Quote from: Arduin;705138ANSWER to the Demo's listed.  THOSE are the money makers WotC is after.  It isn't complex.  :rolleyes:

You know a person isn't actually obligated to accept a premise if they feel that premise is flawed. WotC is in the unique position of not needing to rely on active and entrenched players thanks to D&D's visibility, distribution, lapsed players, fans of derivative works (such as the novels, videogames, etc), and so on.

4e failed because 4e was a terrible game* pitched to the wrong crowd (people who had already dropped a few hundred on their game of choice) in the midst of a recession, vaporware issues, and the killing off of 3rd party support. It was a perfect storm of failure, and was basically still profitable**. Just not profitable enough to justify continued investment in that edition (as opposed to spending money on something that was more of a cash cow like MtG).

Aiming at hard core gamers from any of the three-ish camps when their tastes would conflict with those of the casual market is a losing strategy for someone in WotC's position. They need the game to look like D&D and the rules to suck less than 4's (which shouldn't actually be that difficult). The idea that they actually need you or me or any of the couple hundred regular posters in these sorts of threads is naive in the extreme. Their strategy isn't to be "close enough" for the three camps and that's it. It's to push their "close enough" game to a bunch of casual and new players and leverage that massive player base as a selling point.

IME it's basically already working. There are Next players who aren't even dimly aware that there have been drastic shifts between editions all over the college I currently attend, at least.

*It does not actually do the "tactical RPG" thing well anymore than it does the operational or strategic bits well.

**IIRC it was beat by PF for a bit on some measure of book sales, but I don't think that would have counted the subscription money. And 4e still outperformed PF for most of its run. So if 4e was being put out by any other company, it would have been considered a pretty successful game franchise.

Quote from: Arduin;705117That has been proven false when 4e flopped and Paizo picked up the majority of "D&D" players and moved into the #1 slot.

IF that is their strat, they are doomed from the get go.

Well, except that Paizo hasn't picked up the majority of D&D players. They picked up a substantial fraction of D&D 3.x players (many still play 3.x), and only managed to begin beating out D&D (on print products) late in 4E's lifecycle.

Now, I've argued previously that 4E was a disaster for the D&D brand, and I believe that. But that's different than calling it a flop by all measures. Plus, it only managed to do (relatively) poorly by being a serious departure from every previous edition of the game. Next attempts to redress that error.

As others have pointed out, it's a mistake to conflate the opinions of diehard forum-goers with the general D&D playing masses.

Quote from: beejazz;705157Aiming at hard core gamers from any of the three-ish camps when their tastes would conflict with those of the casual market is a losing strategy for someone in WotC's position. They need the game to look like D&D and the rules to suck less than 4's (which shouldn't actually be that difficult). The idea that they actually need you or me or any of the couple hundred regular posters in these sorts of threads is naive in the extreme. Their strategy isn't to be "close enough" for the three camps and that's it. It's to push their "close enough" game to a bunch of casual and new players and leverage that massive player base as a selling point.

IME it's basically already working. There are Next players who aren't even dimly aware that there have been drastic shifts between editions all over the college I currently attend, at least..

Trying to appeal to all lapsed gamers with incompatible play styles is surely a losing strategy.  

But I don't think that any strategy that focuses only on new players or lapsed players is going to work, either.  

Getting into D&D isn't easy.  For most people, there is someone that is already experienced with the game that introduces them (and this is true for other games, too - not just TTRPGs).  There are a few individuals that see something that they have no experience with, decide to pick it up, then convince a group of friends to give it a try - but those people are very special and you can't build a successful edition on them alone.  

I'm curious to see who they think the 'core' is for Next that they're aiming for.  I don't think it is 4th edition players; I don't think it's 3rd edition players; I don't think it's Pathfinder players...  I don't think they're looking to poach players from another system (GURPS, Rifts, Shadowrun, etc).  It's possible that they're aiming for the 'prior editions' demographic.  And maybe they're so hard up for some 'official love' that the overture will work - but I don't think there are as many of them as they need, and since they've been clinging to their 'old style' gaming so long, I don't know if they can be convinced to embrace 'the newest thing' because it is shiny and new.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;705166But I don't think that any strategy that focuses only on new players or lapsed players is going to work, either. ...

I'm curious to see who they think the 'core' is for Next that they're aiming for.  I don't think it is 4th edition players; I don't think it's 3rd edition players; I don't think it's Pathfinder players...  I don't think they're looking to poach players from another system (GURPS, Rifts, Shadowrun, etc).  It's possible that they're aiming for the 'prior editions' demographic.  And maybe they're so hard up for some 'official love' that the overture will work - but I don't think there are as many of them as they need, and since they've been clinging to their 'old style' gaming so long, I don't know if they can be convinced to embrace 'the newest thing' because it is shiny and new.

I'm curious too.  By examining the product it isn't really clear.  UNLESS, they are going broad approach.  I HOPE they aren't stupid enough to be doing that.

Quote from: Arduin;705100Yes.  You have the AD&D/OD&D/Clone crowd.  The 3.x/PF's & 4E players.  After looking at "Next", it doesn't do ANY of those better than the current offerings.  So, marketing wise, who is their target buyer?

Everyone not in the trenches of edition wars in online forums.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;705421Everyone not in the trenches of edition wars in online forums.

So 90% of gamers, existing and potential.

Quote from: TristramEvans;705426So 90% of gamers, existing and potential.

:rotfl:

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;705421Everyone not in the trenches of edition wars in online forums.

In all seriousness, if someone isn't involved enough in the hobby to participate in a gaming forum, how are they being wooed?  

Are you seriously suggesting that they're relying on a conversion rate based entirely on the number of people who happen to stumble across the books in a book and mortar store?  

They're not going to be relying on Dragon magazine to advertise.  

If forumites don't lead the conversion, it won't happen.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;705438If forumites don't lead the conversion, it won't happen.

This is seriously delusional. The vast majority of D&D players don't participate on online forums, and that includes many hard core players.

I have been the primary DM in my group for some time, play multiple RPGs, buy enormous amounts of published material, but have gone for long stretches without posting to, or even reading, a forum. All but one of the other hard core players in our group (e.g folks who buy lots of material and play regularly) have never been on a forum. Ever. From talking to many others, both online and off, this is not at all unusual.

These conversations always devolve into "forum-posters are representative and important" vs. "forum-posters are unrepresentative and noise." I belong to the latter camp, but there's no real way to convincingly argue one side or the other so it never gets anywhere.

I'd say the biggest clues are the number of forumites who either appear, or have admitted, to not playing, and the ratio of posters to the size of the estimated player base.

Quote from: Imp;705447These conversations always devolve into "forum-posters are representative and important" vs. "forum-posters are unrepresentative and noise." I belong to the latter camp,

I belong to the Statistics camp.  Where the truth lies.  And why I was able to predict D&D's fall from 1st place a couple years before it showed in sale statistics...

That's laughable.

Since there's never been a comprehensive study of this hobby's statistics, the "statistics camp" would be people who forgot to stop imagining after the game ended?

Quote from: deadDMwalking;705438In all seriousness, if someone isn't involved enough in the hobby to participate in a gaming forum, how are they being wooed?  

Are you seriously suggesting that they're relying on a conversion rate based entirely on the number of people who happen to stumble across the books in a book and mortar store?  

They're not going to be relying on Dragon magazine to advertise.  

If forumites don't lead the conversion, it won't happen.

Of the roughly 400+ gamers Ive met/ played with in my lifetime in the US, Britain , and Canada, Ive met a total of 3 players who wanted anything to do with online gaming forums.

IME, the majority of people who've gotten into gaming was via introduction by existing gamers, the rest did in fact simply walk into a bookstore/gamestore/toys r us and picked up the books because they looked cool.

I have no claim to my experiences being universal, but as the alternative has absolutely no evidence to back it up, I'll go with them as the most likely scenario.