What's stopping WOTC from going back to 3.5?

[JamesonCourage]

You know what'd be interesting? A poll that said, "go ask your group about this question. Then come back and vote on it." It'd let us sample people who don't come to sites like this one.

The problem, of course, is the logistics of the poll. If you say, "what's your preferred edition?" and give options, then one vote from the poster who returns won't be enough without a ton of poll options ("3 say 4e, 3 say 3.X/Pathfinder, and 2 say AD&D" probably shouldn't be a poll option, because it's so specific). I think the poll would have to be informal, where people would come in and post the numbers, and the OP would update it to reflect every post. This, of course, would be a lot of manual work, so still not optimal.

Interesting nonetheless. As always, play what you like

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

You know what'd be interesting? A poll that said, "go ask your group about this question. Then come back and vote on it." It'd let us sample people who don't come to sites like this one.

That would be interesting.

I'm sticking with that poll until something better comes along. The thing is that and the Amazon numbers are the strongest pieces of data I've seen...besides an overwhelming rejection of 4E in my hometown. So until something better comes along that's the only useful metric I've seen.

 

[gamerprinter]

Many papers on the psychology of "humans" are based on a dozen grad students at Princeton. Not that they aren't often proven incomplete, but they're still a starting point.

No, we don't have great quality data. But I'm amazed at the steadfast willingness of people to throw out anything that looks like data, especially when they're discussing on a thread like this. Are most groups playing D&D 3.5 and are they willing to buy more 3.5 material the instant it comes back on the market? It's not right to claim the answers to those questions is no on the basis of no data or a gut feeling.

College papers are hardly based on large numbers of data collection points. They aren't the average of raw data - they are completely different animals.

Starting points are fine, and I'm not disagreeing that a forum poll is some level of data collection. The OP is suggesting that the forum poll is the data he's using -- that's a starting point only, not fully acceptable as data. I'm just pointing out that this is a poor claim for evidentiary data.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Sorry, polls taken on ENWorld, don't count as raw data - its anecdotal to this forum for the date the poll was taken, but really has no viability since it only includes votes from here... it doesn't count as 'evidence'.

Er, you spotted that the poll wasn't on ENworld, right?

And I must disagree with you to some extent anyway - you are denying that it is raw data of any kind, and call it anecdotal. It would be anecdotal if someone said "I heard that 8 out of 10 cat owners preferred 4e".

The situation we have here is the data from 500+ visitors to rpg.net who saw the poll and considered that it was worth voting on. There may sometimes be a consideration of the phrasing of questions too.

While you obviously cannot extrapolate directly from that to the population as a whole, it certainly is data from a particular subset of people and can be useful as long as the person making use of the data takes that into consideration.

Cheers

 

[Hussar]

Heh, funnily enough, in that EN World poll, I voted 3e.

 

[Pentius]

Funnily enough, I prefer 4e and own a cat.

 

[Desdichado]

College papers are hardly based on large numbers of data collection points. They aren't the average of raw data - they are completely different animals.

Starting points are fine, and I'm not disagreeing that a forum poll is some level of data collection. The OP is suggesting that the forum poll is the data he's using -- that's a starting point only, not fully acceptable as data. I'm just pointing out that this is a poor claim for evidentiary data.

It suffers from both endogeneity problems and sample selection problems. And you could make a case that the wording on the questions was also problematic.

That said, it's not like this discussion of the buying habits of RPG customers is likely to be submitted to the Quarterly Journal of Economics anytime soon. While it's wrong to suggest that a poll on ENWorld or RPG.net proves anything, it's certainly an interesting thing to talk about. The cry to decry polls comes a little too quickly around here.

 

[Hussar]

Just to point out something here too. Pretty much every time that particular poll comes around, and it comes around every few months or so, the results are generally pretty close. About 50%+-10 for 4e, with 3e and Pathfinder taking most of the rest and about 10% for retro-clones etc.

If nothing else, it's pretty consistent and has been for a few years.

 

[SSquirrel]

That would be interesting.

I'm sticking with that poll until something better comes along. The thing is that and the Amazon numbers are the strongest pieces of data I've seen...besides an overwhelming rejection of 4E in my hometown. So until something better comes along that's the only useful metric I've seen.

Earlier in this thread I showed you why counting Amazon sales as data is a and idea. Yes you had the PF Core book at #1 that day, but 4E held well over half the top 20 slots. Here is the list today. Note th PF Core book is at 15 and we have more non-4E or PF products in the top 20. 4E has exactly 1/2 the top 20. PF has 1/4 of it.

1 4E Red Box
2 4E Madness at Gardmore Abbey
3 PF Ultimate Combat
4 PF Ultimate Magic
5 4E Heroes of the Fallen Lands
6 4E Dungeon Master Tiles - The Dungeon
7 PF Adv Player's Guide
8 4E Rules Compendium
9 Unrelated Novel
10 4E Neverwinter Setting
11 4E PHB
12 4E Monster Vault
13 Unrelated Halo Encyclopedia
14 Unrelated novel
15 PF Core Rulebook
16 PF Bestiary
17 4E DM Kit
18 Shadowrun 20th Anniv Edition
19 4E Dungeon Tiles - The Wilderness
20 World of Darkness Corebook

If you tried to score these by doing a reverse point system (#1 gets 20 points, #20 gets 1 point and everything in between) then 4E has 119 and PF has 62.


Amazon is not a trustworthy data source. Remember, this is the same company who has yet to actually provide any sales figures for the Kindle other than in early 2010 when they updated it from "lots" to "millions" heh.

 

[prosfilaes]

Earlier in this thread I showed you why counting Amazon sales as data is a and idea. Yes you had the PF Core book at #1 that day, but 4E held well over half the top 20 slots..

Those two statements don't go together. How many slots 4E holds is completely irrelevant to its quality as data.

Amazon is not a trustworthy data source.

Aspersions at data they choose not to release do not matter as to the quality of the data they do release. It's not the detail we want, but it's one of the best data sources we have.