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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Primal" data-source="post: 4924010" data-attributes="member: 30678">This is what happened to me, too -- I really *WANTED* to love 4E, because I felt it *was* time for a new, revised edition. However, ever since the silly videos with French guys mocking 3E and the first comments ("Cool! I'm going for sword-and-board myself!"), I felt my intelligence being constantly insulted by their marketing. Not only that, but I felt irritated at the constant use of 'More Fun' and 'More Cool' in forum posts (the few they posted), blogs and previews, combined with repeated trashing of 3E. I even remember one of the designers claiming they couldn't remember how a certain mechanic worked in 3E anymore, because the mechanic is so much better and intuitive in 4E; when they were reminded by another designer, they laughed how silly it is in 3E (and this took place just as the 'Rules Compendium' was coming out, and this designer worked on the book). Shortly put, I felt like they told that my own judgement and sense of what constitutes as fun for me was "wrong", and the edition I had enjoyed (and many of those books had been written by these same guys) had not been "fun" at all. So, I, too, think they blundered pretty badly at marketing; all that affected my own perception of the actual mechanics. When the previews started coming in, I already had a very negative image of 4E. It didn't help, of course, that 4E turned out to be a game that just didn't fit my own group's taste; it had some nice ideas, but I felt disappointed at realizing that no matter how I tried to spin it, I didn't want to run it. Would a more positive image have affected this? No, not really; but I know guys who canceled their pre-orders when they felt they had had "enough" (if I had had a more positive image, I *might* have bought 'KotS' so we could have tried the preview rules, but I doubt I would have bought the core rules anyway).I think WoTC could learn a lot from Paizo, i.e. how to establish a positive and good rapport with the fans and how to market a new edition/game in a more positive way. Not only did the Paizo staff constantly communicate with the fans during the playtest process of the Pathfinder RPG, it's a general policy on their forums (unlike during the 4E design and the closed playtesting process; 4E designers posted on an irregular basis in their blogs, but didn't post on the forums at all -- in fact, I think they still post more often over here than on their own forums). For me, as a customer, this means a *LOT*; I feel like I'm getting truly first-class customer service when the Lead Designer, Editor-in-Chied or CEO replies to my question on saturday night. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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