D&D (2024) WotC On One D&D Playtest Survey Results: Nearly Everything Scored 80%+!

In a 40-minute video, WotC's Jeremy Crawford discussed the survey feedback to the 'Character Origins' playtest document. Over 40,000 engaged with the survey, and 39,000 completed it. I've summarised the content of the video below.

High Scorers

• The highest scoring thing with almost 90% was getting a first level feat in your background. This is an example of an experimental thing -- like advantage and disadvantage in the original 5E playtests.
• Almost everything also scored 80%+.

About The Scoring System

• 70% or higher is their passing grade. In the 70s is a thumbs up but tinkering need. 80% means the community wants exactly that and WotC treads carefully not to change it too much.
• In the 60s it's salvageable but it really needs reworking. Below 60% means that there's a good chance they'll drop it, and in the 40s or below it's gone. Nothing was in the 50s or below.

Low Scorers

Only 3 things dipped into the 60s --

• the d20 Test rule in the Rules Glossary (experimental, no surprise)
• the ardling
• the dragonborn

The next UA had a different version of the d20 Test rule, and they expect a very different score when those survey resuts come in.

It was surprising that the dragonborn scored lower than the ardling. The next UA will include new versions of both. The main complaints were:

• the dragonborn's breath weapon, and confusion between the relationship between that dragonborn and the one in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons.
• the ardling was trying to do too much (aasimar-like and beast-person).

The ardling does not replace the aasimar. The next version will have a clearer identity.

Everything else scored in the 70s or 80s.

Some more scores:

• new human 83%
• dwarf, orc, tiefling, elf tied at 80-81%
• gnome, halfling tied at 78%

Future installments of Unearthed Arcana

• The next one will have new ardling and dragonborn, a surprise 'guest', and a new cleric. It will be a shorter document than the previous ones, and the one after that is bigger again. Various class groups.
• Warrior group digs into something teased in a previous UA sidebar -- new weapon options for certain types of characters. Whole new ways to use weapons.
• New rules on managing your character's home base. A new subsystem. Create bases with NPCs connected with them, implementing downtime rules. They're calling it the "Bastion System".
• There will be a total of 48 subclasses in the playtest process.
• New encounter building rules, monster customization options.
• New versions of things which appear in the playtest after feedback.

Other Notes

• Playtests are a version of something with the assumption that if something isn't in the playtest, it's still in the game (eg eldritch blast has not been removed from the game). The mage Unearthed Arcana will feature that.
• Use an object and other actions are still as defined in the current Player's Handbook. The playtest material is stuff that has changed.
• Thief subclass's cunning action does not interact with use an object; this is intentional. Removed because the original version is a 'Mother may I?" mechanic - something that only works if the DM cooperates with you. In general mechanics which require DM permission are unsatisfying. The use an object action might go away, but that decision will be a made via the playtest process.
• The ranger's 1st-level features also relied too heavily on DM buy-in, also wild magic will be addressed.
• If you have a class feature you should be able to use it in the way you expect.
• If something is removed from the game, they will say so.
• Great Weapon Fighting and Sharpshooter were changed because the penalty to the attack roll was not big enough to justify the damage bonus, plus they want warrior classes to be able to rely on their class features (including new weapon options) for main damage output. They don't want any feats to feel mandatory to deal satisfying damage. Feats which are 'must haves' violate their design goals.
• Light Weapon property amped up by removing the bonus action requirement because requiring light weapon users to use their bonus action meant there were a lot of bad combinations with features and spells which require bonus actions. It felt like a tax on light weapon use.
• Class spell lists are still an open question. Focus on getting used to the three big spell lists. Feedback was that it would be nice to still have a class list to summarize what can be picked from the 'master lists'. For the bard that would be useful, for the cleric and wizard not necessary as they can choose from the whole divine or arcane list.

The playtest process will continue for a year.

 

[mamba]

I want real change. And if they're not going to do that, if we're just going to get a lukewarm revision that doesn't address anything meaningful, they might as well just slap a foil cover on 5e and call it "Commemorative 50th anniversary edition."
The stuff that they're changing is nothing that anyone has asked for, nothing that has a quantifiable change in the experience.

Sure, these are mostly tweaks, but they do seem to mostly be tweaks for the better and make the whole thing more coherent. Neither of which is bad.

If you feel this is not enough, then do not buy it, it's simple. I am not sure what big changes you want (and by extension whether they would even be considered an improvement by 5e players rather than e.g. the OSR crowd), but WotC is clearly not interested in making any.

 

[mamba]

....that tells us nothing. You cannot reason from the sample size alone to determine how representative nor how intense the responders' feelings are. That is outright statistical fallacy.

Sure I can, if half / the majority of respondents do not like a feature, that is a strong dislike, if most like it, that is a strong like. I doubt the e.g. 15% who do not like a feature based on their reply hate it while the other 85% are only lukewarm, that will be a range on either side.

Not gonna bother with how representative the sample is, neither of us know so it is moot.

 

[mamba]

If the 5E adventures used the CR and encounter rules in their design, they assume specific values regarding CR and EL by definition. If the 2024 revision of the game changes those CR and EL values then, by definition, the adventures written for 2014 are no long "compatible" with the 2024 rules.

If the monsters stay the same CR and the rules are improved, I see no downside

If, on the other hand, the adventures weren't designed with the 2014 rules, it proves that those rules were never worthwhile to begin with so revisions of those rules are irrelevant and unnecessary.

The rules were not worthless, they just were not perfect. Improvement is always worthwhile.

Long story short: you can't have it both ways. Either CR and EL is a real, meaningful thing that must be revised along with everything else -- thereby making the earlier adventures incompatible -- or CR and EL was always arbitrary and unreliable, in which case a revision of CR is completely unnecessary and irrelevant and its best dropped entirely.

Something not being entirely reliable does not make it pointless, I am sure you can think of several things where you want a prediction that is say 90% probable instead of going into it uninformed

 

[mamba]

For me, 5e is getting a little long in the tooth. Stripping away most of my exaggeration on here, I don't want to see 5e go 10 years only to be extended by 5.1 edition for another 8. I think there's much more dynamic and creative things that can happen in the RPG space than what we're seeing with OneD&D.

I am sure there is, but you won't see that in the D&D juggernaut, nor should you expect to. If you corner 60% or so of the market, you won't be the one innovating / risking your player base

 

[mellored]

If I'm going to invest all that, then yes, I want it to be different enough to warrant it.
Otherwise it's a free PDF errata.

This is intentional going to have backwards compatability. It's selling too well to kill now.
So yea, just tweaks.

That said, have you checked out pathfinder 2? That's different enough.

 

[Clint_L]

I want real change. And if they're not going to do that...

They're not going to do that. They've been crystal clear that they are not interested in another edition and are keeping 5e as the basis of OneD&D. Either accept it or move on because that what's happening.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What about all the sad dogs we bred to basically be cats?

Ew, do they claw? They really are sad.

(I make it a rule to not interact with dogs smaller than my cats.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sure I can, if half / the majority of respondents do not like a feature, that is a strong dislike, if most like it, that is a strong like. I doubt the e.g. 15% who do not like a feature based on their reply hate it while the other 85% are only lukewarm, that will be a range on either side.

Not at all. Consider the following hypothetical:
60% of users like it, 40% dislike it.
Half of people who like it (so 30% of the total), like it a lot, and half only like it some.
90% of people who dislike it (so 36% of the overall userbase), dislike it a lot, and 20% (4% of all users) only dislike it some.
People who strongly (dis)like something are guaranteed to respond. People who have mild preferences don't respond.

From this, out of the total body: 30% like it a lot and all of them respond, while 32% dislike it a lot and respond. Even though the userbase has a clear majority which like it--outnumbering the dislikes three to two!--more people dislike it a lot than like it a lot, and thus only a third of all users decide the fate of the whole body.

Not gonna bother with how representative the sample is, neither of us know so it is moot.

But that is literally my point. We have no idea how representative it is, and that is the very reason we cannot conclude that the sentiment is strong based on this!

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'll be honest, and it's going to sound terrible.
3.x was out for 8 years and 4e for 5 years.
For me, 5e is getting a little long in the tooth. Stripping away most of my exaggeration on here, I don't want to see 5e go 10 years only to be extended by 5.1 edition for another 8. I think there's much more dynamic and creative things that can happen in the RPG space than what we're seeing with OneD&D.

Having entirely new editions every 5 to 10 years is bad for the game.

And the crux of my concern is that people will tire of 5.1 just like I'm tired of 5e. I think that the new fans brought in with 5e can't imagine a system different than 5e, so it's stifling progress when we're all getting outvoted by tens of thousands of gamers who don't really know game design and probably haven't tried an indie game or played anything beyond 5e.

Most people are not tired of D&D 5e. You're definitely in the minority there. In fact, 5e's still bringing in a ton of new players. And, a big part of why WotC is making these small changes is because they know that 5e is still super popular, but also want to mitigate/remove some of its worse parts to give the system a bit of a boost.

And, no, most of the community probably doesn't know much about game design and how to balance the game. But they know what ideas and general changes they want from playing the game for years. This is why WotC sends out ideas and proposed changes in the UA, gathers feedback from people that just read it and those that actually playtested it, do their own internal playtesting, and balance the UA content before it gets officially released.

OneD&D isn't being "designed" by the survey participants. It's being designed by WotC, and they check with their audience to see if that's what people want, and tweak things to make them more popular.

And it sounds gate-keepy, I know, but I want a game designed by designers, not popular vote by a horde of players who outnumber their DMs and want what's best for their PCs over what makes a more dynamic, fun, and balanced experience at the table.

How do you know that the majority of survey respondents are players and not DMs? I'm a DM, and none of my players are even the least bit interested in filling out any of these surveys. We don't have any evidence to support this view. And, also, I'm not sure that players are any worse at knowing what's fun for their game than DMs are.

 

[mamba]

Not at all. Consider the following hypothetical:

I agree that you can construe some oddball scenarios to make you point, but to me they are all pretty unlikely. To me this is more or less one continuous range and at some point it tips from like to dislike. Where that is (85/15 or 60/40) tells you how well it is liked overall.

People who have mild preferences don't respond.

that would be in my favor as it makes the percentages more representative (of the people polled, not overall)

But that is literally my point. We have no idea how representative it is, and that is the very reason we cannot conclude that the sentiment is strong based on this!

If we have no idea, then it is not worth discussing as you are as likely to be wrong as you are to be right.

If your argument is based on assumptions of which you have no idea whether they are even remotely accurate, then you do not have much of an argument.

My only assumption is that I essentially have a linear transition from ‘love’ to ‘hate’, not a wild curve, then the percentages tell me a lot (within the limit of not knowing how representative my poll is).

As to how representative the poll is, no idea, but 39000 probably makes it more representative than you give it credit for.
You can argue that it is a self-selecting crowd, and I’d argue that so are all 5e players, so that evens that out. I.e. it is probably pretty representative of how 5e players feel about the changes and less so how TTRPG players overall would rate them - but that is probably perfectly ok for WotC’s goals