D&D 5E Have you moved on yet? Has Wizard's handled this properly?

[DM Howard]

The brand holds that much sway over us. 'D&D' is preferable over 'Pathfinder' for a good number of those players, if both games are comparable enough to get the gaming experience out of it that they want.

Never underestimate the power of the brand.

Agreed. I always hear people either at the store or on ENworld talking about Pathfinder being their "favorite D&D". That right there shows you that there are many people that are saying "Meh, I'm busy with other stuff." But when D&DN is finally released many of those same people will be at least taking a glance at the book if not buying the core books to give it a go.

I always hear people saying "Hey wanna come play D&D with us tonight?" when they are actually referring to Pathfinder.

 

[Argyle King]

originally, I had typed out something much longer, but this sums it up...

I do not feel negative toward Next or D&D. I currently feel apathy, but part of that is because I do not feel I am part of the target audience for Next. That may very well change in the future, but there's a possibility it may not.

I'm aware it is nowhere near complete. However, I look at what is currently there, and I think I can see what direction some of the ideas are going. In a few areas, I feel good about the direction. In many, I'm not sure that I do. Overall, I think I feel the same as I felt during a lot of 4E's life: I'm ok with playing the game, and I often enjoy it, but I didn't (generally speaking; there were a few exceptions) feel motivated to buy it.

Part of the reason (but not the only one) behind that is because I've started playing other games more. When it comes to my wallet, D&D now has to compete with those other games.

In response to the OP: While I'm not a Dark Heresy player, I too have noticed the game becoming popular here. It's one of the more popular games here in the local area.

 

[Umbran]

It is very debatable if Blizzard got Diablo III right... I really don't think WotC wants the same level of harping on it that D3 has on its forums.

*shrug*. It seems a good enough game to me. And it sure sold like hotcakes.

I am pretty sure nobody at WotC is so ill-informed to think their forums will be filled with anything other than harping. Happy people generally don't spend much effort to go out to the internet to proclaim it to the world. So forum discussion is dominated by folks who have reason to be unhappy, and the folks who just get glee out of being dissatisfied and negative.

 

[Nellisir]

I'm OK with what's been happening. I burned out on 3.5 a year or two before 4e was announced, and with a few short exceptions, haven't played since. I did DM several 4e games, and found it not to my taste, at least as a DM. I wanted something simple at its core, but with increasing layers of complexity; more emphasis on the lower & mid-levels, and less "epic" play.

Pathfinder is very nice, but it's 3.5 reskinned and upgraded, and I want to go simpler than that. Not 1e simpler, but simpler.

So, yeah, I'm the target audience for Next. Hoping to use it for a campaign of some kind in the next few months.

 

[BobROE]

Never underestimate the power of the brand.

But the longer it goes without that brand being the game being played by a person the less valuable it is as a brand to that person.

I haven't bought and D&D branded material since just after the 4E launch (and that was 3.5 material I hadn't gotten previously) and have since moved onto PF, so the value of D&D's brand has gone down for me.

 

[techno]

To answer the OP's question, yes, our group has moved on. We switched from D&D 4e to HackMaster 5e and don't plan to look back. We tried the D&DN play test but it did not generate any enthusiasm or excitement. I am personally frustrated with how WotC has conducted business over the last few years. I still have a DDI subscription and have been disappointed with the ever-dwindling Dungeon and Dragon content. I feel like, even while trying to sell me on 5e, they are under-delivering on products I am still paying for. I just don't have confidence in the company any more.

 

[Jack99]

According to Mike Mearls, the number of playtesters is steadily increasing. So much for moving on

 

[jbear]

Not to doubt Mr Mearl's words, but I figure I would be counted amongst that number as I'm still being sent messages about downloading the packages and responding to the survey.

But I am no longer play testing. Basically I don't have a group to play with face to face any more as we moved country.

I wonder if that is true of other people. They are still on the list but not actively playtesting.

If I were to start gaming again at this stage I have been interested by what I have seen of Next. I'm not the target audience of the core of the game. But I am curious enough to check in and see what is happening every now and again, see how things are progressing. When the final product comes out I'll give it a look and see what can be built onto the core and see if it is enough to scratch my itch.

So where I am at is: not excited, but still interested, and definitely not concerned either way.

 

[Jester David]

Yes. However, it doesn't serve them to put out a game that has chunks of it that stink, either. So long as they are being open in the playtest, folks will see that they're working in good faith, so delays will be far more acceptable than they'd be in the more traditional silence.

I totally agree.
Of course, they haven't been very frank about the delays. The second playtest package was pretty late and the 3rd was released as late into the promise month as they could manage yet they haven't come out and said they're behind schedule. I get the impression WotC (by which I mean the D&D team) is trying very hard to be open and honest but we still get a heck of a lot of silence.

But here's the catch: it won't be perfect. There will be mistakes. There will be typos and poorly written rules and designs they could have done better. They could spend eight years tweaking and adjusting and redesigning the classes and still find things that aren't just right. Eventually you just have to stop making changes and start working on everything else.
Continual changes hurt 4e. They were thinking of new designs all the way until the last second. They came up with certain mechanics so late that they did not have time to go back and add them all to all the monsters in the MM and only monsters from that point on had the new mechanics (resistance & vulnerabilities IIRC). Just like there are power differences between spells in the Red Box and the later Essentials books because they couldn't stop

The best thing WotC could do is get the entire game written three months early and just stop tweaking for a month and play as if it were finished. Then think about what else needed to be done while they still have two months to make small changes and catch the must-fix problems.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

So seeing D&D Next all but give up on new mechanics and instead choosing to bring back a mishmash of the old is somewhat disheartening, but I've come to see it as a blessing in disguise....

This is why 5e will fail. You see a "mishmash of the old" and I see almost nothing from pre 3e save maybe some terminology. All I see is 4e mechanics reworked a bit, maybe mixed with some 3eisms and some old school flavor text.

They are uniting the old and new fans all right. By giving us a game, NEITHER will like.