Signs of the beginning of the end for 4E.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:22 am

Mearls apologizes for fucking up skill challenges, solo encounters, and wizards.

sake · Post by **sake** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:38 am

I think admitting that they had no intention of finishing any of the game tools they promised for DDI and turning the service into subscription based coming attractions and killing their pdf sales already were signs of the end.

But as far as upcoming end signs go... if we don't see a D&D/FR/Eberron based video game using 4E's system (or at least some recognizable derivative of it) made or in production within the next year, I call that a sign that the system's a goner.

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 4:14 am

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 4:41 am

They admitted that they have no intention of finishing DDI? Are there people paying a subscription right now, and what are they getting?

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 4:48 am

sake · Post by **sake** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:45 am

virgileso wrote: Are there people paying a subscription right now, and what are they getting?

I think the fee actually increased recently, and all they're currently paying for are updates to the character builder, Dragon/Dungeon, the rule compendium, and incomplete playtests for upcoming stuff.

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:29 am

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:13 pm

Sounds a bit like buying a beta for an game. Oh shi-!

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:57 pm

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 7:10 pm

Or a linux distro, like ever.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 7:44 pm

sake wrote: I think the fee actually increased recently, and all they're currently paying for are updates to the character builder, Dragon/Dungeon, the rule compendium, and incomplete playtests for upcoming stuff.

Yeah, that's sad. They don't have about half the features they promised, and they're increasing the fee. And to make things worse, even if you're a hardcore fan and want to help them playtest that bad, they don't even listen to most of your advice anyway.

Man... is WotC deliberately trying to self destruct D&D?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 8:05 pm

RC2 wrote:Yeah, that's sad. They don't have about half the features they promised, and they're increasing the fee. And to make things worse, even if you're a hardcore fan and want to help them playtest that bad, they don't even listen to most of your advice anyway.

Man... is WotC deliberately trying to self destruct D&D?

Funny that you should say that, RC.

I think you guys already know about the Hurricane of Blades fiasco, but for the people not familiar with it, let me break it down for you.

See, back in October 2008 there was a playtest for the Barbarian and they had a level 27 power that people complained about.

Barbarian Playtest .pdf "Hurricane of Blades" wrote: Encounter * Primal, Weapon
Standard Action * Melee weapon
Target: One or more creatures
Attack: Strength vs. AC, six attacks
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage per attack.

Of course, people complained about this power, saying that it's so good that people will do whatever they can to plunder it.

Wizards received this feedback. We know they did, because they adjusted this power in the final printing for the PHB2.

Player's Handbook 2, page 60 "Hurricane of Blades" wrote: Encounter * Primal, Weapon
Standard Action * Melee Weapon
Target: One Creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage.
Effect: Make the attack five more times against the same target or different ones.

And just as the icing on the ass-shaped cake, look what else was printed. Brand new power, was not in the playtest.

Player's Handbook 2, Page 56 "Storm of Blades wrote: Encounter * Primal, Weapon
Standard Action * Melee Weapon
Target: One Creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage. Then repeat the attack against the target or against another creature within reach. You can make the attack a number of times equal to your Constitution modifier.

One or more conclusions could be drawn from this incident.

1) There is no coordination between playtest staff and the people who do the final editting
2) Someone up the chain of command meddled in the final product to make this power work. I'm suspecting Andy Collins.
3) The book was already off to the presses and the 'playtest' was just to get people interested in the product. Which means that the playtest was actually a huge lie.
4) The playtesters who gathered the data thought that people were just being whiny about it being 'too powerful' (which doesn't make any fucking sense, since it's by far and away the best power and if that's not too powerful then nothing is) or thought that it wouldn't matter because 'epic is broken anyway'.

A lot of people, including Titanium Dragon, lost faith in the playtest staff after that. I am one of those people. I was well aware of the flaws of 4th Edition at that point but that blatant 'fuck you' to the fans who sat down and playtested material indicated to me that things will not get better in this edition without the game designers getting their asses fired and us getting some new people in.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 9:32 am

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wizards.com

Just as the icing on the ass-shaped cake.

You gotta love that trendline. Steady, steady for 2008... then July, right about when 4th Edition comes out in full-force and the fucking line drops like a hot potato. And it's continuing to go down. There's been a recent spike, though. If I had to guess, it's because of the Magic: The Gathering game that got released for the X360.

If I was Hasbro, I would be fucking pissed at Andy Collins. I wonder if these guys even know how deeply steeped they are in shit.

ggroy · Post by **ggroy** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 3:17 pm

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 3:51 pm

That's impressive. I mean, I know that Hasbro has lost Narly half of its value in the year since 4e dropped. But that's mostly about how hard economic times contract toy sales. But the thing where wizards.com lost more than half of its share of internet traffic - that's pretty hard to argue with. That doesn't just mean that they are in the sinking economic boat, it means that they are sinking faster than the rest of the boat.

-Username17

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 5:04 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote: A lot of people, including Titanium Dragon, lost faith in the playtest staff after that. I am one of those people. I was well aware of the flaws of 4th Edition at that point but that blatant 'fuck you' to the fans who sat down and playtested material indicated to me that things will not get better in this edition without the game designers getting their asses fired and us getting some new people in.

Yeah, I mean I don't even fucking get it how they can fuck up 4E. The math is simple and something that you should be able to easily fucking do. I mean there's just no excuse for that shit.

Absentminded_Wizard · Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:14 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wizards.com

Just as the icing on the ass-shaped cake.

You gotta love that trendline. Steady, steady for 2008... then July, right about when 4th Edition comes out in full-force and the fucking line drops like a hot potato. And it's continuing to go down. There's been a recent spike, though. If I had to guess, it's because of the Magic: The Gathering game that got released for the X360.

If I was Hasbro, I would be fucking pissed at Andy Collins. I wonder if these guys even know how deeply steeped they are in shit.

Yep. I love how fast that peak right about the time of the announcement turned into freefall.

User · Post by **User** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:46 am

I'd like this to be true, but it seems like wishful thinking. The drop in traffic could have a number of causes, and the timing could be pure coincidence. For example, I remember that around six years ago the traffic of all the geek sites went up. But what really had happened was that a bunch of people had installed the alexa toolbar because of an article they read on /. The 4e forums (rpg.net) seem to be still going strong; if 4e really was dying out I would expect them to be a wasteland.

Absentminded_Wizard · Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:56 am

Check the data. The number of hits WotC's getting from search engines went up (last tab on the graph). Odds are their recent surge is from that traffic rather than a dedicated cadre of followers.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:24 am

User wrote:I'd like this to be true, but it seems like wishful thinking. The drop in traffic could have a number of causes, and the timing could be pure coincidence. For example, I remember that around six years ago the traffic of all the geek sites went up. But what really had happened was that a bunch of people had installed the alexa toolbar because of an article they read on /. The 4e forums (rpg.net) seem to be still going strong; if 4e really was dying out I would expect them to be a wasteland.

Fair enough, though rpg.net does a lot more than just D&D stuff.

I think a better test would be the gleemax forums.

First, here's what Alexa has to say about the websites.

Gleemax is the community for gamers on the web – a combination of social networking, online gaming and game related content. ... Gleemax is built on three pillars – community, games and editorial content – each representing the essence of what WotC has been providing strategy gamers for more than 15 years.

Unfortunately for us, the Gleemax forums also cover activities like Magic: The Gathering so we won't get an idea of posts for just the D&D game, which gives us false positives like the spike in activity with the release of the XBL game. Though I'm positive the spike comes from the XBL game, because almost as many pages threads for the new forum dedicated for that game were created in the same timespan as threads created for the main forum (20 pages of threads for the X360 game, 23 for the 'main' forum).

However, even with Magic, the number of visitors for the WotC forums is still appalling. Seriously, the decline in reach dropped from about .0095 to about .0040. That's more than half of the people not visiting these forums to the time before 4th Edition was released.

But even rpg.net, which doesn't specialize in D&D, has been taking repeated ninja kicks to the nuts. They went down from about a .006 reach to a .004. In layman's terms, they lost about a third of their visitors.

It looks like my 2012 prediction of the edition going under was a bit too conservative. Seriously, not even WCW was tanking this fast and it didn't last for 2 years after it started to really decline.

The sooner Andy Collins has to work at a real job, the better.

User · Post by **User** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 9:06 am

Ok, I have pretty conclusive proof that the drop means nothing: white-wolf.com suffers a similar hit at the same time. So does penny-arcade. Surely 4e didn't impact them in this way. So the drop seems recession related, not 4e related.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 9:08 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: But even rpg.net, which doesn't specialize in D&D, has been taking repeated ninja kicks to the nuts. They went down from about a .006 reach to a .004. In layman's terms, they lost about a third of their visitors.

No wonder. Rpg.net very much promotes "newer is better" policy, whether we talk of DnD, WoD or whatever - anyone who dares to say anything more negative than "I don't like it" is going to be flamed with tacit approval of the mods. They actually have WW freelancers lurking on the forums to praise current WW products and, again, flame people who disagree, for example. But as newer is actually worse this time, I'm not surprised that they lose popularity.

User · Post by **User** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 9:15 am

So, in light of the above evidence - indicating no real loss in visitors proportional to other websites - and the fact that 4e forms seem hopping, and the fact that the books make the best seller list on occasion, it would appear that 4e is doing fine. Sure, there is a community that still prefers 3e. But it looks like 4e has picked up a number of new players who previously didn't like D&D. I guess it's true after all that 4e was designed for people who didn't like D&D. 4e needs killing, it's not dying by itself.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 9:34 am

I might point out that forum hits are a bad form of testing for popularity.

For instance, WoW has an all-time high in users in North America, yet the forums are at an all-time low in posts.

-Crissa

PS, the number of stores selling Hasbro product has never been lower, since the company began. There are less toy stores now, than in the 1930s.