I just said that the type of feedback they likely find valuable is not the type of feedback many people are giving. The evil path is actually a very good example of this. Saying, "I dislike this game because I want to roleplay as an evil character," tells them exactly why you do not like it, it does not tell them how to go about implementing one. This is useful feedback for them, because understanding why someone dislikes your product helps a great deal in going about addressing the dislike. An analogy to explaining how would be you, as a player, writing your own fan fiction evil path and then expecting the developers to implement that. This is similar to much of the mechanics based feedback which has been given, which is very much, "this is how I want the mechanics to be," and not, "this is why I dislike the mechanics."
Well said but problematic. A. I'm not sure how you were able to divine this criteria and B. I think you are ignoring or dismissing the many reasons given for the changes to the mechanics. Reasons like "I think this game plays more like DOS than BG2" is a reason for a 6 person party. I want to use a buffer cleric and melee cleric and still have room for a thief, mage and fighter is a reason. I miss the BG2 multi party banters . . . and I could go on for pages. I think the proposed changes are backed by plenty of reason for the dislike.
Likewise, I want the combat in D&D game to feel like D&D combat is the "feeling" and the elimination of the homebrew is the solution.
I'm glad we agree that things can be changed via feedback but I am less certain than you are that we are able to divine their core design philosophy.
those most strongly in favor of 5e, we know the system the best, clearly our opinion is the most important . . .
Yeah that's a straw man and pretty badly draw caricature. It's really asking that game provide what it's offering on the tin. It's labeled as D&D, it's face of D&D and I want it to inspire a new generation of D&D games. And I can do so if its not representing the ruleset accurately.
The problem with the survey is the problem I keep repeating, over and over again. The forum has a very clear and obvious sampling bias.
I get the sense you don't understand why that statement is unpersuasive -- it's trivially true. And problematic in others ways. Of course you have sampling bias on any forum -- that much is obvious. But how is biased? It's biased because you only sample the most dedicated fans of the genre. The question then becomes whether or not that is bad group to poll. Clearly you think it is but I really don't -- those fans understand the genre best and they will do the best job of spreading the word about the finished product.
On the popularity of the rulese t-- Forbes tells me that WotC sales grew by 53 percent last year. And this is to say nothing of the revenues coming from the popularity of the youtube and netflix series. I think Larian is smart to try and ride that wave of enthusiasm. And "the unexpected bump in sales numbers" that Larian reported is the same thing that other devs have experienced. Beamdog's servers crashed and crashed again for months because they were so unprepared for the number of downloads (sadly, the first of a set of mistakes) The second set of mistakes was not understanding how popular the BG EEs were with non gamers. The graphics wouldn't work on integrated intel video cards this despite the fact vanilla version did. Their beta testers all had gaming machines and the devs lost months of sales rewriting program to accommodate crappy laptops. The lesson -- non gamers will buy it because of the D&D and BG labels. It's why I'm here. Hell, I haven't played the Witcher which I think in enough to get me excluded from the gamer club.
There was reason so many devs made a bid for rights to make BG3.
