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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deset Gled" data-source="post: 9443681" data-attributes="member: 7808">This is entirely speculation from me, but at the proverbial 10,000' view...What I generally see from WotC's actions is a back-and-forth between a couple factions.  One faction is a bunch of MBAs making business decisions. Things like "supporting legacy product is expensive, push everyone to update ASAP." Or "don't dilute your brand or allow factioning; you must call everything by the same name" come from this group. Generally speaking, these are all plans that come from a strong idea and/or have been proven in other markets, but it's unclear how they translate to TTRPGs.The second faction is the group charged with implementing these ideas. Twenty years ago I would have called them the game devs, but today it also includes the VTT devs, ad guys, support teams, contractors for everyone, and a whole bunch of others. This group has to consider multiple ideas and conflicting goals, and come up with real, implementable reality. They also have their own, internal wars. This inevitably means making sacrifices, cutting corners, and going full ahead with some choices that they know will not be in popular, but must be made to deliver a product. The third group is the one that communicates with the user base. Lots of marketing, some real nerds, some customer support folk, etc. Every time a change (or external news) comes out, it's their job to first announce/address it, then get customer feedback and report it to the other two groups. So, what you see is a feedback loop. A decision gets made, a product gets released, or juicy news story comes out. The internet reacts. The marketeers send feedback to the MBAs and devs, who both have immediate and conflicting responses. The devs propose a change, the MBAs make an upper level decision, the devs work on a change, the marketeers announce the change. Rinse and repeat with varying amounts of lather from the fan base.Sometimes the creatives know an idea is stupid but can't convince the suits of that fact until the nerds complain loudly enough. Sometimes the devs screw up and it isn't noticed by the MBAs who are looking at the big picture instead of the minutia. Sometimes the marketeers are just really clueless about how to present an idea without accidentally lighting a dumpster fire with the professional ragers on Twitter. Sometimes, the walls between these "factions" I invented are so blurry it's impossible to tell who's who.  In the end, all sorts of problems end up in the problem/solution treadmill you describe.</blockquote>

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