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

[Henry]

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

Does this make ENWorld the Edition DMZ? Maybe [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] needs that as the site tagline...

 

[BryonD]

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.

This is stretching a bit.
Yes, there is some truth to this. But the idea that there wasn't a general expectation is really misrepresenting.
3E was flat out stealing ideas from a lot of popular games of the time. It was frequently described as the "HEROiziation" of D&D.
4E on the other hand was aimed at massively increasing the size of the fanbase.
It is fair to say that they didn't know if this would work or not. But they made it clear they knew ahead of time that it would alienate a portion of their existing fanbase.

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.

There were often repeated comments that 4E "didn't need us" so nobody cared that they were losing some fans. Now this was far and away the 4E fanbase making these comments. But the dragon crap cartoon and ill-considered unofficial "fired" comment had a very fertile ground of 4e fans saying "that!" in response to it.

You are spinning beyond a reasonable interpretation of what was done and said.

It is vastly more accurate to say they knew full well they were turning their back on a big chunk of their existing fan base (if you are into world building 4e will not be the game for you; we fired them). They were hoping that the WoW fanbase would make up for the sacrifice many time over. They were wrong.

But even that was not unpredictable. I've pointed out before that the fraction of TTRPGers in the population is fixed within a small range. Just because a lot more people are willing to sit at a computer and "pretend to be an elf" does not mean that any of those people have the slightest interest in sitting around a table pretending to be an elf.

 

[BryonD]

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.

And you were not alone.

 

[BryonD]

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.

This seems to be quite a non sequitur.
Some unnamed forum "fired" 3e fans, so you post on a website founded on the launch of 3E that the internet *might* have hurt 3E's reception.

At the end of the day the biggest thing 3E had going for it was that a a very large percentage of the fanbase thought it was a really good game.
The biggest thing 4E had going against it was that not nearly large enough of a percentage of the fanbase thought it was a really good game.

It is funny how the conversation keeps get pushed to everything except "how many people actually enjoyed the game?".
That was the controlling factor.

And again, you used to be so positive about 4E, the growing fanbase, everyone would switch as soon as their existing 3E campaign wrapped up, it goes on and on. You were certain that things were very good.
You never suggested in any way that 3E had been anything other than a smash, you just claimed that 4E was an great extension of it.
Now that the ship has sailed on that, you've gone all sour grapes and everything is negative. And you seem quite fixated on every post not talking about 4E or 5E, but finding some contortion or non sequitur to suggest 3e "tanked" just the same or otherwise wasn't the smash hit that it was.

 

[MoonSong]

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.

Oops, sorry the WotC ninjas somehow missed your house, if you are so kind to update your street address and zip code this won't repeat in the future...

 

[DEFCON 1]

You are spinning beyond a reasonable interpretation of what was done and said.

It is vastly more accurate to say they knew full well they were turning their back on a big chunk of their existing fan base (if you are into world building 4e will not be the game for you; we fired them).

When was this said? I don't seem to recall any WotC employee saying that if a person enjoyed "world-building" that the game wasn't for them and that they were fired. Please enlighten me.

 

[BryonD]

When was this said? I don't seem to recall any WotC employee saying that if a person enjoyed "world-building" that the game wasn't for them and that they were fired. Please enlighten me.

Mearls said if you liked world building then 4e might not be for you.

The "fired" comment was someone else and was a poorly thought-out joke. But it was in the very early stages when the presumption was still common that the lost players would be replaced many times over. so it was a joke, but the attitude was there.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Mearls said if you liked world building then 4e might not be for you.

The "fired" comment was someone else and was a poorly thought-out joke. But it was in the very early stages when the presumption was still common that the lost players would be replaced many times over. so it was a joke, but the attitude was there.

When did Mearls say it? While they were designing it? After it had been released? A couple years later?

 

[jayoungr]

The podcasts were very revealing. Heck, they didn't even listen to their playtesters. It was a edition made for designers.

I've heard the statement elsewhere that WotC chose not to follow feedback from playtesters during the development period for 4E, but it's always been paraphrased rather than an exact quote. I'm very curious about this statement(s), and I'd like to know the original context. Can anyone point me to where this was said?

 

[BryonD]

When did Mearls say it? While they were designing it? After it had been released? A couple years later?

It was early on, I think it was shortly before the official release, it may have been shortly after.
It was not a couple years later.