D&D 5E Has 5E Restored or Diminished Your Faith in WotC?

[TheAuldGrump]

A restoration or destruction of faith?

No.

I will admit to a certain level of vindictive satisfaction, was glad to see word of an open playtest....

But my faith in WotC has already been pretty much destroyed, and I will not put much credence in the open Beta until I see it - I remember the flat statement that 4e was going to be OGL.... That the reference documents were going to be released before the game, that they weren't working on 4e (or at least a 4e that was based around miniatures)....

Doing better than 4e, so far, but I do not have much faith.

The Auld Grump

 

[Mengu]

Did you post a playtest report anywhere that I can read? I have read several reports and none sounded like yours. It would add value to read another perspective like yours, IMO.

I had a longish post about it here.

When I read other people's reviews, it seems they mostly had awesome DM's and somewhere between great to decent experience with their playtest. I was bored and disappointed. I think we need more DM-agnostic reviews of just the system, rather than, how much fun a table had.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Hmm... never lost faith in wotc. They have put out a very solid product with 4e. And Paizo did the same with rereleasing 3.5 with a slight polish.
While 4e initially did enough wrong to annoy me due to the amount of errata needed to fix those clearly rushed out products, the last 2 years offered great stuff. So 4e already regained faith with most 4e products and DDI content in the last year.
Announcing a fifth edition did not change that. It was a logical consequence of the last years developments.
They could lose faith however when they don´t continue 4e character builder etc, and actually i blélieve it would be the most stupod move to cut a revenue stream, even if it is lower as expected. Blizzard never needed to end battlenet service for older products, and they even released patches more than 10 years after a game´s release.
So until now, not worried at all.

I instead wonder, why such a thread is opened? Has 4e not been bashed enough by people who most probably didn´t really play it? Has wotc not been bashed enough despite their efforts to continue delivering new content?
I really don´t get it. Judge them by the products they put out. And maybe ask yourself how much you pay them and how much can be reasonably expected.
6$ per month is not much for the content they deliver... really not a lot. Sometimes I believe some gamers lost their connection to reality...

 

[Dausuul]

I have faith that the individuals designing and working on 5E are doing the best they can to put forth the greatest game they can make. However, I also am aware that as a company that is the branch of a corporation that requires certain financial goals be met, that there is pressure to extend the life of any game far beyond what mnight be called the "core" game.

Sure. I have no doubt that we will see a great heaping pile of 5E splatbooks accumulate as the years go by, just like other editions. (4E has been relatively restrained, likely due to budget and headcount restrictions. 3E was immensely bloated by the end, and 2E became ludicrous as TSR raged against the dying of the light.)

However, I view that as a very minor concern; all it costs me is the effort to tell players, "No, we're not using that in this campaign." Furthermore, while I may not use most of the splatbooks, there will be some that appeal to me, even quite late in the edition's lifespan (e.g., the Book of Nine Swords). If WotC is making some books that I like, why should I care if they make other books I don't?

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I was bored and disappointed.

After reading your post I can understand. It sounds like you got a bad GM.

 

[Mark CMG]

Sure. I have no doubt that we will see a great heaping pile of 5E splatbooks accumulate as the years go by, just like other editions. (4E has been relatively restrained, likely due to budget and headcount restrictions. 3E was immensely bloated by the end, and 2E became ludicrous as TSR raged against the dying of the light.)

However, I view that as a very minor concern; all it costs me is the effort to tell players, "No, we're not using that in this campaign." Furthermore, while I may not use most of the splatbooks, there will be some that appeal to me, even quite late in the edition's lifespan (e.g., the Book of Nine Swords). If WotC is making some books that I like, why should I care if they make other books I don't?

Sure, any inidivdual group or DM can restrict what they use in a home game situation but there are other considerations, as in organized play gamers and those who run games at conventions and gamedays. So, too, in situations where elements are purposefully left out of the early "core" books because there will be additional "core" books that will include such elements (and I am talking about elements that are traditionally "core" from edition to edition since early versions of the game). Those are reasons why, while you might not care for your own personal game, it might be worth being concerned for the sake of the game itself since, in the long run, it might be a factor in the length of the edition cycle, thus having some bearing on how long the game you personally come to love might be supported and have a healthy player pool from which you might need to draw players for your personal game.

 

[Dice4Hire]

The seminars at DDXP, my playtest experience at DDXP, and conversations with the DM during the playtest, all felt like D&D next, is 1st/2nd edition AD&D with some house rules. Everything about the system, the game, the combat, felt rigid. I did not see an ounce of what I'm looking for in a modern game system that is moving forward from 4e. I didn't even see room for customization in the design. Maybe I'm narrow sighted, or maybe I was just in a bad mood with all the senseless hack and slash we did. I was hoping the "returning to the roots" stuff was PR BS, but sadly for me, it all seems for real. Sure, during the seminars, they alluded to some customization possibilities, but I'll believe it when I see it.

This could all be because playtest is at such an early stage that they haven't even thought about how to introduce the layers of customization they are speaking of, maybe they are just testing some math elements, I don't know. My opinions may change. My current state is just disappointed.

Well, you were playing in a fixed-time con slot. That is far different from playing at home week after week. Also, they are trying to show the system. I can roleplay with only an empty table surrounded by friends. I think you are looking for something they were not even trying to offer.

 

[mhensley]

 

[Mokona]

I was a huge 4e advocate and now I'm even more positive about 5e than that. D&D 4th edition had a lot of good ideas in it but lately I've soured on the quality of the execution of 4e. I'm very happy to see that 5e has a much better opportunity, because of public playtesting, than 4e ever had to be more awesome than all previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons.

It takes guts to admit you made a mistake which Wizards R&D is saying with the completely opposite approach with regards to fans when promoting and developing 5e.

I wish complete success and strong sales for 5e because I want a vibrant community of D&D players to hang out with here on EN World and elsewhere.

Who knows, it might be that I'll houserule 4e and prefer that to 5e but I can't know that until 5e releases. Until then I'm going to do my best to make sure 5e is perfect for me and as many other people as humanly possible.

 

[trancejeremy]

Even though I liked 3.0, I really only bought maybe half a dozen WOTC products besides the core books.

The quality was largely terrible outside the rulebooks. Poorly edited, horribly printed (all the art was shades of purple), and often not that great rules wise (at least their early splatbooks). And their adventures kind of stunk.

They need to show they can deliver quality products, on par with what Paizo puts out. WOTC put out products that basically were slightly better than Mongoose (which isn't a compliment).

I have faith that the individuals designing and working on 5E are doing the best they can to put forth the greatest game they can make. However, I also am aware that as a company that is the branch of a corporation that requires certain financial goals be met, that there is pressure to extend the life of any game far beyond what mnight be called the "core" game. In 2E this lead to tons of settings which practically drove TSR into bankruptcy,

The thing is, there were other problems at TSR at the time which seem to be had more problems relating to the bankruptcy.

For instance, the money thrown at competing systems - Buck Rogers, Amazing Engine, and Alternity, the whole dungeon dice thing (an attempt to cash in on the CCG craze, only with dice, which was a big failure), all the book returns.

While I definitely think there was setting bloat, and some of the settings were poorly run (The Birthright setting probably could have been set in an existing setting with some tweaks, and the Player's domain guides were probably a money sink since there were so many low priced SKUs) 2e did last a good 10 years.

And the quality issue also raised its head - the sourcebooks they put out where really awful in terms of production values and playtesting.

I'm not saying that model would have worked forever, but it did last longer than 3.0 or 3.5 or 4.0...