D&D 5E (2024) Mearls has some Interesting Ideals about how to fix high level wizards.

[Justice and Rule]

I think folks put a little too much stock in, "you are gonna upset somebody, so you might as well go for broke" kind of perspective. In the status quo take you will annoy some folks who want big changes, the latter you really need to knock it out of the park or you are gonna lose your base. At this point D&D isnt the innovator, its the incubator.

I'm not saying change everything, I'm saying to exercise some designer authority instead of simply ceding all power to surveys. I bring up the druid wildshape for a reason: it's a change that made sense (even if it needed refinement), but instead was cutoff at the legs because I don't think the fanbase really understood what it opened up combined with the fact that I think people tend to be way more conservative about the game than is realized.

 

[Zardnaar]

At this point it's now fighting for spot 2 with its former self. lol

But I think part of the problem was putting too much power in the surveys. You are game designers, you have to sometimes make decisions that might not seem popular at first because your fanbase is conservative about your game.

Look at Wildshape: the playtest was a solid solution that could have been refined into something good compared to the the janky "Pick an animal at this CR" stuff that fed into optimizers. But players thought they were being restricted because the options were balanced, rather than being enabled to frame themselves as any animal you like instead of choosing one out of a pack of 3 optimized choices per level. Sometimes the players simply can't see what is being offered because they are too concerned with what is being lost.

Trying to make sure they had massive consensus for changes instead of making proper design choices is I think what lead to a lot of the disappointment with the edition. It's a big tent game, so getting a supermajority for a change is difficult unless the feature or class is truly broken. I understand not wanting to upset your player base, but that's going to happen regardless because you are "changing editions", if not literally at least from the perception of many. Might as well try to implement proper fixes instead of sending them to the survey meatgrinder.



Honestly if you just replaced low-level slots entirely with spell points at certain levels, that would be both an interesting mechanic and probably a whole bunch of the slot bloat. I'd also say start handing out metamagics to all spellcasters and find something properly interesting to do with sorcerers, but that is another topic entirely.



I mean, kind? The whole "BIGGEST D&D EVER" argument misses a lot of factors including changing ways of first encountering the material, the market being primed for it, etc. Popularity doesn't necessarily measure quality, it also can measure accessibility, and D&D is easily the most accessible given that it was always the biggest name on the block and could find shelf space basically anywhere. We could make the same statement about McDonald's, too. It's a worthless point to make.

So listen to forum users instead and dont bother asking what people actually want?

They did thay last time worked out well.

ENworldss funny. Survey doesnt agree with me. Attack the survey.

Edition doesnt give me what I want? Imply its low quality or users are idiots.

 

[Belen]

I'm not saying change everything, I'm saying to exercise some designer authority instead of simply ceding all power to surveys. I bring up the druid wildshape for a reason: it's a change that made sense (even if it needed refinement), but instead was cutoff at the legs because I don't think the fanbase really understood what it opened up combined with the fact that I think people tend to be way more conservative about the game than is realized.

I am pretty sure they did a lot of that with some editions or just listened to the very vocal online "build masters." It resulted in a decline in their market share.

D&D appeals to a wide variety of player types. It also introduces people to TTRPGs and needs to appeal to casual players.

I loved 3.5/PF1e until I realized how the crunch burned me out. I refused to look at a battlemap for years. I did not return until 5e.

I am sure that it will swing to crunch again at some point but I think a happy balance is better.

Honestly, "5.5" should have concentrated on optional systems or mechanics that appealed to difference audiences rather than the idiocy of minor rules changes and included systems that just had the effect of sowing confusion.

 

[HatWearingFool]

ssly cater to what is suspec

I'm not saying change everything, I'm saying to exercise some designer authority instead of simply ceding all power to surveys. I bring up the druid wildshape for a reason: it's a change that made sense (even if it needed refinement), but instead was cutoff at the legs because I don't think the fanbase really understood what it opened up combined with the fact that I think people tend to be way more conservative about the game than is realized.

Exactly the old quote from Henry Ford (I know he didn't actually say it) is very apt:

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" - Henry Ford.

As Steve Jobs liked to say, "people don’t know what they want until you show it to them," emphasizing the importance of innovation over mere customer feedback. Because customers don't know\can't see what is possible.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think folks put a little too much stock in, "you are gonna upset somebody, so you might as well go for broke" kind of perspective. In the status quo take you will annoy some folks who want big changes, the latter you really need to knock it out of the park or you are gonna lose your base. At this point D&D isnt the innovator, its the incubator.

It seems that you are the only one posting on this as if the casual<->"super fan" spectrum is a black and white binary where anything other than total exclusive focus on the whims of casual players who you yourself described as people who "don't care" results in an immediate shift to whims of the most extreme hardcore"super fan". Just about everyone except for you seems to be approaching it as a spectrum that needs to be acknowledged as a thing with more than two values and more than one acceptable choice.

 

[Justice and Rule]

So listen to forum users instead and dont bother asking what people actually want?

They did thay last time worked out well.

ENworldss funny. Survey doesnt agree with me. Attack the survey.

Edition doesnt give me what I want? Imply its low quality or users are idiots.

I mean, I feel like the "Argument from Popularity" fallacy is a fallacy for a reason, and if you had a real point to make you'd find a way to properly argue it instead of saying "Well, it's popular, that has to count for something". Well, it could, but that doesn't actually speak to quality necessarily, hence why it's a fallacy.

Surveys are a bunch of things, but measuring what someone might like (or, honestly, simply might be reacting to more than anything) and using that as the primary reason to do something is kind of foolish because that doesn't necessarily indicate the quality of the actual idea. Plenty of people were already set against revising anything, and lord knows plenty of mid things are popular. Again, McDonald's is the best example of this.

I am pretty sure they did a lot of that with some editions or just listened to the very vocal online "build masters." It resulted in a decline in their market share.

What editions would those be? Like, I don't think the problems of most editions have been around listening to "online people", or at least why any edition has problems in their rules.

D&D appeals to a wide variety of player types. It also introduces people to TTRPGs and needs to appeal to casual players.

I loved 3.5/PF1e until I realized how the crunch burned me out. I refused to look at a battlemap for years. I did not return until 5e.

I am sure that it will swing to crunch again at some point but I think a happy balance is better.

I'm not arguing for or against crunch, but allowing for new ideas. The Druid Wildshape idea, to me, was arguably less crunchy than being able to take any animal of a certain CR; the latter requires a whole lot more rules knowledge. But I think it got killed because a lot of people simply saw it as taking away their traditional options instead of being empowered to frame things as they wanted. They saw a loss of optimization instead of more freedom of roleplay and reacted as such.

Honestly, "5.5" should have concentrated on optional systems or mechanics that appealed to difference audiences rather than the idiocy of minor rules changes and included systems that just had the effect of sowing confusion.

Ehhh, dunno about that. I think 5.5E, if you were going to do such a half edition, should have focused on meaningful changes given that basically had an entire decade to figure out the problems with the system, perceived or otherwise. Otherwise you run into the (rightful) critique of "Why are we doing this? They are barely changing anything!" As it stands, I'm ambivalent on 5.5E; I don't play D&D much, but if I were to have a choice I'd take the newer edition over the latter. The process that got it there and some of the potential that it had saddens me, though.



To move back towards the topic:

One thing I would have loved to see is 5.5E really try to fix the problem with Wizards. I think tossing fewer spells but with more freedom to do things like modify spells would have been a massive improvement, and I think @Yaarel 's idea of Spell Points similar to the sorcerer is a great way to view things. Again, requires the sorcerer become something else, but giving it the control over all metamagic has always felt like them searching for an identity after losing the spontaneous spellcasting niche.

 

[tetrasodium]

So listen to forum users instead and dont bother asking what people actually want?

They did thay last time worked out well.

ENworldss funny. Survey doesnt agree with me. Attack the survey.

Edition doesnt give me what I want? Imply its low quality or users are idiots.

I don't think there was any particular reason that one example was chosen over any of the many other examples that could have been chosen. Recognizing that this video having more upvotes at the time Crawford was talked about record survey responses in the relevant survey would taint the self selected survey results in question to such a degree from the resulting brigading that those results are no longer reflective of anything but they one YouTuber's audience of single issue players might have been a better example.

 

[payn]

I'm not saying change everything, I'm saying to exercise some designer authority instead of simply ceding all power to surveys. I bring up the druid wildshape for a reason: it's a change that made sense (even if it needed refinement), but instead was cutoff at the legs because I don't think the fanbase really understood what it opened up combined with the fact that I think people tend to be way more conservative about the game than is realized.

During PF2 playtest just about everything I liked got chopped and all the stuff I didnt was touted. Sometimes you are just the odd man out.

 

[Justice and Rule]

During PF2 playtest just about everything I liked got chopped and all the stuff I didnt was touted. Sometimes you are just the odd man out.

Hey, I get it. Lord knows I've been there for other games (I've been in a few wargames playtests that did not go the way I was hoping they would). It's always rough.

At the same time, sometimes you don't know what you want until you actually try it. I remember being told about the PF2 Playtest and being turned away at the "Raise Shield" action. I thought it was a terrible nerf on martials, that Shield Block didn't do enough and the whole thing put me off the process. After trying it and understanding the intent and how it works within everything, turns out I was completely wrong. I think a lot of stuff with surveys is like that, where people vote for their surface vibes and how they think it'll affect things instead of how it actually plays.

 

[Zardnaar]

I mean, I feel like the "Argument from Popularity" fallacy is a fallacy for a reason, and if you had a real point to make you'd find a way to properly argue it instead of saying "Well, it's popular, that has to count for something". Well, it could, but that doesn't actually speak to quality necessarily, hence why it's a fallacy.

Surveys are a bunch of things, but measuring what someone might like (or, honestly, simply might be reacting to more than anything) and using that as the primary reason to do something is kind of foolish because that doesn't necessarily indicate the quality of the actual idea. Plenty of people were already set against revising anything, and lord knows plenty of mid things are popular. Again, McDonald's is the best example of this.



What editions would those be? Like, I don't think the problems of most editions have been around listening to "online people", or at least why any edition has problems in their rules.



I'm not arguing for or against crunch, but allowing for new ideas. The Druid Wildshape idea, to me, was arguably less crunchy than being able to take any animal of a certain CR; the latter requires a whole lot more rules knowledge. But I think it got killed because a lot of people simply saw it as taking away their traditional options instead of being empowered to frame things as they wanted. They saw a loss of optimization instead of more freedom of roleplay and reacted as such.



Ehhh, dunno about that. I think 5.5E, if you were going to do such a half edition, should have focused on meaningful changes given that basically had an entire decade to figure out the problems with the system, perceived or otherwise. Otherwise you run into the (rightful) critique of "Why are we doing this? They are barely changing anything!" As it stands, I'm ambivalent on 5.5E; I don't play D&D much, but if I were to have a choice I'd take the newer edition over the latter. The process that got it there and some of the potential that it had saddens me, though.



To move back towards the topic:

One thing I would have loved to see is 5.5E really try to fix the problem with Wizards. I think tossing fewer spells but with more freedom to do things like modify spells would have been a massive improvement, and I think @Yaarel 's idea of Spell Points similar to the sorcerer is a great way to view things. Again, requires the sorcerer become something else, but giving it the control over all metamagic has always felt like them searching for an identity after losing the spontaneous spellcasting niche.

Quality is subjective though. Sometimes youre the odd one out.

5E for the forst time in decades aimed at casuals and brought them in outnumbered the old guard 10-1probably.

Its a lot easier to find players now vs then.

Alot of ENworlwrs tastes are so specific they cant find games. Its virtually impossible to find ideal (veteran and, experienced not annoying/smelly)players as well. You grab newbies and hope they turn into ideal pkayers .