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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5375211" data-attributes="member: 59082">I think it is impossible to quantify this question with percentages because the two are simply too entwined to say, "What percent of Bill Slaviscek's motive was profit oriented vs. design oriented?" Slaviscek and the other designers at WotC are certainly pushed (at least one square <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />) to generate profit, but their design considerations themselves are largely to make the game the best--and most enjoyable--that they believe it can be. Do they take into account things that might impact revenue and does this effect design? Certainly. But when the designers at WotC sit down, they aren't simply thinking "Let's figure out a way to scam the masses out of more dough!" Nor is it a 90/10% sort of split. It is both, in some relationship that is impossible to tease apart and quantify.In an ideal world the need for sales should help design evolution by pushing it forward and providing opportunities for innovation. A revision (2E, 3.5, Essentials) provides the opportunity to fine-tune the system, fix errata and major issues, and integrate customer feedback all at the same time as selling more books. A major system reboot (3E or 4E) gives the opportunity to do all of the above and more, to go in a different direction and try something radical, and this is in turn can and will be revised.And so it goes. "Edition treadmill" is a bit of a pejorative term and I understand why it annoys people, especially when the game goes in a different direction than what one would have liked. But given the nature of the game Dungeons & Dragons, it is not only a necessity but ultimately a desirable thing. What many seem to forget is that every previous edition remains intact, ready to be played--and with plenty of material to last a lifetime of gaming. 3.5 players can enjoy literally 100 hardcover books and dozens of adventures and other supplements--and that is just the output from WotC! If you add in third-party publishers and Pathfinder, there might be close to a thousand 3.5/d20 products available.The same is true with every edition of D&D (although to a lesser extent in terms of quantity of product). The fans themselves keep every edition alive to some degree, and will keep every edition alive through their enjoyment and love of the game. So let the "treadmill" move on and, at the very least, watch the ride with curiosity even if you're perfectly happy with your dusty and worn AD&D tomes. Maybe all of us old-timers--which could loosely be defined as any D&D player that started playing before 3E game out--will be rocking on our porches, grumbling as the new-fangled purely virtual 7E D&D comes out. 'Tis the way of things.</blockquote>

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