Marketing criticisms miss the point
- Thread starter Negflar2099
- Start date
Imaro
Legend
SSquirrel said:
I'll give you the new player concern. However as far as the balance of the parties involved, that speaks volumes if even the writer and designer couldn't create a well balanced party for the new rules that are suppose to eliminate bad choices. As far as sub-optimal choices, alot of the DM's state their players mad good strategic decisions, so I don't know how valid that reasoning is.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
delericho said:
I can't say I've ever had a problem with it either. In any event, it provided more guidance than any previous edition ever did. The fact that you ended up tweaking this is of little consequence since that was all we ever were able to do before. With 3e, at least, you had a something to start with that wasn't too far off the mark.
The problem with the 3e system was with the people using it who either slavishly adhered to it or failed to realize that there could be significant difference in characters based on their builds. But even in 4e, I suspect if the DM builds an encounter without considering the specifics of his PCs he will have potential trouble.
Celebrim
Legend
There are problems I have with the system that have nothing to do with marketing, but for me the marketing really did make me much more skeptical and critical of the product than I would have been otherwise.
Major mistakes:
1) Tried to tell rather than show: One of the biggest problems I had was with the marketing making extravagant claims about the system for which they were unable or unwilling to produce evidence. There were promises that they made about the system that I knew that they couldn't deliver on, features that they claimed existed that I knew wouldn't be in the final product. Because of that it made the whole product seem like nothing more than hot air, and made the real product suffer in comparison to this imaginary one they created with thier marketing.
2) Treated the fan base hostilely: The huge success of d20/3rd edition was treating the fan base respectfully. They solicited input. They did previews. They had a lengthy testing period. Fourth edition was rushed to market amidst a cloud of secrecy with problems that just one or two weeks of open play testing could have fixed. All I can say is that it is a very good thing they vetted at least some of the product, because otherwise we'd be dealing with 'Amber Dragon Tail Swipes' or some such for martial exploits.
3) Treating thier past products hostilely: This was probably the craziest one of all. Almost all of thier marketing seemed to emphasive that past editions of D&D were unfun, tedious, flawed pursuits that made you stupid and geeky to play, and how when 4e would come out that would all change. The problem of course is that if you did enjoy past editions, describing those editions in highly negative terms led at least me to believe that the new game was going to drop alot of the stuff that I did enjoy about past editions. Likewise, if you've been a market leader for going on 40 years now, don't fix what isn't broken. If you have a brand as valuable as D&D, why in the heck would you run it down?
4) Failure to realize what had made D&D great: Coming out with something first is no gaurantee that you are going to dominate the market. In fact, alot of the time, the second or third product in a particular market is the one that ends up dominating because it can learn from the successes and failures of the earlier products. So why did D&D manage to survive and thrive and lead the market despite mismanagement and healthy competition? It wasn't by accident. If I may insert a contriversial hypothesis, it is because D&D isn't a Forge game. D&D isn't gamist, or simulationist, or narrativist. It's a hodge podge of different rules and goals, some of which are seemingly contridictory, that leaves D&D without a really core gameplay. What this means is that D&D isn't a master of anything. For any game style you might want, there is probably a better designed system. But it also means that for any random group of 5 or 6 gamers, there isn't a system which gets in thier way less than D&D. It is a concensus game, not a designed game. What 4e does is take the mode of D&D's play styles, and explicitly designs for it. That's great if you happen to be playing D&D according to the common mode, or if you want to play D&D but always felt it didn't do its core gameplay well, but if you happen to be someone who has played D&D for some number of years in an unusual way - and based on my experience that is most of us - then it's a disaster. What 4e does in that case is take some aspect of D&D that you might not have liked, and in fact the aspect of D&D that you found most problimatic, and emphasised it at the expense of how you were playing the game.
4e does exactly what Mearls said a game should never do - tell you how you should be playing it rather than giving you the tools to play the game you want to play. And the marketing, rather than letting you decide for yourself, just beat you over the head with this fact. It's selling point that it was trying to hammer home was a negative as far as I was concerned, and all the marketing did for me was hammer home, "Don't give this game a chance. It's not worth it. It isn't designed for you."
Major mistakes:
1) Tried to tell rather than show: One of the biggest problems I had was with the marketing making extravagant claims about the system for which they were unable or unwilling to produce evidence. There were promises that they made about the system that I knew that they couldn't deliver on, features that they claimed existed that I knew wouldn't be in the final product. Because of that it made the whole product seem like nothing more than hot air, and made the real product suffer in comparison to this imaginary one they created with thier marketing.
2) Treated the fan base hostilely: The huge success of d20/3rd edition was treating the fan base respectfully. They solicited input. They did previews. They had a lengthy testing period. Fourth edition was rushed to market amidst a cloud of secrecy with problems that just one or two weeks of open play testing could have fixed. All I can say is that it is a very good thing they vetted at least some of the product, because otherwise we'd be dealing with 'Amber Dragon Tail Swipes' or some such for martial exploits.
3) Treating thier past products hostilely: This was probably the craziest one of all. Almost all of thier marketing seemed to emphasive that past editions of D&D were unfun, tedious, flawed pursuits that made you stupid and geeky to play, and how when 4e would come out that would all change. The problem of course is that if you did enjoy past editions, describing those editions in highly negative terms led at least me to believe that the new game was going to drop alot of the stuff that I did enjoy about past editions. Likewise, if you've been a market leader for going on 40 years now, don't fix what isn't broken. If you have a brand as valuable as D&D, why in the heck would you run it down?
4) Failure to realize what had made D&D great: Coming out with something first is no gaurantee that you are going to dominate the market. In fact, alot of the time, the second or third product in a particular market is the one that ends up dominating because it can learn from the successes and failures of the earlier products. So why did D&D manage to survive and thrive and lead the market despite mismanagement and healthy competition? It wasn't by accident. If I may insert a contriversial hypothesis, it is because D&D isn't a Forge game. D&D isn't gamist, or simulationist, or narrativist. It's a hodge podge of different rules and goals, some of which are seemingly contridictory, that leaves D&D without a really core gameplay. What this means is that D&D isn't a master of anything. For any game style you might want, there is probably a better designed system. But it also means that for any random group of 5 or 6 gamers, there isn't a system which gets in thier way less than D&D. It is a concensus game, not a designed game. What 4e does is take the mode of D&D's play styles, and explicitly designs for it. That's great if you happen to be playing D&D according to the common mode, or if you want to play D&D but always felt it didn't do its core gameplay well, but if you happen to be someone who has played D&D for some number of years in an unusual way - and based on my experience that is most of us - then it's a disaster. What 4e does in that case is take some aspect of D&D that you might not have liked, and in fact the aspect of D&D that you found most problimatic, and emphasised it at the expense of how you were playing the game.
4e does exactly what Mearls said a game should never do - tell you how you should be playing it rather than giving you the tools to play the game you want to play. And the marketing, rather than letting you decide for yourself, just beat you over the head with this fact. It's selling point that it was trying to hammer home was a negative as far as I was concerned, and all the marketing did for me was hammer home, "Don't give this game a chance. It's not worth it. It isn't designed for you."
Gundark said:
Actually, that's not accurate.
First, I wouldn't say I was bitter toward Wizards after my layoff (though I have had some issues with their accounts payable department). Likewise, Sean volunteered to be laid off so he could move to New York, so I don't think he had much reason to be bitter.
As for "that part being telling," you *do* realize I was talking about Monte, Skip, and Jonathan (and later Andy and Rich), right? I never actually worked on 3E or 3.5, aside from some web content, and some scattered sourcebooks during my time as a freelancer.
And, for the record: If you like 4E, good for you. By all means, spend money on it. I wouldn't want anyone to believe that I'm suggesting people *not* play games they like, and that work for their needs.
I'm just not impressed with it, though, so, while I might play it from time to time (to correct another misapprehension about my intent), I see no reason to pay Wizards for the privilege.
JD
Er, I don't think you can say
"Here's what we're doing and why" WITHOUT referring to the original you're changing from AND making it look like you're NOT denigrating the older version.
*Then there's also the fact that I don't think the 3.x designers actuallly thought through all the changes in 3.0*
(the infamous "Druids are weak" kinda is a good example)
"Here's what we're doing and why" WITHOUT referring to the original you're changing from AND making it look like you're NOT denigrating the older version.
*Then there's also the fact that I don't think the 3.x designers actuallly thought through all the changes in 3.0*
(the infamous "Druids are weak" kinda is a good example)
Negflar2099 said:
Then your like those monkies that held its hands oevr its eyes ears and mouth in the last year. I've never seen a badly run marketing run as WotC has with 4e.
Dont understand what WotC could have done differently? Here's two basic things:
Dragon and Dungeon cancellation was TOTALLY badly handled. Killing the magazine and NOT having something in place to pick up the slack was bad. Saying you have something cool coming was NOT the way to transition. The total disregard for its rich history was bad.
The continuos chorus of 3.5 was bad and badmouthing it to hype 4e was TOTALLY inapproriate. After years of fun, being total basically, when all is said and done 3.5 was bad and sucks and 4e is way cool.....afte spending money on their books is insulting.
Thats just two examples. Lets go through some 4e stuff thats totally botched:
OGL/GSL. Its not here. The release is, its not. It was SUPPOSE to be here in January. 6 months later its not. For whatever reason, its not. Thats not good.
DDI: its not here. Again it was HUGELY hyped to be with 4e. It was a conerstone of the new edition. Not ready.
Lets not even talk about the pit of darkness thats Gleemax......
delericho
Legend
AllisterH said:
"In the last eight years, we've given a lot of thought to the question of how to build fun, exciting and balanced encounters. We have found that by making monster roles more explicit, and by spelling out the differences between creatures meant to be encountered alone and those meant to be encountered as part of a group, we can speed up DM preparation, and make it easier to generate balanced encounters than ever before!"
How's that?
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