Mike Mearls is trolling...

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malak
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Mike Mearls is trolling...

Post by malak »

Mike Mearls wrote:The idea behind the gnome effect is simple. Let’s say you’re planning on releasing a hypothetical edition of D&D. You want to determine which races are important to the game, so you conduct a poll and find that only 10% of gamers play gnomes. That might make it seem obvious that you can safely cut the gnome without much trouble.
From today's Legends and Lore post.
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Post by Username17 »

That's hilarious. Especially since in a game where there are 5 players in a game and 11+ classes, something which is played by 10% of the players is actually something you can't cut.

I don't know what the cutoff is, but something trotted out in every other game is definitely not something that is below the cutoff.

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Post by Xur »

This is hilarious and sad the same time. Poll shows interesting numbers though:
4th Edition is:

* Just right: 67.9%
* Too complicated: 16.8%
* Not complex enough: 11.7%
* I have never played this edition: 3.6%

3rd/3.5 Edition D&D is:

* Too complicated: 63.2%
* Just right: 25.3%
* I have never played this edition: 8.2%
* Not complex enough: 3.3%

2nd Edition D&D is:

* I have never played this edition: 27.2%
* Too complicated: 26.7%
* Just right: 24.4%
* Not complex enough: 21.7%

1st Edition D&D is:

* I have never played this edition: 43.4%
* Not complex enough: 27.2%
* Just right: 17.9%
* Too complicated: 11.6%

Basic D&D is:

* I have never played this edition: 44.1%
* Not complex enough: 37.3%
* Just right: 17.2%
* Too complicated: 1.4%
Old editions still have a lot of traction it seems (and even players who visit the new WotC website). Good news.
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Post by hogarth »

FrankTrollman wrote:That's hilarious. Especially since in a game where there are 5 players in a game and 11+ classes, something which is played by 10% of the players is actually something you can't cut.

I don't know what the cutoff is, but something trotted out in every other game is definitely not something that is below the cutoff.

-Username17
He made the exact same point in the next paragraph.
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Post by erik »

I feel a little threatened by the menacing dildo above his post.

Image


[edit]
Have they not heard of sampling bias? The people visiting the site right now are the people playing/preferring 4e almost overwhelmingly. Of course that sample set is going to use the most positive value statement for their preferred selection. If 4e wasn't the most "just right" for any question, then there's probably something fishy going on.
Last edited by erik on Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Rasumichin »

hogarth wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:That's hilarious. Especially since in a game where there are 5 players in a game and 11+ classes, something which is played by 10% of the players is actually something you can't cut.

I don't know what the cutoff is, but something trotted out in every other game is definitely not something that is below the cutoff.

-Username17
He made the exact same point in the next paragraph.
Maybe Mearls' actual point was that if you cut out gnomes, you can be sure that you sell lots of copies of the book the reintroduces them to the game.
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Post by shadzar »

Yeah oyu can cut the gnome if you want the forums sent straight to hell from people bitching at you for it...oh wait.. that is what happened when 4th came out.
Xur wrote:This is hilarious and sad the same time. Poll shows interesting numbers though:
4th Edition is:

* Just right: 67.9%
* Too complicated: 16.8%
* Not complex enough: 11.7%
* I have never played this edition: 3.6%

3rd/3.5 Edition D&D is:

* Too complicated: 63.2%
* Just right: 25.3%
* I have never played this edition: 8.2%
* Not complex enough: 3.3%

2nd Edition D&D is:

* I have never played this edition: 27.2%
* Too complicated: 26.7%
* Just right: 24.4%
* Not complex enough: 21.7%

1st Edition D&D is:

* I have never played this edition: 43.4%
* Not complex enough: 27.2%
* Just right: 17.9%
* Too complicated: 11.6%

Basic D&D is:

* I have never played this edition: 44.1%
* Not complex enough: 37.3%
* Just right: 17.2%
* Too complicated: 1.4%
Old editions still have a lot of traction it seems (and even players who visit the new WotC website). Good news.
Funny thing is old editions users have little use for DDi or WotC websites, so it shows that, considering you only got to voted on one option, that only two thirds of the visitors to the website, think 4th edition is worth a damn.
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Post by Starmaker »

It’s something you can see from the very first poll, on the difference between grid-dependent mechanics vs. description of an area/DM’s judgment. That poll was split 50.8% to 49.2%.
That's telling, considering the bias.
About 25% of voters were perfectly happy sacrificing options for complexity.
what is this I don't even
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Let's make the statistics slightly more meaningful.

4e
[*] Just Right: 70.4%
[*] Too Complicated: 17.4%
[*] Insufficiently Complicated: 12.1%

3e
[*] Just Right: 27.6%
[*] Too Complicated: 68.8%
[*] Insufficiently Complicated: 3.6%

2e
[*] Just Right: 33.5%
[*] Too Complicated: 36.7%
[*] Insufficiently Complicated: 29.8%

1e
[*] Just Right: 31.6%
[*] Too Complicated: 20.5%
[*] Insufficiently Complicated: 48.1%

Basic
[*] Just Right: 30.8%
[*] Too Complicated: 2.5%
[*] Insufficiently Complicated: 66.7%

So apparently 3e was the worst of the bunch. No wonder it was so unpopular in comparison.

I'm willing to bet that people who like the current edition are more likely to visit the D&D web site regardless of which edition that happens to be.

IMO they're all too damn complicated for what they provide.
Last edited by CatharzGodfoot on Tue Mar 22, 2011 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by malak »

Starmaker wrote:
About 25% of voters were perfectly happy sacrificing options for complexity.
what is this I don't even
That should probably be
Mike Mearls wrote:About 25% of voters were perfectly happy sacrificing options for reducing complexity.
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Post by hogarth »

Thanks to our recent poll "Which is more complicated: A Song of Fire and Ice or stereo instructions?", we're proud to present 5th Edition D&D, based on the popular Sony 534-D with 60 watts/channel and integrated subwoofer.

-Mike Mearls
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Post by gourdcaptain »

About 25% of voters were perfectly happy sacrificing options for complexity.
Mind you, this is after this troll post http://wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20110308 where he makes numbers up to get the results he wants (seriously, it's completely arbitrary what he declares a step.) http://wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20110315 is where that poll about sacrificing options is from, and about 70% or so said screw that, but he doesn't mention those.
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Post by talozin »

I can only conclude that anyone who thinks 1st Edition was "insufficiently complicated" has never actually tried to play it by the book.
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Post by tzor »

I second that motion.
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Post by hogarth »

talozin wrote:I can only conclude that anyone who thinks 1st Edition was "insufficiently complicated" has never actually tried to play it by the book.
I'll play devil's advocate and say that it was less complicated in the sense that almost all of the weird (obviously tacked-on) rules lived in their own little silos. So if you were missing the pages in the rulebook that detailed non-weapon proficiencies or weapon vs. armor modifiers or the rules for overbearing, you'd never know they existed from reading any other book or module. There are only a few exceptions like psionics.
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

Rasumichin wrote: Maybe Mearls' actual point was that if you cut out gnomes, you can be sure that you sell lots of copies of the book the reintroduces them to the game.
Oh, I know that trick from White Wolf. "Dirty Secrets of the Black Gnomes".

Or something.
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Post by talozin »

hogarth wrote: I'll play devil's advocate and say that it was less complicated in the sense that almost all of the weird (obviously tacked-on) rules lived in their own little silos. So if you were missing the pages in the rulebook that detailed non-weapon proficiencies or weapon vs. armor modifiers or the rules for overbearing, you'd never know they existed from reading any other book or module. There are only a few exceptions like psionics.
It's a little six of one, half a dozen of the other-ish. On the one hand, many of the subsystems had little or no relationship to any of the other subsystems, and so there was relatively little complexity of interaction among them. On the other hand, there were a vast number of those subsystems, each of them seemingly developed independently of one another vis-a-vis mechanics, modifiers, genre appropriateness, and even basic ideas like "roll high or roll low?" Which adds up to a lot of added complexity that a game with unified mechanics just doesn't have.

Still at the end of the day, if someone told me non-devil's advocately that he thought 3E was more complicated than 1E, I'm not certain enough of how I'd quantify that to make more than a token counter-argument. But "insufficiently complicated"? Only if one's idea of the ideal level of complexity is Advanced Squad Leader.
Last edited by talozin on Tue Mar 22, 2011 9:05 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by K »

I really think WotC has gotten boned by doing all these surveys. They honestly don't seem to understand how math or science works, and it shows.

The fact that your data shows that people who go to 4e websites like 4e is not a useful fact. The fact that you lost a bunch of people in the 3e to 4e conversion is useful data, but they can't poll those guys because they aren't going to the 4e website.
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Post by gourdcaptain »

K wrote:I really think WotC has gotten boned by doing all these surveys. They honestly don't seem to understand how math or science works, and it shows
Speaking of which, and I've been wondering this for a while, for a genre depending on a lot of dice rolling and numbers, why are there almost no if any published Tabletop RPGS where the makers understand basic math and probability? (Or at least run it past someone who does, let alone people who can competently use a system).
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Post by CCarter »

I'm not sure I believe they have no idea of what sampling bias is. My guess is either:
a) They don't have any other way to poll missing players so this is all they can do; or
b) Its just a marketing ploy to make it appear they're listening.

The figure 'I have never played this edition' at 8.2% for 3E I thought was particularly interesting, since that could be a ballpark estimator of how many players started out with 4E, as compared to being former 3E players.


Unrelatedly, on the gnomes, I have to admit a fondness for them, developed back in 2E when you couldn't actually get spellcasting dwarves otherwise. 3E gnomes had bad flavour (and were less filling).

On other races that were cut, my opinion from reading their Races and Monsters thing was that they had no idea. Some races in 3E were unpopular due to the flavour, and some due to bad mechanics - a new edition fixes mechanics mainly so you have to figure out not just if something is unpopular but why. There's totally a niche for 'ugly guy who hits stuff hard' (half-orc) but most people who would have liked to play these in 3E had a dozen other related options with larger Str bonuses and could see that a net -2 ability penalty sucked balls.
Last edited by CCarter on Tue Mar 22, 2011 10:42 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by TheFlatline »

CCarter wrote:I'm not sure I believe they have no idea of what sampling bias is. My guess is either:
a) They don't have any other way to poll missing players so this is all they can do; or
b) Its just a marketing ploy to make it appear they're listening.

The figure 'I have never played this edition' at 8.2% for 3E I thought was particularly interesting, since that could be a ballpark estimator of how many players started out with 4E, as compared to being former 3E players.
Go to PAX, or GenCon, or any other massive focus of geek culture, and do the survey there. You'll get distinctly different numbers to be sure. Granted, the sample is still skewed because you're sampling people who go to conventions, which is a small fraction of the total gaming market, but you'll get a different section of gamers.

This poll merely tells you that the current, active members of the D&D website/community (who it stands to reason would be fans of 4th edition otherwise they wouldn't bother with the site), who prefer 4th edition over 3rd, prefer it because they felt that 3rd was too complicated. Which tells you absolutely nothing about how the player base actually received 4th edition, because that sample *could* be the entire 4th edition playerbase, and if it's 1000 people vs the 16 million that played 3rd edition, the statistics would still look like 4th edition is the superior product.

If you surveyed 10,000 people who actively played in 3rd edition for longer than, say, a year, but who do not play 4th edition (but have tried it), I doubt that "just right" statistic would be up at around 70%.

PS: I call bullshit on the poll if it was conducted on the D&D website. It's been 3 years or so since 4th edition came out, and there's people who care enough about D&D to go in and take a poll on the D&D web site, but have never tried 4th edition? Enough to be a statistically relevant percentage? Bullshit. The stat is there to suggest that lots and lots and lots of people have tried 4th edition, but I find the numbers to be reflective of creative manipulation, or the sample size is less than a thousand people.
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Post by Shazbot79 »

erik wrote: Have they not heard of sampling bias? The people visiting the site right now are the people playing/preferring 4e almost overwhelmingly. Of course that sample set is going to use the most positive value statement for their preferred selection. If 4e wasn't the most "just right" for any question, then there's probably something fishy going on.
Mearls wrote: I thought it would be useful to pause this week and talk a little bit about the polls that have been appearing in this column. Some folks think of them as poorly disguised marketing research. In all honesty, they’re simply an attempt to engage in a dialogue. We already have an entire department here at Wizards of the Coast dedicated to collecting data, running official surveys, and so on. Plus, I also took enough statistics in college to understand that a self-selecting audience is by no means a sound foundation for the sort of polling we’ve been running in Legends & Lore.
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Post by K »

Shazbot79 wrote:
erik wrote: Have they not heard of sampling bias? The people visiting the site right now are the people playing/preferring 4e almost overwhelmingly. Of course that sample set is going to use the most positive value statement for their preferred selection. If 4e wasn't the most "just right" for any question, then there's probably something fishy going on.
Mearls wrote: I thought it would be useful to pause this week and talk a little bit about the polls that have been appearing in this column. Some folks think of them as poorly disguised marketing research. In all honesty, they’re simply an attempt to engage in a dialogue. We already have an entire department here at Wizards of the Coast dedicated to collecting data, running official surveys, and so on. Plus, I also took enough statistics in college to understand that a self-selecting audience is by no means a sound foundation for the sort of polling we’ve been running in Legends & Lore.
"Yeh, this is not some poorly disguised marketing research, it's a poorly disguised marketing ploy."

We also know why they don't have an editing staff.... they need those market researchers.
Last edited by K on Wed Mar 23, 2011 4:06 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by CCarter »

TheFlatline wrote:
This poll merely tells you that the current, active members of the D&D website/community (who it stands to reason would be fans of 4th edition otherwise they wouldn't bother with the site), who prefer 4th edition over 3rd, prefer it because they felt that 3rd was too complicated.
Yep I was assuming that it was heavily biased to current 4E players.
Only 8% of them hadn't played 3.5.
So only about 1 in 12 of them started 'new' with the edition to replace the big outflux of grognards. If this poll is even slightly indicative of current 4E players makeup (which is the big if), 4E would be extraordinarily screwed.
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Post by fectin »

"biased" doesn't mean "useless". Sampling what your current customers prefer is not bad, even with with voluntary response throwing an extra layer of skew on there.
It's also possible that they have the responses as sets, so you could look at the specific preferences of the 3.7% who never tried 4e.
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