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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 4923466" data-attributes="member: 19675">All well and good, but when the tone of that discussion is "What came before was bad, this is much better," you're alienating those who actually what came before.  You've just elevated opinion to the level of fact.  IOW, you're telling them they had badwrongfun- and there go a few bricks into the wall.In contrast, a design discussion couched in terms of "This is what we're doing, and this is why it rocks!" is an entirely positive tone, and doesn't cause a reflexive backlash.Oh, it did.  I don't know how many, but it did.In many businesses, heads would have rolled for that.You ask for industry insider input quietly...and at a time interval before the product launch that allows you the ability to discuss and digest and possibly even implement some of that input.  GenCon 2007 was in August right?  And 4Ed was released in June 2008.  That's a short period of time for that kind of process...and I think it showed.I disagree.It is entirely possible- and is in fact a basic tenet of advertising- to build up your current product without tearing down your previous ones.You don't say "we improved X" unless you objectively have- and I mean with real quantifiable numbers, not based on opinion polls.  Best practice states that "improved" language should only creep into marketing when you've had a product rack up lawsuit after lawsuit (check the recall lists), stacks of customer complaints about frequency of repairs (watch out, Microsoft X-Box), or a genuine performance increase.  There you can talk about how you've made the product safer, more reliable or more efficient in a statistically verifiable way.*With D&D, you're talking about the rules of a game- "improved" is going to be in the eyes of the Beholderkin.Instead, you say "We changed x" and tell people what that means for them.  As the song goes, "You've got to aaaaaaac-cent-U-ate the positive!" You don't bring up potential negatives.  YOU don't do it.  You let Joe Customer find out the negatives by himself, or wait for your competitors to point it out.The difference is that in one case, you're being explicit, and in another, you're being implicit.  And believe it or not, that makes a HUGE difference in how your product gets received by the buying public.If a big portion of your installed base goes into the store thinking "Those bastards gutted my game!" they're not going to buy.  If, OTOH, they go in thinking "Did you hear, Fighters have more combat options!" you may make a sale.* And sometimes even then, you don't use that language.  Tylenol NEVER mentioned its improved safety precautions after the poisonings- they just instituted the changes and stayed quiet.</blockquote>

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