D&D 4E Sales Figures Debate

[Insomniac]

The videos and the articles where they mocked people for things they liked in 3.0 and 3.5 was hysterically bad public relations work.

At least by pulling barbarians, bards, druids, monks, sorcerers, gnomes and half-orcs they proved the 5 Percent Rule. One person out of 20 is disappointed about something, that means you have at least 25 percent of 1 MC/4 PC tables disappointed by something. Cutting two races and 5 classes basically guaranteed every 3.0/3.5 player table was going to be disgruntled.

It probably showed that every fantasy RPG should ship with at least 12 classes and races, especially if that is what they had in prior editions.

[Gnorman]

The videos and the articles where they mocked people for things they liked in 3.0 and 3.5 was hysterically bad public relations work.

At least by pulling barbarians, bards, druids, monks, sorcerers, gnomes and half-orcs they proved the 5 Percent Rule. One person out of 20 is disappointed about something, that means you have at least 25 percent of 1 MC/4 PC tables disappointed by something. Cutting two races and 5 classes basically guaranteed every 3.0/3.5 player table was going to be disgruntled.

It probably showed that every fantasy RPG should ship with at least 12 classes and races, especially if that is what they had in prior editions.

I don't think anyone expected 4E to match the amount of race/class bloat that 3.5 had been able to accumulate by that time, but not releasing with AT LEAST the core races and classes of the 3.5 PHB was probably a slap in the face to many players.

Issues with the whole "grittier and darkier!" angle aside, it felt weird to have a tiefling warlock be a default option, but gnome bard or half-orc barbarian not be.

[TheFlatline]

I personally don't care about 4E's financial success. It failed me as a TTRPG. It was supposed to be that thing that did what 3rd did but 'better' in every way. They made sure to push that point home by pulling 3rd off the shelves an with their little 'previews' where they talked about how 'bad' 3rd was. Ok, whatever. It's fine to be confident about taking the product in a new direction and all but the product was shit. Where 5E came out with token fanfare 4E came out with a bunch of hype, hype videos, hype events, hype interviews, the works. Tons of books boasting 'tons' of options, new RPGA, blah blah. All for nothing because what they gave me was garbage and the first hint of something else that was at least 'as good' as 3rd and I pounced on it.

It failed me as a D&D game. As a generic fantasy game it might have worked okay, aside from it's crappy math problems and it's MMO difficulty treadmill. I mean, a lot of the concepts of the character powers were used in Warhammer Fantasy 3rd and I enjoyed the hell out of that game.

I'd say it failed commercially to grow the D&D brand. My biggest evidence that it was a letdown from the branding perspective is that while you had 3.x branded cross-product coming out your ears, the only thing that is even remotely close to cross-market branding for 4E was the D&D board games, and that used a radically different ruleset that was boiled down to it's barest essentials.

While there was a stupid amount of 3.x ruleset derived video games for example, there was to my knowledge zero 4E derived games. I mean shit even the D&D MMO used a riff on the 3.x ruleset (yeah it launched 2 year earlier than 4e but the point still stands).

As a valuable brand to push product 4E was a fraction of the success that 3.x was.

[Leress]

the only thing that is even remotely close to cross-market branding for 4E was the D&D board games, and that used a radically different ruleset that was boiled down to it's barest essentials

There was also Daggerdale, but that game was ass and Neverwinter, the MMO.

[TheFlatline]

the only thing that is even remotely close to cross-market branding for 4E was the D&D board games, and that used a radically different ruleset that was boiled down to it's barest essentials

There was also Daggerdale, but that game was ass and Neverwinter, the MMO.

I... hadn't even heard of either of those. What do you know.

[tussock]

4e marketing was weird all along. There's a lot of stuff that was genuinely hard to find out about at the time as a subscribed fan of the game visiting their homepage. Not just from 3rd-party licensees, but the books they were printing too.

5e isn't a great deal different last I checked. Back when 3e was roaring along the web page had new content every weekday and publishing schedules were promoted for months ahead of time, for the movies, CRPGs, books, everything; at least until about Tome of Battle era in 2006 when the errata was for the wrong book and they never fixed that because all the effort was going into Gleemax.

Remember Gleemax? Sort of a unified forum for finding games on their 3D virtual tabletops where all the designers hang out and spitball ideas with the players, and it's the ultimate hip social network for gamer nerds? Yeah, none of that happened either.

[CaptPike]

Argument from anecdotal evidence (my friends think 4E is cool)
point to when I said I KNEW that 4e was a huge successes because of anecdotal. I may have said I THINK It was, but that does not matter because when someone ways "think" that MEANS he knows he has limited, possibly unreliable data.

Argument from ignorance (you can't prove that I'm wrong, so I'm right)
Argument from silence (you can't show me data [even though we did] so I'm right)
Shifting the burden of proof (you have to prove me wrong, despite being the one who made the claim)
what? where are you getting this? I am saying that we DO NOT KNOW if it was a success or a failure. Not that I KNOW beyond any doubt that it was.

My point is that we lack enough data to make any statement such as "we know 4e failed" anything but a lie. Is it possbile? sure, I might even go so far as probable but that is IT.

Moving the goalposts (well, you may have presented me with data, but I don't find it COMPLETE enough to believe you)
so when I ask for data, I am supposed to accept anything and everything you give me? regardless of knowing that you are missing huge chucks?

Nirvana fallacy (rejecting global warming solutions because they are not perfect)
no I reject the idea that we can KNOW that we are causing it because the only good data we have has almost complete overlap with global warming.
so...how can we know it is not normal? that any warming we are causing is not just noise? We could be causing it sure, but without being able to make a model of what the climate would be without us we have no way of knowing that. And of course we can not make such a model today without alot of guesswork because we have no or little data on what the earth looks like before the industrial revolution (at least with the detail we would need)

I reject the solutions mainly becuase I am not sold on them doing anything. The solutions rely upon us being the ones that caused it. There are solutions that do not assume that, and I would support them if they were cheap enough.

And those are just off the top of my head, without diving back into the thread. I don't even know how to begin to categorize your repeated insistence that WotC's decision to discontinue 4E was the product of one person; companies do not generally kill off successful (if indeed it was) product lines without some kind of a justification beyond one executive's whim. I'd like to unofficially term it the Pike Fallacy: wherein one makes the mistake of assuming a complete and utter lack of rationality on the part of an actor or actors, in order to disprove a theory that is based on people making, at least to some degree, reasoned decisions.

It is quite improbable that only one person made that decision yes. But I did not say that only one person did. I said that we only KNOW that one person did. I did say "at least one person" and everyone just skips over that and assumes I mean "one and only one person"

I try not to pretend to know things that I do not know. I KNOW that one person wanted to cancel 4e, I THINK that it was really more then one, but because I do not know it was more then one person it would be a lie for me to say that more then one person did.

I DID answer the question several times, but given the overall denseness of this group I will do so again.

You didn't answer his question (I promise you, it's five letters to barely a sentence, albeit it did get followed up by a short sentence above it).

really? I DID ANSWER THAT LIKE 5 TIMES. TO DO AGAIN NO I THINK IT BECAUSE I HAVE LIMITED DATA THAT POINTS TO THAT CONCLUSION.

done? do I need to repeat that with smaller words for a sixth time?

I am serious about that list, I want a way to post here without everything getting derailed when I point out, what are to me, obvious problems.

Here's one:

No one is going to put up with your bullshit shell games involving "THINK" "FEEL" and "KNOW". Nobody cares about your feelings. This is casual conversation, for the most part, and you're generally going to get called out for trying to defend yourself with pedantic phrasing particulars.

You mean use the English language? that is all I am doing unless of course everyone else here is ok with rampant lying and misleading for no reason whatsoever.

the words KNOW, FEEL and THINK have meanings, if you do not know the meanings please either stop using the words or look them up.

I'm reminded of a scene in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Two Ronin charge each other in a mock duel. At the end one insists it was a tie. The other insists that he won. The lower insists on doing it again, for real, and is promptly slain. Turns out it wasn't nearly as close as he believed.

Regarding topics that are verboten, nothing springs to mind. Just be prepared to bring your evidence. I wouldn't suggest arguing for a position that is contrary to all available evidence. MRA stuff would be bone headed to talk about - you won't have any support here because everyone here has considered the evidence and understands the advantages of having been born a white male in a liberal democratic society.

Regarding 4th editions 'success', your argument is that you can't find any definitive evidence that it succeeded. Every other data element points to 'abject failure'. You might want to spend some time learning about 'confidence values'. Heck, you might even spend some time with literary forms. For example, if I say 'the earth is round', the existence of the Himalayas does not 'prove' my statement false.

The funny thing is that nobody besides yourself would care of 4th edition were successful - even the most successful. You consider yourself on a crusade to correct misinformation - presumably for the benefit of people besides yourself. At some point, they're either going to understand your position or they'll recognize you are incorrect. Repeating yourself ad nauseum is unnecessary.

The fact that 4e was higher then pathfinder on the amazon best seller list comes to mind...or do you not accept that?

no it is not enough to KNOW it succssed by itself of course, but it is more then enought to sheed doubt over the 3er's line of "4e failed, of course"

You know what Orion that's a good point. I define failure as not meeting expectations within a given set of time.

so...a game would be a failure if it had unrealistic expectations regardless of what it sold?

Captpike, what do you think about this idea?

The thing that sunk 4E was their pie in the sky promises. They didn't want to just try to duplicate 3.5's roaring success, a difficult enough task by itself, no, they said they were going to be an online-integrated, autonomous, 50 million dollar a year enterprise like Magic: The Gathering. DDI, Virtual Tabletop, Gleemax and the like was supposed to be their Magic The Gathering Online killer app and this was going to be supplemented with a very ambitious set of books that look to me to be modeled after Magic the Gathering's block/expansion model. 3 major things coming out sequentially at a rapid pace (Powers books, PHBs and Renown books).

All of that stuff had problems, some unforseen and catastrophic, like the sad suicides of developers. The ambitions failed. I don't think 4E as a line lost money, at a minimum it broke even and likely made several million dollars.

So I don't even think 4E lost money. It might have even made millions. DDI for any other game company (tens of thousands of subscribers paying 5 dollars a month, generating millions even after expenses) would have been HUGE for any other gaming company. The subscriber service is a very big reason for Paizo success,for example.

I think 4E had hundreds of thousands of players who were happy with the game, tens of thousands of players paying for an online service, by any other metric this would be a stupendous success.

But when you're DUNGEONS AND MOTHERFUCKING DRAGONS promising to be as financially lucrative as MTGO, and you're not number 1 in the market and you're tied or number 2 to 3.5 Houserules with Production values, second place sucks. HASBRO was told 4E was going to make Dungeons and Dragons a Magic-caliber moneymaker. That is what 4E failed on.

what makes you think they were number two to pathfinder during the time they were competing? by at least one metric they were not (amazon best sellers list)

You also are assuming that the kind of dominance that 3e had was possible when 4e came out, it may well not have been even if they had made a game that did nothing but pander to 3er's desire to pay for the game they already had.



You also are assuming that the choice of target numbers was up to those making 4e rather then being thrust on them as a requirement.

The videos and the articles where they mocked people for things they liked in 3.0 and 3.5 was hysterically bad public relations work.

At least by pulling barbarians, bards, druids, monks, sorcerers, gnomes and half-orcs they proved the 5 Percent Rule. One person out of 20 is disappointed about something, that means you have at least 25 percent of 1 MC/4 PC tables disappointed by something. Cutting two races and 5 classes basically guaranteed every 3.0/3.5 player table was going to be disgruntled.

It probably showed that every fantasy RPG should ship with at least 12 classes and races, especially if that is what they had in prior editions.

I don't think anyone expected 4E to match the amount of race/class bloat that 3.5 had been able to accumulate by that time, but not releasing with AT LEAST the core races and classes of the 3.5 PHB was probably a slap in the face to many players.

Issues with the whole "grittier and darkier!" angle aside, it felt weird to have a tiefling warlock be a default option, but gnome bard or half-orc barbarian not be.

With reguards to race I agree, I honestly do not see why ANY TTRPG would launch with less then 15 races. they take like one piece of paper each and are very easy to make once you have made a few.

15 would cover very niche.

your going to piss people off with what classes you do not include in the PHB1, there is no way to help that. The best you can do is have as broad a selection of classes as possible to allow for as much gameplay as you can with just the first PHB.

[Leress]

The fact that 4e was higher then pathfinder on the amazon best seller list comes to mind...or do you not accept that?

You have yet to have actually shown that.

so...a game would be a failure if it had unrealistic expectations regardless of what it sold?

Yes, but the problem lies with the expectations.

[deaddmwalking]

By my count, you've committed the following:

My favorite so far has been the false dichotomy, which wasn't on your list. You either accept that we need to go to war to establish a one-world government or accept that there is nothing we can do to prevent global warming.

My point is that we lack enough data to make any statement such as "we know 4e failed" anything but a lie. Is it possbile? sure, I might even go so far as probable but that is IT.

If 4e failed (if, for instance the thing you accept as probable happened) saying it failed is, by definition, not a lie. To be a lie, the statement must be factually incorrect and the person must be aware that they are providing misinformation. By your own 'logic' you cannot accuse anyone of lying because you can neither know whether the information is factually incorrect (because you don't think there is enough data) nor can you claim that they are deliberately providing misinformation (because you have no data regarding their state of mind).

It's rather telling that you don't preface those statements with know feel and think despite your insistence that they should not be used incorrectly.

the words KNOW, FEEL and THINK have meanings, if you do not know the meanings please either stop using the words or look them up.

You might find this somewhat interesting. But since you appear to lack reading comprehension, I'll state that it is possible to 'know' something and be wrong. Knowledge doesn't necessarily equate to truth.

And since I'm feeling charitable, I'll respond to a few of your fevered ramblings:

so when I ask for data, I am supposed to accept anything and everything you give me? regardless of knowing that you are missing huge chucks?

Did you know* that approximately 68% of the universe is comprised of Dark Matter. Did you know* that approximately 27% of the universe is comprised of Dark Energy? Did you know* that everything we see and have a working theory for represents less than 5% of everything. With 95% of the entire universe unknown, and, potentially unknowable, you'd think we'd throw up our hands and admit to knowing nothing. It turns out, you can know a lot about the 5% you can see. For example, even though we don't know what Dark Energy is, we know that the universe is getting bigger and it's happening faster (ie, acceleration).

There are a lot of things that we can 'know' about the failure of 4th edition because we would expect 'contrary evidence' if it did not fail. For example, it might still be in print. You do realize that your 'official' claim is that 'real 4th edition totally didn't fail, but when they relaunched it as Essentials, it totally did fail. That would mean that '4th edition failed' - because 'officially' Essentials is part of 4th edition. Do you realize that you agree with everyone here that 4th edition failed and you're only arguing over when it failed?

*I use 'know' here without being sure whether 'know' or 'think' would be more appropriate in your particular circumstances.

Nirvana Fallacy

I'm not going to quote you on this, but you use a closely related fallacy when responding to the Nirvana Fallacy accusation. Essentially, you say that we can't know because our data isn't perfect. You make no effort to understand how good our data really is. You might be interested to learn about Standard Error.

If I say 'Approximately half a dozen men went into your mother's apartment last night' you can't say 'you don't know how many men it was so it was PROBABLY NONE. I could clarify - it was definitely at least 3, but less than 10. Now, that's not very precise at all. But it still defines a range of results. The range of 4e's trajectory is between 'failure' and 'abysmal failure'. There is no data outside of that range.

The fact that 4e was higher then pathfinder on the amazon best seller list comes to mind...or do you not accept that?

You keep bringing up this data, even though you don't believe it is representative of anything. Why should I? But let me ask you this: Paizo has an established direct sales model where people subscribe to their products and receive them from Paizo. Their website includes a full store where all of their product is available. Since Wizards directed their customers to Amazon.com while Paizo directed their customers to their own website, it seems plausible that even if Paizo sold 100x more product than Wizards, they would have had essentially the same ranking on Amazon.com. Since you keep on saying that we 'can't compare two different models', this would appear to thoroughly discredit your talking point. Further, if we accept that the Amazon sales rank means very little because Paizo uses direct sales, this would imply that 4e failed. Essentially your data point shows how badly 4e did, rather than how well.

On the other hand, the fact that 4e is not published in any form would be a pretty clear indication that it has failed while Paizo continuing to publish Pathfinder would seem to indicate that it is a success.

no it is not enough to KNOW it succssed by itself of course, but it is more then enought to sheed doubt over the 3er's line of "4e failed, of course"

You're asking for a judgement call here. I trust my judgement much more than yours, and in my judgement, I do not consider this by itself to be more than enough to 'sheed' doubt on 4th editions failure. However, I'm actually open to being persuaded that 4e is a success. I honestly don't care one way or the other. I would even accept a declaration from Mike Mearls from today onward as 'sufficient proof'. Invite him here, if you like.

You also are assuming that the kind of dominance that 3e had was possible when 4e came out, it may well not have been even if they had made a game that did nothing but pander to 3er's desire to pay for the game they already had.

I think it is disingenuous to claim that you cannot compare 4th edition to 3rd edition regarding what was possible. If there had not been a release of 4th edition, there is no indication that another product would have arisen to dominate the market. In fact, the evidence we do have seems to indicate that if 4th edition hadn't been released, 3.x or a very similar derivative could have maintained the market share that 3.x enjoyed.

Regarding number of classes in the PHB, there is no fixed number. The 3.0 and 3.5 PHB both had 11 base classes. The Deadland's Weird West Player's Guide had 20 Archetypes. Even the original 1st edition PHB had 10 classes (if you count variants such as Ranger as separate classes). If it was important to them, they would have found a way to fit them in.

[CaptPike]

The fact that 4e was higher then pathfinder on the amazon best seller list comes to mind...or do you not accept that?

You have yet to have actually shown that.

so...a game would be a failure if it had unrealistic expectations regardless of what it sold?

Yes, but the problem lies with the expectations.

by that metric a game failing means nothing whatsoever. If I was told a game failed that would give me no information.

By my count, you've committed the following:

My favorite so far has been the false dichotomy, which wasn't on your list. You either accept that we need to go to war to establish a one-world government or accept that there is nothing we can do to prevent global warming.

My point is that we lack enough data to make any statement such as "we know 4e failed" anything but a lie. Is it possbile? sure, I might even go so far as probable but that is IT.

If 4e failed (if, for instance the thing you accept as probable happened) saying it failed is, by definition, not a lie. To be a lie, the statement must be factually incorrect and the person must be aware that they are providing misinformation. By your own 'logic' you cannot accuse anyone of lying because you can neither know whether the information is factually incorrect (because you don't think there is enough data) nor can you claim that they are deliberately providing misinformation (because you have no data regarding their state of mind).

It's rather telling that you don't preface those statements with know feel and think despite your insistence that they should not be used incorrectly.

the words KNOW, FEEL and THINK have meanings, if you do not know the meanings please either stop using the words or look them up.

You might find this somewhat interesting. But since you appear to lack reading comprehension, I'll state that it is possible to 'know' something and be wrong. Knowledge doesn't necessarily equate to truth.

And since I'm feeling charitable, I'll respond to a few of your fevered ramblings:

so when I ask for data, I am supposed to accept anything and everything you give me? regardless of knowing that you are missing huge chucks?

Did you know* that approximately 68% of the universe is comprised of Dark Matter. Did you know* that approximately 27% of the universe is comprised of Dark Energy? Did you know* that everything we see and have a working theory for represents less than 5% of everything. With 95% of the entire universe unknown, and, potentially unknowable, you'd think we'd throw up our hands and admit to knowing nothing. It turns out, you can know a lot about the 5% you can see. For example, even though we don't know what Dark Energy is, we know that the universe is getting bigger and it's happening faster (ie, acceleration).

There are a lot of things that we can 'know' about the failure of 4th edition because we would expect 'contrary evidence' if it did not fail. For example, it might still be in print. You do realize that your 'official' claim is that 'real 4th edition totally didn't fail, but when they relaunched it as Essentials, it totally did fail. That would mean that '4th edition failed' - because 'officially' Essentials is part of 4th edition. Do you realize that you agree with everyone here that 4th edition failed and you're only arguing over when it failed?

*I use 'know' here without being sure whether 'know' or 'think' would be more appropriate in your particular circumstances.

Nirvana Fallacy

I'm not going to quote you on this, but you use a closely related fallacy when responding to the Nirvana Fallacy accusation. Essentially, you say that we can't know because our data isn't perfect. You make no effort to understand how good our data really is. You might be interested to learn about Standard Error.

If I say 'Approximately half a dozen men went into your mother's apartment last night' you can't say 'you don't know how many men it was so it was PROBABLY NONE. I could clarify - it was definitely at least 3, but less than 10. Now, that's not very precise at all. But it still defines a range of results. The range of 4e's trajectory is between 'failure' and 'abysmal failure'. There is no data outside of that range.

The fact that 4e was higher then pathfinder on the amazon best seller list comes to mind...or do you not accept that?

You keep bringing up this data, even though you don't believe it is representative of anything. Why should I? But let me ask you this: Paizo has an established direct sales model where people subscribe to their products and receive them from Paizo. Their website includes a full store where all of their product is available. Since Wizards directed their customers to Amazon.com while Paizo directed their customers to their own website, it seems plausible that even if Paizo sold 100x more product than Wizards, they would have had essentially the same ranking on Amazon.com. Since you keep on saying that we 'can't compare two different models', this would appear to thoroughly discredit your talking point. Further, if we accept that the Amazon sales rank means very little because Paizo uses direct sales, this would imply that 4e failed. Essentially your data point shows how badly 4e did, rather than how well.

On the other hand, the fact that 4e is not published in any form would be a pretty clear indication that it has failed while Paizo continuing to publish Pathfinder would seem to indicate that it is a success.

no it is not enough to KNOW it succssed by itself of course, but it is more then enought to sheed doubt over the 3er's line of "4e failed, of course"

You're asking for a judgement call here. I trust my judgement much more than yours, and in my judgement, I do not consider this by itself to be more than enough to 'sheed' doubt on 4th editions failure. However, I'm actually open to being persuaded that 4e is a success. I honestly don't care one way or the other. I would even accept a declaration from Mike Mearls from today onward as 'sufficient proof'. Invite him here, if you like.

You also are assuming that the kind of dominance that 3e had was possible when 4e came out, it may well not have been even if they had made a game that did nothing but pander to 3er's desire to pay for the game they already had.

I think it is disingenuous to claim that you cannot compare 4th edition to 3rd edition regarding what was possible. If there had not been a release of 4th edition, there is no indication that another product would have arisen to dominate the market. In fact, the evidence we do have seems to indicate that if 4th edition hadn't been released, 3.x or a very similar derivative could have maintained the market share that 3.x enjoyed.

Regarding number of classes in the PHB, there is no fixed number. The 3.0 and 3.5 PHB both had 11 base classes. The Deadland's Weird West Player's Guide had 20 Archetypes. Even the original 1st edition PHB had 10 classes (if you count variants such as Ranger as separate classes). If it was important to them, they would have found a way to fit them in.

the problem with trying to compare the number of classes that pre-4e version had is that many of them were not really different. Are a 3e rogue and fighter really enough to call different classes? what about sorc's and wizards? they use the same spells in the same way.

In some ways 4e was the first version to have more then a few classes in it. Every class was very different and played different, even if they look similar. unlike 3e where they look different but play the same.

Why would you consider Mike's word enough? he is just another stranger, one who many or may not have a bias.
I would treat his word as no more or less good then any of you unless he came with data that I could trust.

The fact that 4e is not being published by Wotc only means one thing...that wotc is not publishing it. it MIGHT mean it failed, it MIGHT mean they decided to dump it, even though it was doing well, because they thought they could do better and do not want to compete with themselves by selling 4e.

We may never have perfect data but that does not mean I have to draw conclusions with what I know is not enough. show me the DDI data, show me the pathfinder data and we can talk about odds and ranges. without that....your just assuming what the range for those are without any real way of knowing. it could 5%, it could be 500% you have no way to know.

Claiming to know something you do not is a lie, it may be of ignorance, and that may be forgivable, but after the first time someone points out that you lack the data to know it.....its is just a lie like any other.

[pragma]

You also are assuming that the choice of target numbers was up to those making 4e rather then being thrust on them as a requirement.

I've been staying out of this because I don't have the time or the energy (you're a hero, deaddm), but I felt the need to pull this gem out in case anyone is only skimming the wall of text.

Pike, you seriously think that someone other than the designers of 4e cared enough about the game to force them to set specific target numbers? Who?! I need to understand this hypothesis in its fullness because I'm pretty sure it ends in reptoids.

Any rate, I think that even the proposition is tremendously crazy. It's why I keep coming back to this thread with popcorn.

[erik]

You also are assuming that the choice of target numbers was up to those making 4e rather then being thrust on them as a requirement.

I've been staying out of this because I don't have the time or the energy (you're a hero, deaddm), but I felt the need to pull this gem out in case anyone is only skimming the wall of text.

Pike, you seriously think that someone other than the designers of 4e cared enough about the game to force them to set specific target numbers? Who?! I need to understand this hypothesis in its fullness because I'm pretty sure it ends in reptoids.

Any rate, I think that even the proposition is tremendously crazy. It's why I keep coming back to this thread with popcorn.

It goes all the way to the top. I feel that it is a well known fact that Dick Cheney was responsible for the target numbers and challenge DCs in 4e. It's more possible that that isn't the case, but since it is what I think, it is just as likely.

Logic facts.

[Aryxbez]

really? I DID ANSWER THAT LIKE 5 TIMES. TO DO AGAIN NO I THINK IT BECAUSE I HAVE LIMITED DATA THAT POINTS TO THAT CONCLUSION.

done? do I need to repeat that with smaller words for a sixth time?

Honestly, I wouldn't mind a 6th, or even 7th repeat using smaller words, in fact I'd very much enjoy the use of "with smaller words" actually.

So no, we're not done just yet. You mentioned "Limited Data", but if as the linked conversation stated*, if you have now discounted that data, how is it "limited' if it's not providing anything at all, useful as having nothing in your vernacular? So yes, could you explain how its not considered a "feeling" now you no longer have data? (Remember! use small, concise words, that strictly answer this subject and query at hand.)

*Changed the link only in case it would be more legible for you that way.

[momothefiddler]

In some ways 4e was the first version to have more then a few classes in it. Every class was very different and played different, even if they look similar. unlike 3e where they look different but play the same.

I honestly have no idea what to do with this.

[pragma]

You also are assuming that the choice of target numbers was up to those making 4e rather then being thrust on them as a requirement.

I've been staying out of this because I don't have the time or the energy (you're a hero, deaddm), but I felt the need to pull this gem out in case anyone is only skimming the wall of text.

Pike, you seriously think that someone other than the designers of 4e cared enough about the game to force them to set specific target numbers? Who?! I need to understand this hypothesis in its fullness because I'm pretty sure it ends in reptoids.

Any rate, I think that even the proposition is tremendously crazy. It's why I keep coming back to this thread with popcorn.

It goes all the way to the top. I feel that it is a well known fact that Dick Cheney was responsible for the target numbers and challenge DCs in 4e. It's more possible that that isn't the case, but since it is what I think, it is just as likely.

Logic facts.

It actually strikes me that if he meant sales targets and not skill challenge target numbers then the statement makes more sense in context. I mean, not a lot more sense, but the sales targets interpretation doesn't point to tinfoil hats.

So I'll cop to a misunderstanding on that point, but my confusion does undercut his defense of his own broken English on the basis that everyone understands it perfectly.

[MGuy]

In some ways 4e was the first version to have more then a few classes in it. Every class was very different and played different, even if they look similar. unlike 3e where they look different but play the same.

I honestly have no idea what to do with this.

I laughed.

[Orion]

I have mixed feelings about the cuts 4E made from the PHB. Half-orcs are stupid and have always been stupid. I was glad to see them go. Personally, I find Gnomes kind of dumb also, but I agree that they should absolutely have been in the PHB. Unlike class writeups, their race writeups took up minimal space. For classes, I'll agree that 8 was too few. They needed to match 3E at 10 or 11. However, Warlord was good enough to be worth making a cut for; Warlock might have been as well. Thinking about the classes that got cut, I'd say cutting Bard was a good choice. It's a weirdly specific concept in flavor, and a confused concept in mechanics that's worth putting off to deal with after you've anchored the more basic characters. Cutting Barbarian was a huge mistake. 4E really wanted to care about weapons. You had Rangers for archers and dual-wielding, Rogues for daggers (okay and technically sword), and Fighters and Paladins, who default to sword and board. They needed a 2-handed class in the first book. Sorcerer is pretty much equivalent to Warlock in my book. The game mechanic reason 3.0 invented sorcerers doesn't apply, so they're just there as another flavor of mage. You could have opened with wizard and sorcerer or wizard and warlock, or told people sorcerers were a type of wizard, or told people warlocks were a type of sorcerer. Whatever. The hard calls are Druids and Monks. Druids, Monks, and also Sorcerers did more interesting things in 4E than any of the PHB1 stuff. I'm kind of glad that they got put off because that allowed the designers to take the time to get them right, at least as "right" as 4E got anything. That said, I suppose nothing they did was so radical that it couldn't possibly have come out in the core book. Maybe instead of being grateful that Druid and Monk got the higher-quality PHB 2 and 3 treatments, maybe I should be offended that they didn't come up with alternate form powers, weapon implements, or "foci" and style powers in time for the core book.

[sandmann]

Why would you consider Mike's word enough? he is just another stranger, one who many or may not have a bias.
I would treat his word as no more or less good then any of you unless he came with data that I could trust.

This believe that a source is more or less credible the more you know her does not get less ridiculous the more you repeat it. Michele Obama is a very credible source in the question "How does the US-President feel today" regardless of our personal relationship with her. Statements by Mike Mearls about 4th are more important and relevant than "some strangers" statements because HE IS THE LEAD DEVELOPER OF 4TH EDITION. And no, to counter your next future fallacy, that does not make everything he says 100% true, but it means that you have to establish things like motives for him to lie or additional facts that make his statement unreliable. You have not done that. Not sure how that fallacy is named, but I'm sure that is one.

[deaddmwalking]

You quoted everything I said above. I characterized your argument as the following:

You do realize that your 'official' claim is that 'real 4th edition totally didn't fail, but when they relaunched it as Essentials, it totally did fail. That would mean that '4th edition failed' - because 'officially' Essentials is part of 4th edition. Do you realize that you agree with everyone here that 4th edition failed and you're only arguing over when it failed?

It sounds to me like you're agreeing that this fairly characterizes your position. Will you please confirm?

Claiming to know something you do not is a lie, it may be of ignorance, and that may be forgivable, but after the first time someone points out that you lack the data to know it.....its is just a lie like any other.

No, it isn't. Claiming to know something because you have evidence is the definition of the word. Even if someone claims you do not have the data, it does not make them right, nor does it mean you cease knowing something.

As you say, words have meanings. Maybe you should learn this one.

Know 1. be aware of through observation, inquiry, or information.

But since you appear to lack reading comprehension, I'll state that it is possible to 'know' something and be wrong. Knowledge doesn't necessarily equate to truth.

Since you seem to be struggling with this concept, the following quote may help:

“A thousand years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, they knew the Earth was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans were alone on it. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”

― Tommy Lee Jones

Note the word 'know' in conjunction with ideas that are factually incorrect.

[deaddmwalking]

Why would you consider Mike's word enough? he is just another stranger, one who many or may not have a bias.
I would treat his word as no more or less good then any of you unless he came with data that I could trust.

This believe that a source is more or less credible the more you know her does not get less ridiculous the more you repeat it. Michele Obama is a very credible source in the question "How does the US-President feel today" regardless of our personal relationship with her. Statements by Mike Mearls about 4th are more important and relevant than "some strangers" statements because HE IS THE LEAD DEVELOPER OF 4TH EDITION. And no, to counter your next future fallacy, that does not make everything he says 100% true, but it means that you have to establish things like motives for him to lie or additional facts that make his statement unreliable. You have not done that. Not sure how that fallacy is named, but I'm sure that is one.

Thanks Sandman. Since you brought that up, I believe that Mike Mearls has every reason to claim success considering his involvement in the project. I believe that the weight of evidence is so strong that Mike Mearls is unwilling to make the claim that 4e was a 'success' by any measure (at least today - during the run of 4th edition is another story). As a result, if he were to come here and make that claim, while it isn't definitive by any means, it would be sufficient for me to change my mind.

For CaptPike's benefit, what I am saying is that I don't hold this belief so strongly despite being based on available evidence and reason that I'm unwilling to change my belief based on new evidence that contradicts the information I currently have. If I only accept information that agrees with my current position, I'd be guilty of confirmation bias.

[Username17]

I'm actually not sure where people get the idea that Wizards of the Coast made money on 4th edition. It seems pretty likely that they did not. Wizards of the Coast is currently offering 15 different job openings, some of which are for multiple people. I don't know how many total people they employ, but it's a lot. A WotC Game Designer makes an average of about seventy thousand dollars a year. Now obviously it costs more to keep a person employed than their literal salary (human resources, outfitting their cubicle, benefits packages, tax payments, and so on). So it seems pretty likely that one of those neckbeards sets them back something in the neighborhood of a hundred grand. Per year. So if ten of those people are on staff, that's a million dollars. Per year.

We've also been told that WotC is management heavy, and that people with the words "senior," "lead," and "manager" make somewhat more than mere "game designers." 4th edition's PHB credits a "D&D 4th edition design team," a "D&D 4th edition final development strike team," "Player's Handbook design," "Player's Handbook development," "Player's Handbook editing," "Player's Handbook managing editing," "Additional design and development," "Director of R&D, roleplaying games/book publishing," "D&D story design and development manager," "D&D system design and development manager," "D&D senior art director," "Cover illustration," "graphic designers" "additional graphic design" "concept artists," "Interior illustrations," "D&D script design," "D&D brand team," "Publishing production specialists," "prepress manager," "imaging technicians," and "Production managers." Now a lot of people are wearing multiple hats (Andy Collins and James Wyatt credit themselves three times each), but there are still over sixty distinct people on that credits page. And they were fucking around on it since at least 2005 (remember that Mike Mearls released Tome of Battle after he convinced the rest of the design team to scrap the version they were working on and have him sell it out the side as optional rules for 3.5).

And we aren't including the distributor reps, the marketing leads, the janitors, and all the other people who allow the company to function but didn't manage to get their name on that one book. But our question is not whether the 4e PHB cost a million dollars to make. It's not even how many millions of dollars it cost to make. The question is how many tens of millions of dollars it cost to make.

And remember: the entire edition only sold hundreds of thousands of books. I don't know what WotC pays for printing and shipping, but it's a little hard to imagine them taking in more than twenty dollars for every book sold. In fact, I'd be surprised if their margin was a lot higher than ten. So the entire book line, I mean the whole thing, brought in a few million dollars in revenue. Big whup. That doesn't even pay for the startup costs.

And yes, they were selling online subscriptions to their Gleemax vaporware service. I don't know how much that service cost to set up and run, but again the smart guess would be somewhere in the eight figures. And how many suckers did they get? A hundred thousand people paying five dollars a month is just six million dollars a year.

Yes, if I sold as many copies of an obscure indie product as 4th edition's multi-national marketing apparatus sold of 4th edition products, I would be a multi-millionaire. But I am not a company that has to feed hundreds of people and was most recently purchased by Hasbro in 1999 for $325Million. Their operating costs are much larger than mine, and it's kind of ridiculous for people to hold up "millions of dollars in revenue" as if it was a good thing for them.

-Username17

[Leress]

by that metric a game failing means nothing whatsoever. If I was told a game failed that would give me no information.

Yeah, when you make a statement you follow it up with the reason why something failed. It called backing a claim up.

Also you still have not shown your amazon best seller data.

[deaddmwalking]

@Frank

The accounting of all those things don't all have to be paid for through sales of 4e. The Magic: The Gathering crowd needed a janitor, too. The incidental costs of a related business line are lower than the startup costs if you were building D&D from scratch. If the D&D design team had to pay for their computers out of their revenue, they almost certainly lost money. That's one major advantage of not being a 'stand alone unit'. But I do agree that it is hard to believe they made dollar $1 - and if they did it was certainly DDI that carried them there.

[name_here]

I actually have a twofold definition for failure, which 4e has done both of. First, it did not do as well as it should have given its resources. It had the DnD brand and the Hasbro infastructure, so it should have been able to sell as well as 3e, or more likely better. It was instead outsold by Pathfinder, which did not have those things.

Additionally, it failed to hit the RoI Hasbro considered acceptable. Even if the target numbers were set unrealistically high, they would not have cancelled subsequent books unless the line was underperforming relative to their other lines for the investment. Also, they would probably have stopped firing people after year two if it just wasn't doing as well as planned.

[Insomniac]

The thing that doomed the edition was like, the 3 year period where they announced a bunch of canceled product lines and put out something like 7 books in 2 years.

5E is managing to not match that sluggish behavior, but they've already had delays on core books within the first year and have announced basically nothing for the 5E pen and paper side of Dungeons and Dragons. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if 5E does even worse than 4E.