When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[justanobody]

If in any way it is the fans of the new edition phenomenon that is pushing people out of the target audience, then maybe that competitive nature from the other games is the type of gamer WotC wanted to target as their audience for 4th?

Which means the audience changed when CCGs came about and widespread competitiveness broke lose.

It may also explain the need to try to balance everything in the game because the target audience is so trying to compete with the other players that making anything less than balanced would make people feel like they had some unfair advantage over another player or vice versa.

I can actually see something in this that means it might be a possibility in reason behind the target shift.

 

[Psion]

And what's with the beginner? That doesn't even know how to play any RPG? How will he react to a lot of "modules" he has to plug together and figure out what he likes?

Pretty much the same way I took all the extra little sidebar rules in Top Secret SI the first time I played it. "That looks cool" or "yeah, that addresses the problem I had."

And what is with play-testing and balancing the system? "You know, we still need 4 play-tester groups for the Vancian Spell + Martial Token System + Wound & Vitality. "

Like I said above, I didn't say it would be easy.

The modularity is already there. The modules just need to be created.

That would make it extensibility is there, not modularity. For modularity to be there, the modules have to... be there. At least in the form I speak of, which is something like inline add-in rules and options like the old Top Secret SI game.

But as far as that goes, I see the core rules of 4e as fairly monolithic. For me to adapt 4e to my playstyle would take more than a bit of hammering.

All this doesn't help people that want to play D&D 4E NOW and expect it to have the "modules" they prefer.

That's true of less stylistic issues, like folks wanting to play druids and bards.

 

[Mallus]

Well, no, not really. 3E worked more often than it didn't, in this regard, it just had a few notable holes.

Like multiclassed spell casters... but sure, 3e, especially late 3e, is a good system that supports the creation of a wide variety of mechanically interesting characters.

Though when I'm in the mood to make mechanically interesting characters, I really prefer the level of control systems like HERO or M&M afford. For example, my character in our M&M game is the Egyptian God of Mexican Wrestling (with a perfectly suitable suite of powers)... something like that would be hard to create in a class-based system, whereas it was a snap in M&M.

I've said before, and I'll say again, if 4E had been a Saga-ized D&D, it would have been a huge win...

I was surprised that WotC didn't go that route.

 

[The Little Raven]

If what you are saying is correct, then should we expect that a D&D product life cycle for each new edition at this point is only 4 years or so?

3.5 was not a new edition. It was a revision to 3rd Edition, hence the reason it still bears the 3rd Edition trade dress and core system. Saying it was a complete and new edition is like saying that 2nd Edition Revised was a complete and new edition, and not just a revision of 2nd Edition.

 

[The_Gneech]

But to extend your thought, you would have to conclude that OD&D is no good for roleplaying either. Because if you think 4E's classes are restrictive, you should see OD&D. But I think those who enjoy playing OD&D would vociferously disagree.

I used to play OD&D, and I certainly disagree.

I used to play OD&D too, and I do think it's no good for roleplaying without some serious house-ruling. I'm happy to agree to disagree on this point, but I held that opinion in 1982 and I still hold that opinion now.

-The Gneech

 

[Psion]

If what you are saying is correct, then should we expect that a D&D product life cycle for each new edition at this point is only 4 years or so?

4 years? No, that's unreasonable. But then, like I already said, I see 3.5 as a refinement, not a new edition.

What I am saying though is I do understand why 1e enjoyed a long period of new innovations, and how the fact many of those same innovations will be available out of the gate for later edition.

(Or then... perhaps not, considering that with the heavy handed nuking of skills under 4e, it need a book like the 1e survival guides or 1e OA. )

I have trouble accepting that - especially since Paizo is *still* going strong today - a year after WotC essentially stopped producing 3.5 stuff.

And yes, I realize Paizo is magnitudes smaller, but to me it means that the D&D brand is in the wrong hands if it can't sustain its acceptable profitability for more than 4 years.

Yes, Paizo is smaller than WotC would be the point I would have offered there. And in a way, I guess they way things turned out is the perhaps the best possible thing that could have happened: a third party that is "sized right" to handle the portion of the market that liked the fundamental informing characteristics of 3e.

As for sustaining profitability... that goal is not a friend to you and I Dave. Yeah, everyone wants to have books on shelves that they want, and have groups playing what they want. But this also gets us marketing-informed decisions like "parsing out the core" and "WoW fans will dig dragonborn."

 

[Storm Raven]

Because Wizards of the Coast is a subsidiary of Hasbro, a publicly traded corporation. There are laws that regulate the flow of information from publicly traded companies, and their subsidiaries, to the public in order to prevent things like insider trading.

In point of fact, providing this sort of public information is entirely antithetical to insider trading. Insider trading means trading on knowledge that is not available to the public - because I am an executive at a company I know that the earning report that will be issued next month is going to tank the stock, so I advise all my friends to dump the stock now. That's insider trading.

Providing accurate information to the public concerning the sales figures for something? That's not an element of insider trading. It is only insider trading if you use that knowledge ahead of time (when it is non-public) to gain an advantage.

 

[Allister]

If in any way it is the fans of the new edition phenomenon that is pushing people out of the target audience, then maybe that competitive nature from the other games is the type of gamer WotC wanted to target as their audience for 4th?

Which means the audience changed when CCGs came about and widespread competitiveness broke lose.

It may also explain the need to try to balance everything in the game because the target audience is so trying to compete with the other players that making anything less than balanced would make people feel like they had some unfair advantage over another player or vice versa.

I can actually see something in this that means it might be a possibility in reason behind the target shift.

You're forgetting ANTHER valid reason for play balance.

Players are no longer expected to play ALL the levels of the game. Another poster in a different thread mentioned that his players are mature enouh to realize that just because they're ineffective today, they will get to shine a few levels down the road. They're playing 6-10 hours every week so the "payoff" isn't that far away.

WOTC has realized that this may no longer be true at all for the majority of gamers. Most gamers might only get together once a month and basing a game system with THAT underlying assumption means it isn't relevant for most gamer's needs.

 

[The Little Raven]

"WoW fans will dig dragonborn."

If one paid attention to 3rd Edition, one would realize that the plethora of dragon-men archetypes that kept surfacing over the course edition points to D&D fans digging them, which was the motivation for making them a core race. Suggesting that WoW, which has no dragonman race for players, is responsible and not the previous edition of D&D, which had several dragonman races for players, is just ignoring the history of the game.

 

[Fifth Element]

I used to play OD&D too, and I do think it's no good for roleplaying without some serious house-ruling. I'm happy to agree to disagree on this point, but I held that opinion in 1982 and I still hold that opinion now.

Reasoned arguments have been made that OD&D is better than 3E for roleplaying. I don't agree since I think roleplaying in D&D is more or less divorced from system, but I find the argument that the original RPG is no good for RPing to be....interesting.