So I haven't said anything for a bit, here, but... I ... I feel the need to remind people of a few things.
1) New and/or Casual Players do not ruin games or cause games to be ruined by bringing new perspectives that cause changes to the game when the developer/designer/publisher hears about it.
They cause the game to become more accessible to more people, 9 times out of 10. Mostly by getting rid of pointless or illogical ideas and traditions that are counterintuitive. THAC0 for example. Negative armor is better for the defender and increases the roll you have to make as an attacker... yaaaaay. It makes sense once you learn the convoluted math behind it... but you get the same result from the much easier 3e armor class system.
When I first saw that I was like "Oh no! Where are the THAC0 tables?!" and didn't understand how the attacks work until someone who never played 2e explained it... and then I was like "Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense."
Similarly, though a bit less accessible to the folks of this forum, I imagine, was the Purple Patch of City of Heroes.
In City of Heroes you gain powers as you level up, and slots you can add to powers to enhance them. Every power has 1 slot by default and you can put up to 5 more slots into any given power. When the game launched, everyone and their cousin six-slotted their attack powers for damage. When they landed a hit, they'd absolutely -destroy- their target, but you whiffed around 50-80% of the time (depending on the enemy).
The Purple Patch added diminishing returns to your slotting. So after 3 slots of damage, your increase was massively reduced for the next three damage enhancements. People screamed and wailed and quit the game because their damage was being nerfed... And then other people learned that putting in even -one- Accuracy enhancement increased your accuracy to hit 70-80% of the time, which increased your actual overall damage output higher than 6 slotting damage did. (Assuming you put 2-3 Damage Enhancements into the power instead of 6)
Those who had quit largely didn't return because they didn't like the change for some reason. But the change? The change was -good-. And it lead to other systems and enhancements being created. It lead to players getting access to the Real Numbers behind the powers of recharge times, accuracy, endurance cost, etc. It was the most maligned change made entirely for "Noobs who didn't like risks" that made it possible to create -vastly- tougher tank characters (Who weren't -actually- benefiting from 6-slotting damage nearly as much as they thought they were).
2) Businesses want to make money.
That means making things as accessible as possible. Linux is an amazing OS that you can do -so- much with... if you're a computer engineer/software developer. For the rest of us it's a rock wall. Linux could put their penguin on every billboard and bus stop in the world, have it do cute tricks in TV Commercials, even make an animated kids cartoon, all to advertise it massively.
That wouldn't increase its sales by a significant degree. Because even if a billion people were way more interested in Linux, they still wouldn't be able to -do- anything with it.
Making things more accessible just makes good financial sense. You're way more likely to successfully sell a product if you can explain it to a random person on the street in 2-3 sentences and show them why they need or otherwise desire that product within a couple sentences more. Advertising is a GREAT WAY to communicate those 2-3 sentences and the additional 2 sentences. But no matter how much advertising you do, if they're not going to find a use for your product they're not gonna buy it.
3) New perspectives show inaccessibility.
If you're not selling your product to a specific market segment at all, or your product isn't in that segment to the degree it exists in other market segments, what do you do? You find out -why-. And that means soliciting opinions and asking questions. And if you ask a bunch of people who -aren't- in that demographic, the answers are going to be based in stereotypes.
"Why aren't women buying our Bic pens to the same degree men are?" "We should make 'em pink and charge more!" "Brilliant! You get a raise, Dave."
"Teenage Girls aren't buying enough globes!" "Make 'em Pink!" "RAISE FOR DAVE!"
"Our Primary demographic for Ouija Boards is 16 year old girls at slumber par-" "PINK!" "Take all the money, Dave, just all of it!"
So... it's really important to get some more perspectives into any room where decisions are being made. And more than any other perspective, that means the perspective of the newb. Why? Because the noob has -interest- in your product, but has concerns about how it functions. And may have new ways of doing things that make more sense.
I played 2e from the early 90s 'til around a year after 3e came out. Once I knew the THAC0 tables I wasn't super interested in other ways to determine whether an attack landed or not. It worked, I understood it, it must be simple enough that anyone can understand it... But that change had an absolutely massive impact on the game's design. And it had a huge impact on how people reacted to the game. And D&D went from "Nerds in a Basement, or the booth at Denny's" into something -way- bigger than it had been, before.
By streamlining the math and getting rid of extraneous tables like the Rogue Skill Tables.
4) One person, one visionary, one perspective, can never do this.
A single person declaring unilaterally how things "Must Change" is never going to have the perspective to make serious sustained, impactful, and positive change.
D&D and WotC don't need a "Visionary". They need as many perspectives as possible with a general idea of what they want to hold onto, what makes D&D what it is.
The whole idea of the "Visionary Leader" is an authoritarian myth. Musk has been proven to be -way- less educated, insightful, and reasonable than anyone ever thought. From his meme culture to his thin skin to his endless continuous failures. Hyperloop, anyone?
'Cause nothing says "Innovator" like recreating a Subway and giving it a new name. And nothing says "Successful" like just not doing it. Just straight up not bothering to complete the work he was paid to do.
