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<blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5270701" data-attributes="member: 32164">All I can do is speak to my experience introducing 4e to a bunch of people that included experience gamers who were primarily 1e and 2e veterans, and others who had never played an RPG before. And all of them had a difficult time &quot;getting&quot; (or accepting) the concept of martial classes with powers. Even several sessions in, most of the time those players (and their characters) were defaulting to 1 or 2 signature powers that they latched on to. My wife's rogue loved &quot;Deft Strike,&quot; every ranger in our games liked using &quot;Twin Strike,&quot; and so on.And ALL my defender players had trouble getting into the idea of marking targets. I think that some form of passive power would have been much better received by the players in my group. Now, these aren't dumb people, but they're mostly creative types, not particularly &quot;techie&quot; or &quot;gamist.&quot; And for them, default 4e is pretty finicky. The more &quot;cerebral&quot; players in each group I ran opted to play Wizards, and both had a ball.One other comment. When I was in business school, one of the things that was hammered into our heads was &quot;NEVER assume you know your customer base. Because 90% of the time, your instincts are WRONG. And even if your instincts are RIGHT, you can learn something by talking to your customers.&quot; The only way to know what your prospective customers actually want is to conduct a proper survey, and do experiential analysis (i.e. watch people play). WotC actually does this, and I'm sure the approach of both Essentials and the new Starter Set is based on their research. Ryan Dancy pointed out a while ago that one of the mistakes TSR made back in the day was to rely entirely on their instincts. Sometimes, those lead to great products (the Mentzer Red Box), but most of the time they don't.The internet can be great for feedback, but you can make a catastrophic business decision if you listen to the vocal minority and don't even try to find out what the majority wants.Just some thoughts.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="JohnSnow, post: 5270701, member: 32164"] All I can do is speak to my experience introducing 4e to a bunch of people that included experience gamers who were primarily 1e and 2e veterans, and others who had never played an RPG before. And all of them had a difficult time "getting" (or accepting) the concept of martial classes [I]with powers[/I]. Even several sessions in, most of the time those players (and their characters) were defaulting to 1 or 2 signature powers that they latched on to. My wife's rogue loved "Deft Strike," every ranger in our games liked using "Twin Strike," and so on. And ALL my defender players had trouble getting into the idea of marking targets. I think that some form of passive power would have been much better received by the players in my group. Now, these aren't dumb people, but they're mostly creative types, not particularly "techie" or "gamist." And for them, default 4e is pretty finicky. The more "cerebral" players in each group I ran opted to play Wizards, and both had a ball. One other comment. When I was in business school, one of the things that was hammered into our heads was "NEVER assume you know your customer base. Because 90% of the time, your instincts are WRONG. And even if your instincts are RIGHT, you can learn something by talking to your customers." The only way to know what your prospective customers actually want is to conduct a proper survey, and do experiential analysis (i.e. watch people play). WotC actually does this, and I'm sure the approach of both Essentials and the new Starter Set is based on their research. Ryan Dancy pointed out a while ago that one of the mistakes TSR made back in the day was to rely entirely on their instincts. Sometimes, those lead to great products (the Mentzer Red Box), but most of the time they don't. The internet can be great for feedback, but you can make a catastrophic business decision if you listen to the vocal minority and don't even try to find out what the majority wants. Just some thoughts. [/QUOTE]

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