The_Gneech
Explorer
hazel monday said:
This is pretty much where I am, although I also started in the "cautiously optimistic" range and have been nudged further towards the "don't like it" side by just about every preview.
-The Gneech
-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
So... is anyone else coming around?
- Thread starter Raduin711
- Start date
This is pretty much where I am, although I also started in the "cautiously optimistic" range and have been nudged further towards the "don't like it" side by just about every preview.
-The Gneech
SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
While I have not changed my opinion (I'm planning on buying 4E and testing it out, and I expect to play it) I have noted a significant change in tone of our posters recently.
As we have started to get real information about 4E, the level of hatred and bile has ramped down considerably. I think this is hardly a coincidence. The designers who have been writing their blogs or making playtest comments don't have "publicist" as part of their job description.
As I've also said before, having game designers do game design and publicists do publicity is the best way to make and promote your game.
--Steve
As we have started to get real information about 4E, the level of hatred and bile has ramped down considerably. I think this is hardly a coincidence. The designers who have been writing their blogs or making playtest comments don't have "publicist" as part of their job description.
As I've also said before, having game designers do game design and publicists do publicity is the best way to make and promote your game.
--Steve
I was enthusiastic when 4e came out, because the problems with 3e have been so obvious for about 4 years now that I can't help but be willing to try anything new to fix it. In fact, I'm finding that 2e, the game I swore I would never play again, has some advantages over 3e. I'd still say 3e is the better game, but it is nice to worry about different problems.
How have I reacted to what I've heard. I like the mechanical stuff I've been hearing enough that I only have two things I don't like.
1) Healing by doing damage to the enemy - It seems very counter-intuitive to me. I don't have problems with "second wind" self-healing powers, or even free healing at the end of every combat encounter, but magical healing as a result of successful attacks just rubs me the wrong way.
2) +X to weapons. I was really hoping that things would be scaled so that I can hand out magical items as rare artifacts. The amount of items you need may be less with 4e, but they are still talking about "trading up" magical items. They just don't seem magical if they can become obsolete.
The flavor text of the wizard organizations is problematic to the way I want to present magic, so having the name bound to the feats and abilities is annoying, though not terminal to my interest.
Tieflings and Dragonborn actually work out with what I was going to do with my new setting, so I'm not unhappy to have rules for them. I'm not sure if I would be pleased if I was doing a Greyhawk campaign though to have dragonborn placed in the core rules (and the corresponding pressure to allow a player to bring one to the table). However, again this is not a dealbreaker for me.
So I pretty much agree with the posters on their complaints, except for one. 4e did not come too early, 3e became unplayable too soon. I played two level 1-20 games as a player, and while they were both fun games, both low and high level play sucked hard. As a player it was bad enough, but as a DM it was an exercise in frustration. Whenever I needed to introduce adventurers to challenge PC's it took just as long to create as PC. Online character generators didn't really help, because they assigned feats and skills at random, and didn't give out the gear that they needed to carry. So I was forced to steal my villains from Dungeon Magazine and to rely heavily on the Monster Manual. So goodbye city adventures, which really sucked for the party bard. Eventually even that became too much paperwork to do, and I just started doing episodic Dungeon adventures with the serial numbers filed off. I just simply didn't have time to run a 3.5 adventure that I designed myself.
Unlike the list above, I can't list all the things that annoy me with 3e. The time prep makes 3e unplayable if you have a family, job, or outside interests. Magical items being more important than your character abilities. Too many stackable bonuses which ensured that PC's would break their abilities for their level. Prestige classes as a necessity to multi-class. The fact that having too many magical items to be touched and too few magical items to be effective couldn't be monitored closely enough unless players bought their own equipment. Grapple, Trip, Sunder. Paladins suck hard, Monks suck, Rangers suck, and all base classes suck compared to prestige classes. I could fill the rest of this webpage's scroll up with all the problems I have with 3e.
It may be the case that 4e will have problems too. In fact it is pretty much inevitable. But I don't know what they are yet, and even if it is poorly designed that will make it more fun than 3e for at least 3-4 years. I can't possibly see anything that you've seen that would annoy you more than the things listed above. What is the annoyance of renaming the Golden Wyvern feat compared to the bile inducing frustration of only having one smite, saving it all day, then losing it when you miss? Or hell, when the smite hits, having the party fighter laugh at you because he does that damage with weapon specialization and power attack every damn round? It makes me grind a millimeter off my teeth just thinking about it.
Also, if you're concerned about D&D being too flashy, or the flavor being too "leet" or "kewl"... that ship has already done a world tour with 3e. I like my D&D to be gritty, dangerous, and traditional myself, but frankly it seems to be more likely to be a possibility with 4e than with 3e. Characters at any level above 10 in 3e glow like a Super-Sayan on Dragonball Z.
How have I reacted to what I've heard. I like the mechanical stuff I've been hearing enough that I only have two things I don't like.
1) Healing by doing damage to the enemy - It seems very counter-intuitive to me. I don't have problems with "second wind" self-healing powers, or even free healing at the end of every combat encounter, but magical healing as a result of successful attacks just rubs me the wrong way.
2) +X to weapons. I was really hoping that things would be scaled so that I can hand out magical items as rare artifacts. The amount of items you need may be less with 4e, but they are still talking about "trading up" magical items. They just don't seem magical if they can become obsolete.
The flavor text of the wizard organizations is problematic to the way I want to present magic, so having the name bound to the feats and abilities is annoying, though not terminal to my interest.
Tieflings and Dragonborn actually work out with what I was going to do with my new setting, so I'm not unhappy to have rules for them. I'm not sure if I would be pleased if I was doing a Greyhawk campaign though to have dragonborn placed in the core rules (and the corresponding pressure to allow a player to bring one to the table). However, again this is not a dealbreaker for me.
So I pretty much agree with the posters on their complaints, except for one. 4e did not come too early, 3e became unplayable too soon. I played two level 1-20 games as a player, and while they were both fun games, both low and high level play sucked hard. As a player it was bad enough, but as a DM it was an exercise in frustration. Whenever I needed to introduce adventurers to challenge PC's it took just as long to create as PC. Online character generators didn't really help, because they assigned feats and skills at random, and didn't give out the gear that they needed to carry. So I was forced to steal my villains from Dungeon Magazine and to rely heavily on the Monster Manual. So goodbye city adventures, which really sucked for the party bard. Eventually even that became too much paperwork to do, and I just started doing episodic Dungeon adventures with the serial numbers filed off. I just simply didn't have time to run a 3.5 adventure that I designed myself.
Unlike the list above, I can't list all the things that annoy me with 3e. The time prep makes 3e unplayable if you have a family, job, or outside interests. Magical items being more important than your character abilities. Too many stackable bonuses which ensured that PC's would break their abilities for their level. Prestige classes as a necessity to multi-class. The fact that having too many magical items to be touched and too few magical items to be effective couldn't be monitored closely enough unless players bought their own equipment. Grapple, Trip, Sunder. Paladins suck hard, Monks suck, Rangers suck, and all base classes suck compared to prestige classes. I could fill the rest of this webpage's scroll up with all the problems I have with 3e.
It may be the case that 4e will have problems too. In fact it is pretty much inevitable. But I don't know what they are yet, and even if it is poorly designed that will make it more fun than 3e for at least 3-4 years. I can't possibly see anything that you've seen that would annoy you more than the things listed above. What is the annoyance of renaming the Golden Wyvern feat compared to the bile inducing frustration of only having one smite, saving it all day, then losing it when you miss? Or hell, when the smite hits, having the party fighter laugh at you because he does that damage with weapon specialization and power attack every damn round? It makes me grind a millimeter off my teeth just thinking about it.
Also, if you're concerned about D&D being too flashy, or the flavor being too "leet" or "kewl"... that ship has already done a world tour with 3e. I like my D&D to be gritty, dangerous, and traditional myself, but frankly it seems to be more likely to be a possibility with 4e than with 3e. Characters at any level above 10 in 3e glow like a Super-Sayan on Dragonball Z.
BlackMoria
First Post
I've gone from cautious optimist to apathy so far.
As I see it, the design goal seems to be to burn all the bridges. Not just wholesale changes to mechanics but wholesale changes to the fluff and tropes. The trouble with an 'all or nothing' approach is it is a huge gamble because one risks alienating your fanbase at the expense of seeing if you can attract new customers to the new shiny.
Given the above, WOTC really needs to manage and market the information flow to minimize the perceived negatives and play up the perceived postives to retain as much of the existing fanbase while playing to the new customer base.
Given the general reaction on this thread, I would say that the marketing plan (if there was one) is a bust, because a portion of the existing fanbase is slowly moving to the negative.
This phase is not when you go after new customers (become the new customers are not D&D players now and know nothing about the development of a new edition). This phase is where you 'sell' the vision of what 4E is. It is the phase you try to reassure and reaffirm the existing fanbase. Once 4E is near release, that is when you hype the game to the new customer base but only after you have made every effort to preserve your existing fan base.
I have seen a increasingly common sentiment expressed in multiple threads - that is the notion from existing fans that they are being shown the door at the expense of attracting new customers.
And that, my friends, is a marketing / information flow failure.
As I see it, the design goal seems to be to burn all the bridges. Not just wholesale changes to mechanics but wholesale changes to the fluff and tropes. The trouble with an 'all or nothing' approach is it is a huge gamble because one risks alienating your fanbase at the expense of seeing if you can attract new customers to the new shiny.
Given the above, WOTC really needs to manage and market the information flow to minimize the perceived negatives and play up the perceived postives to retain as much of the existing fanbase while playing to the new customer base.
Given the general reaction on this thread, I would say that the marketing plan (if there was one) is a bust, because a portion of the existing fanbase is slowly moving to the negative.
This phase is not when you go after new customers (become the new customers are not D&D players now and know nothing about the development of a new edition). This phase is where you 'sell' the vision of what 4E is. It is the phase you try to reassure and reaffirm the existing fanbase. Once 4E is near release, that is when you hype the game to the new customer base but only after you have made every effort to preserve your existing fan base.
I have seen a increasingly common sentiment expressed in multiple threads - that is the notion from existing fans that they are being shown the door at the expense of attracting new customers.
And that, my friends, is a marketing / information flow failure.
paulsometimes
First Post
Stormtower said:
Holy crap! It's like you were reading my mind when you posted this.
Storminator
First Post
I'm definitely more interested now. I tend to read what WotC puts out, and for the most part ignore all the threads about it. I find that what WotC actually says is far less problematic than what other posters tell me WotC said.
And the more I play 3e (and the higher level the PCs get...) the more I wish I was playing 4e.
PS
And the more I play 3e (and the higher level the PCs get...) the more I wish I was playing 4e.
PS
mhensley
First Post
Storminator said:
QFT
I was getting quite down on 4e. Then I played 3.5 again - 3 hour combats, totally unbalanced levels of power between core classes and classes from later books, completely broken feats, etc., etc. 4e can't get here soon enough IMO. I'll take any game simpler than 3.5 at this point. It's just that I have a MUCH better chance of getting my group to try 4e than any other game. If that sucks, it's back to the drawing board.
