When did We Stop Trusting Game Designers?

[justanobody]

For your example, to me it would be like WotC jacked up my house and moved it down the street, and replaced it with a house they like the look of better. So I can either have my old property/lot and the new house, or my old house on a different yard that is missing all my landscaping and vegetable garden.

 

[El Mahdi]

For your example, to me it would be like WotC jacked up my house and moved it down the street, and replaced it with a house they like the look of better. So I can either have my old property/lot and the new house, or my old house on a different yard that is missing all my landscaping and vegetable garden.

Okay, okay. I can see this. Maybe that's why I've been doing so much tinkering with my rules lately. I'm working on re-landscaping.

 

[justanobody]

Yeah it isn't that often your house gets moved without your permission, but grandmothers seem to have a tendancy to fiddle with your stuff when they visit. Old people just have no respect these days! So I figured that analogy would work best.

At least now we are closer to an understanding of where the disconnect in designers ideas and gamers ideas is coming form a bit for us two at least.

 

[Fifth Element]

I beseech you to learn to read what you quote. Follow the link in this post to the one I am quoting from you and read the section directly above where you began typing. But it is much easier to troll when you don't read the words you are quoting that state: "Because it is a status effect", isn't it?

I'll resist the lure to be rude in return, but my reading of this:

"Is "weakened" a keyword in 4th? Or was the problem with using it one that makes people think that they would have their STR score reduced in some way?"

Made me think you were arguing the term "weakened" should have been used in 4E, but was not.

Okay, I just reread your post 3-4 times and finally parsed your meaning. You're saying "bloodied" should be called "weakened".

And, following from your previous post, the fact that it isn't means the designers need a thesaurus.

I could get behind the first point, if I didn't think the specific mechanical terms used are largely irrelevant. (They can call it Doohickey for all I care, as long as they clearly define what they mean by Doohickey.)

As to the second point, your preference of one term over another says nothing whatsoever about the designers. They are not lazy because they thought "bloodied" and "weakened" were good terms where they are. That was just their preference, which differs from yours.

 

[Fifth Element]

For your example, to me it would be like WotC jacked up my house and moved it down the street, and replaced it with a house they like the look of better. So I can either have my old property/lot and the new house, or my old house on a different yard that is missing all my landscaping and vegetable garden.

I still can't see how that's an apt analogy. How did WotC move your house? How is the old house on a new property? What is missing from your old house?

 

[Umbran]

Wait a minute! You are actually saying that you almost quit playing YOUR PREFERRED EDITION OF D&D because someone making a new edition denigrated it, and you feel IT'S THEIR FAULT.

I kind of have to agree here. At some point, you have to be considered responsible for your own opinions. If you're swayed by weak arguments, that's not the fault of the one who offers the weak argument.

 

[catsclaw227]

Pretty much every single 4e design post before the D&D Experience was saying "3e's mechanics are dog doodoo, and 4e does them better in every way! But we're not telling you how... yet!" I can't find the example that was clearest in my mind, but it was about treasure parcels, and involved a hideous misrepresentation of 3e's treasure system.

That's negative advertisement, since all it's designed to do is call something out as being terrible and drag it through the mud in the public discourse, which is exactly what I felt happened.

And furthermore, I don't really feel it necessary to prove to you that it happened, because I'm not attacking WotC or even 4e over it. I'm stating that it happened and as a result I nearly stopped playing D&D altogether because I was being told that what I liked was a pile of radioactive baboon crap.

OK, so I just read a few of them, and not once did I see negative advertising about 3.5 and I most certainly didn't see anyone say that it was a radioactive pile of baboon crap. Either we read different words, or our understanding of the English language is wildly different.

I didn't see one article say "3e's mechanics are dog doodoo, and 4e does them better in every way! But we're not telling you how... yet!" or anything like it. Go ahead, read them, and tell me where. I just did, and didn't see anything of the sort.

They wrote about some of 3.x's shortcomings, which there were some well documented ones - just read the loads of threads here on EnWorld - and they were pointing out how 4e would help take care of the many things that players were complaining about.

If you want to believe that's what happened, that's cool. I just don't see it that way (and neither did the four other people here, non-D&D players, who read the same past articles that I just read).

 

[catsclaw227]

For your example, to me it would be like WotC jacked up my house and moved it down the street, and replaced it with a house they like the look of better. So I can either have my old property/lot and the new house, or my old house on a different yard that is missing all my landscaping and vegetable garden.

Yea, I don't get this analogy either. I still play in a 3.5 game, and it's the same way we played two years ago. Nothing has changed for me.

 

[justanobody]

I'll resist the lure to be rude in return, but my reading of this:

"Is "weakened" a keyword in 4th? Or was the problem with using it one that makes people think that they would have their STR score reduced in some way?"

Made me think you were arguing the term "weakened" should have been used in 4E, but was not.

Okay, I just reread your post 3-4 times and finally parsed your meaning. You're saying "bloodied" should be called "weakened".

And, following from your previous post, the fact that it isn't means the designers need a thesaurus.

I could get behind the first point, if I didn't think the specific mechanical terms used are largely irrelevant. (They can call it Doohickey for all I care, as long as they clearly define what they mean by Doohickey.)

As to the second point, your preference of one term over another says nothing whatsoever about the designers. They are not lazy because they thought "bloodied" and "weakened" were good terms where they are. That was just their preference, which differs from yours.

More to the point that there are two actual weakened states. One deals directly with HP in that when your a lowered to a certain level you gain new abilities and powers, and the other is a status effect that halves damage done. It is where I find a problem with the keywording of things that has gotten worse with 4th. weakened should be used and it is, but I think the status effect isn't really needed or should maybe come with what is considred "bloodied". Bloodied is a term related to appearances, not functionality. Someone could be bloodied and not be harmed at all for it could be someone else's blood they are covered in.

I don't like the rules taking away descriptive terms that add to the story elements because they are used as game mechanics.

I focus on bloodied because all that it could mean and the mountains of examples I can provide off the top of my head for it.

"The man in fornt of you is bloodied."

A: He is at half HP or less?
B: He is covered in blood?
B1: His own blood meaning he is weaker than his norm?
B2: Someone else's blood?
B2a: If was not intended and this person is not a threat?
B2b: He covered himself in someone else's blood to feign weakness?

That one word can mean so many things, but including it to a game mechanic was not good. I also wouldn't mind it being called doohickey, or thingamajig.

You are several post behind and stuck there and need to follow after that to where the discussion has lead beyond the thesaurus reference.

For whatever reason, the word is the problem. Didn't they change the name of something else prior to print because the community said the naming convention was dumb for it from its preview?

Also I question now with recent events, the playtesting of the material for what is seen in the beta of DDI, because it seems they leave big gapping holes in the beta/play testing of things because they are neglected and should be testing everything including the specific reader response to the wording where books are involved. Maybe it isn't the designers fault, but the editors, but we won't know unless we know what process WotC uses, and it seems with DDI beta at least they are using a different testing method than others have been using for years, so it is possible with the D&D products they are using a different method as well that may not be catching these things that need to be fixed, or just not testing them enough to catch them in the case of a complete new product which 4th edition is.

The same was a problem with 4th as well wasn't it? I mean how long did it take for 3.5 to come around because of poor design, editing, or testing to not catch the problems with it?

Look at all the errata for Magic the Gathering cards. Some have more than a page of corrections for a card with but a paragraph of text on it.

It seems a systemic problem within WotC though.

Anyway....The words are just one disconnect from gamers and designers, and it is funny the more technology allows for communication, the more the lines of communication break down.

The house reference, is all about the lines that gamers have within a game to where it is something they want to play versus something that no longer interests them such as moving someone else's furniture in a house.

Like I said somewhere if the names of the products were switched for Warhammer and D&D would people still play the one named D&D, or the one with the D&D rules? That tells you what is important to each of those people depending on what they chose and what real priority you should put on their opinions.

The ones playing the game named Warhammer that are the D&D rules are the ones you would be interested in seeking ideas and advice from, while those playing the game named D&D that has the Warhammer rules, are not going to provide you with any useful information to doing something with D&D as they are just playing the name, not the game.

It has been asked many times before so in the vein of "trusting designers", would 4th edition be as good a game and have as many profit if it did not carry the name D&D? The answer is no, not yet. The reason is above, and those that disagree with design elements from any edition are the ones playing the game, not the name and found something in that game that they liked and gave them a reason to play D&D instead of Warhammer, Rifts, Vampire, etc....

So the designers took the game in a direction and some gamers disagreed with that direction and don't agree with it so don't play 4th edition D&D, or didn't play 3rd, 2nd, whatever.

 

[Ahglock]

Perhaps you've never read the Complete Priests' Handbook... The whole bit with the spheres and whatnot that allowed you to customize clerics' spell lists to their religion is in the 2e PHB (building off of concepts introduced in the 1e Dragonlance hardcover). The Complete book doesn't have any new ideas on that front, but rather has a system for designing custom priests mechanically that always results in a class vastly underpowered compared to the standard cleric & druid. I seem to recall one gem of an example priest that had minor access to a sphere that had no 1st-3rd level spells... I felt robbed that I had paid money for that one.

Not that there weren't good Complete books (the Bard one is stunning), but the choice isn't between "imaginative but zero editing" and "heavily edited but dull." Allowing freelancers to produce supplements with no editing, no overall vision, and no coordination was and is a mistake, and that was the big problem with the 2e books. The 3e splats were somewhat hit & miss, but at least the game material in them was generally usable as-is.

It has been a while but I read the complete priests handbook, so I may be miss remembering it but we made fairly effective priests from it, and sometimes it went really wrong and we made crappy priests with it.

The entire purpose of it was if you wanted to make priests that were not the standard from the PH. I think one of the builds involved giving them crappy unarmed combat skills or something. They may have erred a bit on the side of caution when making a more free form system to reduce potential abuse, but you could use it to make effective characters.

I think the spells and magic/skills and powers books did it much better, but the priest book was not bad. I'd put it in the average range of books, and I'd likely rate it above the adventurers vault or the completely too long list of the same thing with different mods over and over again.

Complete books I thought were
great books.
Wizards
Bard
Good books
Dwarves
Fighters,
Thieves
Average books
Rangers/whatever
Priests
Bad books
Elves
Gnomes/halflings