D&D (2024) The WotC Playtest Surveys Have A Flaw

[doctorbadwolf]

Yep. The trouble is, you need a sufficient sample size to determine how "representative" it really is, and that's all but impossible.

This leads me to believe that they aren't relying completely on these playtest surveys. Probably not even mostly. I'd wager they give far more weight to their own internal playtesters and designers, and just watch the survey results for trends and hot topics. They pretty much have to. (But that's just a friendly wager; I'm not putting money on it. I have no idea how that particular sausage is getting made, and I'm pretty sure I don't even want to know.)

I disagree, though I also won’t put money on it. I think they are taking the playtest survey’s very seriously, as well as Reddit and twitter chatter.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Those of us who want something different and actual improvements to the game have no choice but to look at other game systems.
Talking to my good friend last night, he said, "this is the first time in 33 years I haven't been playing D&D."
It kinda hurts to step away from the brand and fandom. There's a lot of history and memories there.

That's not always a bad thing.

I and my main group stepped away after 3.5, and that led to some of the most productive, creative gaming we had had for years. We got into FATE and discovered a system that for the first time ever, everyone wanted to run. We tried Reign, dug up Traveller again, ran a campaign with Burning Wheel. It was great.

And 5e came along, and we could take some of the fun we had and bring it back to D&D. Not all those players are still playing D&D, but they're all gaming somewhere. I came back because of, as you say, history and memories. But I feel I'm richer now because of the detours that were taken.

 

[CleverNickName]

I disagree, though I also won’t put money on it. I think they are taking the playtest survey’s very seriously, as well as Reddit and twitter chatter.

Hm. I hadn't considered that they might be treating the playtest surveys as another part of their social media.

I wouldn't be surprised if WotC hires consultants to analyze and report on trends, patterns, problematic IPs, all that usual "social media manager" stuff for these playtest surveys.

 

[Clint_L]

Yeah. Eventually people might have to buy them as older books fall apart, but that's hardly an incentive to do a massive print run. In the meantime, retailers will be stuck with these books that everybody already owns.

A free upgrade? Or will they have to buy the new PHB on DDB?

You’ll have to buy it if you want it, though digital only books are much cheaper than the print ones and go on sale a lot. Plus you can share them with everyone in your campaign. Then you can continue using both versions, or toggle off the old one. This is not new; they already did this process with Monsters of the Multiverse (I prefer having both it and the old books activated).

 

[Parmandur]

I wouldn't be surprised if WotC hires consultants to analyze and report on trends, patterns, problematic IPs, all that usual "social media manager" stuff for these playtest surveys.

Yeah, they have access to a whole outside statistician firm through Hasbro, getting hooked up with that after 4E fizzled was how theybdesigned this process.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

And this is even better than those, where every idiot has the same vote as an PhD,

Not mutually exclusive, sadly.
And it is dangerous terrain to assume people without phd are idiots..

 

[UngeheuerLich]

These are people that I game with every week. We schedule and coordinate our games through social media, so it's not like they live under a rock either. But as one person out of eighteen total, I'm literally the only 6% of active 5E gamers that I know of who are even aware of these playtests. I imagine the number of folks who are aware and interested is even lower. How much less, then, for the number of people who are (a) interested enough to (b) download the material, (c) read it, (d) playtest it, and (e) provide feedback?

And that fraction of a fraction of a fraction of people that made it all the way to Step (e) is supposed to be everyone's voice in the room.

I don't have a better idea, but still. That's a big ask.

And this is the reason for the high treshold and the reason to be very careful in changing anything.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Yeah this is right imo - WotC aren't even testing alternative hypotheses or seemingly considering why things are how they are. That's part of why I've called this "bad design".

In general, they aren't asking questions that matter.

Yeah, IMO they would be much better off trying to get feedback on a much smaller subset of key design points.

I pretty sure you can come up with a well designed 10 questions that would really get to the heart of the short rest / implied encounters / reality at tables issue.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'd be happy to do that.

This comes down to the DM Experience. DMs may not purchase the most books when compared to all players combined, but they are an integral part to delivering a quality play experience. So DM support would make the game better, but wouldn't maximize profit (like, say, selling new skins on your VTT avatar might).

The DM Experience in 5e is bad. The DMG is frequently cited as one of the worst books for the edition. There are numerous threads, videos, and articles about the DM Shortage. WotC would have addressed this if they actually cared about the quality of D&D.

The DMG encounter guidelines don't work. The CR system doesn't work. The DMG provides little helpful advice to DMs. It's a worthless book that should've been revised YEARS ago while DMs have struggled through this mess of a system.

But, let's forget the DMG (most people do anyway), and move to other tools. What should WotC be offering for FREE to aid the DMs who basically are doing volunteer work for WotC to keep people playing their game?

• Free Encounter Calculator to help us plan battles by plugging in the monsters from the sources we own
• Free Treasure reward calculator
• Free indices and guides to all of our books (of course, we should have to purchase our books - I only want a database with a page number)
• Tools such as Initiative trackers
• Online character builder that can export to PDF

Revised DMG, free tools to help us run games. What else?

• Good quality DM Screens with the charts we actually use on them.
• Short adventures that don't take a year to run, which we can purchase individually or at least download.
• PDFs that we can search, print out handouts, etc.
• Errata that improves the game as needed to repair obviously broken rules and underpowered options
• Optional rules that recognize some tables prefer tactical depth - that actually work with the system. (Something like Tome of Battle, Skills & Powers, etc., would've given 5e more "legs")

None of these suggestions would make the game sell better, necessarily. Some might even lose money, but I think most of these would improve the quality of life for DMs, which could translate to a better overall gaming experience.

These are all good suggestions and IME (30 years of selling D&D Books) they would very likely make the game sell better.

I don't think that there IS a difference between making the play experience better and making the game sell better. Better quality products are (sadly) a smaller factor in sales than marketing gimmicks, but they're not nothing.

 

[Horwath]

Not mutually exclusive, sadly.
And it is dangerous terrain to assume people without phd are idiots..

Oh, I agree completely.
And I didnt say that.

But as you do not offer explanation for your choice in elections and here you can do that, that is why I say that these polls are better.