D&D 5E What is Quality?

[James Gasik]

So you're having a problem with a product. It's not doing what you need it to do. Perhaps you've encountered a design flaw or shortcoming that you feel attention should be brought to, so that you can find out if it's not just you- if enough other people have the same issues, maybe it's something that needs to be fixed.

There's always going to be other opinions, of course. People who are like "hey, look, it does all these other things, you should be happy with what you got", but humans are, by nature, never truly happy with anything for long. Which is one of the reasons why we innovate.

If people were happy with an initial product, we'd still be playing the original version of D&D, for example.

But comments like "it must be good, many people like it", "it must be good because it makes a lot of money" or "i have never had this problem" aren't super useful.

Because at the end of the day, you have two choices. Either find a product that does what you want it to do, or find a way to make it work. Or gripe at the product maker, but they likely won't do anything unless a lot of money is on the line.

Or, as Edward Norton says in Fight Club:

"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

A thing can be popular, make a lot of money, and have critical flaws. There's no reason to ignore the fact that it is flawed on the basis of it's success. Avengers: Endgame made a TON of money. However, you will find many people who point out that it's a flawed movie.

Quality =/= Entertainment value is a common dispute amongst fans and critics. One can be entertained, highly entertained, by something that, from an artistic standpoint, is garbage.

So while popularity and success are a value by which a thing can be judged, they are not the only values.

I'm not going to argue with 5e's success- the reason it's successful is the reason I engage with the game and attempt to play and run it. If it were not successful, I wouldn't need to. I might choose to anyways, if it was the ideal product for my needs, but that's neither here nor there.

Because it is popular, many people want to play it. For me, thinking about playing it or running it again, requires me to look at it critically, not turn my brain off and go "everyone likes it, so surely if I don't like something, I must be insane".

I could be insane, but I'd like a little more evidence than "most people don't agree with you".

 

[LadyElect]

The perception of “quality” is and will always be a subjectivist concept, whether applied to D&D or any number of analogues already presented here—fashion/accessories, food/beverages, music. This is why dialogues from an objectivist perspective never truly resolve. Popularity exists as an abstraction of shared sensibility and perspective. Due to the nature of its enumerability, many lean on it as the closest thing to an objective resolution, but it still fails when individually contested. Similarly, a divergence of ideals by niche markets or individuals with field expertise/seniority are just as subject to scrutiny despite the perception of authority they may carry for others.

All that philosophizing is just to say it’s inherently fruitless to seek a resolution to this discussion. I like to take part regardless, personally.

5E has largely succeeded due to its palatability. It’s mathematically simple as far as user demand is concerned. The designers have continued to lean into its aspects of individualist expression within an era that thrives on having outlets for that. Early adoption and opinion boosted its self-supporting marketability and the streaming era has been a further boon in that regard.

Those are examples that at least help to account for its success for the popularity-as-quality crowd. The desirability of those and other aspects being contestable might be why others deny it.

 

[jmartkdr2]

So you're having a problem with a product. It's not doing what you need it to do. Perhaps you've encountered a design flaw or shortcoming that you feel attention should be brought to, so that you can find out if it's not just you- if enough other people have the same issues, maybe it's something that needs to be fixed.

There's always going to be other opinions, of course. People who are like "hey, look, it does all these other things, you should be happy with what you got", but humans are, by nature, never truly happy with anything for long. Which is one of the reasons why we innovate.

If people were happy with an initial product, we'd still be playing the original version of D&D, for example.

But comments like "it must be good, many people like it", "it must be good because it makes a lot of money" or "i have never had this problem" aren't super useful.

Just to nitpick this point: it could just be (the theoretical) OP. Your table could actually be the only one who find the basic crafting system in 5e too complex or whatever.

Often I feel those posts are more about seeking validation, although sometimes the answer is "actually there's a rule for you case, it's just buried in the books." (I see that one a lot in the PF2 fora than 5e, but it happens.)

On the other other hand - if OP is the only one who doesn't like the element and it's not because OP missed something, then OP has a point and a totally valid complaint. But if they are the only ones, they should probably fix it themselves for their table rather than expect WotC to do it for them.

Because at the end of the day, you have two choices. Either find a product that does what you want it to do, or find a way to make it work. Or gripe at the product maker, but they likely won't do anything unless a lot of money is on the line.

Yeah, that.

 

[Campbell]

So how do you define quality of design? I gave my reasons, ongoing success is just one and it's only a measurement. I think you have to look at the goals of a game, what the developers were trying to do and how they accomplished their goals.

I take a look at things like how well a game accomplishes what says it sets out to do. I take a look at things like how compelling core play loops are, value for complexity, time to table, how reward systems reinforce play, etc. Is it a subjective aesthetic judgement? Of course it is, but so is popularity. That's just depending on someone else's judgement. There is no objective measure of quality when comes to television, film, games or any other form of media.

If 5e were less popular, but still fundamentally the same product, would it have a lower quality design? If so design quality is not worth actually speaking to.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Maybe we shouldn't "bomb" discussions at all, but actually engage each other in good faith.

I mean we shouldn't but when something we have a toxic parasocial relationship with is threatened with non-praise discussion, something Must Be Done.

 

[Oofta]

The argument is not about saying it isn't 'a quality product', it's about not liking it when someone bombs discussions about flaws and critique with 'It's popular, so shut up' in order to cut that discussion off.

I started this because of your response to my post (and similar tangents)

Modularity is, and always will be, on a scale. I think 5E is more modular than at least the last couple of editions. It obviously could have been more modular.

No matter how flexible or modular they made the game, some people wouldn't have liked it. But the proof is in the pudding, or in the case of the team's goal of making a popular game, in the sales.

P.S. I don't remember anyone denying that at some point early on in development someone made the claim. The relevance of a one person overpromising in an interview is what I question.

The point was that if additional modularity was demanded, it could have been added. Instead WOTC has let 3PPs provide it, like Morrus's Level Up. If there were enough demand, WOTC would be in that space. Since sales continue to grow the additional modularity people want simply isn't necessary for WOTC to meet their goals. That's not a criticism of wanting more modularity even if I don't personally think it's necessary. It's acknowledging the reality of business decisions.

The goal for D&D developers was to make a broadly popular game. It worked.

 

[Oofta]

I take a look at things like how well a game accomplishes what says it sets out to do. I take a look at things like how compelling core play loops are, value for complexity, time to table, how reward systems reinforce play, etc. Is it a subjective aesthetic judgement? Of course it is, but so is popularity. That's just depending on someone else's judgement. There is no objective measure of quality when comes to television, film, games or any other form of media.

If 5e were less popular, but still fundamentally the same product, would it have a lower quality design? If so design quality is not worth actually speaking to.

I would also say that for a game like D&D to have a decent amount of flexibility in order to satisfy the needs of the broad base.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

A car that is inefficient, uses cheap materials, offers minimal to zero safety features, etc. is not, by any reasonable definition, a quality car. It may be popular, it may sell extremely well, it may have other virtues, but quality is not among them. And yet there have been several cars which meet that definition, including the first mass production car, the Model T Ford. By design, it was made to be cheap to make, and to turn a profit mostly via sales volume. It was a direct rejection of the way cars had been designed up to that point, where they were luxurious, comparatively safe, finely-engineered custom builds, sometimes literally hand-machined from the best materials available. The Model T was specifically intended NOT to be a high-quality car, but rather to be a high-utility car.

Something being popular does not, in any meaningful way, communicate that it is a superior product, neither in design, nor in execution, nor in materials. Popularity tells you that, in the context where the product was deployed, it was seen as a desirable purchase. Higher quality products are not at all guaranteed to be the bestseller, not even guaranteed to be in any particular position. Indeed, the bestseller is usually the cheapest product that doesn't fail too often nor too severely. Even that last one, severity, is up for debate if the catastrophic failures are rare enough. Consider the Pinto, very popular until the whole exploding gas tank case came along.

A thing may sell, it may in fact sell extremely well, and still be a mediocre product. A thing may have very low sales, may barely sell at all, and still be an excellent product. Popularity does not meaningfully sort for quality. Note that this goes both ways; I'm not inverting the fallacy either and saying that popularity indicates something is a bad product. I'm saying that there is no relationship, not even correlation, between sales volume and quality. If there were, we'd see a lot fewer crappy, crappy blockbuster video games that somehow still made bank.

In specific, this reasoning is a form of argumentum ad populum, a subtype of appeal to authority. It would be a fallacy to assert that this means popular things are bad or wrong. Instead, popular things are...popular. There may be many reasons why they are popular/sell well, with quality being just one, and frequently quality is not the most important concern. If we wish to make assertions about the quality of a sold good, we must ground them in the actual...you know...qualities of that good. For physical objects, the materials from which they are made, aka the "production value." For most things, the design and utility (since most products have SOME kind of utility value, even if minimal). Ease of use, interoperability, elegance, etc. Sales don't tell you anything about these things.

 

[James Gasik]

Speaking to D&D specifically, no matter how popular it is, it's going to be replaced by a new edition eventually. Wizards of the Coast will want to sell us all new books, and once sales dip to X level, the stars align, the prophecy comes to pass, or whatever metric they use to prognosticate these things reaches a given value, they will unveil the next big thing. It could be 2 years from now, 5 years from now, or 10 years form now (I'm going to be cynical and assume sooner rather than later, but it's not like I have special knowledge on this topic).

When this occurs, should the new game sell more product, does that mean the new game is simply better? Does that mean 5e was less of a game because it didn't make as much money?

Do we take market trends or inflation into account? A rising population?

Would 5e, compared to this hypothetical edition be said to have "failed" because it didn't make as much money?

Obviously not. But in this grim future, will people who were perfectly happy with 5e and have problems with 6e, 25e, Super Advanced Dungeons AND Dragons ("ampersands are so last century!") Mega Edition, or whatever they call it be told "there is nothing wrong with the new D AND D because it's making more money"?

 

[Umbran]

So how else are we supposed to judge quality of a product other than how well it sells and meets or exceeds it's targets?

Well, there are a few things we can talk about that differentiate "quality" from "meeting financial targets".

The first we might address is the McDonald's Phenomenon. McDonald's food sells well. But, it isn't healthy to eat frequently, and its nutrition content per calorie isn't high. It has carefully tuned (and high) levels of salt, fats, and sugars to entice the human hindbrain, but it you are looking for flavor beyond that, it doesn't have much going for it.

McDonalds food does have qualities we can say are, in some way, positive - it is inexpensive, it is highly available, and it is pretty consistent across most of the USA.

So does the massive revenue of McDonald's indicate they make "quality food"? Or is it "food with some sellable qualities"?

Then, we can talk about quality in other aspects. We can talk about cars - cars that go fast, are super popular, that people drool over, and sell well for their price category, but spend lots of time in the shop for maintenance or repairs. How "quality" is that car, compared to, say, a really reliable, efficient, but not very sexy Prius? That depends on what matters to you.

I submit that saying a product is, or is not, a "quality game" is not particularly meaningful until you talk about what qualities matter to you. Otherwise, it is too general except as a very broad statement of acceptance or rejection.

As for whether sales are quality... they are not a direct indicator of any particular quality you may care about. But high sales don't happen for zero reason either - so there's an indirect indication of something there. For McDonalds, sales probably does indicate that it is inexpensive, quick and available, which may matter when you are on a long drive to a convention.

So, overall - whether you are for or against a game, talking about "Quality" in a general sense probably isn't meaningful enough to bother with.