"strip mining" old stuff for future 4E splatbooks

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 6:13 pm

Yea, their release schedule is completely unsustainable.

However, if they start strip-mining Magic: The Gathering, there should be enough to print until 2012.

I think that the 1 book, 1-2 campaign (levels 1-30) every 3 months release schedule would generally make everyone happy.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 6:53 pm

I believe that their curent release schedule is based on the assumptions that player takeup is only impeded by a comparitive lack of material. They see it as a quantative issue, not a qualitative problem.

There are observed reasons why someone wouldn't be able to detect the difference in quality and assume that it's only a quantity problem. Quality is not very objectively measurable, but quantity has these convenient numbers (mostly meaningless) that get management off their backs about montising the new edition.

Sales, well... there are a lot of things you can blame a sales slump on other than a drop in quality. Pirates are a popular scapegoat, the MPAA and RIAA have legitimised blaming them for any sales woes you might have. Oh, hey, the economy isn't doing too well!

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 7:06 pm

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 7:08 pm

I don't think the market can support the current release schedule, even if they had 100% of it. It feels like an author that writes more than 1 book/month, and a movie producer that releases 2 movies/week. To the vast majority of audiences, that is just too much material.

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 7:22 pm

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:07 pm

SunTzuWarmaster wrote:I don't think the market can support the current release schedule, even if they had 100% of it. It feels like an author that writes more than 1 book/month, and a movie producer that releases 2 movies/week. To the vast majority of audiences, that is just too much material.

Not to mention that most of their new material is totally useless to existing campaigns and characters. New classes that you have to start out in, feats with crazy ability score prereqs that you wouldn't have unless you specifically built to get that feat, racial feats you can't take unless you're some obscure race/class combo... Honestly it seems like the only time you'd care about 4E splats is if you had to make a new character.

At least in 3.5 you could use some of the stuff in the splats on your current character. casters got new spells, fighters could plan to take a feat or two or use one of the new PrCs. There was a reason you may want to buy those books for your existing character.

But 4E... damn... it doesn't seem like it offers much at all to existing characters.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:25 pm

ggroy wrote:When a product is doing really well in sales, this is probably what leads company executives to think that they can get away with selling "dogshit" masquerading as the product.

I prefer to apply Hanlon's Razor - the dev team think they're putting out good quality work, and see the lower player takeup as being a problem with the amount of available material instead of how good the material is.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Not to mention that most of their new material is totally useless to existing campaigns and characters. New classes that you have to start out in, feats with crazy ability score prereqs that you wouldn't have unless you specifically built to get that feat, racial feats you can't take unless you're some obscure race/class combo... Honestly it seems like the only time you'd care about 4E splats is if you had to make a new character.

At least in 3.5 you could use some of the stuff in the splats on your current character. casters got new spells, fighters could plan to take a feat or two or use one of the new PrCs. There was a reason you may want to buy those books for your existing character.

But 4E... damn... it doesn't seem like it offers much at all to existing characters.

I guess they believe that there are more players ready to get into the game that are just waiting for an appropriate character class to become available.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 4:09 am

Well, they've already stripmined all the art...

..but yeah, I agree with the uselessness of most of the splats. I mean, it seems like they could have made them more useful if the designers weren't obsessed with "every class should have its own extremely limited schtick"

With the exception of every controller, who gets summoning attached for the low, low price of $29.99.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 4:49 am

It's frustrating because the entire power design is obviously heavily influenced by 3e splatbooks: "We need fodder, pad the book with spells!"

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 5:36 am

They'll probably start recycling old campaign settings that 3E skipped, if it comes down to it - Spooky Spooky Land, D&D in SPAAAAAAAACE, My Infinity is Bigger than Your Infinity, It's Always Hot and Dry Outside and so on.

And there are fans of the above settings who hate 3E simply because it didn't support their favourite 2E setting, so those idiots would buy it up instantly. Not that there's enough for it to actually do any good, mind you, but still, they'd have x+y sales instead of just x (where x = people who buy up any shit that WotC produce, and y = old setting fanboys).

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 7:13 am

Koumei wrote:It's Always Hot and Dry Outside

They mentioned plans to publish novels set in IAHDO. No word about any supplements as of yet, though. The previous incarnation was just an ad for XPH, so I don't hope for the next one to be anything worth reading. They'd just press the reset button once again to be able to use new content, yay! No thanks, I don't want emo retards and FYIADs fucking up the awesome world of scheming Templars and would-be avangion Preservers.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:21 pm

Koumei wrote:And there are fans of the above settings who hate 3E simply because it didn't support their favourite 2E setting, so those idiots would buy it up instantly.

Actually I was the exact opposite. I sort of didn't hate 3E because they didn't support my favorite 2E setting, which really was a crappy conversion of their 1E setting which really was, come to think of it, really crappy and I ignored most of the crap.

That setting, btw, was Lankhmar.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:49 pm

They didn't actually own any rights to Lankhmar, tho.

-Crissa

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Jul 21, 2009 1:11 pm

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
SunTzuWarmaster wrote:I don't think the market can support the current release schedule, even if they had 100% of it. It feels like an author that writes more than 1 book/month, and a movie producer that releases 2 movies/week. To the vast majority of audiences, that is just too much material.
Not to mention that most of their new material is totally useless to existing campaigns and characters. New classes that you have to start out in, feats with crazy ability score prereqs that you wouldn't have unless you specifically built to get that feat, racial feats you can't take unless you're some obscure race/class combo... Honestly it seems like the only time you'd care about 4E splats is if you had to make a new character.

At least in 3.5 you could use some of the stuff in the splats on your current character. casters got new spells, fighters could plan to take a feat or two or use one of the new PrCs. There was a reason you may want to buy those books for your existing character.

But 4E... damn... it doesn't seem like it offers much at all to existing characters.

Gotta reroll to use the new FotM builds! That's content! Learn2play.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:37 am

Roy wrote:Gotta reroll to use the new FotM builds! That's content! Learn2play.

Did someone mention World Of Warcraft?