Open Letter to WotC from Chris Dias

[Pour]

I read this entire thread and now I realize I should have spent the time playing Dragon Age 2...

I commend full-time WotC, Paizo, Goodman and Green Ronin employees and ex-employees for not posting in here. I'm frankly embarrassed by all the back and forth. At first I thought it'd be informative, and there were some pearls here and there, largely early on. Then it became kind of amusing to see what it transmogrified into. And then, as I continued further along, the amusement passed and I started to get a little frustrated, then discouraged, and yeah, ultimately embarrassed.

I supposed this isn't constructive to the thread topic, and I can't be held a paragon of virtue or any sort of moral judge (so take what you will from another tangent), but have some of you looked back, truly looked back, on what is amounting now to 19 pages of... honestly I don't even know what to call it?

It's ugly, it's sucking even the best of us in, and it's making the community something I no longer want to be a part of.

 

[xechnao]

I think PF is taking very little of "their" market.

You cant be serious. If there were no such thing as Pathfinder, more 3.xe people would have followed Wotc regarding their purchases for D&D. Especially if Paizo went on to make quality adventures & APs for 4e. But Paizo did not do this. Instead it tried to transform the 3.5 market to a Pathfinder market. And apparently this was a success for them and a failure for Wotc.

 

[BryonD]

You cant be serious. If there were no such thing as Pathfinder, more 3.xe people would have followed Wotc regarding their purchases for D&D.

I am 100% serious and I am convinced you are completely wrong here.


I'm not confusing my personal anecdote with the overall mood of the market. But lets start with the one thing I do know. I know that I was not going to end up playing 4E once I knew the ins and outs of 4E. Before I ever heard of Pathfinder I had already bought a few new GURPS books, some Warhammer 2E stuff, and was providing some comments to Wulf Ratbane on the "3.75" tweaks that ultimately become his "Trailblazer" product. I really was not sure where I would have gone, but I knew for certain that I had zero interest in 4E. Lack of Pathfinder's existence had nothing to do with it.

So that is one little drop in the ocean.

But, I find that of the non-4E players, I tend to be on the "whatever" end. Yeah, I certainly enjoy arguing. But in truth I find the issues with 4E to simply make it fair to middling. It is an ok game in a market with numerous awesome games to choose from. When I talk to people in meatspace "4E sucks" is a much more common phrase.

When you say people would have followed WotC you are saying that people would put brand or company identity ahead of personal taste. I find that absurd.

People don't play 4E because *they don't want to*. It is that simple.

Paizo saw that a lot of people didn't want to play 4E and that they had a mechanism for making a game that those people DID want to play. And they jumped on it. An absolutely critical piece of the puzzle is "FIRST there was an untapped market". That market was untapped because WotC led somewhere a lot of people didn't want to go. And they were not going to blindly follow.

 

[xechnao]

When you say people would have followed WotC you are saying that people would put brand or company identity ahead of personal taste. I find that absurd.

Not necessarily. Some people have suggested upthread that a game like D&D gains heavily from good adventure and setting support.

Paizo's APs are for 3.5 and Pathfinder. This is an existing market, created by Wotc's 3.xe. Paizo supports this market and this market supports Paizo.

If Paizo supported the 4e market and the 3.xe were without support by someone like Paizo, I believe that you would not see 3.x/Pathfinder products in the various outlets. You would rather see some pretty 4e adventure paths luring their fans to buy them and so to buy into 4e to play them.

All in all, you would hear more people talk about 4e and less about something like Pathfinder.

 

[BryonD]

I don't see anything in that which explains why people would play a game they don't like.

Again, there was a major segment of the market turned off by 4E *before* PF was announced. And this was well before anyone knew that WotC would add a module quality issue on top of the bigger "we don't like the game itself" problem.

If Paizo HAD followed 4E, they would be looking into other options now just like other 3PPs.

 

[xechnao]

How are you so sure about people not liking 4e or even what that actually means? Games not only have their weak and strong points, they are also eligible to sorts of modifications.

What you could rather say, that it would make more sense, is that you like more 3.xe than 4e. This I can understand more clearly. But most gamers are willing to follow or at least explore new ideas and products -especially the "quality" ones. Besides the gameplay experience among the two games is not that different.

 

[BryonD]

How are you so sure about people not liking 4e or even what that actually means? Games not only have their weak and strong points, they are also eligible to sorts of modifications.

What you could rather say, that it would make more sense, is that you like more 3.xe than 4e. This I can understand more clearly. But most gamers are willing to follow or at least explore new ideas and products -especially the "quality" ones.

Didn't I already go into this just a few posts ago?

I agree 100% that most gamers are willing to "explore" new products. And I'm quite certain that the overwhelming majority of 3E fans "explored" 4e. And then they made values judgments and the current marketplace is the collect sum of those assessments.

Besides the gameplay experience among the two games is not that different.

There have been monster threads on whether or not the gameplay experiences are the same or not. Suffice it to say that they may be to you, but they are not to a lot of people.
But there is no value in repeating that debate here. If you don't accept it, fine. But it just nullifies your ability to provide meaningful on points of view that don't accept as real. *IF* you don't accept it.

If you do accept it, then great, but then you last comment would seem rather odd.

 

[Ampersand999]

Just curious, but has the way Paizo helped 3rd parties enhance the Pathfinder portfolio help Paizo's profits? And do we know if not helping third parties for 4th edition has helped or hurt Wizard of the Coast's profits, at least with respect to Dungeons & Dragons?

I suspect Paizo knows it does, and Wizards thinks it knows its better off going alone.

 

[xechnao]

...

Pathfinder, while catering to the 3.xe was something new to explore. At the same time it was so close to 3.x (claiming compatibility) that must have cut it for many skeptical fans that had second thoughts regarding the steps towards 4e; fans that otherwise could have given 4e a better or a second look. Pathfinder was an ideal solution for many doubtful fans.

Moreover by being actively supported by ex D&D players and alive by being available on shelf, Pathfinder gets a share of the new blood of the D&D hobby.

 

[MrGrenadine]

And if someone would just give an example of what this "valuable service" is and how they feel it would help WotC profit either directly or indirectly, this discussion would be at a close.

See upthread.

I honestly can't believe that anyone would argue that quality 3PPs wouldn't benefit the brand in the long run. It happens all the time, in other industries--a company will produce goods and/or services that are linked to a larger, stronger brand, and all boats raise. I have no hard numbers for this, of course, but I have eyes that see companies besides Apple that sell iPod chargers, companies besides Ford that sell seat covers for Mustangs, companies besides Eureka that sell compatible vacuum cleaner bags, etc etc.

So given that, is it really so difficult to think that a terrific, quality 3PP product for D&D would encourage someone to play D&D, (and buy books, subscribe to DDi, etc.)?

Maybe the problem rests in what "quality" is?