All logs are asymptotically equivalent, for the same reason that a factor of 10 is invisible.
Only in theory, with branching factors of 32, they are not remotely equivalent unless you have a supercomputer counting atoms in a universe or something.
Readit Newsfreshhawk commented on Chez Scheme: Lisp with native code speed yakihonne.com/article/nad... · Posted by u/simonpure
freshhawk commented on Chez Scheme: Lisp with native code speed yakihonne.com/article/nad... · Posted by u/simonpure
To drill down into this, adding or removing from a vector or hashset in clojure is O(logn). This also means that random access is also O(logn).
Most operations on clojure persistent data structures are an order of magnitude less efficient than they are on the mutable equivalents, excepting a full copy which free due to it being unnecessary.
Useful to specify that it is log32N, not log2N since that makes an enormous different in practice.
Also, if you care about that then you can use transients (if no one knows you mutated the data structure then it still counts as immutable) or mutable structures - both of which are pretty simple.
That was certainly their gamble... and it clearly didn't work.
The problem for WotC is that Dungeon Masters (DMs) are the decision-makers for the playerbase.
DMs are higher information consumers than players. They are the ones looking up obscure 3rd party homebrew fixes for issues inherent in 5e's design. They are the ones memorizing hundreds of pages of rules _for fun_.
And if your DM says, "I'm going to switch us over to run Pathfinder 2e because Paizo is supporting the community," then you as the player probably just go along with it.
Why didn't it work? Paizo had a big jump in sales ... for Paizo, the numbers are a rounding error for WotC.
Same with the DnDBeyond boycott drive, did that actually make a dent? To me there is basically no evidence for this supposed level of consumer power that the fandom is claiming they have. WotC's response was the most half-assed, who-gives-a-shit, PR statement I've ever seen. They did not treat it like a real PR issue at all.
> They are the ones looking up obscure 3rd party homebrew fixes for issues inherent in 5e's design.
Well yes, they will definitely be losing those people. However it's a small percentage of DMs who are even aware of 3rd party stuff in the first place. Single digit percentage and on the lower end, at best.
I think it's hard for lots of old players to realize that post Critical Role/Stranger Things, they are a tiny minority of the market now, and they kinda suck as consumers if you are trying to extract video game level profits from your players.
The community WOTC built over decades shouldn't have to give feedback that 85%+ identify with in order to achieve results that are desirable. If community sentiment is so lopsided then what was the rationale to make the decision in the first place and how was the communities' desire not implicitly understood?
There is no doubt in my mind that WOTC (let's be real, Hasbro) has enough self-awareness to have realized they were encroaching significantly on their core demographic. They chose to do so anyway and are backtracking out of an interest of self-preservation rather than a customer-first mindset.
I find this shameful enough behavior to warrant a legitimate, heartfelt apology. Instead, they present themselves as benevolent caretakers listening to their communities' response. This comes across as tone-deaf because they've already lost the trust of the community and don't seem to have learned how to take ownership of that fact.
Still, this is a better result than if they'd stayed their advertised course. So, for that, I am thankful.
It might be that they are out of touch but there is another very sensible reason for all this.
They view D&D as extremely under-monetized (pretty reasonable, they don't make much off each player on average) and they have a huge influx of new fans and interest.
So why does everyone assume they care about the existing fans, who don't give them money, so much? Maybe they just decided they don't care, they'll get new fans who actually spend money and want to play their combined digital VTT/new D&D edition/microtransactions and lootboxes thing?
Also - why are people upset over a product (that doesn't affect the game) being sold to people others? I feel like important context is missing here over why anyone would be upset by this.
This is a segment of geek culture that has all sorts of ego/identity stuff tied up with these brands. So when they don't "act properly" it feels like it reflects on them and they take it personally.
That's the downside to having that market segment as your customers, the upside is that they are fanatically loyal and are not remotely picky or discerning as customers/consumers.
freshhawk commented on An Open Letter on the Open Gaming License, to Wizards of the Coast opendnd.games... · Posted by u/Macha
> The brand is so dominant that in any group most of the players will play D&D
I cannot wrap my brain around this. For boardgames, which is a growing market and has been for years now, people are buying and learning new games every day, especially geeks who are only too eager to teach them to their gaming groups.
How come for RPGs it's too difficult for one geek to evangelize a new RPG to their group, especially if they are newbies not too invested in an ongoing RPG campaign?
D&D is a very complex system, there are far simpler, newbie-friendly rules out there. How come you cannot convince your newbie friends to try one? One other commenter was mentioning how complex D&D is, how every spell and level and weapon is interconnected in very restricting ways in order to prevent overpowered characters -- that cannot be easy to teach! I played plenty of D&D based video games, like Icewind Dale, and for the life of me I'm thankful the computer hides all the complexity; I wouldn't have played them otherwise!
I honestly don't understand it completely, but there are a lot of casual players who will not even read the rules intro in the players handbook, and will play for a long time without ever learning how their character works. They don't want to leanr anything, they just want their DM friend to take them through some games and make it fun, so learning something they aren't even vaguely familiar with sounds like a lot of work.
It's also a longstanding, odd thing that even experienced players will spend a huge amount of time homebrewing hacks to D&D to make it work as a different kind of game instead of learning a new system that works well for the kind of game they want to play. Ttrpg systems seem to have a lot more momentum/brand loyalty than you would guess.
A lot of D&D players play a fairly "adversarial DM" style and, rightly, don't want to play the more narrative focused or rules-light systems that are easy to learn, because giving players freedom will lead to them abusing it. The dynamic is players wanting a power fantasy and relying on the DM to stop them from ruining the game with their rule bending.
I'm one of those people who likes learning new ttrpg systems and trying out different systems, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask about this. It seems like it's a lot of compounding factors, including a lot of growth being driven by streamers and new players who want to play D&D, not some nerd stuff they've never heard of.
freshhawk commented on An Open Letter on the Open Gaming License, to Wizards of the Coast opendnd.games... · Posted by u/Macha
Maybe I'm missing something here but this summary feels pretty FUD-y. WotC has the right to re-license their own content, and we are free to disagree with that decision, but surely they have no legal means to force other creators to switch their own content to the new license version simply because they are using a license text that was drafted by WoTC? Plenty of OSS projects have stuck with GPLv2 in similar circumstances.
And I'm less clear on this point, but are they even able to change the license terms under which third-parties have used WotC content that was already published under the old license? Couldn't these third parties continue using the existing content so long as they forgo new additions which are published under the more restrictive license? Or can they really revoke that licensing on previously published content?
WotC owns or controls all the places those creators sell their stuff. So they definitely have the economic means to force creators to abandon the old license. They will also probbaly just threaten people with their odd legal interpretation of their actual legal means as well, and plenty of people will comply.
freshhawk commented on An Open Letter on the Open Gaming License, to Wizards of the Coast opendnd.games... · Posted by u/Macha
Are they actually trying to revoke the previous version? I do not know, which is why I ask; honest question.
I observe that 1.0 contains the verbiage:
"Updating the License: Wizards or its designated Agents may publish updated versions of this License. You may use any authorized version of this License to copy, modify and Distribute any Open Game Content originally Distributed under any version of this License."
which at least to my open source license not-a-lawyer read says that they basically can't revoke it.
They can relicense stuff going forward under 1.1, and that may be bad, but I wonder if people are misunderstanding and treating it as apocolyptic when it's just bad. It seems like the worst case scenario is the community undergoes a de facto fork and you can stick to a 1.0 world if you want, not that all the 1.0 stuff goes away.
This smells to me like many similar panics in our community when some project goes to relicense and people don't generally understand that the relicense only applies going forward, because in general you can't retroactively relicense an open license. (There are nuances to that statement which I'm skipping over, but I'd say that's the most correct short summary. The thing that people think is happening is not what is happening.) Of course it is still valid to be upset about the relicensing going forward! It just may not be quite as much a kick in the teeth as people think.
They are going to "revoke" that license in the way that you will no longer be able to sell content with that license in the stores they control (which are all of the ones that matter).
freshhawk commented on An Open Letter on the Open Gaming License, to Wizards of the Coast opendnd.games... · Posted by u/Macha
How important is it to stick to the D&D franchise? Why are third parties married to something like the OGL?
I understand D&D is to RPGs what Windows is (or used to be) to operating systems. But unlike an operating system, D&D's grasp on roleplaying is more fragile. There are plenty of RPG systems that are (subjectively) better and owe nothing to D&D's imaginary setting or rules. In fact, the largest innovation happens outside the D&D franchise.
There are very innovative "lite" RPGs like Trophy Dark or Risus, but also heavier and "crunchy" systems that owe nothing to D&D. Why risk your business by tying it to a franchise owned by a competing business?
(Again, I understand riding the success of D&D's popularity. But unlike with computers and hardware, the "vendor lock-in" pitfall is easier to avoid with something as intangible as an RPG)
In practice it's much harder to avoid. Especially with the new players driving all the recent growth.
The brand is so dominant that in any group most of the players will play D&D or they will not play. If you don't have the brand on your 3rd party product then the average number of units you will sell is around zero.
It's not really Windows, D&D is Windows+Apple+Linux and everything else is one of the BSDs.
Open source is literally proof of this. I make software in my free time simply because I enjoy it. I publish it out there in a variety of licenses with zero expectations. I got a GitHub Sponsors profile with zero sponsors and I'm not even mad about it.