Quote from: kythri;752195Maybe that's their problem - you/everyone else that thought 4E was a shitty RPG were vocal enough to get it cancelled in record time.

It would have been phased out no matter due to the 5 year plan. The negative reaction just accelerated the process. A negative reaction WOTC themselves fostered right out the gate. But it would have been replaced around now no matter.

Quote from: Omega;752245It would have been phased out no matter due to the 5 year plan. The negative reaction just accelerated the process. A negative reaction WOTC themselves fostered right out the gate. But it would have been replaced around now no matter.

Not really. Their intention was to make Essentials evergreen products and cashing in on their DDI investment for as long as possible. But 4e was a highly inefficient roleplaying game by its design principles.

Simplest Questions: Will it be Fun?

Will gamers want to buy "D&D" again?

 Those are the biggest two questions.

 ...Maybe I should start a thread....

- Ed C.

Quote from: kythri;752195Maybe that's their problem - you/everyone else that thought 4E was a shitty RPG were vocal enough to get it cancelled in record time.

I for one never thought 4e was a shitty RPG. A shitty Dungeons & Dragons yes but not a shitty game. If the OSR contributed meaningfully to 4e demise it is only because by making the history of D&D more accessible.

how soon everyone forgets. Remember when the PDF's came down? Remember WotC removing 'free' pdf's that had been on their site for ages and ages? Remember when the management decided to create 4e instead of going with something more like what D&D had been in earlier iterations?

A starter set with chargen in it on the shelves means that it'll always be a part of it. A pdf means that a policy decision could disappear it tomorrow, at least legitimate copies.

Either way, a lame starter set might not mean much to the corporation. 3rd edition was a success despite a poor starter set. Maybe that's all that matters to them. Not to me.

I had a discussion last night. If any other company turned round and said that their strategy going forward would involve supporting real world products with online support to expand and enrich the consumer experience, everyone would be patting them on the back. Especially if the company released this stuff for free.

OPP/WW starter PDFs, Eclipse Phase "Hack packs" of PDFs, art work, etc etc, FFE (Marc Miller) releases a big old CD-Rom full of stuff), and so on.

One moment "the community" is going "ooh, I like PDFs they are so good for RPGs and worth the money. I like reading on tablets. I like getting things online blah blah blah."

The next they (the community of consumers) are crucifying WoTC for releasing a product that has not been seen yet. Through innuendo and suggestion this product is deemed to need online support for what the community decides would be a maximising of the product and the experience using it.

WoTC, damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;752314I had a discussion last night. If any other company turned round and said that their strategy going forward would involve supporting real world products with online support to expand and enrich the consumer experience, everyone would be patting them on the back. Especially if the company released this stuff for free.

OPP/WW starter PDFs, Eclipse Phase "Hack packs" of PDFs, art work, etc etc, FFE (Marc Miller) releases a big old CD-Rom full of stuff), and so on.

One moment "the community" is going "ooh, I like PDFs they are so good for RPGs and worth the money. I like reading on tablets. I like getting things online blah blah blah."

The next they (the community of consumers) are crucifying WoTC for releasing a product that has not been seen yet. Through innuendo and suggestion this product is deemed to need online support for what the community decides would be a maximising of the product and the experience using it.

WoTC, damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I largely agree with the thrust of your post here, but I do think there's something of a presentation issue.

If, for example, WotC announced at the beginning, "We're releasing the Basic rules of the game for free, in PDF format, with a print on demand option," (which for all we know they may indeed be doing), and then said, "In addition to these free Basic rules, we'll be releasing a very affordable Starter Set that will come with dice, a quick How-to-Play guide for players, and an adventure designed to help first time DMs take new players into the game," they'd probably be getting a lot of accolades.

What happened is they announced the Starter Set, and as yet have not made all their plans as revealed to us as they are to Pundit.  And since a lot of folks really want to see a quality Basic Set, people knock the Starter Set for not being that, and knock WotC for not making it that.

I myself think a good Basic Set (distinct from a Starter Set) is really needed to keep the game growing (and mitigating the need to quick-infuse revenue into the line by releasing a new edition of core books).  But that doesn't mean I'm averse to alternate strategies, particularly 31 years after Mentzer Basic.

If it was a case of the Starter Set as is being expected to bring people to the Big 3, I, too, would be all over the announced Starter Set for not being enough.  But apparently they have additional plans for the step between the Starter Set and the Big 3, so I'm perfectly willing to wait and see what they've got.  If it is indeed something along the lines of setting up an on-ramp of Starter Set -> free Basic Set PDF -> Big 3, I think that's a great way of doing it without making the new player/DM pay for duplicated material.

It also makes sense in terms of targeting old school folks who don't want all the bells and whistles of the Big 3, and who have a plethora of free rulesets and other material, and are not inclined to actually pay for a new Basic Set.

Quote from: estar;752278I for one never thought 4e was a shitty RPG. A shitty Dungeons & Dragons yes but not a shitty game. If the OSR contributed meaningfully to 4e demise it is only because by making the history of D&D more accessible.

I didn't say it's a shitty game, but I did say it's a shitty RPG.

And I'm not laying the credit on the OSR.  I'm laying it on all of the vocal critics of said shitty RPG.

Quote from: Iosue;752332And since a lot of folks really want to see a quality Basic Set, people knock the Starter Set for not being that, and knock WotC for not making it that.

The standard game presented in the core rules is the basic set. It's the most basic iteration of the system, and can be expanded (in the core books and I presume in future books) with options that add complexity and variants.

Quote from: kythri;752337I didn't say it's a shitty game, but I did say it's a shitty RPG.

And I'm not laying the credit on the OSR.  I'm laying it on all of the vocal critics of said shitty RPG.

I'm pretty sure WotC care more about sales than what a bunch of geeks who represent a fraction of their customers say on the internet. If 4E was pulled early it's because it didn't meet sales targets. If it did meet those targets, they'd still be publishing 4E, regardless of how many geeks pissed and moaned about it on RPG forums.

And to be honest, I don't think 5E will be warmly embraced by the online D&D wonks, who tend towards the dogmatic and combative. It lacks the cutting-edge mechanics that please the system-wonks, and it won't be old-school enough to suit the OSR taliban (nothing is). But I do think it will be a commercial success. And I think it will demonstrate how out of step the RPG forum community is with the far larger, and far more casual and easy-going market of people who play the game and don't argue about it on the internet.

Quote from: Haffrung;752343But I do think it will be a commercial success. And I think it will demonstrate how out of step the RPG forum community is with the far larger, and far more casual and easy-going market of people who play the game and don't argue about it on the internet.

Yeah, we'll see, because comments like that were the same shit the 4vengers were crowing whenever anyone made any comment critical about 4E:

"RPG Forums are out of step"

"The Internet echo-chamber is an infinitesimally small portion of the greater RPG community and doesn't represent them"

or, my absolute favorite,

"4E has been a commercial success"

And we all know how that turned out.

It's the same here - people are critical of the game, the execution of its release, etc. and they're met with the same reception that critics of 4E received.

I've ultimately got little to no interest in 5E, but I do hope that it's successful, because, regardless of what some believe, I feel D&D as a name/brand is important to the hobby.

I truly do wish it was something I wanted to play, instead of something I find myself shaking my head in disgust about any time I see some new bit of news or some new foot-chewing comment by people like Mearls.

Halfrung is "all in" as far as 5e is concerned, so read his posts in that light.

Quote from: kythri;752351Yeah, we'll see, because comments like that were the same shit the 4vengers were crowing whenever anyone made any comment critical about 4E:

"RPG Forums are out of step"

WOTC tested this hypothesis, and it can be true.

They asked survey questions, and then compared answers in the thousands, to the same answers found on message boards.

The message boards, regardless of topic, were much more negative (about any question) than the survey responses.

RPG forums can be out of step, AND 4e can have been a failure of a game that in many ways was bad.  They're not mutually exclusive claims.  

Forums attract the most negative voices, and those negative voices might be representative of the larger group of all opinions, or they can be entirely not representative at all.  But the bottom line is, you shouldn't go by forum opinions, because they will always skew negative and so it's not a good measurement tool.

IN 5e's case the surveys, which are measuring a lot more people than the internet message board posters, are showing they are going in the right direction with 5e.  That's something they did not do with 4e.  It is however something Paizo did with Pathfinder, before they made those rules.  And it's something TSR did a bit of as well.

Quote from: Mistwell;752361WOTC tested this hypothesis, and it can be true.

They asked survey questions, and then compared answers in the thousands, to the same answers found on message boards.

The message boards, regardless of topic, were much more negative (about any question) than the survey responses.

RPG forums can be out of step, AND 4e can have been a failure of a game that in many ways was bad.  They're not mutually exclusive claims.  

Forums attract the most negative voices, and those negative voices might be representative of the larger group of all opinions, or they can be entirely not representative at all.  But the bottom line is, you shouldn't go by forum opinions, because they will always skew negative and so it's not a good measurement tool.

IN 5e's case the surveys, which are measuring a lot more people than the internet message board posters, are showing they are going in the right direction with 5e.  That's something they did not do with 4e.  It is however something Paizo did with Pathfinder, before they made those rules.  And it's something TSR did a bit of as well.

4E itself was arguably built around complaints common on rpg forums at the time. I think forums can provide a useful window but you have to be careful because they don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the majority of gamers (in most game groups I have been in lije 1 in 4 or 5 guys are regular forum posters).

Quote from: Endless Flight;752352Halfrung is "all in" as far as 5e is concerned, so read his posts in that light.

Yeah, I'm frankly amazed that WotC is designing a version of D&D that suits my preferences. I've played it, and it's damn close to the hybrid version of the game I've been cobbling together myself over the years.

I don't share the seething resentment towards WotC that so many RPG forum posters seem to have - I don't feel any emotions at all towards WotC (or any other company that makes things I buy). So the reflexive hostility and suspicion expressed towards a game that hasn't even been published yet, and which most of the critics didn't bother to playtest, strikes me as childish. And as I've noted already, I get he strong impression that a great many of the people taking the time to express their criticism aren't even interested in playing 5E regardless of how WotC designs or markets it. Maybe this was also the case with 4E - I didn't bother to follow the release and reaction to 4E because I wasn't interested in the game. Apparently a lot of people who didn't intend to play 4E spent much time and energy denouncing it - motivated by impulses I can't begin to fathom.

I'm not bothered that some people won't like or play 5E. There are reasoned arguments being made against 5E. They stand out because they aren't expressed with a tone of anger and contempt. And they deal in specifics. But it looks to me like most of the criticism comes from people who hate WotC or hate any alternative to their cherished version of the game. And that's to be expected - each edition of D&D, regardless of its qualities, seems to spark an eruption of nerdfury in a segment of the fanbase.