D&D 5E Nobody Is Playing High Level Characters

According to stats from D&D Beyond, above 5th level characters start to drop off sharply, and above 10th level, the figures are very low. The exception is level 20, which looks like it's probably people creating experimental 20th-level builds.

Some of them say 0%; this isn't strictly accurate, but levels 16-19 are used by an insignificant number of players. Interestingly, there are more 3rd-5th level characters than there are 1st-2nd level.

D&D Beyond has said before that under 10% of games make it past 10th level, but these figures show the break point as being bit lower than that. DDB used over 30 million characters to compile these stats.

 

[BadEye]

I'm well aware the data is selectively provided as part of a corporate information strategy to manage the community and justify decisions to the consumers. Which is one of the reasons it's fun to overanalyze. Especially when someone with insider information pops in to rebut by citing NDA-protected analysis in the same breath.

My point from the beginning has been that there is a niche, but profitable group of intermediate players who would like to start campaigns at level 10 (or 15) and finish at level 20 just to see what it's like, but there isn't an official, hardcover, printed campaign that does that, so the only people who play those levels are dedicated players finishing OOTA, Tyranny of Dragons, TOA, etc; those playing higher teired AL, or those in their garage doing homebrew. Most of the people who use DDB are probably newer players who probably started at an LGS or the Starter Set/Essentials Kit at level 1, so the data set is not representative of the entire player base.

Now, if there is some additional analysis that WoTC did that says players don't like high level games and would not buy campaigns geared toward them, then I'd love to see the data on that, because my players won't shut up about how cool it would be to play high level characters instead of starting over at level 1 every time we start a new campaign. The DDB data isn't making the argument to me because it's skewed.

Does it make intuitive sense that most players are low level and play in low level games? Absolutely.

Would more players play in high level games if it had more support with products?

I think so, and it's money on the table. Paizos used to do that sort of thing with their Adventure Paths, so it's not unheard of.

I understand your point, but your point is still based on assumptions and personal anecdotal evidence.

You say "profitable group," but there is no way that you actually know that it is such.

You say "most of the players who use DDB are probably newer," but you have no way of actually knowing that is true either. I can tell you that of the millions of accounts and [###K] of subscribers, the Essentials Kit is nowhere close to the main driver of that engagement.

And finally, you say you think there would be more high level play if there was more support for it. I naturally agree, but you mention there is "money on the table," but the amount and scale of how much is the actual important bit.

I've got to bow out for now, but I genuinely do appreciate the civil discourse on all fronts.

Thanks everyone!

 

[EthanSental]

I think that's exactly the sort of question that should be posed of the DDB team when they put out public data like this.

Whenever I see data without answering entirely reasonable questions about the data, that is one of my early warning signs that the data's presentation is being manipulated for a non-scientific goal. Not saying that's the case here – but as @Lanefan points out it certainly has happened in the gaming community before.

Adam answered this earlier, they include characters that have short and long rests being used, exp added, etc. cuts down on the issue Dave mentioned as I don’t think that 150 would count.

 

[BadEye]

I think that's exactly the sort of question that should be posed of the DDB team when they put out public data like this.

Whenever I see data without answering entirely reasonable questions about the data, that is one of my early warning signs that the data's presentation is being manipulated for a non-scientific goal. Not saying that's the case here – but as @Lanefan points out it certainly has happened in the gaming community before.

I have actually personally answered those questions about this data many times on the development update streams from which this data was plucked.

When it ends up reposted on great news sites like this I have less control over the explanation of the parameters. Hence my efforts in this thread to clarify some of the misconceptions.

Thanks!

 

[Tiggerunner]

I understand your point, but your point is still based on assumptions and personal anecdotal evidence.

You say "profitable group," but there is no way that you actually know that it is such.

You say "most of the players who use DDB are probably newer," but you have no way of actually knowing that is true either. I can tell you that of the millions of accounts and [###K] of subscribers, the Essentials Kit is nowhere close to the main driver of that engagement.

And finally, you say you think there would be more high level play if there was more support for it. I naturally agree, but you mention there is "money on the table," but the amount and scale of how much is the actual important bit.

I've got to bow out for now, but I genuinely do appreciate the civil discourse on all fronts.

Thanks everyone!

 

[ChuckieGoLucky]

I feel the issue is that DnD is a game where higher tiers are about alignment, the cosmos, the planes and other stuff that breaks down all the "homebrew" that ignore the fact DnD is more than just a ruleset. Games are not near as dangerous and surprising anymore and lot of players have so much drama action and glory in their backstories they get bored of them easily. So many DMs run their own thing that never gets above the save the town much less save the world. All that homebrew gets exhausting and replaces the content waiting in higher levels, which WoTC is fine with cause community, or something..

So many people start at 3rd level that you have to tell people of you are actually starting st level. This is why there are more third than first levels.

It is very interesting, especially when compared to the number of people around this forum that have completed multiple APs, which typically go up to 10-15. I think it is more evidence on how outside the norm the forum posters are. We are just a rare breed!

The

 

[Tony Vargas]

So many people start at 3rd level that you have to tell people of you are actually starting st level.

Glad to hear that's finally catching on.

 

[Umbran]

My point from the beginning has been that there is a niche, but profitable group of intermediate players...

Sorry, but if you don't know how many of them there are, you can't really say if serving them would be profitable.

or those in their garage doing homebrew.

Given how strong the homebrewing tradition is among RPG players, describing it as "in the garage" seems... undeservedly dismissive.

Most of the people who use DDB are probably newer players who probably started at an LGS or the Starter Set/Essentials Kit at level 1

Upon what do you base that assertion? I mean, you may be correct. With the PHB selling in the top 30 books, that makes us wonder who is buying them all... if they are mostly new players... well, the more new players there are, the less the old players are relevant to the business equation, I'm afraid.

so the data set is not representative of the entire player base.

I will agree that the D&D Beyond data is not reliably representative - it is a self-selected population.

However, "Your data is not representative" is not equivalent to, "therefore, my assertions are correct." You need representative data as much as they do to make assertions.

Now, if there is some additional analysis that WoTC did that says players don't like high level games and would not buy campaigns geared toward them, then I'd love to see the data on that

We all would. But you do realize that they do not owe us that data, yes?

I think so, and it's money on the table. Paizos used to do that sort of thing with their Adventure Paths, so it's not unheard of.

Paizo "used to do that sort of thing"? As in, they no longer do? Interesting.

If Paizo were still doing it, you'd be supporting your argument that there's significant money on the table. By apparently reminding us that they don't do this... that suggests that it wasn't great business for Paizo, doesn't it? This does not seem to support your argument very well.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Well, let us look at the WotC survey data from 20 years ago for a little insight...

This was a survey of folks playing 1e and 2e. It... If something about the game were causing folks to reset their campaigns, it was an effect before you reached high level.

20 years ago, AD&D had, itself, a history of over 20 years, common wisdom about the playable 'sweet spot,' had had plenty of time to become entrenched.

And, yeah, that did kick in before what we'd call high level, today.

And, I mean, you have cautioned us, yourself, about reading too much into stats. Just a mean average is not that much to go on.

I mean an obvious inference of the less-than-1-yr averaging fewer sessions between restarts would be TPKs bringing that average down. But it's not the only possible explanation.

 

[CptMcquacken]

Well, I think a very very good explanation for these statistics is a simple one. Since DnDBeyond has revolutionized the way we D&D, we just haven’t made it that far in our campaigns. I’m sure there are groups that may play twice a week for 4-6 hours a session. But, my group tries to play once a week and our average session is about 2 hours depending on who “has to work” the next day etc. We have been playing for almost a year and we’re level 7. Playing storm King’s thunder mind you, where there are a billion options and directions we can take it. There’s so much content in Storm Kings thunder our DM has talked about morphing it into a full blown level 20 campaign. The short reason for these statistics is that “In terms of the nature of D&D character development DnDB is just too young to see those kinds of numbers and they will always be low on the level spectrum if they are being successful as a business” because once the O.G. players are nearing level 20 and those stats go from hundreds of high level players to thousands, the number of new dnd players should go from tens of thousands to millions. Right now though, it’s the wrong time to look at these kinds of statistics given the slow moving progression and nature of the game.

 

[Lanefan]

Saying DDB "only supports the base rules as written" is not an accurate statement. The biggest gap at the moment is the gigantic UA content drop for variant class features that was recently released. We will be shoring up that gap in January.

We?

As in, you're a DDB developer? Cool!

Furthermore, this entire line of thinking makes assumptions that folks that want to play highly-customized games are a larger percentage of the population of total D&D players than any data suggests.

Well, yes it does; because gathering data from people playing those highly-customized games isn't easy, given as they're by default much less likely to use official online support from where much of such data is gleaned.

Unfortunately that is not data that I am able to share, but I will mention it here. And by the way, yes, it absolutely could be the case due to a chicken-and-egg situation. That doesn't make it any less true as things stand now.

Oddly enough, this might be a case where some polling here on ENWorld might be of use. This is overall a pretty hardcore crew, from what I can tell, and thus much more likely than the broader community to be willing (and able) to kitbash their preferred edition into what they actually want it to be.

I wonder how different the results would be from a do-you-homebrew poll taken here vs whatever data it is that you have that we can't see.