D&D 5E The all-inclusive 4/5E DDI

[DEFCON 1]

One thing that I always see mentioned when the talk about any supposed 5th edition comes up, is the idea that the 4E DDI suite "goes away"... leaving 4E players high and dry. They "lose" all their material because WotC shuts down the 4E Character Builder, Monster Builder etc. etc.

But let's think about what a "5E" game and online tools would be like. Based upon all the work they have done to get the CB, MB, Compendium, and VTT up and running... all the years of availability to the public which have basically made them all running open beta tests... doesn't it seem odd the idea that whatever 5E is, that it'd be so completely different from 4E that they wouldn't actually be able use anything they've built for it up to this point?

To me at least... it seems much more likely that whatever the next iteration of the D&D game is... that it will use the foundations that have been built within 4E and the 4E suite of online tools such that 4E won't actually stop being a part of the game architecture (because it would be much cheaper and easier to build on what they've learned... doing another but much more comprehensive "clean up" and "adaptation" of the rules... than have to completely reinvent everything for a whole new game.) Even if you add tiers of complexity like Mearls has talked about in Legends and Lore... you can still do all of that while maintaining the basic game architecture they developed for 4E.

To that end... people have been clamoring for ways to "turn off" certain parts of the Character Builder/Monster Builder for quite a while now (in order to eliminate material from books they don't want to use, or to remove feats/powers that have been made redundant over time.) It seems likely to me that this probably will get added to the architecture of the programs at some point in time. It's important enough to eventually work on, plus there's a very good reason why to, once "5E" gets added to it. Doesn't it seem likely that WotC would include as part of the toggleable settings the actual 4E Classic and 4E Essentials games themselves as removable/addable parts within their Character and Monster Builders? That way... if/when the "5E" material arrives and possibly "resets" much of what has come before (with new versions of feats, new versions of classes and class features, new versions of monsters and equipment), you as a user will be able to "turn off" all of 4E if you don't want to use any of it... "turn off" parts of 4E if you only want to use things like monsters created with the MM3/MV math and beyond... or more importantly, "turn off" all of 5E itself so that you can continue to use your DDI suite strictly for your 4E game if you choose not to move on. Because after all... so long as you maintain paying your monthly subscription fee, it no longer matters which version of the game you actually use. You're still "buying" 5E even if you never use it, and WotC is happy.

If the foundation of the game remains basically the same... and everything is built such that any and all of it is pretty much compatible with each other... there's no reason NOT to set it up so that players can choose anything and everything within 4/5E they want to use. And as a result... those of us who subscribe to DDI will truly never lose access to any part of the game we want... even if it moves on to a "new edition" without us.

 

[wlmartin]

One thing that I always see mentioned when the talk about any supposed 5th edition comes up, is the idea that the 4E DDI suite "goes away"... leaving 4E players high and dry. They "lose" all their material because WotC shuts down the 4E Character Builder, Monster Builder etc. etc.
.

That is part of the point
5e WOULD have to be completely different to justify a new edition. They couldn't just say "4e rules but with an extra D20 to account for a luck roll" or something silly

DDI gives WotC a fantastic ability to release Digital Only Content that is undownloadable and commits people to spend $6 a month for life. So whilst 3 became 3.5, if DDI had existed prior to 4e, 3.5 would not have existed and it would have just been a slow transition to a newer edition without realizing it with errata changes bit by bit.

Their goal might be to create SOOOO many errata changes over the next several years that 4e simply BECOMES 5e and the only way one can have access to all the many ammended rules is with DDI (ca-ching)

Think of it like the TV show model. Each edition being a new series.
In theory with something like DDI you could have one massive long 200 episode TV series (that would have spanned 10 individual ones) and the only way one would tell something has changed is to look back at the original Corebooks and what would eventually become and someone says

"Dudes, you realize with all the changes... this is 5th edition anyways, we dont have Power Cards any more and Initiative is based on Int + Dex" - you would never know because a watched pot never boils!


If this doesnt occur and a drasticaly different edition comes around then they would need to split DDI into a 4e section and 5e section, that is a must no question.


Remember one important thing. DDI was an experiment during the early days of 4e that went RIGHT. Just like Video Game publishers are moving to MMOs now because of the revenue stream, so to is WotC moving to a purely digital platform. If they can release new Corebooks that are Digital Only (DDI subscription required) they make a lot more money for a MASSIVLY lower outlay.

It costs a lot of money to publish books
It costs a lot LESS money to publish PDFs

No matter what, I do not think that D&D will exist much if at all in Solid Corebook fashion any more and if they can get everyone signed up to DDI - they can either
a) Stretch the 4e ruleset to anything they want over time, thus completely bypassing the need to release edition after edition
b) Release whatever edition they want in the future but do so purely electronicaly

I don't see 5e happening for a good long while, they have plenty of tweaks and changes to 4e before they answer the question that no-one is yet asking which is

"4e is stale, can we have a new edition please?"

They are on a good earner - I don't think they are going to do anything to sour it!

 

[delericho]

But let's think about what a "5E" game and online tools would be like. Based upon all the work they have done to get the CB, MB, Compendium, and VTT up and running... all the years of availability to the public which have basically made them all running open beta tests... doesn't it seem odd the idea that whatever 5E is, that it'd be so completely different from 4E that they wouldn't actually be able use anything they've built for it up to this point?

Yes. If 5e is significantly different from 4e, then pretty much all the existing tools would become useless. Only the VTT would survive largely intact. Of course, that seems to be WotC's primary focus at the moment...

To me at least... it seems much more likely that whatever the next iteration of the D&D game is... that it will use the foundations that have been built within 4E and the 4E suite of online tools such that 4E won't actually stop being a part of the game architecture...

If the foundation of the game remains basically the same...

Well, that's the crux of it right there.

As far as I can see, there are three possible reasons for doing a 5e:

1) To get the sales bump that comes from new versions of the PHB/DMG/MM. Of course, this only works if people buy those new versions, and anything that impedes that is a bad thing.

2) To clean out the accumulated "junk options" from the game. A goal that is defeated if those options remain in play through the DDI.

But the big one:

3) To try to win back people who left D&D at 4e; that is, to win back the Pathfinder converts.

If I were WotC, I would consider the existence of Pathfinder as a commercial venture (not to mention the relative sales levels) to be a major failure. 99% of those players should have moved to 4e. And they represent probably the biggest and easiest untapped market for expansion of the D&D brand - genuinely new players are hard to attract, the efforts to win back lapsed players with the Red Box seem to have failed, that that group...

However, to win back the people who rejected 4e, 5e will have to have big and obvious differences from 4e. Just slapping a new coat of paint on the same system will not work. By and large, people who quite 4e for Pathfinder did so for a reason, and whether that reason is 4e or WotC, to win them back WotC have to show that they've changed.

(And all of that ignores Mearls' likely desire to really put his stamp on the game, which will also likely mean changes.)

So, I fully expect any 5e to be significantly different from 4e, and thus to get a whole new DDI suite. (And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the DDI effort is actually, secretly, going towards those new tools. It really would explain a lot about the online CB and MB at release.)

Of course, if 5e requires a new DDI (and perhaps even if it doesn't), I fully expect the old stuff to be promptly removed. Both because WotC have never supported two editions in parallel (and wisely so, IMO), but also because of the costs inherent in hosting and maintaining tools for an edition they'd rather see fade away in favour of the new hotness.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't see 5e happening for a good long while, they have plenty of tweaks and changes to 4e before they answer the question that no-one is yet asking which is

"4e is stale, can we have a new edition please?"

Well, this was my reason for continually putting 5E in quotes... because I agree that I don't think what comes next would be considered a "new edition" like in the past, but rather just an overhaul and clean up of 4E. I used "5E" as a shorthand to describe what the next phase of this game architecture was going to be. So I think we're both in agreement.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) The more I think about it, the more I come to this conclusion: with D&D still being the brand powerhouse that it is, WotC/Hasbro could go virtually any way they want with the next iteration- based on pre-4ED, based on 4Ed, or based on new mechanical underpinnings- and still make a viable product.

2) With the technology of the day combined with the brand power at their disposal, it is also entirely possible- as has been done by companies like Coke, Pepsi, Ford and others- that WotC/Hasbro could support multiple product lines within their market. Using a digital only model for certain products, they could even have the entire history of D&D available for sale. By that, I mean that both old and new products for past editions would be available via download, but that only the most current edition gets afforded physical production. Yes, it would require a bit more staff, but not much. If an older edition proves to not be a good source for sales of new product, cease the production of new product, but keep supplying the already extant product to make your old IP work for you. You could even sell entire line in game stores as PDFs on flash drives. (I'd buy that.)

Disney does that to great effect, every few years releasing a few of their classics to the public.

 

[DEFCON 1]

As far as I can see, there are three possible reasons for doing a 5e:

1) To get the sales bump that comes from new versions of the PHB/DMG/MM. Of course, this only works if people buy those new versions, and anything that impedes that is a bad thing.

2) To clean out the accumulated "junk options" from the game. A goal that is defeated if those options remain in play through the DDI.

But the big one:

3) To try to win back people who left D&D at 4e; that is, to win back the Pathfinder converts.

To comment on your three points...

If people are still paying for DDI, then 1) gets taken care of. So long as WotC continually adds things to all their databases to keep people signed up, then it works for them and they get their money. If they can have a big expansion that delivers a whole new thrust of material to possibly get even more people to sign up (whether that's called Essentials, or 5E or something different) then that's even better.

As far as 2)... the reason they haven't cleaned out the junk options yet is because they didn't want to eliminate things that people might still be playing. Which was the point of my post. If the new Builders have more aggressive and flexible toggles for showing/hiding information... they won't need to "eliminate" anything. They can just let people turn stuff off. So someone who signs up purely to play whatever "5E" type expansion that gets released can go in and turn off ALL 4E material. But at the same time... someone playing 4E who doesn't want to move to the "5E" material can turn THAT off as well, and stick with what they've had before. It solves the problem for both sides of players. You can keep the databases active for both of them.

It's your 3) though that I think you're not on the right track with. Because to move back that far with 5E to regain the 3E players, means you alienate all your happy 4E players. Thus you've just made the same mistake twice. I think what we've seen from both Essentials and all the Mearls pieces is the idea of returning to earlier concepts in D&D while still staying within the 4E architecture.

Some 3.5/PF players are gone regardless of what WotC does-- some are the ones who got offended by the "badwrongfun" of 3.5 they perceived WotC were claiming when they rolled out 4E. Others are ones who use and enjoy so many third-party-products that they won't go to any future system that won't include an OGL. So there's little to nothing WotC can do to get those players back, short of selling the game to another company or having a new OGL... neither of which are at all likely.

The rest of the players are ones who just have problems with many of the game mechanics of 4E (ranging from healing surges to multiclass rules to power similiarity or disparity etc. etc.) And for these people... WotC can most certainly move things back in that direction while staying within 4E game architecture, considering that much of Essentials has already started going that way. Now, we and they know it's impossible to get all of the PF players back... but I believe they'll try to find a good balance of creating various game options to inspire the 3E player, as well as the 4E player, as well as the all-new "5E" player, and as well as the basic/advanced game and miniatures/no miniatures game schism of players too... especially if they can set up their Character Builder to turn all of these options on and off depending on personal campaign choice.

They do that... and they can have a D&D game that can play a lot like 3E, 4E, "5E", a hybrid of any of them, and perhaps even harken back to 1E or BECMI. All while using the same base game architecture that can be run through the VTT and the various game Builders.

 

[Riastlin]

Based on what I saw in the initial VTT Beta, it certainly appears as though WotC is contemplating supporting, at least to an extent, multiple editions. Its much easier to support an older edition digitally than it is in print. They don't need to actually print new books for instance.

As for the "bottom line" it actually makes sense to keep the support for the older editions. After all, which is better in terms of sales:

a) customers buying new books and the DDi + keeping those from 4ed who do not like the new edition but still pay their $X a month DDi fee, or

b) customers buying new books and the "new" DDi, but losing all income from those who dislike the new edition but liked 4ed?

In one case, the 4ed players continue to pay $X per month. In the other, they pay $0 a month and maybe buy 1 or more of the new core books.

So in sum, I think it is likely that WotC will continue to support 4th Ed through the online tools, though I do agree its unlikely that you'll see new content for 4th Ed. if and when they switch to 5th Ed.

 

[delericho]

It's your 3) though that I think you're not on the right track with. Because to move back that far with 5E to regain the 3E players, means you alienate all your happy 4E players.

Oh, absolutely. They most certainly shouldn't move back. But the people who rejected 4e did so for a reason; to have any hope of regaining them, 5e has to be different.

Some 3.5/PF players are gone regardless of what WotC does

I believe this is right. I suspect that WotC could buy Paizo, republish Pathfinder as 5e, and still have lost a lot of people. I wonder how many people that is.

But I'm very sure that to have any hope of pulling them back in any numbers, they'll need to change.

(And the Red Box, and what they said about reclaiming lapsed players, suggests to me that they'll try. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the marketing for 5e played the "we've screwed up, but we've changed; give us another try!" angle quite strongly, at least in gaming circles.)

Edit: it is, of course, possible that I'm projecting what I would like to see as what is likely to happen. Sadly, 4e is pretty much my least-favourite iteration of D&D; if this proves to be the ultimate evolution of the game, I will be really quite disappointed.

 

[delericho]

In one case, the 4ed players continue to pay per month. In the other, they pay $0 a month and maybe buy 1 or more of the new core books.

It costs money to support 4e, even if there's no new content. It will cost a lot of money to develop 5e. Supporting 4e while rolling out 5e will canibalise 5e sales, at least to an extent. I just do not see it happening.

 

[Scribble]

Since I don't believe there will be a 5e anytime soon, I think the idea of the more useful filters is the best bet.

As I said in other posts I think we'll start seeing more products that expand how 4e plays without revamping the core system. Like essentials it would be optional, yet integrated.

This would allow them an avenue to start drawing back lost players, without creating a huge "We no longer care about you" rift people feel when their edition is replaced in the current 4e players.