D&D 4E Should I play 4e?

lowkey13 said:

I didn't want to comment on the rest of your post, but something stuck with me, and I went back, and this was it.

There is a large disconnect if you keep insisting (as I have seen various designers insist) that the consumers are "just doing it wrong."

Let's give an easy example- a lot of what you hear is engineered to please you. Like ... the thunk of your car door when it closes. You may, or may not, know this but the door doesn't naturally sound like this anymore (the deep and satisfying clunk); instead, engineers had to alter car doors to provide the sound that people were expecting and wanting.

You know where this is going, right? Okay, how about when you take a photo on your phone- that satisfying sound of the shutter noise that doesn't exist. It's all electronic, so why not have it sound like, oh, church bells ringing? Because that's the sound people expect. At some point, people will expect the signifier (the shutter sound) without even having a reference to the signified (a physical camera that would make the sound), in the same way that we still use 5 1/4" floppy disk icons to indicate something to be saved.

So from a design standpoint, you have it entirely wrong. Designing something that is (in your opinion) good unless you're some sort of bad consumer that likes bad previous editions completely missed the dynamic; the job of a good designer is to allow people to embrace the changes; and sometimes designers simply have to give consumers what they want and what they expect, or find a way to meld the changes into what the consumers want and expect.

This is even moreso when you are designing for the flagship product in an product category- like D&D. If you're designing for D&D, you don't get a blank slate, unfortunately. It's the blessing AND the curse; you get the built-in name brand loyalty and advantage of all those consumers eager to buy your products, but you also have to deign within the strictures of those years of products that have come before you.

You can't blame people for not liking something.

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No, you can't. People can like any ole thing and have no obligation to explain why.

But people liking a thing has absolutely no bearing on the quality of a thing. Thats a huge issue that trips up otherwise very smart people. They conflate "I like this" with "This is good"

I'll use myself as an example. When I was growing up, I read a TON of forgotten realms novels. I wont name specific books or authors because I don't wish to cast aspersions. When I try to go back and read them today, I still get a lot of enjoyment out of them. However, having grown up and become more educated in literature and art and such, I recognize that they are for the most part extremely poor quality works. They just...well, aren't good. They didn't have to be, I enjoyed them. I enjoyed them more (much more in some cases) than legitimately good works of literature. I'd much rather read me some Forgotten Realms than say the Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, or Catcher in the Rye.

Does this mean forgotten realms is of an equal or higher quality than a literary classic because I enjoyed it more? LOL no. Not even a little bit. And if I tried to claim as such, I would be (rightly) mocked because it is just clearly not so.

So when Tony claims "4e was as good a game as D&D ever managed to be"...coming back with 'But not as many people liked it!' is meaningless and doesn't address the point. Now, I mean, he doesn't really back up his claim with anything and its fine if you disagree. But the metric of 'How many people enjoyed/did not enjoy this' does not belong in a discussion about quality. Does it have a place in a discussion about 'What can we sell to make more money?' Absolutely. But thats not Tony's claim. 5e is a more profitable edition. Hands down.

But that is not indicative of quality of the product.

HJFudge said:

So when Tony claims "4e was as good a game as D&D ever managed to be"...coming back with 'But not as many people liked it!' is meaningless and doesn't address the point. Now, I mean, he doesn't really back up his claim with anything and its fine if you disagree.

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::shrug:: A more accurate claim would be that "4e was not nearly as bad a game as every other edition of D&D." Because, honestly, it still wasn't that good. Scale of 1 to 10? D&D's never risen to 5. I'm not sure any RPG has, TTRPG is a new kind of game, and it's evolved very slowly over a mere 45 years.

lowkey13 said:

Well, the difference being that this would be the release of a system that is no longer supported, and isn't very popular (no offense).

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None taken. D&D has only been fairly popular in the fad years of the mid 80s and the current come-back. And /ad populum/ remains a fallacy.

But that's not the only difference. Hasbro bought WotC with the 3.0 SRD a fiat acompli. The genie was out of the bottle, the 3.5 and 5e SRDs don't really release a lot of IP that wasn't already in the 3.0 - a hypothetical 4e OGL/SRD /would/. So it's not going to happen.

lowkey13 said:

I didn't want to comment on the rest of your post, but something stuck with me, and I went back, and this was it.

There is a large disconnect if you keep insisting (as I have seen various designers insist) that the consumers are "just doing it wrong."

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You can love something for it's virtues, you can love it in spite of it's flaws, and you can even love it /for/ some of it's flaws. None of those are actually "wrong" reasons.

But they're reasons that are important to understand if you're considering compromising on one of those virtues or fixing one of those flaws...

You know where this is going, right? Okay, how about when you take a photo on your phone- that satisfying sound of the shutter noise that doesn't exist. It's all electronic, so why not have it sound like, oh, church bells ringing? Because that's the sound people expect.

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Yep. Gets into the "reality isn't real" trope. The sound of coconuts knocked together sounds more like horses hooves to movie goers than actual horses actual hooves would if they were ever to actually hear them.

sometimes designers simply have to give consumers what they want and what they expect, or find a way to meld the changes into what the consumers want and expect.

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Sure. 5e did that very well, it's great accomplishment was finding that compromise between keeping the game acceptable - and, yes, that means, in a very real sense, /bad/ - to it's most ardent fans; yet also accessible to potential new fans who have not had 25+years to develop the same predilections. 4e erred on the wrong side of that formula, outraging enough of the hard core to generate a controversy that repelled the mainstream before they could even try it for themselves. 5e avoided that, so it had a chance, and it didn't repel enough of the mainstream to ruin that chance. (Hmmm... it created a lot less furor in our community, but 3e is /possibly/ an example of that: acceptable enough to the fanbase to sweep the hobby, but not accessible enough to the mainstream to take off, even though D&D seemed poised for a comeback, then, too).

You can't blame people for not liking something.

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Well, you can, just like you can blame a game for improving when you liked taking advantage of the specific ways it was broken in the past (Hero Systems' 6th ed lost me in much the same way 4e lost some 3.x fans) - but I agree you shouldn't /blame/ them, but, rather, understand where they're coming from and let them continue to exercise their preference.

Like, if you think people shouldn't really smoke (it's none of your business, but if), and you ask them why they keep smoking even though it's bad for them, you'd get answers like "I like the flavor" or "it gives me something to do with my hands," or maybe even "when you've seen as much as I have, you realize that there are far worse things in this world than cancer." Addressing those issues (if you even can) isn't going to get them to quit. And, y'know, /it's their choice/.

But, by the same token, you shouldn't blame people for liking something new, and certainly shouldn't go out of your way to destroy it out of spite.

Like, if your friend's trying to quit, don't hide his nicotine patches, y'know?

If you like mini’s and grid play 4E. If you don’t like mini’s and grid play 13th age.

HJFudge said:

No, you can't. People can like any ole thing and have no obligation to explain why.

But people liking a thing has absolutely no bearing on the quality of a thing. Thats a huge issue that trips up otherwise very smart people. They conflate "I like this" with "This is good"

I'll use myself as an example. When I was growing up, I read a TON of forgotten realms novels. I wont name specific books or authors because I don't wish to cast aspersions. When I try to go back and read them today, I still get a lot of enjoyment out of them. However, having grown up and become more educated in literature and art and such, I recognize that they are for the most part extremely poor quality works. They just...well, aren't good. They didn't have to be, I enjoyed them. I enjoyed them more (much more in some cases) than legitimately good works of literature. I'd much rather read me some Forgotten Realms than say the Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, or Catcher in the Rye.

Does this mean forgotten realms is of an equal or higher quality than a literary classic because I enjoyed it more? LOL no. Not even a little bit. And if I tried to claim as such, I would be (rightly) mocked because it is just clearly not so.

So when Tony claims "4e was as good a game as D&D ever managed to be"...coming back with 'But not as many people liked it!' is meaningless and doesn't address the point. Now, I mean, he doesn't really back up his claim with anything and its fine if you disagree. But the metric of 'How many people enjoyed/did not enjoy this' does not belong in a discussion about quality. Does it have a place in a discussion about 'What can we sell to make more money?' Absolutely. But thats not Tony's claim. 5e is a more profitable edition. Hands down.

But that is not indicative of quality of the product.

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I don't see where, in the post you were responding to, that [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] made a statement concerning qualitative judgement, if anything he seemed to be responding to this part of the sentence he emphasized....

Tony Vargas said:

... and if you weren't too deeply wedded to the flaws of past editions, it was hard to dislike.

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where it does seem to be implying if not outright stating that the product isn't to blame for it's failure or consumers disliking... a flaw in the consumer is. If anything I've seen [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] make continuous statements around qualitative judgement concerning 4e and other editions without backing it up in any way. Which I guess is why I see this particular call out as kind of odd.

Imaro said:

where it does seem to be implying if not outright stating that the product isn't to blame for it's failure or consumers disliking... a flaw in the consumer is.

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It's not a flaw /in/ the consumer, it's a preference for (familiar) flaws /in the product/.

Having a preference isn't a flaw.

If anything I've seen [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] make continuous statements around qualitative judgement concerning 4e and other editions without backing it up in any way. Which I guess is why I see this particular call out as kind of odd.

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Heck, I can back up quantitative claims about the various editions (FREX: LFQW is a mathematical fact of D&D class design - it's profound in 1e or 3e, significant in 5e, virtually absent in 4e, resulting in a level-based game that actually remains playable at all levels), but that wouldn't convince anyone (NO! No! Samey! Fighters cast spells! Wizards are s'pos'd'ta be better at high level!), because that's not what liking a game, especially a class of games so new/un-developed as TTRPGs, is ultimately most about - nor is it the point.

The point is, we didn't /need/ to have an edition war. But we did. Because enough people decided that letting other people play in a somewhat different way that they found worked better, was unacceptable.

Tony Vargas said:

Heck, I can back up quantitative claims about the various editions, but they wouldn't convince you, because that's not what liking a game is ultimately most about - nor is it the point.

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If those claims are not the point why keep making them?

Imaro said:

If those claims are not the point why keep making them?

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Because people keep pulling out the same tired /ad populum/ fallacies to claim that there was something terribad about it, and it's necessary to point out that something can be qualitatively, even quantitatively, 'better' and genuinely fail in a market, to counter those fallacious, factually false, assertions.

Tony Vargas said:

Because people keep pulling out the same tired /ad populum/ fallacies to claim that there was something terribad about it, and it's necessary to point out that something can be qualitatively, even quantitatively, 'better' and genuinely fail in a market, to counter those fallacious, factually false, assertions.

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Well I don't think every time you've stated 4e is the best (or better than X) edition... or edition X is not as good as 4e it's been to answer one of those assertions but putting all that aside... without anything to back your statements up they are no different from the fallacious, factually false, assertions you are pushing back against...

Imaro said:

Well I don't think every time you've stated 4e is the best (or better than X) edition... or edition X is not as good as 4e it's been to answer one of those assertions

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There are more fallacies than just /ad populum/ resorted to, certainly.

... without anything to back your statements up they are no different from the fallacious, factually false, assertions you are pushing back against...

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I gave you one example, LFQW, above. It's a fact. It makes D&D a bad game - imbalanced, problematic to play at low & high levels. 4e fixed it. 4e is reviled for fixing it, because it's one of those flaws that people came to love.

Now, we've been on this marry-go-round before, so having demanded facts and having received them, you'll retreat into the claim that it's all subjective, that the facts - that you demanded - don't matter.

That's fine.

Whether you love the game for it's flaws or in spite of them /is/ plenty subjective.


We should all just live-and-let live.

We should have all just live-and-let live since 2008, too.

Tony Vargas said:

There are more fallacies than just /ad populum/ resorted to, certainly.

I gave you one example, LFQW, above. It's a fact. It makes D&D a bad game - imbalanced, problematic to play at low & high levels. 4e fixed it. 4e is reviled for fixing it, because it's one of those flaws that people came to love.

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Well 4e didnt solve this... like 5e it lessened the impact but wizards... especially since they got ritual casting for free as well as more skills... still had much more out of the box versatility than the fighter. So it did the same thing 5e, AD&D and BECMI did... reduced the wizards power in comparison to 3e.... not sure that's evidence of 4e's superiority over other editions, maybe 3e but even then the pros and cons would have to be looked at and evaluated holistically.

Tony Vargas said:

We should all just live-and-let live.

We should have all just live-and-let live since 2008, too.

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Yep... of course it would be easier if some posters would realize it's not 2008 and throwing inflammatory claims of superiority only helps to stoke the flames.