D&D 4E Would you still play 4e?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't see any need for WotC to discontinue 4e DDI support. It would be one thing if the tools were free, then you could make a financial argument that its acting as a barrier preventing players from upgrading to 5e.

It's called product cannibalism.

Free or not, continued support of 4Ed could eat into sales of 5th, just as continued sales of 3.X could have eroded 4Ed sales.

 

[Dragonblade]

It's called product cannibalism.

Free or not, continued support of 4Ed could eat into sales of 5th, just as continued sales of 3.X could have eroded 4Ed sales.

In the TSR era when you had two different print products sitting on the retail shelf for two different campaign settings, sure. Consumers who only care about a certain product line, only buy that one, but TSR still had to bear the cost of producing, warehousing, and distributing two separate product lines.

That is why product cannibalism killed TSR.

In the internet age, this is no longer true, as long as a single DDI subscription gets you access to BOTH 4e and 5e.

Then you keep the 4e players who want a DDI sub for 4e, but don't care about 5e AND you get potential business from the 5e players who don't care about 4e but want 5e.

Since the 4e products are pretty much in archive mode, there is little additional cost simply to provide access to existing content, and a lot of potential revenue to be made. Plus the access to 5e content doubles as marketing for that content that may get those diehard 4e players to maybe dip their toe in the 5e waters.

Hell, I think you could extend this strategy to 1e, 2e, and 3e, as well. Granted this can be a little riskier, since DDI style content doesn't already exist for those editions, which means there is a now a cost with no guarantee of added revenue. But at the very least, I would offer the back catalog of prior edition products for sale.

Heck, if DDI offered even online only access to WotC's entire back catalog of D&D books and adventures, plus all the new 5e content as it comes out, I'll just give WotC access to my bank account and they can bill me for life.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In the internet age, this is no longer true, as long as a single DDI subscription gets you access to BOTH 4e and 5e.

That is the core assumption that would make it work. Otherwise...

Because, in truth, I've been saying as much about the previous editions myself- include them in the DDI, and you'd get MY money, and I'm sure others' besides.

But let's not kid ourselves that such inclusion is nearly free. Even archived stuff needs maintenance & updating.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Even if it isn't product cannibalism, any business lawyer will tell the decision makers at WotC that it is. And, bearing in mind that most of those working on the design of 5E will lose their jobs within a year or so of it being published, a year or two after the release of 5E there is likely to be nobody left at WotC who can remember saying that the 4E tools would remain.

I'm praying for a decent hack before then.

 

[Drowbane]

No. Regardless of the success of 5e, I will not be returning to 4e. The one guy in my group who wanted to return to 4e just removed himself for asshatery and DM-powerz abuse.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Assuming that 5e comes out and a version of DDI for 5e REPLACES the current DDI offerings, ie. no more 4e Compendium, no more 4e Character Builder, no more 4e Monster Builder, no more 4e VTT, etc., would you still play 4e?

I played 4e for two years without using the on-line tools, so yeah, if 5e sucks, or even just fails to improve upon 4e, I'll keep playing it until something better comes along.

At minimum, for another 17 levels of our current campaign.

 

[Jack99]

Considering I just sold my complete 4e collection of books and boxes, No DDI would definitely mean no more running 4e, which would mean no more playing 4e.

 

[Piratecat]

I'd have *much* more difficulty running my two 4e campaigns without DDI.

 

[fba827]

DDI, or lack thereof, has NO bearing on if *I* play 4e -- never subscribed to it and yet still play (and DM) 4e just fine.

Having said that, others in my group are DDI dependent so I don't know if I'd have much of a group able to play if DDI wasn't an option.

 

[zoroaster100]

The OP hit on my biggest worry regarind D&D right now. I already decided looking at the playtest I have zero interest of changing to 5e and prefer to keep running campaigns with 4e. But if Wizards takes down the DDI tools for 4e once 5e comes out, I may have to quit DMing altogether. It's too much work to DM for me these days without those tools, but I have no interest in DMing 5e with or without DDI tools. Certainly I would have no interest in continuing to pay for DDI if Wizards no longer provides DDI support for the edition of the game I want to DM (4e).