If it failed at all (remember it probably remained profitable, even if WotC decided it wasn't profitable *enough*).

Now, it's known that 4e probably lost those pre-3e players who grudgingly played 3e because it was close enough and others played. 4e was pretty well not "close enough" any more, but it's hard to say what percent of 3e players were holdovers from previous editions at the time of 4e's launch.

And it also lost some 3e players for various reasons, many of whom migrated to Pathfinder. Again, it's hard to say what percent of 3e players decided not to make the switch. It's also hard to say whether they never made the switch, as opposed to switching back after Pathfinder was published.

Finally, we don't know how many people 4e managed to bring in. Which is kind of important, going forward. Because it means there is a population who has played nothing else, who will either be pleased or neglected by a 5th edition.

For those who never even played 3rd, and just stuck with their favorite system through it all... well they hardly contributed to the end of the edition. I can't imagine WotC expected them to come back.

But there are also external factors outside of audience. Outside of Pathfinder, even though Pathfinder might be seen as legitimate competition (since they're operating in a similar niche of both rules and genre, so they might actually take sales away).

...

I'm wondering if the DDI contributed to hurt book sales. The first thing any of my friends and I thought with the release of 4e was that we might subscribe to DDI instead of buying books in order to access all the rules, potentially more cheaply. This was back when we thought we'd be playing 4e. Anyway, I'm sure others might have had a similar thought.

Commonly brought up in 4e threads is that it is more minis-dependent than most editions, so I'm wondering if part of the plan was to offer the rules more cheaply through the DDI, while selling the toys as the focus of physical product.

So what if 4e was as widely played as any edition, but it was disappointing minis sales (or low profits on the minis) that ultimately hurt it most? It would also partially explain the frequent returns to boxed sets as a move towards selling physical components some other way.

Of course, this is all speculation on my part. If anyone has concrete data to either support or contradict my point I'd appreciate it.

Why did it fail? Because it's a SUPERHERO MINIATURES BOARDGAME.

Also, I didn't get into 3e, but I am ready to come back . . . so long as they give me a combat system a la TSR D&D.

While I think it did not succeed the way that Wizards wanted it to, I do have this to say:

Many new editions are "successes" by virtue of successfully marketing to the existing fan base - especially the hard-core grognards.  By retaining this core of their old customers, they have a guaranteed market and make money by selling them a boatload of new books.  However, by marketing to the grognards, it is inevitably a shrinking guaranteed market with each new edition - because pleasing the grognards is less likely to please new, younger players.  

4th edition D&D was a risky move where they changed some very major aspects of the game, presumably in the hope of attracting new players.  I don't think it worked out the way they hoped.  However, I think it is fine and even a good thing that they did not design it to please the grognards.  The problem was that it didn't please enough new players.

Quote from: jhkim;507276While I think it did not succeed the way that Wizards wanted it to, I do have this to say:

Many new editions are "successes" by virtue of successfully marketing to the existing fan base - especially the hard-core grognards.  By retaining this core of their old customers, they have a guaranteed market and make money by selling them a boatload of new books.  However, by marketing to the grognards, it is inevitably a shrinking guaranteed market with each new edition - because pleasing the grognards is less likely to please new, younger players.  

4th edition D&D was a risky move where they changed some very major aspects of the game, presumably in the hope of attracting new players.  I don't think it worked out the way they hoped.  However, I think it is fine and even a good thing that they did not design it to please the grognards.  The problem was that it didn't please enough new players.

I would agree that marketing to grognards wouldn't have been the way to go with 4e, and that their marketing towards new players sucked pretty badly (the MMO was more visible, ad-wise).

But I also feel that new players tend not to make purchasing decisions based on rules. They really have no basis for comparison.

And the RPGA might have mitigated the bad marketing and (unverifiable) reduction of new inductees at home tables.

You don't think the DDI would have hurt book sales? Or that WotC might have pinned its hopes on minis sales that didn't materialize?

I think it was a few things, but mainly too many changes to the core game (particularly magic). Also agree with Justin Alexander's take that the disassociative mechanics drove away some people (I was all for 4E until I read the PHB and had my first few lay sessions). Really they focused on pleasing a narrow band of the player base and did so at the expense of those with different preferences. So I think then game quite simply lacks broad appeal as a result.

I don't think it completely failed. They wanted to make a "not your daddy's D&D" with some organized play, and they did. A lot of kids love it. It didn't meet what was probably an unreasonable expectation at Hasbro.

It wanted to have a more comprehensive online component. It failed at that.

Whether the idea of a "not your daddy's D&D" was or wasn't worthwhile can be debated. Being one of the daddys, I don't especially think it was necessary. But then--my dad told me stories of having to sneak out of the house to listen to Johnny Cash records. So I guess it's a generational thing.

The handwriting was on the wall for 4e with "Essentials".  Remember, the ad push for 4e was practically tailor-made to destroy any goodwill anyone felt towards Wizards.  The whole savings worth of said goodwill that they'd spent the introductory years of 3e building up went away in a flash.  An ad campaign that said "Your games sucked and you're stupid for having played them this way"...

4e sales were beaten out by an OGL product that people could essentially (no pun intended) have had for free.  OSRIC and other games ate into their profit margins - and yes, they did - in a way that couldn't be ignored.  

Gleemax was an instantly mocked joke that NOBODY liked.  Nobody.  No-body.  "Facebook for gamers!" - dumbasses.  Facebook is the Facebook For Gamers.  Why didn't they push that in a major way?

The DDI...oh boy, don't even get me started on this.  D&D was successfully wed to electronic products through the 80s and 90s and yet Wizards couldn't hire a competent programming team for this effort?  Good lord.  That was another nail in 4e's coffin.  Hasbro saw all this money circling the drain and couldn't do a thing to stop it.

So after flipping the bird to about half their customer base, they immediately scrambled to get that base back.  A "tour bus" covered with old-school D&D art.  A week, flaccid attempt to garner "our" attention.  Then came Essentials.  Put in the pink Mentzer box, and 4e rules shoehorned into 3e paradigms...you could smell the stink of desperation as soon as the box was opened.

The already anorexic release schedule for 4e began to wither, and then...bam, 5e announced.  Every card they've played for 5e has been "A return to old school D&D!".  I'm not kidding myself; 5e isn't going to be like..."HA!  It was AD&D all along!"  But they're clearly looking at older playstyles as the way forward.  Not 4e's "superhero boardgame" as 1989 put it.

4e failed when it threw the baby out with the bathwater - Most folks didn't want "D&D but in name only".  We want D&D.  They get it now.  5e might not be perfect but as I've said before if it's a good 2nd game for me, that's enough to win back my gaming dollars.

It has it's own fans, topped sales charts as much as we can tell and tried to update the game completely rather than tinker with the games mechanics as previous editions did, so I'm of the opinion that the only way it 'failed' is by not sucking in previous edition players and selling a mountain more books (and 'failed' by not rendering Pathfinder obsolete thus killing that game off). Proof of that is that it's easy to find plenty of pristine/like new 2nd hand 4e books for sale on forums and ebay, usually starting at 99p when the books are still for sale new.

That's how I bought mine (all three books for less than £20 delivered, look like they've hardly been used, if at all) but I never played the game so in that respect it failed to suck me in as well. I flicked through it, saw a load of terms and abbreviations I didn't understand, and put it down again. If I want to play a Fantasy RPG I'll run houseruled BECMI, Tunnels and Trolls, give the Mongoose Legend/Runequest a try or even dust off and houserule MERP (or maybe look at HARP), because that was fun when you figured out how it actually worked.

I don't think single fights last 30 mins-2 hours in any of those games either, which is another thing that put me off 4e. I have the 4e Starter set, but it's still sealed, waiting for me to unwrap and try it.

I dunno. There was just something missing for me. It didn't suck me in, I had no mad desire or rush to try it, just had a flick through and thought "I'll read that and GM it." and it's still there, with dust now, on the shelf, waiting. Whether that's down to mechanics, having to learn an all new system, the sluggish (come on, how long to run a fight?) combat system with powers that recharge or simply burnout from Fantasy RPGs, I don't know. I'll read plenty of reviews before I decide whether to bother with 5e.

For me:

Too many changes from previous editions.

Too much focus on combat abilities, while seemingly ignoring everything else. (I've since changed a bit about this, so if 4e came out right now, I doubt this would bother me).

Too much dependence on mats and minis.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;507286(I was all for 4E until I read the PHB and had my first few lay sessions).

Dude why be hatin on 4E if it got you laid?

It failed because it wasn't D&D.

The primary reason it failed was because of presentation issues not design.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;507298Dude why be hatin on 4E if it got you laid?

Lol. I've got to stop posting by iphone.

Quote from: estar;507299It failed because it wasn't D&D.

The primary reason it failed was because of presentation issues not design.

I agree that the presentation was a big factor. When I first opened it up the text layout looked way too business-like for my taste.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;507301I agree that the presentation was a big factor. When I first opened it up the text layout looked way too business-like for my taste.

I can see that being an issue but what I was referring to was how they choose to implement the design in terms of the mix of classes , powers, Items, monsters,  and adventures.

It was high powered heroic fantasy pushed to the max. And the initial adventure designs more like Battletech scenarios than the modules of older editions.

They had a great setup with Nentil's Vale and Fallcrest in the 4e DMG. But the follow up failed to do it justice.

In fact I consider the 4e DMG the second best after AD&D 1st. But the rest of the initial product line failed to live up to it.

Quote from: beejazz;507285You don't think the DDI would have hurt book sales? Or that WotC might have pinned its hopes on minis sales that didn't materialize?

Was this towards me?  I think the lack of minis sales seems like a symptom of not getting enough new players.  I would note, though, that the new D&D boardgames - Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, and Legend of Drizzt - seem to be doing extremely well.  The latter was for a time selling better than Monopoly on Amazon, though it has since dropped back in ranking to currently the #90 board game.  

It seems to me that using players DDI instead of books was part of the plan.  The idea was to attract some fraction of the people into World of Warcraft and other online games, as well as games like Magic: The Gathering.  The books themselves are too complicated to be a mass market success - but DDI was intended to be the main item to sell to players, while the books are for DMs and grognards.  

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;507286I think it was a few things, but mainly too many changes to the core game (particularly magic). Also agree with Justin Alexander's take that the disassociative mechanics drove away some people (I was all for 4E until I read the PHB and had my first few lay sessions). Really they focused on pleasing a narrow band of the player base and did so at the expense of those with different preferences. So I think then game quite simply lacks broad appeal as a result.

While it was a narrow band of the existing player base, I don't think the intent was to appeal to specifically those players - but rather to make a play for a fraction of the much larger set of players of games like World of Warcraft.