Signs of the beginning of the end for 4E.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:16 am

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:Except that WotC's numbers keep declining after the initial slide (even going down during the time after 4e's release, despite the big surge in traffic when they first put it on the D&D home page). Everybody else, OTOH, holds steady. And that includes Gleemax, which should have been awash in analysis of the fresh new rules.

Yeah. I think someone needs a lesson in Graph reading.

A sudden change in the way information was processed In April does not explain a 4 month long decline starting through July and proceeding to September.

Look at the spike on that graph there just before the decline where the numbers jump up. That's the June release date of 4E.

Yeah. After the April "methodology" change that apparently had no significant impact on that graph.

Some one is indeed thinking wishfully. Requiring time traveling release dates and methodology changes that phase in over a perfect 4 month decline curve, 4 months after being applied.

User · Post by **User** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:23 am

So what about: http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 324#p25324 which seems much more reliable than alexa? Or should we ignore that because it doesn't fit what we would like to be true?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:34 am

User wrote:So what about

I was just there reading that.

And it... is really stupid.

That guy says "4E is doing fine. Just not compared to 3E which was fucking AMAZING. So comparing it isn't fair. 4E is just doing as good in my own odd words as a year in which I suggest people were wondering if D&D was dead! And it only took another edition indeed, Third edition to cure that. And so 4E is fine! Just like D&D was back when it was languishing in obscurity!"

I mean WHAT? 4E is doing fine because you aren't allowed to compare it's release to the last major edition release? For no reason?

He will actively instead pick a year when D&D was "looking dead" and say 4E is doing fine in comparison to that, because all it will take is a new dramatically different edition to have the success that 3E had? WTF?

User... what is it you are Using? It sounds pretty potent.

User · Post by **User** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:36 am

There's a big difference between "doing ok, but not as well as 3e" and "on its last legs/soon to be no more 4e". What are you on that prevents you from grasping that simple distinction?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:41 am

The man openly declares that what it will take to revive 3E levels of interest, is 5th edition.

You and he are REALLY in wishful thinking land if you can make the "4E is doomed" argument FOR US and then declare it proves us wrong.

User · Post by **User** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:44 am

I'll repeat myself: There's a big difference between "doing ok, but not as well as 3e" and "on its last legs/soon to be no more 4e". What are you on that prevents you from grasping that simple distinction?

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:47 am

User wrote:So what about: http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 324#p25324 which seems much more reliable than alexa? Or should we ignore that because it doesn't fit what we would like to be true?

No, we should ignore it because it's little more than Goodman saying, "Trust my authority." The only actual data he refers to is a relative increase in pre-orders for one of his product lines. The thing is, though, that Goodman Games, as a smaller company, doesn't have to sell as many books to be profitable as WotC does. Furthermore, we don't know how many people are buying these products just because they're Goodman Games fans and intend to modify the adventures for use in 3.5. That post tells you nothing about how WotC products are selling and whether that's enough to make 4e profitable (or profitable enough) for them.

BTW, I love how you simultaneously argue that Alexa is untrustworthy and that the decline is caused by a methodology change to make Alexa more reliable. Is Doublespeak your native language?

User · Post by **User** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:51 am

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:BTW, I love how you simultaneously argue that Alexa is untrustworthy and that the decline is caused by a methodology change to make Alexa more reliable. Is Doublespeak your native language?

My point is simply that Alexa is not the best source; there are many reason to not take it at face value. Among those reasons is that changes in collection methodology around the time of 4e's release that may have caused the data to skew up or down for some sites. There is also the fact that Alexa is built upon a statistically small and biased sample of internet users. Etc, etc, etc. However I would be more inclined to trust them in this case if there was some other collaborating evidence outside of Alexa to support the claim that 4e is on its last legs. Provide it and I'll listen.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:55 am

User wrote:Alexa is built upon a statistically small and biased sample of internet users.

But a guy who gives us no data at all is actually good evidence?

Alexa may be a small sample but it is much larger that one guy's anecdote about his feelings.

And hell the unspecified market segment and data that he uses to back his argument from authority is arguably the even SMALLER and significantly more biased sample of people who buy his obscure third party gaming products.

Learn some consistency User, or it will bite you in the ass.

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 10:35 am

User wrote:Here's a much better explanation, which also explains drops in sites like penny-arcade at the same time:

"On April 16, 2008 many users reported dramatic shifts in their Alexa rankings."

I'm looking at the rankings for wizards.com, and I do not see a dramatic shift in Alexa rankings for that site around April 16th. Instead, I see a slow decline between May 2008 and Jan 2009. Your "much better explanation" does not match the data, and is therefore much worse.

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 10:44 am

User wrote:I'll repeat myself: There's a big difference between "doing ok, but not as well as 3e" and "on its last legs/soon to be no more 4e". What are you on that prevents you from grasping that simple distinction?

'

Now look here:

I'll start by saying that I'm not involved with RPG market. I know stuff from casual observation, like 90% of others, but I don't know the inns and outs, and how it actually functions inside the publishing companies. Also, business isn't my specialty, but I do know quite a bit about running one as well as how its done due to unimportant stuff.

Now, here's how the stuff is being done. You are a company, and you have a product. You sell that product. The interest in your product (and, consequentially, the sales) increases at first more or less rapidly, then it reaches the certain peak. After that, it stagnates a bit, and, after that, people start losing interest in it. So what does the company do? They renew the product. Add some enhancements to it, some new additions, some new features, and start selling that. The new sales probably won't reach the peak sales of the original product, but, hey, they will do their job and prolong the product cycle.

Eventually, the inevitable comes, and you just can't renew the product anymore. People have lost all interest in it. So, you drop it, and launch a new one. And the whole story starts again.

So, in D&D world, you had 3E. For all intents and purposes of my explanation of things to you, that's the original product. It sells. Then, they keep publishing books such as Swording and Fisting to keep the interest of the customers. Then, they publish 3.5, which is essentially a new product a few years later. And then, some more years after 3.5, here comes the 4E.

What does that tell us? The product cycle of 3E & 3.5E lasted for about... 4 years? if 4E's peak is lower, and you agree it is, how long do you think before some imaginary 4.5 or 5e? 4 years? 2 years? Well, WotC originally planed for longer, which leads me into...

The WotC reformed business model. The DDI and the new PHB every year thing. What it basically comes down to is this. With DDI they wanted to generate income for a prolonged period of time. Which probably means that they thought 4E book sales would just not be enough. And PHB every year means that, in order to keep up, they would need a significant boost of sales every year.

Now, what was their intended level of sales objective? Well, they did practically stop any and all 3E support. And they tried to get in new people. That makes you think they were originally aiming for 3E-level peak or even higher.

And they failed. They did not recover the market share they originally had. Even Goodman's "its doing good, I won't say how, but it does" speech doesn't miss that. They didn't reach their objectives.

Now what does this mean, what are the implications of this, I don't know, that's something only known to WotC management. Maybe they'll get by with this failure just fine. Maybe they'll have to reform. Maybe they'll need to make unfortunate cuts. Honestly, there's no way for an outsider to know.

But I do know one thing. You know what you do when your invention fails? You go back to the drawing board.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:43 pm

My conclusion from that data was that 4e simply isn't as popular as 3e. However, the 6-month drop bottoms out and then stays steady, implying that 4e has a so-far loyal following.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 1:21 pm

mean_liar wrote:implying that 4e has a so-far loyal following.

Sadly it does - though I have the feeling that this loyalty will end once 5E comes out. Shit, we'll need an insult rhyming with/sounding like Five, then. I mean, we have Threeaboos, Fourries, what will the 5E fans be?

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 2:52 pm

Fifth is close enough to filth already. Unfortunately, Fifthy sounds too similar to pithy, so that's right out.

Well, 5E is likely to be deeply affected by casual gamers, so perhaps Fifth-Raff?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 23, 2009 3:28 pm

There are a lot less 3rd party producers for 4e than there were for 3e. Goodman says that there is enough interest n 4e to keep his stuff alive, but he doesn't say that there is enough to keep dozens of other potential entrants into the market alive. He doesn't even imply that. And yet, for 3e, there was.

Goodman had dozens of competitors in 3e times. Writing material for 4e, he has like four. All he is saying is that 4e is doing no worse than 10% as well as 3e was doing. That's plenty for him, because of the ecological niche he lives in. But that's not a glowing endorsement for WotC.

He openly admits that 4e is not doing well by the standards that the publishing company of the actual game should care about. But he says that we shouldn't care about that, because it's still doing well enough to keep him afloat. The thing is, I don't give a rat's ass whether Goodman stays in business, and neither does WotC.

-Username17

Thymos · Post by **Thymos** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 4:34 am

Well, the new GSL can also explain why there are so many fewer 3rd party publishers.

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:19 pm

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:49 pm

I can't imagine why they'd give a fuck about Goodman releasing a book about anything. A Dragonborn book was preordained, because it's how their release schedule works. Each book is as narrowly defined as possible because they need to publish four fucking books a month.

So Complete Warrior became Martial Power and no longer covers Paladins and Barbarians. So Races of Short becomes Races of Dwarf and Races of Rabbit Fucking is chopped into Races of Halfling and Races of Elf.

Like K said, all choices made in the 4e design process are bad choices. As I said in Lago's marketing strategy thread, the races of books need to be more generally useful, not less.

-Username17

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 4:13 pm

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:11 am

WotC sent me a letter that they might suspend my forum account for inactivity.

The account that I haven't been able to log into for four years?

-Crissa

PS: Every product has a level of loyal following. The thing is, can or will the publisher attempt to make a profit at that level?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:17 am

I got one too, similar circumstances.

So their traffic has dropped off over the last year. And they send out emails to everyone who hasn't logged in for a year... (including those who can't for various reasons).

A desperate measure to beat up some extra traffic?

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:32 am

I got one as well, then two days later it said that it was a mistake.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:45 am

So was it a mistake because you had logged on in the last year or whatever it was? Because if they are just sending this message out to basically anyone then that is SO totally thinly veiled drumming up traffic.

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:05 am

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 2:08 am

PhoneLobster wrote:So was it a mistake because you had logged on in the last year or whatever it was? Because if they are just sending this message out to basically anyone then that is SO totally thinly veiled drumming up traffic.

For me it was because I had logged in within this year. It would look like a thinly veiled way of drumming up traffic.