D&D 5E What is Quality?

[Morrus]

Moreover, if a lower-ranked game suddenly got a lot more popular did the design improve retrospectively? Like a fine wine perhaps.

Yep. As I said earlier the best was for me to ‘improve’ my games is to buy Facebook ads for them. This increases their ‘quality’. It’s insurmountable logic, really.

 

[Maxperson]

I can only point you to this thread which is fairly old and the recent one here. There have been many, many reports of how 5E exceeded expectations from the get go and has seen double digit growth every year since.

I see no reason to doubt the reports.

You're still ignoring the impact of entering the main stream on that double digit growth. If you want that growth to be from the quality of the product, you need to prove that entering the main stream had little to no impact.

 

[Aldarc]

Yep. As I said earlier the best was for me to ‘improve’ my games is to buy Facebook ads for them. This increases their ‘quality’. It’s insurmountable logic, really.

It's also incredible how that also increases the quality of so many other TTRPG Kickstarters.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm assuming that the TTRPG market is relatively competitive.

bad assumption... no 3 other companies not producing D&D added togather equal D&D.

That when 5E was released, it had not been the top selling RPG for a couple of years, but quickly bounced back.

it at most fell to number 1 with a competitor as a kind of close 2nd until they stopped publishing books (and it is not a competition if one competitor is sitting out that round)

That there's no inherent reason for D&D's growth over other systems.

except the fact that it is D&D and that NAME carries meaning. That NAME is worth the money... and notice Big Bang theory, Stranger things, ect didn't talk about pathfinder or fate/fudge...

But primarily that if it wasn't decent quality that some other TTRPG would have risen to the top.

no unless D&D stops publishing...

The post is labeled "What is" not "D&D 5E is" for a reason.

quality is not sales numbers. quality is not growth. low quality or out right bad products can boom with good coverage by news/entertainment/advertising.

 

[Umbran]

A Ferrari and a Kia are both automobiles.

That's like saying the Oxford English Dictionary and Seuss' On Beyond Zebra are both books. I submit that, "automobile" is too broad category over which to assert a single valid concept of quality over the entire group.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The streams draw in a fraction of the number of people playing (now estimated at 10 million by WOTC).

and stranger things pulled MORE than that. so lets look at that (along with other shows)

There are also streams for other game systems. Mercer's game started as a 1-shot in 4E, switched to Pathfinder for their home game and then switched to 5E for their stream. CR has also done 1-shots in other game systems.

I don't know anything about CR so I don't know... but none of those are things mentioned on Big Bang theory or Stranger things.

Seems like most popular streams are using D&D because it's what people play and show interest in to me, not the other way around.

funny how everything you WANT to equal 5e is the best is there...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yep. As I said earlier the best was for me to ‘improve’ my games is to buy Facebook ads for them. This increases their ‘quality’. It’s insurmountable logic, really.

maybe all quality control should be sending more money to ad agencies

 

[Willie the Duck]

You can see statements from WotC's CEOs over the years on any of the many mainstream media articles about the game, or the various articles about Hasbro earnings calls and the like. I cover that stuff on the news page fairly regularly.

I know, but I'm trying to hold people to the same standard. The one about 4e being the best selling edition so far (or whatever, which is the point) keeps getting thrown around, and quite frankly it is meaningless (bordering on genuinely detracting/counterproductive) without actually being able to see what was claimed.

Popularity alone is often based on the intrinsic qualities. One of the things that does contribute to popularity, though, is brand name recognition/loyalty, which is something that D&D has in spades. Of course, that has nothing to do with the actual quality of the game. It applied to 2e, 3e, 4e and 5e.

The streams draw in a fraction of the number of people playing (now estimated at 10 million by WOTC). There are also streams for other game systems. Mercer's game started as a 1-shot in 4E, switched to Pathfinder for their home game and then switched to 5E for their stream. CR has also done 1-shots in other game systems.

Seems like most popular streams are using D&D because it's what people play and show interest in to me, not the other way around.

It can be both. That's how feedback loops form.

The simple fact is that D&D is very popular right now, with a public awareness that at least appears to dwarf any previous surge (be that the initial 'fad' with ET, Mazes and Monsters, and steam tunnel stories; the 90s Larping scene; or pick your own example). We cannot easily (and without ambiguity, analysis, and disagreement) determine if it is something about the game itself that caused the spike, whether the spike is a sign of the game quality, or anything else. Trends and fads and movements (by which I mean 'the mainstreaming of gaming') are really hard to pin down with what is chicken and what is egg (much less which came first).

 

[Umbran]

funny how everything you WANT to equal 5e is the best is there...

Oh, as if both sides of this argument aren't cherry picking left, right and center? Come on, dude.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Oh, as if both sides of this argument aren't cherry picking left, right and center? Come on, dude.

Both sides, eh? Slam dunk argument, there.