NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 4924224" data-attributes="member: 19675">By what measure?  How am I being untruthful?  What backpedaling?Remember, you opened this can of worms with:The answer is an unequivocal "yes"- and the first step is not throwing your own product under the bus.  No, I'm not.I'm not calling WotC a failure- its clearly not.  They have multiple successful product of which 4Ed is one.I'm saying they used a flawed advertising campaign in the launch of a single product line, and it cost them customers & sales.And I'm dead on about Paizo.They don't own D&D, and never did.  At most, they held a license to produce certain supplementary material.  That license was not renewed.Now they have released an RPG based on elements of a discontinued RPG, but containing certain changes that distinguish it.  That makes them a competitor to WotC.Pathfinder is competing in the same market as 4Ed, and it means different rules apply.  The kid gloves are off.  They can get away with the advertising equivalent of bloody murder and they won't engender the same kind of backlash as WotC did.  By making fewer mechanical changes, the baseline perception will be that they didn't "hurt poor 3Ed" as much as WotC did.  That the game they're using as their inspiration was one of the most popular in RPG history gives them a further pass.It is if you don't have hard data to back it up.  And in certain markets- not the RPG game market- it may even get you sued.If you're just relying on subjective standards to make such a claim, you're playing with fire.Again, it depends on how that critique is done.  Claims that it takes less time to stat out a monster is potential gold and is pretty easy to verify.  Claims that combats will be more fun is subjective and shouldn't be made.That isn't what I suggested at all.  I said: You don't tout your new game mechanic as "better."  You don't say its "different, not better."  You present the new mechanic neutrally, and talk what positives it brings to the table, not how it compares to the previous way of doing things.IOW, imply, don't preach; flies & honey, and all that.By telling people in your ad campaign that the new way is "better," you're asking others to respond "no, its not- I LOVE that way of doing things."  By avoiding value-laden language in the press releases, you invite the customers to try things out and decide based on their experience with the game rather than trying to fight past their (possibly erroneous) ideas about the game based on your tone.Yes, advertising relies on subjective factors- I never denied that.What I'm saying is you generally avoid the subjective when you're rolling out a product designed to replace your own product.That's part of how Coke (since you bring it up) got into a world of hurt with New Coke.  They had objective data: the New Coke recipe beat both the original Coke and hard-charging market competitor Pepsi in taste test after taste test.However, their ad campaign talked about how much "better" New Coke tasted than the original recipe...and their installed base said "#%$#@^, no it doesn't!"...even with years of research data showing that it did.  Calls for boycotts popped up.  Their customers had been told what they should enjoy  and that the old stuff just wasn't up to snuff anymore... and they weren't having it.Coke badmouthed their own product and paid for it with lost market share.   New Coke was fine as another Coke product, but it wasn't acceptable as a replacement.  (BTW, its still in production as Coca-Cola C2.)Had Coke instead said New Coke beat Pepsi in taste test after taste test- as Pepsi had said of their product vs original Coke- and completely avoided that it also KO'ed original Coke as well, the story would have ended much differently.On this, I stand corrected.No, that's not what I'm saying.I'm saying you promote it by saying "Here's 4Ed!  Please notice that we're doing _______, which means you can now do _______!!!  And the new _________ rules means that __________ never happens.  Isn't that great?"You stay positive and don't badmouth your own product.  You get one type of psychological reaction if you point out the really cool consequences of a new rule mechanism.  You get an entirely different one when you denigrate prior product explicitly and directly.  Even if you're slaughtering a sacred cow, you don't highlight that fact- you let the consumer figure it out for himself after he's purchased the product.When 3Ed press releases talked about certain mechanics being counterintuitive- which they did...because some were- I heard constant complaints about "needless changes dumbing down the system" from gamers in the stores I frequented.  One even went so far as to point out how the unification of the stats system (very intuitively and intelligently bringing the bonuses from Str in line with other stats) changed the math of combat...with a spreadsheet.  He didn't buy a 3Ed book until early 2006, and his first 3.5 product in mid 2007.</blockquote>

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