The Myopic Sniper
Hero
Nothing to add except that I was out of the D&D realm during this period, but I find all this fascinating. Keep up the good work.
Yes, these are pretty forward looking. The need for a "bigger tent" approach to the game, making mini's optional, ramping down releases and going back to fewer better known spell/powers....all hidden in plain sight.
It is funny so soon after Essentials. Those must have really....under-performed...
Agreed. One thing to keep in mind, though, was while they may have been looking ahead to 5e at this time, they probably weren't anticipating a big public playtest and consequent early announcement of 5e. I suspect that Essentials was an early 4e expression of these ideas, and it was after looking at Essentials performance throughout 2011 that the decided to go that route. And by performance I don't mean purely revenue-wise. In another interview Mearls mentioned that one thing they were seeing was a lot of people buying the Red Box, but weren't continuing on into the full game. I suspect it was after this that they thought that not even Essentials was growing the market, and they decided to scrap everything and start over.I'm not sure if it's a matter of under performance, going with essential was a change in tactics, going with 5e was a huge strategic change.
Warder
I think these two things are tightly connected, at least in respect of 4e.Mearls seems to question the wisdom of a heavy release schedule.
<snip>
Finally, Mearls slips in a little bit of design philosophy
I think this will all be interesting to see. I'm not sure feats are as easy to balance as you say here, but agree that subclasses is the big issue.Another aspect of 5e as far as material goes is there's a lot of space to go to without worrying about unbalancing the game too much. Backgrounds being one, and the chunkier feats being another. The big question is how crazy they will go with subclasses, in whatever form, be that new player expansions, a resurrected Dragon magazine, or Unearthed Arcana-type articles.
I suspect that Essentials was an early 4e expression of these ideas, and it was after looking at Essentials performance throughout 2011 that the decided to go that route. And by performance I don't mean purely revenue-wise. In another interview Mearls mentioned that one thing they were seeing was a lot of people buying the Red Box, but weren't continuing on into the full game. I suspect it was after this that they thought that not even Essentials was growing the market, and they decided to scrap everything and start over.
I have heard some people say good things about the Essentials product structure, but not many!Mearls did indeed put the 5e starting point in a big box, and created the online Basic Rules as a smooth, relatively less complex on-ramp to the rest of the game.
Yes, these are pretty forward looking. The need for a "bigger tent" approach to the game, making mini's optional, ramping down releases and going back to fewer better known spell/powers....all hidden in plain sight.
It is funny so soon after Essentials. Those must have really....under-performed...
What do we know? The 4e PHB2 sold extremely well, hitting the top 15 on the WSJ bestsellers list (and spending multiple weeks on the list), and the PHB3 didn't sell remotely so well but was somewhere round #50. (Not bad at all, all things considered given it was a pretty awful book IMO - out of six classes I hard ban three, soft ban two, and ban Hybrids, leaving just the Monk)....
Enter Essentials. 4e's lovely internal edition war of a product. ...
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Essentials really underperformed.
Basically only one guy who had been involved in 4E was still doing RPG design for D&D after that point.
And his name was Mearls.
My take is that 4e was doing well (it was making $6 million/year as late as November 2013, over a year after the final book) but not up to the $50 million/year target Dancey said they needed to become a core brand. Then Pathfinder came out and started selling well. The flailing was due to the unexpected competition, and someone suggested taking 4e in the direction of PF (pleasing no one) hence Essentials. Essentials failed. Slavisek took the lead so he took the fall, leaving Mearls.