I agree with Gadget, the way you said it was dismissive and struck me as edition war stuff.
Mistwell, I'm not going to enter into a dance with you. I've seen where that goes, but wanted to let you know that I did read your response (and am not ignoring it) but that I disagree with your interpretation, or at least it doesn't match up with my intention! I find that most "edition wars" are started with misconstrued accusations of edition warring, and since I have no interest in that I'll just leave it at that.
You said in your original post:
"The full title was going to be "Why (and how) 5E can succeed in ways that 4E failed" but I didn't want this to be construed as an edition war thread. I am not meaning to criticize the quality of any specific edition except insofar as the health and vitality of the community that is built around it. The fact that 5E was announced three and a half years after 4E was published speaks volumes to this failure."
You were suggesting 4E failed. You weren't talking "degrees of success"... you out-and-out was saying you thought 4E FAILED as an edition. To which I say HOGWASH.
Had you originally said (as you mentioned above in your reply to me) "I think we can safely say that 4E was not as successful as previous editions in that the edition cycle was only four years, and less really if you think about the period of active support." I wouldn't have said anything. Because your statement could possibly be true based on just outsider perspective... but which there's no way to confirm or deny that as we have no numbers to tell us how much the edition actually made.
But you did not say that. To which my reply still stands: Anything you produce that makes you money, keeps your business open, and allows you to continue to do business is a success. That which does not can be considered a failure.
No, this is not nitpicking in any way, shape, or form.
As soon as you say something has "failed"... you are giving license to the belief that there is nothing of value in it. Thus, all of your personal opinions about why it "sucks" are thus validated in your mind, because the product has no value. So rather than discussing things from a moderate point of view, taking into account the good and the bad (of which every edition has both)... you dismiss things out of whole cloth. There is no discussion, because your belief is on the extreme end of the spectrum.
But when you speak from a moderate position, we can have a conversation about all manner of points about each of the editions. Good and bad. Useful and useless. Popular and not popular.
Don't speak from extremes. That devolves into hyperbole of the worst sort and results in completely unsupportable BS. While it might make the speaker feel better because they mistakenly think their opinion now "has weight"... in truth, their opinion has weight when they can see and argue from both sides, because invariably they will produce evidence that is more defensible.
I would add: Don't make a strawman out of someone's view and turn it into an extreme, which it seems is what you are doing, my friend.
I'm going to have to agree with [MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION] that you're nitpicking semantics. The word "failed" seems loaded for you, like its inherently an all-encompassing castigation, a word that applies to all context which, in the original post, I was very clear I wasn't using it that way. As I said, I wasn't talking about how good of a game 4E is, or how loved it is by its advocates, or how creative it is, but the overall impact it has had and the community strength behind that. As I said, relative to previous editions - in terms of the context I outlined in the original post and since then - it seems like a "failure." Announcing a new edition three and a half years in doesn't speak of a thriving community.
I see a bit of a strawman argument here, because you aren't accepting my re-phrasing, which you agreed was a viable viewpoint - but instead go back to my original phrasing (and your interpretation of it) and obstinately continue to disagree with
that. In other words, you reject my clarification.
If you want to do away with the word "failure," fine. We can talk about "degrees of success" to which I'll say 4E was on the lower end of the spectrum, a "minor success" in that it offered a new way to play the game that some people liked and it made WotC some money initially but didn't last. I'm guessing that WotC hoped for more, something more sustainable.
By the way, my position with regards to 4E is moderate! I like the game, played it for three years. But my original post has nothing to do with how I feel about it as a game, but its larger impact on the game and community and, perhaps most importantly, its (lack of) longevity and sustainability.
maybr I would have. But so pleased that it's relevant.
