I haven't seen them try to fix it. 5.5e did improve encounter difficulty, but the balance is still around resource attrition with large bags of hit points to fight against. Basically, it's a bit of mitigation, rather than an attempt to fix the issue.
The only fix that I can see is a new edition, because that can be built from the ground up around a different method of balance.
If a sizable portion of your player base is not playing the game to your settings....than yes that is a design flaw.
For example, in boardgame design one of the most important elements is blind playtesting. Where you watch the players play with 0 interaction (and sometimes you don't even want that, and maybe take reports from them when there was no recording, just to ensure they are playing 100% the way they would if you weren't there).
If you find that players are consistently ignore rules or playing in a way you did not expect....you HAVE to take that into account. Either you need to accept that, and decide the game will work that way....or you have to change rules, guides, whatever to curb that behavior. While of course there will always be a few outliers, again if your seeing a CONSISTENT deviation from your design expectations....if you don't account for that you are setting up your project for failure.
D&D isn't a board game. Even then people ignore rules Monopoly comes to mind.
The people who designed 5E and gave feedback were different than the ones who ended up playing it. They're an extreme minority now probably sub 10% depending on how many casuals dropped out.
That's not anyone's fault. Its more veiled edition warring or D&D is terrible narrative I've been hearing since 1996 (started 1993) .
I did point this out 2015 basically got told to shut up from the usual cheerleaders that pop up each new edition.
Wheres your fantasy vampire game now biaches suck it!!
Only difference is, in 3e, leveling by xp was kind of still norm. In 5e, people switched to milestones for the most part. When you level by XP you are more incentivised to fight, to squeeze extra encounter or two in a day so you can hit those last few XP's you are short of level up (cause leveling characters mid game is waste of time). It punished you for creatively resolving problems without use of violence. Milestones puts story first. If you can hit your story objectives without fights, great, you still get level up reward.
Example: You had rolevplay heavy session resolving courtly intrigue to gain favor of local noble
3e - 0 fights=0 xp, depending on the mood, DM might give you some xp for "good role play". You are step closer to achieving story goals, but not any closer to gaining that sweet level.
5e - 0 fights. But you moved story forward in impactfull way. You are step closer to achieving your goal in story, but also step closer to gaining that sweet new level.
I'm glad someone else commented on it while I was taking the time to find the pages in question. As often as we have had to hear how 5e is perfectly great in all ways as long as the GM doesn't suck, reads the dmg, and follows the encounter guidelines that result in multiple sessions of NOTHING but combat in this thread & over the last decade or so I don't think this blatantly false bit of failure to read the 3.5DMG deserves a pass.
That's far more useful than the guidance we have in the 5e DMG & still largely applies ... Except it doesn't stop there. The next page had two super critical bits of information on it on top of a section on story awards. One was a section on why you should "talk to your [problem] player" rather than penalizing experience in addition to an extremely revealing bit of math that lays bare just how insane the 6-8 encounter target 5e set was
Yes. 5e shifted the per rest encounter count expectations to about what was expected for close to 50-60% of an ENTIRE LEVEL. Not only that, the section explaining it gives a good example of why that information was a powerful tool for the GM to wield during prep. The endless fawning over a failutre to read better designed tools making out milestone leveling as some gift from on high is overdone
Well, this exactly: I don't think WotC views it as a problem if people play D&D and have fun even if encounters are easy and the Classes aren't pushed by DMs equally. Customers having fun are satisfied customers.
Yeah. We argue here and debate endlessly about how things are/should/best done, but at the end of the day, if your group is having a good time, you're doing it right.
D&D isn't a board game. Even then people ignore rules Monopoly comes to mind.
The people who designed 5E and fave feedback were different than the ones who ended up playing it. They're an extreme minority now probably sub 10% depending on how many casuals dropped out.
That's not anyone's fault. Its more veiled edition warring or D&D is terrible narrative I've been hearing since 1996 (started 1993) .
I did point this out 2015 basically got told to shut up from the usual cheerleaders that pop up each new edition.
Wheres your fantasy vampire game now biaches suck it!!
It is possible that with all of the testing WOTC did in the early days of 5e, they just did not know people played 1-2 encounters per day instead of 6-8. I think someone needs to question how their playtest data was so messed up that they didn't catch this, but I can relent that point.
However, there are two other things to consider:
1) Early adventure design in WOTC's catalog did not follow their own rules. So either they did in fact know how people played and design the adventure to that...or they intentionally violated their own guidelines, and effectiveless told players playing these modules that the guidelines are "wrong".
2) 5.5 has access to all the playtest data you could ever want. millions of games played. Yet when it comes to encounter budgetting and design....not a lot was changed. A tweak here and there, but in reality the math still depends on a very high number of encounters per day.
5.5 was a chance to issue a correction if they truly were ignorant, but they didn't do it. So you might forgive 5e for that issue, but you should not forgive 5.5
I'm glad someone else commented on it while I was taking the time to find the pages in question. As often as we have had to hear how 5e is perfectly great in all ways as long as the GM doesn't suck, reads the dmg, and follows the encounter guidelines that result in 2-3 sessions of NOTHING but combat in this thread & over the last decade or so I don't think this blatantly false bit of failure to read the 3.5DMG
That's far more useful than the guidance" we have in the 5e DMG & still largely applies ... Except it doesn't stop there. The next page had two super critical bits of information on it on top of a section on story awards. One was a section on why you should "talk to your [problem] player" rather than penalizing experience in addition to an extremely revealing bit of math that lays bare just how insane the 6-8 encounter target 5e set was
Yes. 5e shifted the per rest encounter count expectations to about what was expected for close to 50-60% of an ENTIRE LEVEL. Not only that, the section explaining it gives a good example of why that information was a powerful tool for the GM to wield during prep. The endless fawning over a failutre to read better designed tools making out milestone leveling as some gift from on high is overdone
The Model T was a great product for Ford for over 20 years. But that doesn't mean that car would compare to modern standards.
Time passes, we improve our products, and our bar of expectations gets higher. We forgive a system when it has issues, but we are far harsher if the system that follows STILL has those issues.
Yea I think stumbling across that 13.333 BTC section totally by accident while debunking the milestone fawning really shows how far off the mark the 5e encounter per rest expectations & how insanely overly permissive the rest/recovery rules are.
It absolutely did. And by that I mean that the rules did suck. Like not as much than AD&D, but that is an extremely low bar. But I rather like many of the principles behind the rules, and the GMing advice from 3e and even older editions. And I think my 5e campaign has been quite successful by importing some of those principles and guidance.
