Is Wotc Slipping?

[Argyle King]

Good post.

And I too thought Essentials would do well. I think, in hindsight, some of this was wishful thinking. Contrary to the claims of those who think all PF players want WotC to die, I suspect most are like myself to one degree or another. We are sentimentally attached to the brand and want it to succeed even though we have no interest in the current incarnation.

I think if I was going to make an educated guess on why essentials has not done as well as hoped it is because it lacked a large enough, and viable enough, target audience.

1 - Essentials, while welcome, was too little too late for PF players like myself who feel 4e has left behind too many "classic" D&D assumptions. You can't well argue it harkens back to the things people associated with D&D (i.e. magic missile) but is still fully 4e.

2 - Essentials, while appealing to completist, was not needed by core 4e players who were satisfied with their game.

3 - Essentials (and this one is a guess) is too confusing for new players in that it provides an additional gateway into the game on top of the core books already produced. People don't want to buy the same rules twice if they can help it and I suspect half the new buyers will buy the old books and half will buy the new books, as they try to figure out what should be the first book bought.

good points; if you don't mind that I add a few of my own....


4 - I'm still not entirely sure what exactly Essentials is supposed to be. It's supposedly an easier introductory product and an easier format for new players, but I find the Heroes of ______ books to be written in a way which is more confusing than the PHB ever was. For me, the layout of the information jumps around too much. As someone who knows how to play the game, it takes to long to get to the information I need. If I were to somehow mind erase myself and be a new player once again; I don't believe Essentials would be easier than how PHB1 was presented.

4b - Essentials isn't necessarily less complex either. While it is true that some classes do not have ye olde power structure of 4E, many of those classes replace power choice with keeping track of more variables such as auras stances and other such things. It's also my humble opinion that feat selection is more important than it was before, the Essentials feats tend to be more powerful than their forerunners were.

Overall, I just don't understand what the end goal of Essentials was supposed to be. It often seems to conflict with itself.

5 - I believe other games have gained ground on the 'industry leader' over the past 2 years. There was/is (I believe) a group who didn't want to go back to 3.5 (or Pathfinder,) but were also turned off of 4E after the first few books. They took their first venture into non-D&D territory and discovered a world of possibilities they didn't know existed. They still gave Essentials a look to see if it changed what they didn't like; in some cases it did, but in other cases it took 4E further in the direction they already didn't like... sometimes it somehow managed to do both at the same time. I count myself into this category.

 

[Wicht]

I mean, which of the old core books are you supposed to buy if you start with all of the essentials products? Do they tell you anywhere? Do they tell you how much you'll be buying twice if you do so? Do they tell you what changes were made in Essentials, that, if you buy the old books, will not be supported with the online tools? And do they tell you all of this in one convenient easy-to-find place?

I've been playing D&D in one form or another since 1981. I'm not a newbie and I must confess that if I was to try, at this moment, to tell someone which 4e book to start with, I honestly wouldn't know what to say other than to point them to the 1st 4e Players Handbook and DM's Guide. And even then I would tell them that I have heard they have had a lot of errata and that after you buy the book you'll have to find out what those changes are on-line. (Which isn't the best way to have to sell a book of rules.)

 

[xechnao]

D&D Essentials, as the evergreen D&D essential product should be one, maximum two books (one for the player and one for the DM).

What they did was an attempt to launch and sell a "new(revised)/not new(compatible)" severely long package line and (if internet claims are true) they failed utterly.

I am not sure whether this was due to wrong marketing or a failed conceprtion regarding the product's commercial potential.

Nevertheless, IMO the design of Essentials is a sincere effort to fix 4e, towards what tabletop D&D has historically wanted to be and it is a well done effort at that. Now, whether the design of 4e can trully be amended on this front is a different matter entirely. But Essentials seems to be the best thing that one could do about it.

 

[BryonD]

By confusing, I am not referencing the rules. I assume they are not confusing. I am talking about consumer purchasing confusion.

Moreover, as my point is that I would guess essentials lacks a large enough viable target audience, your second point merely reinforces what I was trying to say. Essentials hasn't done as well as expected because it lacks a truly viable target demographic capable.

Corrected and in agreement

 

[MrMyth]

But you are majorly moving the goal posts here.

Even the title of this thread says "slipping" not "failing" which are far different assessments.

Just to be clear, I don't necessarily agree or disagree with either assessment. But either one involves making a very large conclusion about the state of an entire industry based on a variety of uncertain data. And that, as a whole, is a very different thing from saying, "That guy's shop failed because he undermines himself by discouraging people from buying product he is selling."

In the second case, it may still not be true, sure! But I think it is a much smoother declaration to make than claims that WotC is slipping based on the information we have thus far.

Now, if your claim is that ProfessorCirno is an unreliable witness, so those of us on the internet can't make any judgements at all - then sure, that's more of an argument. Even if I have no reason to doubt him, it has become secondhand knowledge, and I'd be making a conclusion about a store I've never seen based on a statement from someone I've never met.

But for ProfessorCirno himself, coming to a conclusion about a store he has personal knowledge of, based on his own personal experiences about the owner of the store, seems like a much more reasonable thing than all of us bouncing around bits of various data and trying to assemble it into a complete picture, without ever having access to the data that truly matters.

Either one, of course, Dannagar's xp comment wasn't celebrating ProfessorCirno making some genius calculation to have definitively shown why that store owner failed. It was about saying, "Yeah, telling people not to buy products you are selling is silly."

Which, regardless of why the store failed, is true.

 

[Belen]

A table top RPG will not dictate the success or failure of a LGS. If a LGS is relying on sales of TT games to keep them in business, then they have already failed. A store owner that is pro-PF or Pro-D&D does not matter except for local sales of one edition or another.

A friend of mine that owns a successful LGS barely stocks PF because she believes that she cannot compete with paizo.com. She carries a few PF products and mainly WOTC, although sales of WOTC have tanked. She has considered reducing shelf space dedicated to RPGs because they just do not offer a lot of sales.

The state of PF or D&D really has no influence on a LGS. In many cases, carrying such books are only used as loss leaders to get people into the store that may buy other items.

Personally, I am happy for Paizo.

WOTC made themselves largely irrelevant to me when they canceled Saga and complete irrelevant when they canceled the minis.

 

[BryonD]

But either one involves making a very large conclusion about the state of an entire industry based on a variety of uncertain data.

You are casually brushing off a lot of data here.

Now, if your claim is that ProfessorCirno is an unreliable witness

I don't claim that at all. I have no idea. I'm certainly willing to presume he is right about the facts. Heck, I can even assume he knows more than he said and the connection DOES exist. None of that changes my point.

But for ProfessorCirno himself, coming to a conclusion about a store he has personal knowledge of, based on his own personal experiences about the owner of the store, seems like a much more reasonable thing than all of us bouncing around bits of various data and trying to assemble it into a complete picture, without ever having access to the data that truly matters.

Why does his data get every benefit of the doubt and all the other get presumed false with no option for even consideration?

Either one, of course, Dannagar's xp comment wasn't celebrating ProfessorCirno making some genius calculation to have definitively shown why that store owner failed. It was about saying, "Yeah, telling people not to buy products you are selling is silly."

Heh, that is a wildly charitable interpretation of a sarcastic "paragons of mankind", remove it from the context of both the specific post and the overall conversation and declare it to just mean "silly". So you bend over backwards to distort the xp comment to something unrecognizably passive. But one post ago you were going out of your way to warp "slipping" into the major overstatment "failing". You are applying rather stark double standards.

 

[Umbran]

You are casually brushing off a lot of data here.

Amount does not imply accuracy.

Why does his data get every benefit of the doubt and all the other get presumed false with no option for even consideration?

If my friend in Portland tells me about the weather in Portland, I'm likely to just believe him. If he isn't also a climatologist, and starts making claims about global climate, I'm going to ask where his information comes from.

It is not unreasonable to think that a single person can accurately observe and report on a local phenomenon. If it isn't my locality, I'm not in a position to question their accuracy - barring special circumstances, the local observer is usually more likely to know what's going on than I am at a distance.

The same doesn't hold for more broad scope. Individuals cannot generally observe global phenomena directly. They must gather data. And then how they get what data becomes very important.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If my friend in Portland tells me about the weather in Portland, I'm likely to just believe him. If he isn't also a climatologist, and starts making claims about global climate, I'm going to ask where his information comes from.

It is not unreasonable to think that a single person can accurately observe and report on a local phenomenon.

Yup.

But if my friend in Portland has been known to have an agenda to make me think the weather in Portland is better than it really is, or if I have noticed that whenever actual observations show him to be wrong, he either denies those observations or refuses to admit he is wrong, it makes me suspect that my friend in Portland might be a less-than-reliable witness.

Observation of someone's habits across multiple threads tends to affect how much weight I give their observations. YMMV.



RC

 

[Umbran]

But if my friend in Portland has been known to have an agenda to make me think the weather in Portland is better than it really is, or if I have noticed that whenever actual observations show him to be wrong, he either denies those observations or refuses to admit he is wrong, it makes me suspect that my friend in Portland might be a less-than-reliable witness.

Yes. Which is why I did say "likely" and "barring special circumstances". There's always exceptions.

Mind you, if you want to be completely intellectually honest, if you're going to critique your friend, you ought to critique yourself, too. Ask yourself if you have an agenda of your own, and if you've been properly skeptical of the sources of information that "prove" your friend wrong, and all that.

This is all easy when you're talking about the weather, and there are solid sources of information independent from you or your friends and your possible agendas.

In dichotomy wars, it is a tad more difficult.