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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8787768" data-attributes="member: 18">For sure.On the flipside audiences are extremely good at detecting when a movie sucks, or when it contains stuff that just doesn't work for them.None of these match what WotC's own surveying suggested players want, and they were extremely poorly designed, and showed a real lack of effort and care. Something that players regard as a core element of the class should be a badly-designed optional subclass, should it? WotC's surveying indicated people want an animal friend to help them kill stuff. Not a rando summon, and not a pet that just stood around mashing the DODGE button.No.Absolutely not. We have direct evidence that is not how WotC works. This circular reasoning that whatever we get is what the audience wanted is absolutely false on a truly fundamental level. Not just in D&D, but across the board with media. Companies are extremely bad at understanding and implementing survey results, and as you yourself just pointed out, players are bad at explaining what they want.Real skill in class design comes in creating fantasies people want to embody. WotC have not been great at that. Many other companies aren't too, but it is why WoD was really freakin' huge. White Wolf didn't "survey people" to see what players wanted from a vampire game. They created a bunch of awesome vampire archetypes with the Clans, and then people wanted to be them.Part of WotC's problem has been being blinded by their own surveys and the admittedly-confusing-and-contradictory results therein. Audience know what they don't like, but they're much more confused about what they do like.WotC's focus should be on making a super-sexy super-awesome Ranger than says "PLAY ME!". Not checking a bunch of bloody boxes.As I've said before - that could even work with a half-caster (or even maybe full caster!) Ranger. But they need to "pick a lane", and surveys aren't really helping them do that, very clearly.To be clear we have a situation where:A) WotC are NOT following their own surveys particularly closely.andB) WotC are NOT creating a sexy-as-hell Ranger class that people want to play.They're not sitting in either chair, let alone lounging across both smugly, as we'd hope.</blockquote>

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