D&D 4E Sales Figures Debate

Windjammer · Post by **Windjammer** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 8:43 pm

Please look up epistemic contextualism (Keith de Rose, Peter Unger, Stewart Cohen). It means that depending on context, the standards to justify knowledge claims can swing wildly up- and downwards. Here is one standard:

Cartesian standard: strictly speaking you can't know that p (for some proposition that p) unless data currently available to you enable you to rule out that not-p.

Standard example of p = 'I am currently not dreaming.'

Debate then ensues over (1) whether or not to accept the standard and/or (2) how to parse the 'available data' and their bearing on deciding the truth value on p.

What we have seen for 12 pages is that Pike disagrees with the Den on (1) and (2) for p = '4e was a failure.' I liked the efforts of some to clarify subcomponents of that p (eg is 'failure' commercial failure), but that simply raises issues (1) and (2) in slightly revised (and still not a very interesting) garb.

I don't think you can refute Pike's position, just as you can't refute a hard boiled Cartesian on your not being asleep. The only thing that astounds me is that you guys get a kick out of the exercise.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:12 pm

Benchmarks for 4E success or failure:

1.
Lasted as long as expected before revision (3 to 5 years)
No. The game released all core books simultaneously in June 2008.
By September 2010, Essentials released.
2.
Lasted about as long as 3.0/3.5
Again, no. Game came out in 2000, lasted until late 2007, early 2008.
4E hardly even made 4 years.
3.
Released promised books in a timely fashion.
No. 4E totally failed on this. The product was dogged with pushbacks of releases and major cancellations.
4.
Made good on promise of Virtual Table Top and Gleemax
No. Gleemax was a tragic debacle and the VTT did not exist at launch or even at all.
5.
Was fundamentally sound in its mathematics and mechanics
Again, no. In approximately 3 years, 4E racked up a staggering 170 pages of official errata. Monster math was off so bad that you're told to not even use 2 or 3 of 5 Monster Manual style books. Some things, like Skill Challenges, were broken from the onset and never truly fixed, despite a shocking and comedic amount of fixes and patches, official and otherwise.
6.
Kept the goodwill of the brand and did not "split the party."
No. It antagonized past Dungeons and Dragons players as an official part of advertising strategy. It released an incompatible version of the game within 3 years further "splitting the party." It eventually lost out to Pathfinder, which is 3.5 Houserules with Production Values, and was second place to basically its own materials. The Open Game License/Game System License debacled killed secondary support for 4E and kept 5E again from having OGL.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 1:49 am

@Windjammer, the burden of proof is on the claimant, and someone who wants to claim a not-p (in this case, D&D did not fail) has to show that all reasonable measures of p are untrue.

A much easier claim would be that 4e had some success, where any measures of p show that the opposite (4e had no success) is false. That's a claim the captain tried to defend, and failed. The measure of success was reaching #1 on Amazon sales ranking for a few hours, but then he later admitted that was not a credible measure. Because it isn't for a enterprise the size of Wizards/DnD in light of their declared sales over time.

I'd go so far as to say 4e had no success at all. None I can think of at least. Even the relatively bright spot of $5 million pa from digital subscriptions relied on the crazy errata schedule and pissing on their wider business model by locking down all the content under random hash tags (by which I refer to the power and monster names) and making it near impossible to use at all without their character creation tool. Wrecking your core business to make dollar off support for that same business is not a success story, that can't work at all.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 2:30 am

Windjammer wrote: I don't think you can refute Pike's position, just as you can't refute a hard boiled Cartesian on your not being asleep. The only thing that astounds me is that you guys get a kick out of the exercise.

So your point is that he's not right and he's not even wrong. What astounds me is that you think a position that audaciously inept isn't worth mocking.

His position is that he will ignore all evidence and listen to his feels. He hasn't been a part of the debate for some time, he's just been a punchline. If I were to read his posts, I'd suspect he's attempting the troll tactic of saying more and more outrageously stupid things so that you cannot possibly address them all, so that he can claim victory through verbosity.

That doesn't even need refuting, you can just point and laugh. He only offers a dishonest position devoid of any rational discourse. Of course we couldn't know that he was dishonest until he showed his cards which were all blank, and still clung to his claim that his blank cards beat a full house. So that's how things started and then we could ponder the more relevant issue "How hard did 4e fail?" and take a breath to laugh at Pike for comic relief.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 3:20 am

erik wrote:Of course we couldn't know that he was dishonest until he showed his cards which were all blank, and still clung to his claim that his blank cards beat a full house.

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:51 am

Lurking on this thread out of a morbid curiosity (and boredom while code compiles), I feel like there's a common theme between CaptPike and that other porno guy and...

They all seem to want to portray the opposition as not just factually wrong, but as liars. Even when it's pointed out to them that maybe the person is just factually wrong but believes they're telling the truth, the arguer in question sticks to the whole "Nope, it's a lie" spiel.

I guess it's a moral-high-ground kinda thing ? Quick-n-dirty way to try to discredit your opponent ? Is CaptPike "lying" when he calls others liars, or is he really deluded into thinking everyone who disagrees with him is lying to him ?

Gnorman · Post by **Gnorman** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:17 am

Calling someone a liar is a great way not to have to address the substance of their claims. It doesn't matter if they're right; they're liars!

Also, yes, definitely on the "moral high ground" bit. Part of he-who-apparently-shall-be-named-frequently's strategy was to claim that his opponents were liars, and thus lesser beings not worthy of taking seriously. I believe at one point, he claimed that such a transgression resulted in the "liar" being basically a moral Untouchable, and as such not even worthy of being saved from, like, being on fire.

Long story short: it's a slippery slope from calling someone a "liar" because you disagree with them or dispute their evidence to casually dismissing them as subhuman trash not even worthy of existence.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:14 pm

What brought on my sig was Zakky-poo saying that either someone was wrong, or someone was lying, but either way they had lost all credibility forever, etc etc.

This is opposed to my own personal beliefs to such a point that it makes me wish trial by combat was still a thing. If you're wrong, you have a chance to correct it and then you're better than you were five minutes ago.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:10 pm

FYI The Zak thing was literally him saying that because I admitted to making a satirical parody of his posting style, that therefore I was admitted troll, and trolls are liars, therefore I was admitted liar, and therefore nothing I ever said ever at any point was worth listening to, and that [something I can't remember exactly about how if I was dying on the street he wouldn't swerve to avoid me, or he wouldn't move out of the way of the ambulance or something that was basically just "you deserve to die"].

Of course, this conviently came about right about the same time that I started quoting him WORD FOR WORD saying the exact thing that I claimed he would say about people who play RPGs differently than him 40 pages earlier, that he accused me of being a liar for.*

*Technically, he replaced the word "idiot" with "loser" in his post. But come one, I predicted it exactly weeks ahead of time. I'm a fucking genius bby.