D&D General Hot Take: D&D Has Not Recovered From 2E to 3.0 Transition

[GMforPowergamers]

No early in 3.0 we played it like late 2E. Most other groups I saw played it at a casual level.

Like that 3.0 was fine. Once you figure out how to break/cheese it the wheels fall off.

Playing 3E casually is the way to do it imho.

yes in general if you could erase all power plays from you and your groups minds any edition would workwell

 

[GreyLord]

Which, of course, is why they slashed the D&D staff to the bone over multiple rounds of layoffs, created a new edition, and shut down DDI. That's what big businesses do with things that make stupendous amounts of money.

(To be fair, DDI might have brought in quite a bit of revenue, and still been unprofitable to operate; technology is expensive. Particularly when you have to find developers who both know Silverlight and want to use it. But it was obviously not a cash cow.)

Off-topic time...

Here's a hypothetical made up story that came to mind after reading your post that could be hilarious to consider (and it could be more of an analogy in other areas of the business world...maybe)...

DDI WAS making a lot of money, but after being created was seen as not really needing that many people to actually run and update. Thus it was making silly cash for operating costs only.

So, they cut it to the bone. They had 3 (give or take a few) people running it. One who basically held the keys to the Kingdom and knew everything about it and how to run it.

Then that person quit.

That's the...we're screwed moment. No one else knows how to actually keep it working. We transferred too much of it to online control. It is going to be an exorbitant cost to get someone who can dissect it and make sure we can run it if it crashes hard to the point it needs to have a critical part of the program rebuilt.

Stupid in laying off everyone else who knew what they were doing before to save costs. Now what?

Well, 4e is already coming to an end because it couldn't make 50 mil like Has-bros were wanting us to. Good time to shut it all down.

Good story, nice time. True...not a chance in the world...but dumb stuff like this happens more than people realize in the business world because we don't value the computer guys enough to accept them at their word when they say they need redundancy in positions and knowledge.

 

[Zardnaar]

yes in general if you could erase all power plays from you and your groups minds any edition would workwell

Apparently they playtested 3.0 more like a 2E game and didn't playtest the higher levels.

I was plugged into the internet hivemind back then. We didn't do the Uber builds but we're playing a different style than the other 3E groups.

That's around when I started to suspect forum goers are a minority, the game doesn't generally get played at higher levels and most gamers aren't power gamers.

4E kinda cinfirmed it. It fixed problems most people had no issue with or even knew they existed. And 5E data has essentially confirmed it officially.

 

[Zardnaar]

Off-topic time...

Here's a hypothetical made up story that came to mind after reading your post that could be hilarious to consider (and it could be more of an analogy in other areas of the business world...maybe)...

DDI WAS making a lot of money, but after being created was seen as not really needing that many people to actually run and update. Thus it was making silly cash for operating costs only.

So, they cut it to the bone. They had 3 (give or take a few) people running it. One who basically held the keys to the Kingdom and knew everything about it and how to run it.

Then that person quit.

That's the...we're screwed moment. No one else knows how to actually keep it working. We transferred too much of it to online control. It is going to be an exorbitant cost to get someone who can dissect it and make sure we can run it if it crashes hard to the point it needs to have a critical part of the program rebuilt.

Stupid in laying off everyone else who knew what they were doing before to save costs. Now what?

Well, 4e is already coming to an end because it couldn't make 50 mil like Has-bros were wanting us to. Good time to shut it all down.

Good story, nice time. True...not a chance in the world...but dumb stuff like this happens more than people realize in the business world because we don't value the computer guys enough to accept them at their word when they say they need redundancy in positions and knowledge.

Well they throw around 5 million a year for DDI. Iirc the rpg market 2013 was worth 13 million according to icv2.

Last I saw post 5E that pushed it up to around 60 million.

Even if online income doesn't get counted that's a big difference. Not that's the market not income for WotC.

We don't know the operating costs of DDI. Nor if the numbers were active users or just accounts paid for at one point. 5 million may have been peak DDI.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Good story, nice time. True...not a chance in the world...but dumb stuff like this happens more than people realize in the business world because we don't value the computer guys enough to accept them at their word when they say they need redundancy in positions and knowledge.

So true. It's happening to me right now. New owners took over and laid off most of our UI team, then transferred the remaining guy to a different department. Then, when they realized there was no one left to do UI development, they asked me to learn how to do it. I said sure, because it's a great opportunity for me, but I pointed out that it isn't going to happen overnight. So now I'm getting paid to learn, but the project is basically dead in the water because there's no one who can do the front end.

I'm as certain as I can possibly be that the new owners didn't give any serious thought to the technical needs of our project. They just assumed there was fat they could trim, when our team was already almost as lean as it could possibly get and still function.

The power of magical profit-driven thinking in action.

 

[Zardnaar]

So true. It's happening to me right now. New owners took over and laid off most of our UI team, then transferred the remaining guy to a different department. Then, when they realized there was no one left to do UI development, they asked me to learn how to do it. I said sure, because it's a great opportunity for me, but I pointed out that it isn't going to happen overnight. So now I'm getting paid to learn, but the project is basically dead in the water because there's no one who can do the front end.

I'm as certain as I can possibly be that the new owners didn't give any serious thought to the technical needs of our project. They just assumed there was fat they could trim, when our team was already almost as lean as it could possibly get and still function.

The power of magical profit-driven thinking in action.

Doesn't code become outdated kinda fast?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Doesn't code become outdated kinda fast?

It depends, but not necessarily. Languages may rise and fall in popularity, but they don't really get outdated. Programming concepts, like functional/OOP programming and patterns don't get outdated.

Plus, a lot of outdated code still sees use to this day due to legacy projects, many of which need to be maintained.

 

[Oofta]

So true. It's happening to me right now. New owners took over and laid off most of our UI team, then transferred the remaining guy to a different department. Then, when they realized there was no one left to do UI development, they asked me to learn how to do it. I said sure, because it's a great opportunity for me, but I pointed out that it isn't going to happen overnight. So now I'm getting paid to learn, but the project is basically dead in the water because there's no one who can do the front end.

I'm as certain as I can possibly be that the new owners didn't give any serious thought to the technical needs of our project. They just assumed there was fat they could trim, when our team was already almost as lean as it could possibly get and still function.

The power of magical profit-driven thinking in action.

Something similar happened to me. We were working on a big project to do revisions that it badly needed, they decided to do mass layoffs. Two weeks later they called me up and asked me if I wanted my old job back supporting the old system. Being an in-demand IT person, I didn't literally laugh out loud because but there was no way I was going back.

Kind of amazing how some companies think reducing head count will automatically leads to more profit. Someone has to do the work to build or support their products.

In any case, good luck and have fun learning!

 

[Oofta]

It depends, but not necessarily. Languages may rise and fall in popularity, but they don't really get outdated. Programming concepts, like functional/OOP programming and patterns don't get outdated.

Plus, a lot of outdated code still sees use to this day due to legacy projects, many of which need to be maintained.

Too true. Odds are fairly good that your insurance company or bank still has COBOL code that was originally written in the 70s. Frequently it's code that nobody really understands so they can't replace it.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Too true. Odds are fairly good that your insurance company or bank still has COBOL code that was originally written in the 70s. Frequently it's code that nobody really understands so they can't replace it.

Yep, I know quite a few retired programmers who still make a very nice side income supporting software that no one else understands, because that tech simply isn't in demand anymore (so no one really wants to learn it).