D&D 5E Reasons Why My Interest in 5e is Waning

[BryonD]

Oh please. They didn't turn their backs on their fans... they produced an evolution of 3.5 that codified all the miniatures use that many groups were using into a rules system that emphasized and highlighted much of what players were already doing. It turned out not to be the evolution a good percentage wanted, but WotC didn't design and produce it to deliberately thumb their nose at 3.5 players. And if people took 4E as a personal affront, that's on them.

There was a lot going on.

The whole "fired" debacle was blow out of proportion. But the fanbase didn't help matters with the constant "H4ter" and "we don't need you" posts.
And then WotC posts a cartoon with a dragon crapping on a troll complaining on the internet. It isn't hard to call picking a side in the debate "turning your back" on the other side.
Was that meant as an attack? Of course not, it was meant as a joke.
Was it smart at that point in time? No.
Did they do ANYTHING to try to show that they wanted the "h4ter" talk to back down and that they recognized their mistakes in keeping a big portion of their fanbase happy? No.
The theme of "we will create 10 new fans for every one we lose" was common.
Mearls said that if you like world building 4e might not be the game for you. This is not the statement of someone taking pains to keep you happy. This is "don't let the door hit you"

 

[sunshadow21]

Personal experience - my wife has been interviewing for a job out of state. I looked up the local game stores in the college town we might be moving to, and they are all MTG focused with no mention of D&D or even PFS. I may be SOL on this hobby.

That may not mean much. The local game store I used to go to before moving didn't really advertise the rpgs due to negative view that is still out there about them, but it had a healthy number of players for both D&D and PFS nonetheless. Just because you aren't seeing anything about them doesn't mean that they aren't present; it just means that it's not the big draw for the stores.

I don't think that either brand will likely be the keystone for any new store (D&D has too many negative aspects tied to it for that to happen), but like existing stores, new stores will offer Pathfinder, 5E, and/or whatever other rpg is the strongest at the time, and new communities will develop around the local favorites. I don't think the hobby is dependent on a single title within the hobby as much as it is highly dependent on other types of games to draw enough people into the physical stores to sustain them; this is true with or without an official D&D game being on the shelves.

 

[pemerton]

WotC didn't listen to its customers, thinking it new better.

This reminds me of how many people were saying that they hated D&D or the Forgotten Realms and how 4e made them like D&D. WotC cattered to people who didn't like its product

Repeating this won't make it true.

It's simply not the case that the people who bought 4e "hated D&D" or "didn't like WotC's product". Some people who bought 4e liked D&D. Some of them (not me, but several of my players) liked 3E. Some of them (including me) liked aspects of B/X and AD&D. Some of them (especially me) liked the tone of fantasy roleplaying that is quintessential to D&D.

You didn't like 4e. This is equally the case for plenty of other D&D-players. But you are not the true D&D partisans. You just happen (it seems) to like different things in RPGing from what I do. That you may be more typical than me is an important commercial fact for WotC, but it doesn't show that you love D&D more than I do, nor that WotC - in making something that I enjoyed but you didn't - had turned its back on D&D and its fans.

I also made this point multiple times before 5E was announced and stated that 4E had the same problem of expecting the fanbase to be "monolithic" to use your word, and "not throwing a wide enough net" to use mine. Back then I was frequently taken to task by 4E fans for taking this position, and I don't recall any 4E fans ever coming to my aid to say this was a fair point or anything. So there is certainly an element of "what goes around, comes around" here.

I posted the following (as part of a longer post) on Feb 3, 2011 (Australian time - so maybe a day earlier for you):

for the reasons I've given I think that the lack of a setting isn't a coincidence relative to the mechanical and flavour changes, but rather fits with them as part of a coherent (but, as it turns out, perhaps not so popular) overall design.

When 4e game out, I posted on these forums that WotC apparently agreed with Ron Edwards that a narrativist-oriented RPG focusing on situation and character-driven play would be more popular than a simulationist RPG focused on the players exploring the world and/or stories that the GM creates for them. Such a belief seems the only way to explain the presence, in 4e, of all the features I've mentioned above.

At the time I tended to assume that WotC weren't just speculating but actually knew- unlike Ron Edwards, for example, they have marketers and market researchers on their payroll. But it seems they may have got it wrong.

For someone like me, who wanted a game like the one they produced, it's turned out to be a lucky error. The tone of Essentials, though, plus the release of Nentir Vale, suggests that WotC might be pulling back, and trying to turn 4e into a more traditional RPG.

You posted in the same thread about 7 hours later, replying to another post of mine made about 20 minutes later, so presumably you read it at the time.

I'm not sure what sort of concession you are wanting from 4e fans four years later - to admit that they (we) were weirdos and wreckers all along?

 

[BryonD]

I posted the following (as part of a longer post) on Feb 3, 2011 (Australian time - so maybe a day earlier for you):



You posted in the same thread about 7 hours later, replying to another post of mine made about 20 minutes later, so presumably you read it at the time.

I'm not sure what sort of concession you are wanting from 4e fans four years later - to admit that they (we) were weirdos and wreckers all along?

Excellent and thank you.

I'll still stand by the general point that I took this position frequently and by the 4E side of the debate, I was generally raked over the coals for it.
I don't recall this specific post from 2011. I recall a consistent theme to the opposite. I don't remotely claim it was from you.
(Keep in mind, in this thread I concurred with you, and then referenced 4e supporters as a whole)


I'm glad to see that one time in 2011 you expressed this sentiment.

Thanks

Edit: Wow, that is a fun old thread. Thanks. You and I actually agree specifically on this point the next day. So there is that. kudos.

But there some fun pre-5E ire in there. All in all it is a relatively calm conversation, but you can see how it swings as various people pop in and out.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Those two statements are contradictory. If much people were already doing they would have embraced the change.

Many people did embrace the change. Many people didn't. "Many" is not synonymous with "more than 50%"... so many people can like *and* dislike something. Thus, my statement isn't contradictory at all.

It isn't a personal affront. It just is that WotC didn't listen to its customers, thinking it new better. The podcasts were very revealing. Heck, they didn't even listen to their playtesters. It was a edition made for designers. All the changes to the Forgotten Realms and teh great Wheel were explained that way. To make it easier for their writers and designers.

Really? In the two years they were designing 4E before it was put on the shelves and each and every 3.5 product they were releasing during that time sold less and less copies (like for example Magic of Incarnum)... they weren't listening to their customers? Just what exactly were their customers demanding when they weren't buying The Book of Nine Swords? Hmm? What was 4E supposed to look like while they were working on it? Tell me what the grand reveal of how 4E was supposed to have been designed such that they weren't going to "turn their back on their customers"?

The fact of the matter is... you NEVER know with any accuracy how a new product will be received. Guess what? 3E could have been crapped on too! WotC didn't know. They thought that what they were making was going to be good and that they hoped all the 2E D&D players would embrace all the changes they were making to the game to highlight ways many tables were already playing... but they didn't KNOW. The SAME exact way they didn't KNOW how 4E's design was going to be received. And I think they sincerely thought that the game's evolution and most especially its "ease-of-use" would be seen as a good and cool thing.

So no... they didn't "turn their back" on their fans... because that implies they deliberately acted against the known wishes of their audience. Which was impossible, because all they really knew of their audience at that time was that they WEREN'T buying all that much of 3.5 anymore. 4E wasn't designed to turn off their customers... their 3.5 output at the time was already doing a wonderful job of it.

 

[Hussar]

Just to add to Defcon1's post, I'd point out that there is a large forum of dnd players where you are not allowed to talk about 3e. Sure sounds like they think they were "fired" as customers a long time ago.

Had the internet been as prevalent at 3e release, 3e's reception may have been very different.

 

[Shasarak]

Just to add to Defcon1's post, I'd point out that there is a large forum of dnd players where you are not allowed to talk about 3e. Sure sounds like they think they were "fired" as customers a long time ago.

Had the internet been as prevalent at 3e release, 3e's reception may have been very different.

Yeah I heard about them - dont they post their comments in by snail mail to be printed in a monthly newsletter?

 

[pemerton]

Excellent and thank you

Here is another post of mine from the same thread, some days later:

we don't know what [WotC's] market share is (although there is some reason to suspect it might have dropped, certainly from the heyday of 3E).

We also don't know what there market share is relative to their projections. For example, if part of the reason for going to 4e was because they had already projected an OGL-driven loss of market share arising from good 3pp competing with 3E, then it may be that they are now better off than they feared - or worse off than they hoped. Until we know this, it's hard to tell whether the move to 4e was rational from WotC's point of view.

Another complexity is how the changes in the game are taken into account by the business side of 4e trying to project their impact. I'm sure they're sophisticated enough to rely on more than just designers' intuition as to whether a particular mechanical approach will be popular, but I'm also pretty sure that market research into RPGs is not as sophisticated as into many other entertainment products. For example, how sophisticated is their marketing analysis of gamer demographics, and of RPG rulesets, and of the popularity of different rules with different demographics? Again, I don't know, but without those sorts of analytical tools I imagine it is fairly hard to predict how changes to the game are likely to fare in the market place.

I think I would stand by most of this, except obviously with 5e they did increase the sophistication of their market research, pretty much along the lines that I described four years ago.

 

[Fildrigar]

I am ever thankful that I missed the edition wars. But man, are the edition skirmishes annoying.

 

[S_Dalsgaard]

Personally I hated 3e when it was released, but fortunately I could just keep playing 2e, as my old books didn't magically disappear from my shelves.