When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[stephengroy]

I'll be 40 in May, and have played since 6th grade.
I've not bought much 3E stuff.
I HAVE played Minis, and it burns me they're changing that.

 

[joethelawyer]

i guess because of the ogl and the d20 license, wotc basically ran out of stuff to put out. they needed to do a new edition so they could put out all the same materials they and others already put out, but under a new rule system. otherwise they would have no new revenue streams.

i dont know if wotc planned on losing almost half of their base of customers when launching 4e, but i guess they figured hey, half of our customers spending X per month is better than all of our customers spending next to nothing per month, because all decent product ideas have been done already by us and others.

as to the rest, there is a lot i dont understand.

to begin with, and i dont know i this is relevant to anything in this conversation but i am still amazed by it, i never understood how a card game could have nearly killed off T$R back in the 90's. (though i understand T$R was complicit in their own doom, i never understood the defection of rpg gamers to card gamers.)

i dont understand how wotc is planning on getting new gamers involved in the game. i know the edition is designed to appeal to mmorpg players, but i don't see that there is a huge crossover between the markets. all geeks are not equal. just because you're a geek in one arena doesn't mean you will like all geeky things.

so other than making something similar in mechanics to mmorpg games, what else are they doing to attract new gamers?

one could argue that the DDI thing is an effort to make dnd more familiar and appealing to the new dnd gamer audience, but other than that, what else are they doing to get new dnd gamers? and as for DDI i'll beieve it when i see it. i have little faith it will turn into something good for the company.

if you dont get new gamers, then with each edition you reduce the base by half each time. eventually you will be out of people to sell to.

i'd be very curious to see of the people who bought 4e, how many were people who never played dnd before.

i guess in summary, is this a dying industry with an ever decreasing rate of return, not counting price increases?

 

[Psion]

But you didn't, and you don't. This leads to the general point. So much stuff for 3E had been released (and it is an incredible amount, by way of comparision, I have a pretty complete 1E collection, it takes up, oh, 18 inches of shelf space, at the most, while my very partial 3E/D20 one takes up much more) and bought by so many people, that WotC didn't really have a choice but to do a big revision. 3.75 would face too much competition, from what they have already released.

That also has the ring of truth.

Still, you can make a game mechanically incompatible and not have the same philosophical shift seen in 4e.

 

[Obryn]

When did Motley Crue become classic rock?

I was listening to a Classic Rock station in Southern Illinois this past weekend.

They played Pearl Jam and I felt ancient.

-O

 

[DaveMage]

i guess because of the ogl and the d20 license, wotc basically ran out of stuff to put out.

I see this assertion alot, but I just can't believe it. How can you run out of stuff to put out when the setting is the multiverse?!?!? If you can't come up with an idea for a cool product in such a setting, then I really don't think you're trying.

I think the real problem lies in the "1 or more rule books released per month" strategy. Want better sales per book? Have fewer books.

1E, in its 12-year run, had a total of, what - 10 rulebooks? Everything else was settings or adventures. 2E started the splat craze and (along with mismanagement) overloaded TSR to the point of failure. The splat craze continues unchecked and thereby seems to require less and less time between editions.

Less rulebooks, more ways to use the rules would be ideal, IMO. (Hopefully Pathfinder will keep the rulebooks to a minimum.)

 

[Halivar]

i dont know if wotc planned on losing almost half of their base of customers when launching 4e

I think they gauged the market pretty well. I also don't think they lost anywhere near half of their customers.

so other than making something similar in mechanics to mmorpg games, what else are they doing to attract new gamers?

The 4E = WOW contention is seriously spurious. If I wanted to, I could hand-wave a "3rd Edition is nothing but Baldur's Gate for the tabletop" argument, and it'd have about as much weight. I have yet to see an actual list of similarities unique to 4E; instead, it's only "general feelings" and assumptions. As someone who plays both WOW and D&D, the association is ridiculous. They both have a class they call "paladins," and the similarities end there.

I think the real problem lies in the "1 or more rule books released per month" strategy. Want better sales per book? Have fewer books.

You can only sell a particular book once to the same person.

 

[Crothian]

There is nothing wrong with not being their target audience. I'm not sure I was their target audience in the days of 3.5 either as the adventures and books they came out with for the most part were far removed from the style of game I run. 4e seems no different but like that old 3.5 stuff I buy it because I can use it for the games I want to run. I imagine the games where I would be the target audience are the games it would be tough to find players for.

 

[TerraDave]

That also has the ring of truth.

Still, you can make a game mechanically incompatible and not have the same philosophical shift seen in 4e.

Its funny, when reading the first post, it reminded of all those who never left 1E. 2E involved a philosophical shift that turned off a lot of people, inspite of the fact that it was backwards compatible.

I don't have a complete answer to this problem of philosophy. I guess once you are the designers, you have decided to go for it and do something new...you have to do something new. Regards 4E, I like the "we need to worry how it actually plays" part of the new philosophy, not so much the "we need to 'update' the style and feel for a new era" part. But given I liked the old versions, its not that surprsing I don't like all the changes.

 

[Obryn]

I see this assertion alot, but I just can't believe it. How can you run out of stuff to put out when the setting is the multiverse?!?!? If you can't come up with an idea for a cool product in such a setting, then I really don't think you're trying.

It's not about making a cool product. It's about diminishing returns.

While you, personally, might find "A Guide to Elves in Acheron" compelling enough to purchase it, it's likely something that the majority of D&D players wouldn't buy. The narrower your books get, and the more specialized their application, the tougher it will be to make back the original investment and development dollars.

What about settings, though? Remember the morass of settings in 2e... Granted, those settings still have fans and many were excellent. I think it's fair to say, though, that a multiplicity of settings will balkanize fans (and therefore their purchases) as much as releasing a new edition would. If I run Dark Sun, odds are I don't need Spelljammer, FR, Birthright, etc. supplements. More settings only compounds the problem, and it's why WotC rightly scaled back their settings for 3e. It's best to leave these to third party publishers who won't have nearly the overhead that WotC itself does.

-O

 

[El Mahdi]

When did Motley Crue become classic rock?

About 10 minutes after Nirvana became popular.