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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 944699" data-attributes="member: 158">A thought struck me this morning (ouch!) and frankly, I don't know why it never occurred sooner:For all the complaints and concern about the length of time between editions that have occurred, people don't seem to be taking into account the POWERFUL effect that the internet has on playtesting and on revision of existing rules.In the 1970's, it took years for the consensus of the gaming community to filter back to a company, assuming the company was listening in the first place.In the 1980's, the advent of BBS's helped people share their interests and their optional rules, but the internet still was not a user-friendly place to be.Even still in the early 90's, a company did not have many means to ascertain the direct pulse of a community built around their products. The advent of AOL, GEnie, Compuserve, and the internet galvanized who communities of gamers, and showed people the beginnings of instant feedback. For better or for worse, just as computer programs now have amazingly short development times between revisions, RPG designers have harnessed the ability of a community to determine <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> from Shinola in rapid time.It still takes a long time to discern between valid complaints and suggestions, and loud-mouthed grousing, but think about the fact that when someone comments that the Grappling Rules are cumbersome and have errors, that the DESIGNER of said grappling rules is likely listening right as it's being said! At what point in prior history has a designer of a product been able to listen to hundreds of thousands of feedback almost immediately after releasing their product?The fact that money is a concern is not a question to me. But the idea that a revision is "too soon" is using the turnaround cycles of a non-internet age as a point of comparison to a new era in customer satisfaction and feedback. On ENWorld, we have some posters who get outraged when a complaint is not answered in 3 hours or less; how much more instantaneous are the demands from a game designer on new or revised product?</blockquote>

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