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!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7487873" data-attributes="member: 37579">I'll agree that they dragged their feet. But continuing to work on a projected fewer and fewer people want isn't a good business decision. "Obligation" isn't a good reason to release a product. If they started work on a trilogy and the reception to the first release was cool, they shouldn't be obligated to finish. Especially as it will literally be coming at the expense of content that the current audience DOES want. There's a finite amount of hours in the day, and they can only log so many hours of work. Yes, it sucks that they didn't spend a tonne of money on manhours releasing free content for an increasingly small percentage of the audience. And yes, it's a black eye. But a much smaller black eye than releasing a low quality book for the larger audience because they were focusing on the ranger. Really, this is why WotC was so secretive in the late 3e/ 4e era. Because when they changed their plans people got upset. So, the "mistake" they made was keeping the fans in the loop. And, personally, I'd rather have the company reactive and responsive to changes and shifting feedback than maintaining a plan years after it was devised. I could say very similar things about the PHB sorcerer given how unpopular wild magic is. Should they redo the sorcerer as well? There's a bunch of fixes they could do (bloodlines giving spells, rephrasing metamagic). Or… they could just release more options, which largely fixes the problem. Regardless, the beast master isn't "half" the ranger. It's half the options, but maybe a quarter of the class features. Less if you include spells. So redoing the entire ranger to fix the beast master is unnecessary. What they *should* do is just offer a variant pet using ranger subclass. This skirts all the problems with releasing a variant ranger, as people are used to additive options. Drop an "animal lord" that fills the same niche but has slightly different flavour and variant powers. Which lets people play that kind of character, but doesn't confuse people with contradictory options or forces players to revise their character. Heck, they could even have two. Have a "warg" option that is more utility and lets the ranger see through the eyes of its pet, which is more of a hardy familiar. And a combat pet option, with the beast being all about kicking butt. If the response to a poor quality product is for them to release it again and make even more money… what's the incentive to get it right the first time?</blockquote>

Verification