Lord Mhoram
Hero
As I recall they said something to the effect that they had the first 5 years release schedule and types of books planned out. I expect this is to get more data for where they plan to move now.
FTFYIt is survey design 101 though. @schneeland explained it better than i did in post #36. But it gives them statistically more accurate results. You may not like it, but you can't fight the math man. Rapiermetrics if you will.
It's probably more about wanting to figure out how to reach more people. Find out what other things the current players like and then reach out to people who like the same things.
Indeed not just more D&D books, but they want to know what our current favorite board games are. Probably wanting to rip them off and through out a D&D branded version of them.
Well, now that's much less amusing.
I had a similar feeling. There is a reason for making surveys like that, but I can't remember the precise explanation.
If I remember my books about survey design correctly (that was for research, but I think marketing should be similar), the main reason behind this is that depending on the exact wording, people might answer differently, so you try to come up with multiple questions that refer to the same factor you are interested in and average them later (or calculate the median).
When it got to the "Which of these editions have you DMed/Played*" I was able to check them all.....wooooo yay old age!
*I assume it asked "played" if you had never DMed. But it asked me which I'd DMed iirc. Bad memory also a sign of old age sigh.
Someone on Reddit once made a great observation: With the ascendency of online ordering and instant delivery, your sons might find the “shopping cart” icon becoming for them what the “floppy disk” save icon is for you.I wonder what sounds my sons are growing up with will disappear by the time they are adults?
The execs took one look at the success (?) of Paizo just selling a playtest and said, "yup, it's time for a new edition."
At least now they can come full circle, back to their demonic roots, and call it version 6.66.
Just curious, were there any survey questions about pricing? Like, "on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to pay $70.00 for a hardcover D&D book? $30.00 for a .pdf?"