I got into fantasy roleplaying through Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition. For better or worse, to me D&D and the 3rd edition system are one in the same. After getting into a variety of different systems for different genres ( Chaosiums BRP, Kult's system, Storyteller 1 & 2, Palladium Megaversal system, to name but a few) I'm convinced that 3.5 fantasy is pretty much the best RPG system for fast paced tactical combat in close quarters. D&D 3.X offers players and DM's a lot of options when it comes combat. Miniatures may or may not be implemented. If they are, the  group can include as much detail as they ever want. Players are given to chance to participate in any capacity their players can. The level system is a perfect gauge for a player's prowess. The game rewards character growth through physical activity, but it also lets the DM put in effect other goal based systems. D&D makes dungeoncrawling fun and challenging by giving the players many options they can use if they are mindful of their characters strengths and limitations.
That piece-of-shit,World of Warcraft-wannabe 4th Edition dumbs down the game to the point of being condescending. It is a very stupid game that requires you to buy shitty plastic miniatures and cardboard dungeon pieces. 3rd Edition gave allowed you decide what is good for your game and what isn't.
Pathfinder is the cleanest iteration of the 3.0 version of the D20 System.  If you already own the 3.5 books then you may argue that buying the book is redundant. I lost all my 3.X books so I can't wait till Pathfinder comes out this summer.
Paizo is an amazing company who is being smart by going into the D20 market that Wizards of the Coast tried to destroy for no apparent reason. They definitely deserve my business.

Quote from: StormBringer;279993Again, that is the question you want to address, because it is the only winning strategy.  It completely misses the point that a group of people who are hardcore fans are not flocking to the latest iteration.

I'm sure what the significance of that is supposed to be. Do you imagine that a similar polls on the Wizards boards wouldn't show something completely different?

Quote from: StormBringer;279993No one is making the argument that this poll is rigorous enough to pass as a valid survey.

Yes, you are. You repeatedly have. Because if the information is invalid, we shouldn't listen to it, right? But you're saying we should pay attention to it, that it does mean something.

Quote from: StormBringer;279993The real point that these smoke and mirrors is trying to obscure is that the people most likely to embrace a new edition are lukewarm about it.

They are? Or is your point that some people haven't embraced it? Because, again, EnWorld as a whole represents something like 1.7 to 8.07 percent of the D&D playing population.

Quote from: StormBringer;279993Is that the whole argument?  Of course not, but it is an indicator.

So are overwhelming sales...

Quote from: StormBringer;279993While the poll won't pass muster for accuracy or validity, the argument that it is wholly irrelevant is false.

This is just nonsense. You're saying outright that a) the poll isn't accurate and b) we should heed what it tells us about 4e popularity. If it isn't accurate or valid, why should we listen to it?

If I polled kindergartners about their attitudes about 4e, should we listen to that poll, too? I mean, it would obviously be inaccurate and invalid, but that doesn't seem to be a problem.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;280578So are overwhelming sales...

So, you are willing to use this as an indication of success, but not an informal poll as an indication of troubles.

Quote from: StormBringer;280601So, you are willing to use this as an indication of success, but not an informal poll as an indication of troubles.

Yes. One is objective and mathematically robust. Your poll isn't. Or, rather, isn't outside of the population for the poll, which is EnWorld.

Seanchai

Quote from: StormBringer;280601So, you are willing to use this as an indication of success, but not an informal poll as an indication of troubles.

I am imagining a man lost at sea, stuck on a raft with nothing but a compass and a chart drawn from his memory of where he is pretty sure the land is.

He travels for days on swift currents. His raft has traveled for hundreds miles, adrift on the ocean, and is soon to die of thirst and hunger.

Suddenly, he can see actual land. He can see..people! civilization!

He compares it to the homemade chart he drew. It doesn't match at all.

The compass works fine, the chart is exactly as his memory and imagination told him to draw it. He knows he will die soon!

So he compares the chart to the coastline, and since the reality doesn't match his imagination or theory.. he decides the coastline must be wrong, and turns his raft away, towards where the other land must be...  he continues to drift. He dies within a day, because he was too stupid to get off the boat.

hello TheRPGSite! Welcome to the ocean!

How, or why, would a poll at Enworld be a better indicator than say one conducted on this site?

Quote from: Seanchai;280621Yes. One is objective and mathematically robust. Your poll isn't. Or, rather, isn't outside of the population for the poll, which is EnWorld.

Seanchai

Ah, so you have the sales numbers...?

Quote from: Seanchai;280565Because the company, the process, people, and core concept supported your views and your war against the Swine.

I think you have that kind of backwards. I hate the Swine because of their war on D20 and mainstream games.

QuoteExcept when it comes to 4e...

No, including 4e. Its just that with D&D, especially with the kinds of ambitions Wizards was talking about in this project, the margin of their success must be several orders of magnitude higher than with any other RPG.

QuoteUh-huh. Because Wizards has said a) that they sold over a year's worth of 4e in the first month of its release and b) that it wildly exceed their expectations. You know this. And so you've been talking for months now about how 4e is a success.

Except that WoTC has proven you can't believe anything their PR people say.
So the only way we'll know is over time, when we see what they end up doing and whether they end up treating 4e like it was a success or not. I'm not calling 4e a failure yet, I'm saying its too soon to tell and there are some mixed signs.

Quote"Yes, that's quite a conundrum, but couldn't you really say that about any game company, about any game?"

Look at the goal posts shift. First it was "any company" and now it's "ANY company making the level of commitment to a product line on the same level as what Paizo is doing..."

I don't see it as a shifting of goalposts at all. Obviously I meant with any game where there is a comparable level of significance of the product in question.  So, for example, Kenzer with the new Hackmaster.  WW with their new WoD. Etc etc.

QuoteAs I said and as we both recognize but you won't admit, other RPG companies aren't making that sort of commitment. Can you even think of another one that has?

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean here: are you asking if I recognize that other companies aren't going with 4e? Or that other companies aren't sticking to 3e? Or what??

RPGPundit

Quote from: StormBringer;280652Ah, so you have the sales numbers...?

No, I just have reports made about the sales numbers.

Seanchai

Quote from: RPGPundit;280712I think you have that kind of backwards. I hate the Swine because of their war on D20 and mainstream games.

No, you hate the Swine because they were a convenient target. Anyone would have done. They just wandered along. You can argue all you like that's not the case, but we all know a) you're an online persona, a projection, and b) that you decide to do or not to do based on said persona, what attention you decision will draw to it, etc..

Quote from: RPGPundit;280712Its just that with D&D, especially with the kinds of ambitions Wizards was talking about in this project, the margin of their success must be several orders of magnitude higher than with any other RPG.

Which they met.

Quote from: RPGPundit;280712Except that WoTC has proven you can't believe anything their PR people say.

So, to clarify for the home audience, 4e will only be a success if it meets WotC's expectations, but we can't listen to WotC to determine if it met their expectations. In other words, Pundit can remain on the fence forever. He can continue to call 4e is failure because only he has the keys to his definition of success...

Quote from: RPGPundit;280712So the only way we'll know is over time, when we see what they end up doing and whether they end up treating 4e like it was a success or not.

Uh-huh. Would reprinting additional books, creating products, et al. count as treating 4e like a success? Wait, no, silly question. Only you can determine if WotC is treating 4e as if it's been successful - any more objective, outside measure is doomed to fail.

Quote from: RPGPundit;280712I'm not calling 4e a failure yet...

Sure you are. You do it all the time.

Quote from: RPGPundit;280712I don't see it as a shifting of goalposts at all.

Of course not - you're in the frame of reference that's shifting.

Quote from: RPGPundit;280712Obviously I meant with any game where there is a comparable level of significance of the product in question.  So, for example, Kenzer with the new Hackmaster.  WW with their new WoD. Etc etc.

Yes, and we both agreed with that. But now it's..."ANY company making the level of commitment to a product line on the same level as what Paizo is doing..."

What Paizo is doing is greater and more risky than what Kenzer did with its new Hackmaster and what White Wolf did with their new World of Darkness.

Quote from: RPGPundit;280712I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean here...

I'm saying, what other company besides Paizo used to produce products for the market leader; badmouthed the market leader; created a playtest scenario that has a real possibility of raising and then dashing the hopes of the current clientele; then went on to produce a new version of their game that isn't wholly compatible with either their old products or the market leader's products?

Some companies have done some of those things, but it strikes me that Paizo is really moving out there with Pathfinder. If it's a hit, cool. If it's not, then what? It's not like they can go and start producing 4e adventures...

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;280855No, I just have reports made about the sales numbers.

Seanchai

With an outside party to confirm, I am sure.

Quote from: StormBringer;280905With an outside party to confirm, I am sure.

No. Of course, if I thought the people compiling the reports couldn't do basic math or gave me some reason to believe they weren't following the proper procedures, that would be a different story.

That's the crux of the problem with the idea that the EnWorld poll is representative of any population beyond EnWorld. The math is bad. There's no two ways about it - that's just not how statistics works.

And I know that's not how statistics works. Hence my saying repeatedly that the polls only represents the feelings and attitudes of the folks on EnWorld.

So, statistically speaking, the poll means nothing.

Now, you seem to be arguing that we should ignore statistics in favor of our gut feeling about the poll. Okay. Fine.

EnWorld has around 80,000 members. That represents something like 2 to 8 percent of D&D players as a whole. Not all EnWorld members dislike 4e.

So, just on gut feel alone, no, EnWorld's polls indicating a strong dislike for 4e doesn't mean anything. If the results were replicated on WotC's site, at other sites, etc., I might change my mind...

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;280930No.

Then, of course, those numbers are equally suspect.

You ask for adherence to the strictest of standards when considering an informal poll, but are unwilling to provide numbers that have undergone even a cursory validation, let alone what reports you are referring to.

So, you want people to trust your 'secret' knowledge without the merest shred of evidence that the numbers are accurate, other than your estimation that the report was compiled by people whose skills are beyond reproach.

Quote from: StormBringer;280935Then, of course, those numbers are equally suspect.

Absolutely. I believe the most information we have about D&D 4e sales is that they're self-reportedly "strong," that they've sold their first print run [pretty early on, right? Does anyone know how many copies were in the first run?], and that it's outselling anything else at the moment. That's really not very much information, and moreover, doesn't say anything about how much people like it. 4e got enough hype - slashdot advertising! - to sell an assload, to people who weren't even gaming at the time, but that doesn't mean they'll stay interested and keep buying; sales figures [even these largely speculative ones] can really only tell us how many people bought the thing, not how many liked it, or are still playing it, or will continue to play and buy it.

Now, if we could get hard figures on, say, an ongoing basis, we could start to get a sense of how "popular" the game really is, but given that we don't have anything like those figures, we can't do anything but speculate based on the information we have. Anyone who says differently, the man tells me, is selling something. Metaphorically, anyway.

Quote from: StormBringer;280935You ask for adherence to the strictest of standards when considering an informal poll, but are unwilling to provide numbers that have undergone even a cursory validation, let alone what reports you are referring to.

"Of course, if I thought the people compiling the reports couldn't do basic math or gave me some reason to believe they weren't following the proper procedures, that would be a different story."

That's the part of my response you conveniently left out.

Again, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the poll isn't a valid for the use you're (repeatedly and erroneously) attempting to put it to. If the sales data were coming from Joe's Ye Wee Hobby Shoppe and I knew their data was bad, then I'd have some reason to suspect said data. In the absence of any such doubts, there's no reason to be suspicious. I wouldn't call any conclusions based on said data 100 percent beyond reproach, but...

Seanchai