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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4157300" data-attributes="member: 2067">Hey, this is a bit long, and an extended kind of analogy, so prepare yourself. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The one thing that they say about people at the top is that they've got nowhere left to go but down. Call it the Sophomore Slump like music does. Call it the Sequel Problem like movies do. The fact is that after something wildly successful has run it's course, the company in control of that successful thing wants to get people to embrace the next iteration of that successful thing. The next album by a platinum-record seller. The next movie starring a character audiences loved the first time around.From what I can tell, 3e was the best selling edition of D&D to date. It was a rousing success in many areas. It has its flaws, but despite those, it dragged D&D out of the slump it was in at the end of 2e, shepherded it to a new company, and sold books, and kept selling books. Sure, I bet the sales fell off there in '07 or maybe at the end of '06, but even a slight fall-off still was successful for WotC.Wizards is now in the rather unenviable position of avoiding the problem of the Sequel. Thousands of people (at least!) grabbed 3e and loved it. I'm sure Wizards would love for all of those people to grab 4e and love it, too. But the thing that sequels and sophomore efforts face isn't just the regular competition from the others in the industry. They also face competition from their own successes. From the movies people still remember fondly, to the albums that people still listen to, to the games that people still play.WotC's first effort, they've claimed, is to keep the D&D fans on board with 4e as much as possible. They won't start really concentrating on new blood until the fall. Like with any sequel, there will be those who loved the first thing so much, they'll buy the next thing. There's those who saw some flaws in the first thing that are being addressed in the second thing, so they'll eat it up, too ("The first ablum was good, but had a bit of a commercial taste. This next album promises to be a bit grittier, so it'll fix my problems!"). But what about those people who liked the original, and who are comfortable with the original? Maybe the first movie lacked some polish, but they find it charming, or they can ignore it because the plot was so thick. Maybe the first album had a few disposable songs, but they can ignore it because the good songs were so good. What about those people for whom 3e has been "good enough?"What incentive can you give them to change?By and large, people don't need perfection. Everyone reaches a point of diminishing returns -- when any further enhancement isn't that big of an enhancement for them. Once you have something wildly successful, it's difficult to one-up it, to provide an enhancement that's worth as much as the original was.Telling them the first thing they liked wasn't so good isn't a winning strategy, whether it comes from the company themselves or from the joiners and trufans who leap in early. If a fan of the new movie tells you "The CG effects are so much better than those old stunts!", and you *liked* the old stunts, that makes you less likely to see the next movie. If the record company says that on this new album, the band has better recording material and a professional producer, and you *enjoyed* the last album, you're going to wonder why you should care. In effect, when you try to one-up something that was tremendously successful, it's going to be very difficult to convince people that it's BETTER. You can convince people who weren't big fans in the first place that it's better, and you can convince people who had issues with the initial thing that it's better, but that's just bringing in people from the outside.An appeal to quality, in the case of 4e, might not be the way to convince 3e fans that 4e is for them. For every point of "We're fixing X!" you'll get "But I liked X!" or "But X wasn't really a problem!" or "Then why aren't you fixing Y?"What sells a sequel isn't going to be "It's better than what you already like!" Diminishing returns apply especially harshly to sequels to successes, and it can actually work against you when you get people who embrace that idea. A trufan going on and on about "simulationism is dumb!" is just going to alienate people, just as if you changed the actor for a character in the sequel and some people LIKED the other actor, saying "The first actor was dumb!" is just going to alienate people.So what DOES convince people to buy into the sequel? How do bands who make top-selling sophomore albums pull it off?From where I'm sitting, it looks like instead of telling you this is going to be EVEN BETTER, they tell you this is going to be the same kind of thing, but NEW and DIFFERENT. It's going to take a few new turns, but it's going to stay grounded in what you already enjoy. What does this mean in terms of 4e?Instead of trying to persuade people to go to 4e by way of saying "We've fixed our mistakes!", it might be more useful to persuade people to go to 4e by way of saying "Check out this cool new thing you can do!" Without saying "...you couldn't do it before."If someone thinks 3e is "good enough" already, telling them how their game sucked isn't going to win them over. Telling someone who was either neutral or a fan of the acoustic riff in the first album that you're TOTALLY PUMPED that the second album has none of those obnoxious acoustic riffs isn't going to win them over.You've gotta sell them on the new stuff.Say "In the new movie, our heroes are facing a new villain!" or "In the new album, this new song has a frickin' wicked harmonica solo!" or "In the new edition, this new healing surge mechanic will keep you in fighting shape all day long!"People can still say "I liked the old villain." or "I don't like harmonica solos." or "I prefer grittier hp." But because you haven't made their love of the first thing seem silly, they're much more likely to say "But I'll give it a shot." Their affection hasn't been insulted, they're not defensive, you're not telling them that 4e is BETTER, you're telling them that 4e is NEW, which lets them decide for themselves if they think 4e is better or not. And people like new stuff, especially when it's realated to stuff they ALREADY enjoy. So this is my point: all this talk about 4e being "better" is just making those who think that 3e is probably "good enough for them" defensive. You're only winning over those who had deep problems with 3e, which means you've stopped your losses and you've perhaps converted some outsiders, but you haven't recruited any of the old fans, and you've made some of them outright enemies, because of the focus on the flaws of 3e. Perhaps a better angle to take is to talk about 4e being "new." This doesn't criticize what so many people already love, it just says "If you love X, you'll love Y, which is the hottest new thing about X!" It appeals to peoples' love of the new without shaking their love of the old. People can still not like the new thing, but at least you stay "on their side."Now, I think that the "D&D" brand name has enough trufans that even a worst-case scenario is still going to rake in the bucks for Wizards. This isn't about making a profit or the failure or success of D&D as a game. This is about making 4e a successful sequel to a successful game, and how difficult it is in any situation where you're trying to repeat success. D&D could still do flying colors in sales and not be a very successful sequel. And I think the more the message of "We're fixing 3e's problems!" is promoted, both by Wizards and by the people who are totally into 4e, the worse off it'll be as a sequel, because the more the already-existing fans who aren't married to the D&D brand name will go elsewhere, rather than to 4e. I think the D&D brand name has a very strong pull, definately enough to pull off an edition change, even with a few hiccups. But they are at risk for a Sophomore Slump kind of scenario, where more people just keep listening to the old album without hearing much about the new one. Eh, maybe the problem is completely obliviated by D&D's brand pull.Either way, I just thought I'd lay that little theory out there. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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