Quote from: James Gillen;545625"You are posting in a troll thread."

Well done sir.

Quote from: Aos;545629Eating at Chili's is the ultimate expression of nihilism.

For all cases of expression where nihilism = indigestion.

Quote from: gleichman;544688You're on my ignore list, I have to take extra steps to view your posts and seeing what they've been- it hasn't in general been worth it.

Thank you. Trying to engage in a serious discussion with an inexplicably arrogant troll who apparently has to put forth extra effort to understand simple concepts is taking too much of my valuable time anyway. I understand though. If you saw my posts, you might have to respond and have even more of your points proven to be bullshit, then you'd have to either admit you're wrong or again be shown to be the douche-bag troll you've been proven to be in most of the other threads you've attempted to derail here. Feel free to crawl back under your bridge for another year, you're starting to stink up the place again.

Quote from: B.T.;545527On a semi-related note, one of the Usual Suspects is claiming that WotC released the Essentials line to deliberately sink 4e.

Seems like kind of a stretch. Andy Collins got fired and Bill Slavicsek took over. Within a month, the entire 4e line of books had been cut and D&D Essentials was announced. Someone actually asked Bill Slavicsek what would happen if Essentials wasn't a success and didn't bring alienated players back. He "jokingly" replied "Then we all get fired."

But of course, that's exactly what happened. Essentials was a failure and Bill Slavicsek was fired seven months after initial release. The Essentials line was cut back after just three months. The "ten core Essentials products" after which the line was named never materialized.

Within a month of getting the big chair, Mike Mearls announced that he was working on a new edition...

I think it's fairly obvious what happened. 4e was a costly failure and the people in charge got fired literally every year while it was going on. Bill Slavicsek tried a hail mary of starting a new quasi-edition to try to jumpstart interest and save his job, and when that didn't work, the next guy did the only thing left: start an actual new edition.

Looked at from that perspective, all the weird polling and shit makes perfect sense. Mike Mearls needs to show progress constantly to the suits or lose his job. But he doesn't have a product that he can sell, because the last half-edition got shit canned before the core material was even finished. So in order to keep his job, he needs to show the people upstairs that progress is being made and fan interest is being generated without having any books to sell. So the answer is poll after poll to show the suits upstairs mountains of fan interest in the form of responses. I mean, the actual data is probably basically this, but I don't think it matters. The suits certainly aren't reading it and probably wouldn't know what it meant anyway.

But basically, if the actions of WotC seem wildly random to you, it's because people are being fired all the time. It's literally a corporate culture where people get fired every year and the head of the organization gets culled every year. Each new guy in charge has to show big results or they will get fired in next year's firings. And so they make big changes, hoping to get magic lightning that will keep their job. I don't know how long Mike Mearls can keep 5e as vaporware with a bunch of non-committal fan interest, but he basically has that plus six months to keep his job if the last two guys who had his job are any indication.

-Frank

Quote from: James Gillen;545620That's why it's called "average", isn't it?

JG

Yes. But it is surprising how much that bothers people. There was a thread on en world where a poster lamented his perfectly average IQ score. The responses suggested people didn't understand the guy was just perfectly normal.

IQ only exists to be misinterpreted and misused.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;545659I think it's fairly obvious what happened. 4e was a costly failure and the people in charge got fired literally every year while it was going on. Bill Slavicsek tried a hail mary of starting a new quasi-edition to try to jumpstart interest and save his job, and when that didn't work, the next guy did the only thing left: start an actual new edition.

That matches my assessment.

The interesting question would be whether or not Essentials could have been successful if it had actually been designed, structured, or marketed in anything resembling a competent fashion. But that's purely hypothetical at this point.

QuoteThe "ten core Essentials products" after which the line was named never materialized.

That's completely false. The Essentials product line was:

Starter Set
Heroes of the Fallen Lands
Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms
Rules Compendium
Roleplaying Game Dice
Dungeon Master's Kit
Dungeon Tiles Master Set: City
Dungeon Tiles Master Set: Dungeon
Dungeon Tiles Master Set: Wilderness
Monster Vault

All of those products were produced and are currently available for sale.