When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[Aeolius]

...the very macaroni and cheese I've been making since I was in college, has been ravaged and disfigured and left bleeding on the page. Where once it contained only cheddar cheese, now the recipe calls for a mix of cheddar and Colby. It may contain macaroni, and it may contain cheese, but it is not macaroni and cheese."

Mac & Cheese ain't got nothin' on:

I always thought Monterey Jack sounded like the name of an adventurer.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So they will have to accept responsibility for it either way it turns out, just like every one else in the adult world.

Given that I'm sure every one of them worked their butts off to bring us the best game they could, and that no edition of D&D has ever not been successful (barring goofy executive asshattery), I don't think they'll have a problem with this.

I'm not exactly sure what pushed them in such a combat-centric direction, but I'm sure it wasn't just one thing. Selling minis and internet compatibility were probably part of it. Customer feedback was undoubtedly part of it. RPGA may have been a part of it. And it might not have been a bad decision -- certainly the initial core book sales speak volumes about how many people are at least interested to learn about this new path.

4e will almost certainly be a success, probably no matter how many people don't like it, because of the D&D name if nothing else.

Pretty much all they'll have to measure against is "how much of a success is it?", but the metrics for that are pretty subjective and sometimes tough to determine. Regardless, I think everyone working at WotC has more than earned their keep on this, even if it doesn't turn out as well as they would have hoped.

Living with it and accepting responsibility for it won't be a problem, because it is something to be proud of (even if it's not for me).

 

[Fifth Element]

Well they could have set out to make a roleplaying game instead of a combat simulation game, wherein the roleplaying game allows for combat, but a combat simulator doesn't need any roleplaying.

You can play any prior version of D&D as only a combat simulator if you want to.

 

[firesnakearies]

Maybe I'm just dense here, but I've been playing D&D in all of its incarnations for 22+ years, and I don't see, at ALL, how 4E is noticeably more "combat-focused" than any previous version.

Can someone explain, with specifics?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I see a lot of THIS going on:


"I have read the new Better Joy Cookbook and I am devastated to my very core. Their macaroni and cheese recipe, the very macaroni and cheese I've been making since I was in college, has been ravaged and disfigured and left bleeding on the page. Where once it contained only cheddar cheese, now the recipe calls for a mix of cheddar and Colby. It may contain macaroni, and it may contain cheese, but it is not macaroni and cheese."


Just sayin'.

And other people see the differences as "Hey, uh, this cookbook lists the ingredients for Mac and Cheese as 'chicken breast and marinade.' I like chicken breast, but how the hell is that Mac and Cheese?"

 

[Fifth Element]

And other people see the differences as "Hey, uh, this cookbook lists the ingredients for Mac and Cheese as 'chicken breast and marinade.' I like chicken breast, but how the hell is that Mac and Cheese?"

This might be an apt analogy if the cookbook did not clearly contain most of the same ingredients as previous editions. The spices have certainly been changed, and maybe they added a little something that wasn't there before or taken something away, but claiming that the ingredients have changed completely is ridiculous.

 

[justanobody]

Maybe I'm just dense here, but I've been playing D&D in all of its incarnations for 22+ years, and I don't see, at ALL, how 4E is noticeably more "combat-focused" than any previous version.

Can someone explain, with specifics?

Name all the spells/powers that are not for use in combat.

Most say target enemy/ally IIRC.

The focus is on combat because those are the rules that are easier to define what happens when something occurs.

The rules cannot including something for every role-playing aspect, but the books do read a bit like many wargame rules books. Oddly many wargame rules books contain a LOT more fluff.

Maybe the lack of fluff making the PoL setting more open-ended to fit any playstyle, settings, or game make it seems only focused on combat?

Add in one damnig thing such as distances measures in map grip squares that takes shift perspective from 1st person to 3rd person, so that things are looked at from the POV of the player making things seem less likely to put you into the action yourself and more like watching the action as you would a movie.

There are many other things people have said since 4th was released about what makes it more combat oriented, and the Wizards boards are full of threads about it if you can locate them.

Mostly it seems the prose in the books itself and focus on what is presented within them, or what isn't presented in them.

 

[Thasmodious]

Yes. I fundamentally don't consider 4E to *be* D&D. I consider it a tactical miniatures game with a fantasy expansion pack tacked on. WotC got D&D *right* with the 3.5/OGL model. It wasn't perfect I admit. But it needed a bit of a tune-up, not a rebuild.

Essentially 4E is the first edition of a brand new game that bares little resemblance to D&D. They kept the D&D identity for marketing purposes. I understand why of course, it's a valuable brand name. But the game is too far removed from what I consider the most perfect version of D&D.

Thankfully with the OGL there is always the possibility that others will keep the game alive. It saddens me that future gamers who are introduced to D&D as a new game will see 4E as D&D. Which I don't think it is.

We few grognards will have to school these younglings.

Long live 3.5!

Heh. How many times did we see that exact same post (except a -1 to the numbers) when 3e came out, word for word, just replace WotC with TSR and add in a few references to the evil takeover that will end RPGs forever?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Maybe I'm just dense here, but I've been playing D&D in all of its incarnations for 22+ years, and I don't see, at ALL, how 4E is noticeably more "combat-focused" than any previous version.

Can someone explain, with specifics?

Not to be too snarky, but they're right above. This page, the previous page...lots of details about how 4e's material is, speaking in focus, on combat, in the core rules.

They do address other things, but every class power, every monster in the MM, and most of the words about set-up, encounter design, and rewards in the DMG, are about combat. The four roles are combat roles. Rituals aren't spells because spells are for combat. You don't have class/profession skills because they have no use in combat. The rogue is a ninja because it needs combat balance. Healing surges exist so that there can be more combats. Play sessions are combats chained together through dialogue. An encounter is either a combat or a skill-based combat (and the skill-based combat has mechanical problems pointed out elsewhere on the boards).

Perhaps the strongest case, the one that sold me, was that the roles were once "dungeon exploration" roles (trap guy, swiss-army-knife guy, fighting guy, recovery guy), and now they're expressly "combat" roles (fast guy, healing guy, crowd-control guy, damage absorbing guy).

It can be (and has been) vastly overstated before, but I'm beginning to get why this impression is there. It is there because, yeah, combat is a bigger part of what the game is about in 4e. Even though it was always a huge part of what the game was about, it was never the ultimate end point, just an important part of getting to that end point. Now, it seems to be the endpoint. Everything is cleaned up and refined around that purpose.

For many critics, that is all well and good, but it leaves the parts of the game that the liked (exploration, for instance) by the wayside.

 

[Thasmodious]

Maybe I'm just dense here, but I've been playing D&D in all of its incarnations for 22+ years, and I don't see, at ALL, how 4E is noticeably more "combat-focused" than any previous version.

Can someone explain, with specifics?

The focus on the game is no more on combat than it always has been. Combat has always been the central area of concern for D&D.

The only difference with 4e is that the rulebooks don't include a designer approved set of extra subsystems (that have changed from edition to edition) to deal with what the designers at the time felt were needed subsystems outside of encounter resolution. Those are left to sourcebooks and houserules.

All versions of D&D have been combat focused, its the central element of the game. Both the 3e PHB and the 4e PHB have a 7 page chapter on Exploration. The 4e DMG has only 15 pages on combat and the rest is on building adventures, encounters, social situations, world building, the environment...

It's a colored perception by people who want to see it that way, no more true than when the 2e grogs used the same line of attack against 3e. The only real difference in 4e is that they trimmed the fight to present a concise system from which to build the edition over the life of the edition. The design is modular. As sourcebooks are released you can plug in new systems if you like, but their absence from the core rules takes away the weight of "official" to them, which is a good thing. 4e tells you - play the game the way you want - here's the rules for the core element of D&D gameplay: encounter resolution. That doesn't force the game to focus on combat more. When you play it, you see that simpler, more concise rules for combat means you have to focus on it LESS.