Janaxstrus said:
I don't think I like the idea of D&D assuming we play 2 hours a week or that were will be bored of a character after 12 levels, those are DM calls that shouldn't really be codified in my opinion.
I don't think of it as codified -- I don't think they'll FORCE anyone to stop playing after two hours.
I think of it as optimised -- if they know that the average person plays for that long, that often, and sees that percentage of the game, they can target their design that way.
For instance, in 4e, a combat can take an hour or so to resolve. If someone plays a session for two hours, this means that they can get through two combats each week if they do nothing else (or one combat + some story, or whatever). In the first case, this may mean they can structure how long a thing takes to resolve -- if combat is taking up half of your session, is that a good thing? A bad thing? Something we might want to scale? Does every goblin-bashing need to take an hour? Do we want a dragon to take the full two hours? Do we want to make turns shorter? What if the group wants to spend half the session on roleplaying? Or exploring a dungeon? Or maybe we split it three ways (combat/roleplay/explore!), about how long should each chunk take, and how complicated then should we make each chunk?
So that's useful to know because it helps give you a baseline target for these things: Okay, if we can fit an entire short "adventure" into one night, complete with all of D&D's major features (combat, interaction, exploration, resouce management, tactics, strategy, etc.), we've got something that even someone who only plays D&D once for two hours will get a handle on -- something we can market as a casual game -- and something that can scale well. Stacking adventures can make for a more complex, powerful game, where each time you meet, you can get something done and walk away feeling like you've done something other than roll dice with your time.
Those who play for longer can always fit more in. It's not hard to pad out something that can take an hour in D&D into four or more.
This also plays into a longer-term strategy.
If the game takes 10 combats to level up and your combat time is like 4e, this means the "two-hour group" is leveling once in a little more than a month (5 weeks). In a year of play, they'll be about level 10 (give or take a few weeks for holidays and whatnot). If a group doesn't stay together for more than a year (or just wants a change of pace), how does that affect our sales strategy?
How long will it take them to see 30 levels? Is it wise to publish 10 new classes within the first few months, or should we wait a year or two? Should we invest a lot of R&D into epic-level stuff when almost no one has a game that lasts that long anyway? How much should we want to bring that experience into that year of play anyway? How many new characters will a given player usually play? How many options do we
really need, so as not to saturate the market?
Again, this isn't about exclusivity or control. Okay, the group that plays for 8 years can stretch it out or change over time. But do we really need to change the one-year-game group's game that much? Or, do we need to do it
faster, so that we can actually sell Epic Destiny rules to those who play in briefer games? Do we need to provide an option other than "Spend 2,000 hours in the next two years killing 1,000 goblins to get to level 20, and THEN you can play this content" because the amount of people who can sit down and actually do that is
not very big?
I think it's vital when you're producing any product, to understand how your product is actually used. In this situation, it might be something like: "We think Epic Destinies are an awesome idea, but no one seems to be using them, because almost no one plays one character for 2,000 hours. Maybe if we implement them as a form of reward that the DM can insert in the campaign at any point to change the flow of the game, rather than something that automatically happens at point X, we can get them out to people who will love them and use them."
