The Gaming Den

"Mearls admits 4th edition might have gone too far in creating a perfectly balanced game."

pffft, I'll admit I had to crack up a little when I heard that line in the summary at the site, and within the article itself. Something about that entire article just seems like it doesn't really understand much of anything that it's talking about. Maybe it's just me, but seems something painful about reading that article all the same.

I'm rather concerned that this article desired to mention him good at much of anything RPG based. Especially so in that it gives me the the notion that other people "think" he's a good designer too, I truly hope not...

I like how they talk about 4e out selling 3e.

Even though WotC never said that, based on anecdotal reports from some comic book shop guys I know, that seems to be the case.

Also the whole thing talks about preorder sales, with absolutely no mention of what happens once people read the books.

And of course, if you read that article, you would be completely unaware that 4e didn't sell well, and that's why the 5e talk, and the essentials, and the firing, because it just pretends that the sales were pretty much the same as last time.

Pathfinder is outselling 4e on the basis of "We're not 4e!"

That alone speaks volumes.

I think it has more to do with Pathfinder being presented as 3.75: "this is just like that edition, only better!"

The first half is accurate at least.

Nice article. It's interesting to see the mind-set of a failure.

Damn, you guys are cold. No wonder why I like this board.

I've heard that the game designers in interviews and promotions back in 2008 tried to hype 4th Edition by putting down 3rd as an unfun, clunky ruleset. If so, this would be the major reason for the broken fanbase. Nobody likes it when they're told that they were never having fun all those years of gaming.

Does anyone have links or transcripts of these statements/interviews?

I would start for the "Meet the Tiefling" video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UqFPujRZWo

It makes sense for him to phrase his argument like that though, when you think about it.

"The last edition had too much game balance, and everyone hated it!"
"uh.."
"So this edition will have less game balance! And then people will like it"
"no, wait"
"We're gonna release a version for everyone so that we can all join in on the game!"
"I don't--"
"And DLC for all!"
"stop. stop now."

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Pathfinder is outselling 4e on the basis of "We're not 4e!"

That alone speaks volumes.

Well, technically, Pathfinder is currently outselling 4E. But early on 4E was selling better even after Pathfinder launched.

Still, even Penny Arcade - which used to play a 4E campaign - has switched to Pathfinder with the words "In the New Testatment, there were bread and fishes! Here, you had flood! And plagues! And pillars of mother-fucking salt!"

4E D&D's problem wasn't that it was balanced. It's problem was what it did to achieve balance and the fact that it wasn't very balanced at all.

To wit, in the name of balance 4E:

[*] Ended up neutering all of the characters who could actually do things like naughty poodles. Just because we didn't like Linear Warriors / Quadratic Wizards doesn't mean that we'll like Logarithmic Warriors / Logarithmic Wizards.
[*] Intentionally made the physics engine more vague and DM-fiated at the cost of believability in order to prevent abuses.
[*] Completely neutered multiclassing.
[*] Reduced almost all of the powers in the book to damage + stock effect.
[*] Introduced several unliked disassociated mechanics in the game in the name of balance such as level-based DCs and crap like the 50 gold piece / 1 hour door unlocker.
[*] Introduced newer classes that became steadily worse and weaker as the game went on. In the PHB, the only class that isn't in the top three of its role is the paladin and that can change dependent on build.
[*] Churned out errata into the game at a maddening rate.
[*] Hamhandedly slathered on mechanics made to 'improve the game balance' like the expertise feats and item rarity.

And despite all that the game didn't end up very balanced anyway. True, the game doesn't break down as spectacularly as 3E D&D (being more of a whimper than a bang), but balance points of various classes and builds diverged unacceptably long before the end of the game.

When they say people don't like 4e because it's too balanced, I feel like it's someone saying "women don't like me because my dick is too big and I'm too rich and handsome."

It's a symptom of profound self-delusion OR lack of insight about people bordering on autism OR outright marketing lie. Maybe all three.

4e is not as fun as other games, thus other games have taken a larger share of the RPG market. You can debate the reasons why, but the bottom line is always going to be that 4e is less fun than previous editions.

Hey, you know what just occurred to me?

Because Mike Mearls is pretty much admitting that he's a fuck-up and a failure, it probably means that he's not working on 5th Edition D&D or doesn't have enough for a game.

I don't think anyone, even Sean K. Reynolds, is stupid enough to go 'sure, I fucked up the product line during my tenure and have no real idea how to fix it' but then slather their name all over the next product. Or at least there's no way his handlers would've let him say all that to the Escapist.

Who says that they "let" him? Maybe he got an advance notice of his pink slip and wants to do a marketing spin for his new job. That article has the same looking-for-pity vibe as Brad McQuaid trying to sell his ass after the failure of Vanguard on f13.

Of course, trying to give a "positive spin" to be one of the biggest causes of the D&D edition wars is like trying to market STD's, but the man doesn't seem to be aware of that.

We really don't have a guy who's qualified to step up and do things. I mean, there's Monte Cook, but when's the last time he put out something great?

My speculative idea is that WotC has no idea what the hell they are doing now that essentials failed.

Would be the perfect time for some newcomer with a good idea and half a book's worth of material to give'em something. In a better world this would be the chance for some no name to make his way into WOTC. But I'm guessing SOMEONE there has SOMETHING or they'd be making desperate moves. Right now just seems like they are going through the motions. The little articles here and there don't seem desperate enough to hint at them having absolutely nothing.

Penny Arcade, just like Pathfinder, is overrated.

Also, I wonder if any of the guys here at the Den have even the slightest chance of influencing the choices that those morons at WotC are going to make.

For example, statistics gathered internally show that more than two thirds of D&D players choose to play one of the four major races - human, elf, dwarf, halfling - so there's been a shift to focus on the core of what people expect from the game.

This specifically worries me,

It just becomes a Self-fulfilling prophecy way too fast not to mention that they completely gloss over any other reason for these stats.

Ryan Dancey, former VP of Marketing at WotC wrote:I think the tabletop RPG market is enduring a kind of death. I think it is transforming into something that isn't a viable commercial business for more than a handful of people

I think this might be the most interesting or worrying thing from the article. If the honchos at WotC come to the conclusion that the profit ratio isn't there we might not see a new version of D&D, not even a lame one.

EDIT: I missed the 'former' part of his title.

uhmmm he doesn't work for wotc anymore unless I'm mistaken and seeing he claims he is an 'MMO Marketing Expert' with specialties like: "Separating the "wheat" from the "chaff" of tactics vs. strategy", I don't care at all what he thinks

IIRC, Ryan Dancey is CEO of GoblinWorks or whatever they're called and is responsible for the upcoming Pathfinder MMO. I have a soft spot for him ever since he made a comment about the four different stages in D&D 3E gameplay throughout 20 levels. Said comment lead to the idea of E6.

About Mearls: I would laugh my sorry ass off if he ends up working for Paizo - in fact, I kinda hope it'll come to that. Just yesterday I flipped through Malhavoc's "The Book of Iron Might", with its not-quite-Warforged and the crazy maneuver- and stunt system. Almost all of Mearl's work I am aware of is a sad story of "what if...".

The puff piece sections of the article are annoying, but in a way they are illuminating as well. It's important to remember that 4e had more pre-order sales than any other D&D product ever. This really is a perfect example of the product itself alienating people and driving away customers.

People were ready for a 3e reboot. People had grudgingly come to accept that Fighters were underpowered and Clerics were overpowered and were willing to accept major changes to get that fixed. People were frustrated by the way items worked in 3e and were willing to accept radical changes to get that fixed. People had grudgingly accepted that there were major problems with 3e multiclassing and there were no easy answers, and they were willing to accept major changes to get that fixed too.

4e could have been a 3e PHB in lipstick and it still would have had the best sales in the first couple of weeks of any D&D product in history. The time was totally right. Only incredibly terrible design could have fucked that up.

Anyone who had their name attached to 4e at launch should be pariah in the industry. It is a proven fact that their actual writing and design skills sank the leader of the industry.

-Username17

K wrote:When they say people don't like 4e because it's too balanced, I feel like it's someone saying "women don't like me because my dick is too big and I'm too rich and handsome."

It's a symptom of profound self-delusion OR lack of insight about people bordering on autism OR outright marketing lie. Maybe all three.

It seems like the 4e team just didn't have any clue what people meant by "balance".