D&D 5e has failed

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Voss
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Post by Voss »

Mord wrote:
violence in the media wrote:How much authority do editors typically have to send stuff back for rewrites?
It depends what other hats the writer and editor in question are wearing. If the writer is also the line developer, then the editor doesn't really get an opinion. If the writer is some freelancer, then the editor might have some power, assuming that the freelancer in question wasn't brought in because he's butt buddies with the line developer. It's nepotism and handjobs all the way down.
From the outside it's obviously hard to tell, but Paizo often doesn't look like it's run as a business, but rather a collection of friends who write fanfic and house rules together. But sometimes don't feel like walking over to the next office and telling anyone else what they're writing.

Starfinder's big bugbear (aside from recycling bad ideas because half the design team worked on Star Wars d20, Saga or Alternity), is it looks like they ran into their deadline and just stuck chapter drafts together. There's a reference to Dex to damage buried on one page, but nothing else refers to it (and, officially, no way to get it). There are abilities that cause divide by zero errors all over the place, DCs scale to unachievable levels, there are items that are worse than the standard way of achieving something (like the Efficient Bandolier, which makes you draw ammo as a swift action, when it is part of the reload action normally. So instead of a move action, reloading with the (in)Efficient Bandolier requires a swift + a move).

The operative trick attack doesn't work the way the specific developer thinks it does, so the Ghost operative gets a +4 bonus it shouldn't, radiation is a poison, a disease and a couple stand alone abilities that don't function like either (and it isn't clear if the environmental protections of every armor protect against all of them).

It's just a hot mess for a game that's just houseruled pathfinder. Some of the issues are exactly the same. But of course they announced that it wasn't actually backwards compatible with pathfinder a few months before release (because reasons), despite being largely the same.
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Post by Ferret »

5e is doing well enough to Hire a new designer I guess.

Edit: it's interesting to me that the job category for a WOTC design employee is "Marketing, Brand & Community Management". Of course that could just be HR system weirdness buuuuuuuuuut
Last edited by Ferret on Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Voss »

Their emphasis on the Chicago Manual of Style feels like a :confused:

Maybe its internal shit only, but their published books don't really show any relationship there, particularly indexes, math expressions and general formatting.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Ferret wrote:5e is doing well enough to Hire a new designer I guess.
I wonder if someone noticed that all the staff were working on their own competing products on company time and fired someone.
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

Experience refining someone else’s game design, writing, or both into publishable form required.
Sounds like something to do with Unearthed Arcana?
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Post by Voss »

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
Ferret wrote:5e is doing well enough to Hire a new designer I guess.
I wonder if someone noticed that all the staff were working on their own competing products on company time and fired someone.
Well, they've got plenty of holes to fill after the last decade. Maybe they're thinking about doing more than one Crunch book a year?

And maybe needing content for another book, since the upcoming one is largely just minor edits to the Unearthed Arcana doodles that got more than 70% of the popular vote.
Last edited by Voss on Tue Nov 07, 2017 7:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by infected slut princess »

Voss wrote:
they've got plenty of holes to fill
Please tell me more about this.
Oh, then you are an idiot. Because infected slut princess has never posted anything worth reading at any time.
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Post by Voss »

infected slut princess wrote:
Voss wrote:
they've got plenty of holes to fill
Please tell me more about this.
It isn't exactly a mystery, especially around these parts. They've been cutting D&D team members loose pretty much every year since 4e launched, plus people like Monty Cook, who just walked off to do their own things.

Most of the people cut ritually every Santa Season weren't replaced.

The D&D team is around 8 people plus a variable number of interns.
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Post by jprepo1 »

Threads like this are important for reminding everyone that nobodies' predictions are perfect, to say the least. Pretty big swing and a miss w/ regards to the OP's topic.

As for Starfinder, I am a but surprised how poorly it appears to be performing. Mechanically, I get it, but it seemed to me that, with all the popular pulp sci f shows out there, and the tabletop renaissance going on in general, that this would have been a pretty good time to launch a project like SF.

Devil is in the details I suppose.
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Post by Kaelik »

While I would never defend the general predictive powers of infected_slut_princess the person I block, I think that just like the last 50 times someone showed up to tell us that 4e/5e was doing amazing, that 5e has sold much less than 3e as expected, and is you know, therefore pretty much a failure.

You can certainly imagine downgrading expectations enough that "hey it pays mike mearl's salary" counts as a success, but I have no particular desire to live in a world where that is the definition of a successful D&D edition.
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Post by jprepo1 »

ICv2, self released sales stats, amazon, stores, et al. seem to indicate it as not just not a failure from a sales perspective, but a roaring success.

Anecdotally, conventions, pop culture, and store play backs that up as well. The amount of new people coming to the hobby is incredible.

Now, you can have the chicken and egg debate, over whether the 5e success is do to a general tabletop boom, or whether 5e's success contributed to the tabletop boom. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle there.

I dont gamble, but if I were a betting man, I would have put money on the success of both 5e and SF. With the former, I'd look pretty smart, but with the latter, at least at the moment.

To be fair, once I actually picked up the book for SF, I felt much less confident, and that general feeling seems to have been borne out. Too bad, too, I think having a Pazio around to help keep WotC on their toes is good for the hobby.
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Post by virgil »

jprepo1 wrote:ICv2
I have yet to actually see a single article from that site show legit evidence of D&D sales. Hasbro doesn't give out specific numbers, and has only done stuff like mentioning it as 'part' of the growth in the entire Hasbro Gaming category. Other times, it's voluntary reporting from brick and mortar stores, which is obviously tiny and at best anecdotal.
self released sales stats
Citation needed. They specifically do not release actual sales data, but instead release caveat-ridden statements that sound good while not actually indicating whether it's actually good.
amazon
Earlier in this thread, I have explicitly shown my research of the first two years of Amazon's sales data analysis, and 5E was practically an order of magnitude worse than 3E, after accounting for known qualifying factors that nobody has even thought about being able to counter. Evidence shows us a release schedule that is anemic at best, and a cadre of employees that hasn't been this small since the 1970s; and you cannot infer those as signs of a successful company, unless you adjust your expectation of success to the bottom of the barrel.

Are we honestly going to keep retreading this ground every couple of pages?
Last edited by virgil on Tue Nov 14, 2017 7:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Voss »

jprepo1 wrote:
Now, you can have the chicken and egg debate, over whether the 5e success is do to a general tabletop boom, or whether 5e's success contributed to the tabletop boom. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle there.
.
Wait, wait, wait. The 'tabletop boom' isn't about 5e or RPGs in general. It's specifically has to do with board games (and assorted other things like the deck games that specifically aren't CCGs) and the big German and FFG type games (rather than 'traditional' family board games like monopoly and shit).

You're talking about two completely unrelated things.

And no, having Paizo around is just bad for Wizards. The 'hobby' doesn't benefit from one company regurgitating terrible house rules for 3.5 and the other... not really producing content, except accidentally on a semiannual basis.


Also, 'chicken and egg debate' isn't a real thing. The answer is obviously egg, because evolution is an actual thing. At some point a creature that wasn't quite what we would classify as a chicken laid an egg that hatched into a creature that we would classify as a chicken. It's only a debate for creationist morons, it's otherwise a really basic logic puzzle for children with correct and incorrect solutions.
virgil wrote:I have yet to actually see a single article from that site show legit evidence of D&D sales. Hasbro doesn't give out specific numbers, and has only done stuff like mentioning it as 'part' of the growth in the entire Hasbro Gaming category.
Fun thing on this note, Hasbro is talking about buying Mattel. If that happens, D&D is going to be an even less significant aspect of their profit margins and priorities, if you can imagine such a thing.
Last edited by Voss on Tue Nov 14, 2017 6:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by jprepo1 »

You seem to be extremely upset that 5e has done so well, though I can't, for the life of me, get why. Given how well the PHB is doing, and the release of thei SaaS digital tool + actually adding staff for a change, seems to be going pretty

Plus, given how widespread the game is at most FLGS, just about every tabletop convention, et al, good time for 5e by all accounts.

At a bear minimum, being the 'face' brand of an entire type of gaming is a positive thing for WotC/5e I would think.
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Post by Cervantes »

jprepo1 wrote:You seem to be extremely upset that 5e has done so well, though I can't, for the life of me, get why. Given how well the PHB is doing, and the release of thei SaaS digital tool + actually adding staff for a change, seems to be going pretty

Plus, given how widespread the game is at most FLGS, just about every tabletop convention, et al, good time for 5e by all accounts.

At a bear minimum, being the 'face' brand of an entire type of gaming is a positive thing for WotC/5e I would think.
Hey, welcome to the forums. Probably read some other threads about the Den's thoughts on the overall design of 5e so you get why people here aren't super thrilled about it. Here's some starts:

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56184
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56727
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=55676
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Post by Kaelik »

jprepo1 wrote:You seem to be extremely upset that 5e has done so well
When people tell you "X isn't true" it doesn't mean that X is true and they are angry about it. It usually just means that X isn't true.

There is no sales data indicating that 5e is doing anything even vaguely approaching as well as 3e. We aren't mad about the fact that 5e is doing gangbusters, because it isn't.
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Post by jprepo1 »

Oddly enough I found this thread while looking into Starfinder, as the excitement I saw from a lot of folks has not matched the results post release.

Overall, I also thought it was amusing that the thread was still going once I realized the context.

I mean, you guys are kind of out on an island here in this claim, which doesn't mesh with statements from WotC re: their PHB sales, 5e's PHB still being relatively hgigh on the Amazon best seller list, ICv2 showing strong 5e driven sales growth, and, more importantly (if anecdotally) the overall community.

I mean, in an era were RPG's are as big as they have ever been, and a good deal more socially acceptable, 5e is far, far, far and away the biggest and most played, on every platform from conventions, to FLGS, to online VTT's, etc.

It almost feels a little like that Far Side comic on the 'International Didn't Like Dances With Wolves Society' meeting. I mean, I could at least kind of see the argument back when the post was originally made, but its borderline comical now.
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Post by jprepo1 »

Looked through the posts linked. I can see, mea culpa, that I didn't realize the board had a particularly angry bent there w/ regards to 5e. I get the feeling that a lot of these are conclusions with justifications back to them, rather then the other way around.

Nevermind then, happy gaming.
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Post by Koumei »

jprepo1 wrote:I mean, you guys are kind of out on an island here in this claim, which doesn't mesh with statements from WotC re: their PHB sales,
Wait you're telling me that WotC are stating the thing they are currently selling is in fact selling super well and they're really pleased with it?

CASED FUCKING CLOSED, GUYS! WotC themselves, who clearly have no horse in this race, have stated it's doing great and they did a great job and it's the super-popular edition that you're a fool not to join in on. We can just straight-up take their word on that.

Or maybe you're an immense tool who needs to look into doing some critical analysis and not taking company statements at face value.
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Post by Voss »

jprepo1 wrote:You seem to be extremely upset that 5e has done so well, though I can't, for the life of me, get why.
I'm unclear on who you think is upset, and why you believe that.
Plus, given how widespread the game is at most FLGS, just about every tabletop convention, et al, good time for 5e by all accounts.
See, things like 'most FLGS' 'every convention' and 'all accounts' are unsubstantiated nonsense. If you're going to make claims, you need to back them up with something.
At a bear minimum, being the 'face' brand of an entire type of gaming is a positive thing for WotC/5e I would think.
Sure? I'm sure the 8 or so people sitting around in D&D sub-department of the WotC office think it is amazing. It means fuck all to anyone else, however.

But that isn't what you claimed:
you wrote:I think having a Pazio around to help keep WotC on their toes is good for the hobby.
Paizo does their thing, and WotC seems entirely disinclined to give a shit. In the face of an overly complexified competitor, they stick to their overly-simplified hybrid edition, and (with a literal handful of exceptions) don't even bother producing products. The effect of 5e on the 'hobby' is pretty much nonexistent, because they don't produce much of anything.

Reprinting a percentage of Mearls' napkin notes (because they got high marks on terribly designed surveys) as their first 5e crunch book* doesn't mean much. Their relative lack of releases demonstrates a profound skepticism on their part that the RPG market is healthy at all. That reluctance is much more indicative than your anecdotes and frankly baseless blanket statements.

*Sword Coast Adventures was done by Green Ronin
I mean, in an era were RPG's are as big as they have ever been,
I honestly have no idea why you think this. None.
I found this thread while looking into Starfinder, as the excitement I saw from a lot of folks has not matched the results post release.
Which was quite well predicted here. Paizo managed every mistake expected of them, and then went above and beyond for extra screw-ups.
I was actually overly optimistic about it - I knew the economy would be a weak point, but didn't think it would be the absolute dogshit it turned out to be. I also didn't expect the races to be complete trash, nor that the feats would be the most Paizo selection of feats yet (either taxes, entirely worthless or restricting normal player actions for no reason) or that three of the seven classes would suck monkey ass.
Last edited by Voss on Tue Nov 14, 2017 8:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by virgil »

jprepo1 wrote:I mean, you guys are kind of out on an island here in this claim
We have evidence. You do not.

Hey, let's revisit what Amazon sales mean, and not manipulable rankings.
Image
This is *just* for the PHB. Lifetime sales on Amazon can be estimated to be ~160k. Based on interviews over the last couple years, Amazon is a major power player in the “mass-market” venue (including chain bookstores); and much of its growth is from the vacuum created by Borders and similar chains shutting down. From the same interviews, total mass-market sales are at parity with hobby stores (comic/gaming stores, etc). This may have changed in the last year or two, and very likely toward making Amazon a bigger player. What we can conclude from this is that we can generously assume lifetime sales of ~450k for 5E's PHB.

For history: when 3rd edition was released in 2000, the PHB sold 300k copies in the first 30 days (no clue whether that includes international).
Last edited by virgil on Tue Nov 14, 2017 8:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by nockermensch »

Kaelik wrote:
jprepo1 wrote:bear minimum
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bear

Bearposters gonna bearpost.
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Post by erik »

So, jprepo, we have posted actual numbers and have been tracking 5e as well as anyone that I have seen. To date nobody has posted sales numbers here that contradict what vigil just reposted.

And if you want to compare our anecdotes, when I went to gencon in 2014 d&d presence on was practically dead (I posted about it at the time in our going to a con thread). And they have since stopped being a sponsor.

Compare to ~10 years ago when there was a vibrant community of RPGA players that had hundreds of people playing 3.5 dnd in each slot. Now Gen con continues to grow despite the sclerosis of dungeons and dragons. This is why people say tabletop boom. Not dnd boom.
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Post by virgil »

This [research] doesn't point toward the rules actually being good, especially since the sales numbers of their supplements are mediocre. This tells me Hasbro is working with a revolving door market; people are reminded D&D exists (Wheaton, Stranger Things, their own marketing, etc) and are sufficiently enticed to buy the rules to check it out, and then never return. There's just enough effort in their product line to stay on the radar as something that exists, but not enough to keep the audience.

I will certainly admit surprise at 5E's growth over the last three years, which means that Hasbro could very likely be convinced to put in more effort. As Mearls is still holding the reins, however, I doubt its future.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

The OP indicated that a major goal of 5e was to unite the fan-bases. I don't see any indication that has happened.

There are certainly a lot of ways youcould define success and some probably make more sense than others. I think production schedule is at least a telling metric - one would presume you would release content if there was a market for it - that is, after all, what companies do. Leaving profit on the table is...unusual. The PHB/MM/DMG were released in August/September/December 2014 so we're close to 3 full years of the edition. That's also about how long before 3rd edition updated to 3.5. The 'official product' for 3rd edition far exceeded 5th edition's semi-annual offerings. And that doesn't count the 3rd party books. And of course, there were loads more after the switch to 3.5.

The amount of product available during 3rd edition has never been rivaled.

So, sure, you could make a claim that D&D 5th edition is a success. If you're enjoying the game you shouldn't let it bother you that other people aren't impressed. And if you're not playing the game, it's kinda surprising that you'd want to claim that it is successful. So I'm sure that WotC is happy that you're standing up for their honor, but I promise you it isn't a hill you want to die on. You'll only look stupid and silly for believing marketing spin.
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