Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post

Do you not see the irony here? You agree that supporting two design philosophies simultaneously is bad and fractured, but you want them to... go ahead and do that? Or is the ask that they should be forced to wait until the very end of an edition to even be allowed to try anything new in a published product at all?
I want them to not use the current edition as a test bed for 2024 changes. That is very, very simple. You want to playtest a big change/new edition? Then release playtest material for that purpose. Paid material shouldn't be test material, it's the whole point of Unearthed Arcana.

There's a big difference between creating new content and mechanics for 5E, and then what they're doing which is using 5E as a testing bed for mechanics that actively alter how the game was originally designed.

You're equivalating any kind of new content/design, and not all change is equal in scope or intent.


How very convenient. I'm shocked, really.
Yes, it is convenient that the content surrounding the time where they were dealing with a difficult time and making a variety of promises that didn't actually happen (like the extent of modular play that Monte Cook spoke about)was expunged from their own website.

I imagine that is why they did it.

Your blue text reply feels like this:

"The robber broke into my store and stole the contents of my safe"

"Can you prove they did it"

"Well they destroyed the recording equipment as part of the robbery..."

"How convenient"

...Like, yes, it is, just not for the people that want to point to what they promised.

So based on a promise you all can't even locate, the designers aren't allowed to evolve in any way from 2015 until 2024? That's reasonable to you? It's not remotely reasonable to me, and what's worse, I think if they had tried this awful "suggestion" the game as a whole would've immensely suffered for it. "No new design until 6e" just guarantees 6e will be crappy, on top of all the people who don't share your opinion that the current design doesn't need updating.
Lol, no, based on not upending a successful game that I, and millions others, enjoy to test material for a change years away.

Something is coming out in mid-to late 2024? Here's something radical, put out playtest material and surveys about it in 2023, and focus on the game you're actually making and selling to people in the meantime.

This would be like me working on an entirely separate client, then copy/pasting chunks of it into an existing client request, even if it didn't really sit well with, or make sense with, the existing content I had written.


World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Runescape... All have had major design shifts long after "beta." Had they not done so, they would be unlikely to have lasted as long as they did. Any living game with that kind of longevity needs to do the same, or else stagnate.
By example I was hoping for something actually illustrative, and not just a list that doesn't actually explain what you're talking about. But from googling World of Warcraft a little bit, this is my impression:

Playing World of Warcraft is like playing Dungeons and Dragons. That doesn't actually mean anything to someone that knows about it until you specify what expansion pack/edition you play(ed).

If a game is going radical changes every so many years... that's all they're doing. You're not playing the same game anymore, just the current entry in the 'series.'