Bah, scrolling back for information? Sounds like a job for the objectivists. It’s so much simpler over here with the subjectivists, where all I have to do is feel!
For bizarre historical reasons (mostly a group taking on the name as though naming themselves that actually adds credence to their position), that
specific term doesn't tend to mean 'person actually being objective/preferring objectivity.'
I'm not sure what you base this last point on. 4e had a loud group of detractors (including Mearls) but you have no evidence at all about what the majority experience of it was. In fact, Wizards at the time said it was the best-selling edition ever, making it the second most popular RPG of all time. By the arguments posed in parts of this thread that makes it the second best RPG of all time.
This gets thrown around so frequently, yet no one ever can bring up the reference so we can see what was actually said, and thus what constraint there were on the claim. Was it the best selling edition at 6 months out? What specific aspect were they measuring (units vs. dollars, gross vs. net)? Did they mean the gamebooks (or even just the core gamebooks, which would be notable since a lot more of 4e counted as core than other editions) or total D&D product at the time? Without that context, the statement is of extremely limited use.
And, yes, it is absolutely useful to suppose that some judgements are superior. Because if we don't, then we accept bad faith arguments as valid as well as simply uniformed judgements as equally valid. The notion that all judgements are equal gets right back to the whole anti-intellectual thread that pollutes any conversation like this.
Engaging in thought exercises over the subjective nature of perception doesn’t necessitate the acceptance of all views due to that nature. Judgements can be born of ignorance or inexperience or, hell, even dishonesty. They can be measurably harmful and deserve their disavowal by the masses.
And I certainly understand the view that engaging those exercises is unproductive or frustrating or abstracted to the point of uselessness in ordinary discourse. But anti-intellectual against the alternative of accepting agreement in lieu of true demonstrability? You’d have to take the fight back to Descartes to prevent that from popping up. And this:
Only works for as long as you want to ostracize the very inevitable contention.
I find individual on nerd-centric online forum framing their* position as in defense against anti-intellectualism right up there with naming one's group 'the objectivists.' It is wrapping ones own position up in a term we all gravitate towards.
*Yes, I know it was actually Morrus who inserted the term.
There are objective truths (such as nutrition for a burger, maybe quality of paper and binding for a TTRPG rulebook) and also informed and uniformed judgements (someone can be genuinely wrong about what a game ruleset includes). Those are mostly beside the point to the discussion. The reason objective vs. subjective is used here so much is because many-to-most of the things being used to judge TTRPGs aren't going to have objectively better outputs unambiguously able to be placed on an ordinal scale. If that makes the threshold for objectivity unreachably high, so be it (and thus maybe the term best not be used in the situation). Plenty of other things can't 100% be objectively stated to be higher quality, but there can be a shared general consensus that something is important to a product, and there be relative universality in agreement (especially if something is egregiously bad at something, like a book with unreadable font or genuinely confusing page layout). Much of the rest of things
may have objectively measurable qualities, but even then there is a subjective argument as to whether that quality is an unequivocable aspect of product quality.
Is a Ferrari or a Kia a more quality automobile? I see a lot more Kia’s around than Ferrari’s. Does that mean Kia is better quality than Ferrari?
I have ridden in a Ferrari*. It was loud, uncomfortable, and hot (AC could not keep up), and the headroom left much to be desired. Depending on how you measure 'takes you from point A to point B' (do you include measures of reliability and repeatability? etc.), it may not even be good at that primary function. That said, you are not wrong that Kia's popularity is not a measure of quality, any more than a Ferrari's desirability.
*Friend rented one for another friend's bachelor party
Yes. My parents had an old grandfather clock in the house that didn't work either. They kept it, though, because it served a purpose other than telling the correct time twice per day.
Going by the implied argument of the last example, I don't think either of these are really that apt of comparisons to the topic of RPGs. Leaving aside the watch/clock-as-jewelry/art argument, the primary function of a watch is very obviously to tell time (and something like losing minutes a close-to-inarguable deficit in that regard). The bomber has a few competing functions (flying in general, carrying bombs, accurately dropping bombs, continuing to fly while being shot-up), but in general the quality is again fairly hard to argue against (even if you can argue about relative value of the above qualities, or even potentially how to measure). For TTRPGs, the comparable measure is (IMO) -- 'can the ruleset be used by someone to play a roleplaying session?' With few exceptions --
Hybrid being maybe an RPG at all but maybe just someone's word salad that includes some RPG framing, and FASA's 1980s
Master of the Universe rpg (where there are rules referenced which never actually show up in the rulebooks) -- all TTRPGs meet that standard and most of the qualities used in arguments about which ones meet the standard better than others not being objective or even semi-universally agreed-upon.
All this leads me back to my overall conclusion that RPGs are closer to movies or music than burgers or clocks -- they all do the basic necessary requirements to qualify as the thing, some but not all of the components of their quality can be measured unambiguously, and there is no consensus on comparing product A with strengths in X and Y to product B with strengths in Z and W.
Getting back to the primary thread topic, no, popularity isn't in and of itself a measure of quality. There may be a correlation, and when something is really popular it is useful to analyze it to see what quality-related qualities it might have (and it's always useful to remember that what you assumed would be the measures of quality might not be right, and actually this popular thing happens to have something going for it of which you hadn't thought). It's at best smoke, which implies fire but doesn't guarantee it.
