D&D 4E My biggest concern about 4E

[PeterWeller]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. TSR also thought it knew its market back in the 90s, and we all know what happened to them. Although market researchers often have pretensions to omniscience, their work is always limited by the available sample. Also, there is always the pressure to tell those who control your job whatever you think they want to hear.

That's not really a fair or accurate comparison. TSR assumed they understood their market, even when all their sales numbers spoke otherwise. WotC has put a lot more work and effort than TSR ever did to see where the market is with the game. Now, they're incapable of being 100% accurate, but at least they do listen to the market and do research.

 

[DaveMage]

Yeah, TSR - especially in the later years, ignored customer data.

4E will be interesting to watch from a business point of view.

The game itself holds no interest for me, as I do not feel it's needed at this time - but the marketing push, the timing, and the business environment around it (such as "the brand") intrigues me. Will the DI succeed? Will the online "magazines" succeed? Will the new minis line succeed? Will the entire 4E process be a colossal failure?

The complete answers won't come (publicly) until probably 2009. But in June of 2008, we'll get a pretty good idea of what this community thinks anyway....

 

[The Little Raven]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. TSR also thought it knew its market back in the 90s, and we all know what happened to them. Although market researchers often have pretensions to omniscience, their work is always limited by the available sample. Also, there is always the pressure to tell those who control your job whatever you think they want to hear.

According to Ryan Dancey's account of the TSR purchase, Wizards was surprised to learn that TSR conducted no surveys and collected no real feedback. So the big difference, I would say, is that TSR thought they knew their customers without making an effort to do so, while Wizards thinks they know them because they use market research and collect feedback.

If you don't go to GenCon, don't participate in the RPGA, and aren't on the Internet boards, how could WOTC know what you want?

I've got a number of books with blank survey cards in them. I guarantee there are people that fill those out and send them in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_research

This can also explain far better than I could how Wizards can collect pertinent information.

 

[Henry]

One problem I think will be with the 3E to 4E conversion is that the 2E to 3E conversion was more or less an expansion back to a lot of frontiers that were contracted from 1E to 2E. Assassins returned; Barbarians returned; the old 1E bard and the dragonlance knightly orders was sort of used as a template for prestige classes; half-orcs returned; clerics were expanded to 9 spell levels; cantrips returned; more rules were added to make swashbuckler-types viable; feats and skills allowed customization that just wasn't well-done or even there under 2E, and so on.

With 4E, we're retracting, even if for only a year or two, back to a core set of rules that may be ultimately more expandable than 3E, but still will not be the full volume of rules released under 3E. We also don't have that mass exodus of players from 3E the same way we had it under 2E. Under 2E, the game was on life support in the late 1990's; now, it may not be as healthy as it was in the early 2000's, but it's still got a very formidable player base going on right now. So there seems to be more resistance to change than there was in 1999 to 2000. It may just be my perception, but I recall quite a lot of enthusiasm in 3E from sources that with 4E just aren't that enthused by what we've seen. If the release of the rules can change this somewhat, I'll be glad; if not, there could well be a lot more fragmentation with 4E than there was with the D&D player base in 2000.

 

[PeterWeller]

That's a good point, Henry, and I think it's the main reason behind a lot of the anger over the new edition.

 

[pawsplay]

I can tell WotC has definitely found a pulse in the D&D market, but I worry that:

A) I may not be their target demographic
B) they still may not manage to put together whatever it was they were aiming for

4e has filled me with a lot of trepidation, but I am still trying to convince myself it's going to be a valuable adjunct to the D&D experience, not an unsatisfactory replacement. I think there are a lot of things that have simply changed too much for someone like me to feel D&D is still D&D.

 

[Michael Morris]

When 3e came out my house rules to change things or ban things from play went from 390 pages to 2 sentences. Now admittedly my setting has a lot of mechancial additions, but throughout the lifespan of 3e I didn't have to change anything - it worked perfectly.

4e has me full of doubt. I don't want dragonborn or tieflings in my games. I don't like the idea of 30 spell levels. I will buy the core and see what's in it, but I don't know if I'll switch. I don't consider myself a grognard - my field of work is one where I must constantly embrace and make use of new ideas and concepts. But it also makes me wary of change for change's sake. Without seeing the whole document I cannot say for sure, but much of 4e's changes that have been revealed seem to have been done for their own sake, and not for any underlying need.

Experience has taught me these are the worst sorts of changes. 4e seems to be full of them. I am worried. A failed 4e would be the most devastating blow WotC has dealt to the industry since their ill-advised Fallen Empires snafu (for those not familiar with Magic, in that incident WotC filled all the preorders for Fallen Empires to the surprise of store owners which hadn't been able to get their orders filled on prior sets. Many, many shops folded due to this mistake, and the fact that Fallen Empires is easily one of Magic's worst sets).

WotC, for all their researching and studying, occasionally makes mistakes. They occasionally make big ones. For the sake of the hobby let's hope that this isn't one of them.

 

[zoroaster100]

Dr. Awkward, nothing would please me more than if you turn out to be correct, and it turns out to be very easy to run a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms campaign without conversion effort using the core 4th edition rules.

 

[BlackMoria]

If anyone knows the thinks they 'know' their market, it is WotC..

Fixed it for you.

If WOTC truly 'knows' their market, then everything they print would be a smash success.

Which it is not ... and the proof of that is comments on these very boards. Just look at the commentary on any new publication from WOTC. You will find a near even split of people who like it and don't like it as a observation and it not very often that a supplement or book gets a postive thumbs up from a majority of ENWorlders or strikes a accord. For every book that gets high praise, there is about a half dozen who get very mixed reviews.

4E is a gamble. Success is not a guaranteed outcome.

 

[WayneLigon]

WOTC can simply look at its book sales, and judge interest by those, but even that can be deceptive. If a book appeals to most of the hardcore gamers, but few of the casual gamers, is that book really a success? It could be a money-maker, but it does nothing to grow the market. Perhaps WOTC wants to sell simply to the hardcore gamers that it knows, and is choosing to ignore the casual gamers.

I would put forth that the 'casual gamer' isn't a very good customer to pursue and support if he can't be turned into a 'hardcore' gamer. Right now, he's probably not giving you any money anyway. Your casual gamer might buy a Player's Handbook if it's convenient but he's not going to GM, ever, so something like 75% or more of the books aren't something he's ever going to be interested it to begin with. The rest of the player-oriented material he'll borrow from his friends or tell the GM 'here's what I want, find me a PrC that does that'.

Actually I'll strike that: every book other than the PHB is useless to the casual gamer; for all but one of the regulars at my gaming table, one PHB an edition is all the money WoTC will ever see out of them, and two of them don't even own that. Two of them are dedicated players who will change plans to play, but as far as customers they might as well not even exist. If a new edition drives them out of the hobby for good, WoTC hasn't lost anything. If they were going to turn into hardcore gamers they'd have done it a long time ago.

I'd think that the specific rules, look and feel, etc aren't going to matter to him very much - he'll play as long as his friends are playing or something else better or more pressing doesn't come along. So, an edition change isn't a blip on his radar and I doubt he cares very much. He's going to cycle out of the hobby in a couple years even if everything stayed the same, so really who gives a tinker's damn what he thinks? He'll be replaced by another casual gamer who, perhaps, will be turned into a hardcore gamer by the new edition and it's changes.