D&D 5E When Did 5E Peak Quality Wise?

[Hussar]

Do you have an example that doesn't involve computer programs? Technical compatibilities and limitations are inherently objective, but they are not necessarily representative of what is being discussed.

Well considering we’re not supposed to consider things like mistakes, or bad writing, or physical product, what would you consider as an example of degree of quality?

 

[Hussar]

But why is Cos considered better? When often it’s because of the nonlinear nature of the adventure means that the play experience is different and often people like the freedom.

Does that mean that cos is a better adventure? Well no. It’s better once you define your criteria. And as such not so much better as different.

 

[mamba]

But why is Cos considered better? When often it’s because of the nonlinear nature of the adventure means that the play experience is different and often people like the freedom.

Does that mean that cos is a better adventure? Well no. It’s better once you define your criteria. And as such not so much better as different.

Yes, you define your criteria, and they clearly are not about the packaging side of things, because otherwise both should be regarded equally. That was my point. Your criteria fail to capture any meaningful difference, i.e. what the players / potential buyers would actually be rating the adventure by

 

[greg kaye]

How do you measure quality?

My first questions, when learning of new material, are: "does it fit?", "does it enhance?"

The core rulebooks were great, Zanathar's added constructively but various other aspects of books went way off-piste. Strixhaven even went as far as giving free feats with backgrounds (the kind of thing that might have given a tool proficiency if you were lucky). Aarakocras can FLY, 50 feet per round, all day, without breaking sweat. Tasha's went full Rian Johnson in subverting our core expectations on things like race. I get the feeling like WotC is just trying to drum up interest in fad things for products that people don't really want. (I suggest they take a look at Humblewood).

 

[greg kaye]

I liked old stuff because it did what it said.
Magic Missile, does what it says.
Fireball, does what it says.
Mimic, Mind Flayer... it all does what it says.
What the heck is Silvery Barbs...?
A name like Success Sabotage might have been more intuitive.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, you define your criteria, and they clearly are not about the packaging side of things, because otherwise both should be regarded equally. That was my point. Your criteria fail to capture any meaningful difference, i.e. what the players / potential buyers would actually be rating the adventure by

But your “better” has zero to do with quality.

It’s better for you because you prefer open ended adventures. Which is perfectly cool. No problem at all.

But you can’t claim that the quality of one is better than the other. At best you can simply advocate for your preference. Again no problem.

But once you invoke “quality” now you are claiming one is objectively superior.

 

[Zardnaar]

But your “better” has zero to do with quality.

It’s better for you because you prefer open ended adventures. Which is perfectly cool. No problem at all.

But you can’t claim that the quality of one is better than the other. At best you can simply advocate for your preference. Again no problem.

But once you invoke “quality” now you are claiming one is objectively superior.

I think you're failing to realize it's subjective. People like what they like for whatever reason.

Tashas seems to be the tipping point going by the responses.

 

[mamba]

But your “better” has zero to do with quality.

that is strictly a matter of how you measure quality. At no point did I say that the measure used by anyone here is objective, quite the contrary

It’s better for you because you prefer open ended adventures. Which is perfectly cool. No problem at all.

Or maybe I just like gothic horror better than pseudo-space travel, fairytales or plane-hopping, regardless of whether it is a sandbox or not. CoS and SKT are both sandboxy, yet CoS is considered one of the best adventures while SKT is near the bottom, so there are plenty of criteria that people consider.

Yet going by objective criteria like readability of the font (cannot rate how much you like the font or whether it fits the theme, that is subjective), number of typos, full color print, some art pieces (cannot rate the art, that is subjective, so just its existence), glue binding, ... they come out on par. What good is rating something by criteria that do not reflect what people like better? How do you explain the difference in rating and do you consider it relevant at all?

If you do not want to call this quality, fine, then call it something else. Whatever you want to call it, that is what is being discussed here, what people like and why, since that is all that matters given that the technical / production quality has been pretty consistent and largely does not matter (unless it is really good or really poor). Quality encompasses more than the production side of things.

But once you invoke “quality” now you are claiming one is objectively superior.

Only if you assume that quality is objective. I see no reason why that would be the case. There are some objective criteria, but those are by no means all there are.

 

[Hussar]

I think you're failing to realize it's subjective. People like what they like for whatever reason.

Tashas seems to be the tipping point going by the responses.

What is subjective? Quality? Not in the English language it isn't.

Like or dislike has zero to do with quality. It just doesn't. If your goal was to see when people stopped liking what WotC was publishing, then sure, whatever. But, your question was about QUALITY.

 

[Hussar]

If you do not want to call this quality, fine, then call it something else. Whatever you want to call it, that is what is being discussed here, what people like and why

But, "what people like and why" is NOT QUALITY. That is the basic definition of the word. Because if something is higher quality than something else, then it is objectively BETTER than that other thing. The goal of measuring quality is to create an objective (or at least as objective as possible) scale to measure against.

The question isn't "what do you like and why". The question is "When did 5e peak in QUALITY?"

I'm not the one who should be calling it something else. This pretense that your personal tastes in any way are objective (because quality is measured objectively) is ridiculous. And frankly it's intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise.

If you prefer gothic horror, that tells me absolutely nothing about why SKT is a bad module. It DOES tell me why you don't like it. Fair enough. OTOH, it's kinda pointless if I don't prefer gothic horror.

Even the notion that SKT is poorly ranked is pretty ludicrous. Since when is SKT considered a bad module? It's highly ranked on Amazon (higher than many other modules), which, by your criteria, means it's a qualitatively better than most other modules. Curse of Strahd is 4.9 and SKT is 4.8 out of 5. If that's the range from top to bottom, I'd say that the quality (using your definition) is fantastic. It literally cannot get much better.