D&D (2024) It feels so much like the D&D Next playtest did

[Yaarel]

I just hope that more of the exciting ideas make it to the end product this time. Very little of the stuff my group and I provided positive feedback for made it to 5e. Which, maybe we were extreme outliers or something, but it really made us wonder...

It seems inevitable that the end result will only improve incrementally. But perhaps designers that recognize useful innovations can make them variants that implement easily.

 

[HammerMan]

I don't know what system WotC uses for surveys but it is highly likely to have protection against that kind of automated ballot-stuffing. Plus it's highly unlikely they'd even have the technical competence and determination to implement such a thing.

Right. Again I am an old out of touch guy who is typing on a phone that might as well be magic. I have no idea what is and isn’t possible. The two talking sounded (to me an outsider) like tech guys though if that matters.

 

[Yaarel]

The problem with innovation is - it is easy for a majority to disagree with a status quo, but difficult to propose an innovation that a majority agree with.

Compare psionics.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My niece is one of those new players. I know she won’t sit through a 3+ page survey as much as I wish she would. But if they made a “sound” on tic tok to “stitch” she would make a dozen 1 minute response videos for them to see

Yeah and I imagine they'll have people looking at social media, but that sort of thing is impossible to quantify so has limited value as mass feedback.

If I were them I might put out very short videos explaining each rules change and why it was being suggested and get people to react in the comments with specific emojis or phrases, which might kind of work there.

 

[HammerMan]

The problem with innovation is - it is easy for a majority to disagree with a status quo, but difficult to propose an innovation that a majority agree with.

Compare psionics.

Yeah. We don’t need 55% of people to say “yeah this is a problem we need fixed” we need 55+% people to AGREE with the fix.

This is what I feel happened with psi incident, it felt to me like most of the player base (new or old) wanted psionic classes. But no one agreed on a good way to do them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The problem with innovation is - it is easy for a majority to disagree with a status quo, but difficult to propose an innovation that a majority agree with.

Compare psionics.

Quite right.

Virtually every caster class in 5E would have failed the 70% test if suggested as a new class.

 

[HammerMan]

Yeah and I imagine they'll have people looking at social media, but that sort of thing is impossible to quantify so has limited value as mass feedback.

If I were them I might put out very short videos explaining each rules change and why it was being suggested and get people to react in the comments with specific emojis or phrases, which might kind of work there.

Yeah I don’t think you can automate a “what are people saying on Xxx” in a computer and what they say fitting on a graph is hard unless you pair it down to “positive negative”. But I still think it would be worth hearing the feed back.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Right. Again I am an old out of touch guy who is typing on a phone that might as well be magic. I have no idea what is and isn’t possible. The two talking sounded (to me an outsider) like tech guys though if that matters.

Them being tech guys doesn't matter, because tech is so broad, and most people have narrow areas of actual competence, even if a lot of them are self-deluded about it. It's like, if they are competent scripters/coders and willing to do a ton of work and learn a bunch off stuff, could they technically come up with a way to automatically repeatedly fill in surveys? (Subject to whatever spam/flood protection WotC has).

Sure.

But if they're that competent and determined they also know that WotC could basically weed out everything they insert with Excel, let alone better tools. I could weed it out, and I'm only borderline a "tech guy".

And anything they do that's more aggressive than mere clumsy and likely slow ballot stuffing (which is painfully easy to detect) is risking civil or even criminal sanctions (esp. as the US has incredibly low thresholds for computer crime and utterly draconian punishments).

 

[Alzrius]

The problem with innovation is - it is easy for a majority to disagree with a status quo, but difficult to propose an innovation that a majority agree with.

I suspect I'm in a distinct minority here, but I can't help but wonder if part of the underlying issue is the idea that changes to the game are "improvements" as opposed to just being "changes."

I've been playing D&D for just shy of thirty years now, and from what I've seen, different editions are just that: different. Not better, not worse, just more in line with certain expectations and play-styles than others. 3E wasn't a "superior" game compared to 2E, 4E wasn't an "improvement" compared to 3E, 5E wasn't "better" than 4E, and One D&D won't be an "upgrade" to 5E.

Parsing it this way pushes divisiveness; I can understand wanting the game to better reflect your personal preferences and values, but that's not an indication that the new edition is necessarily an upgrade over how it used to be. It's just different.

 

[Reynard]

I will be very surprised if any actual innovative changes on the scale of advantage/disadvantage are introduced, and even more so if they end up in the final result.