Remathilis
Legend
I hear ya man.
My group tried no less than aborted 4e games since the game's inception.
1. I DMed a traditional D&D game from levels 1-5. The game died when my players wished to return to the 3.5/Eberron game I was running before 4e came out.
2. Another player ran a 4e Realms game lvl 1-5 (including Spellgard) before ending it due to conflicting schedules. No one was terribly upset to see it go.
3. My primary DM tried Twice. Once running a "humanoids" game (only monster races, not the classic races) designed to have a "for the Horde" feel. It made it 5 sessions level 1-3 (including the Hall of the Mountain King module from GG) before ending mid-dungeon because of player disinterest.
4. Convinced it was the very "WoW" feel of the monster-game, he tried again with "normal" races and classes (abet a homebrewed setting) that lasted 3 sessions before proving to us that no, it wasn't the setting, it was the rules all along.
I went into all four games gung-ho that 4e was amazing and everyone else would like it as well (In fact, all 3 DMs above bought into the game very hardcore before actually playing. No one had a "wait and see" attitude except a two players, one in each group). It was a bunch of things that wore us down.
* Slow, sluggish combats that took forever. We're not a huge "combat-heavy" group, so when a combat against 4 giant spiders takes 30 minutes to complete, we were considering playing some Mario Party instead...
* "Sameyness" of character classes. I played (since I had a PC die and one leave) a swordmage, wizard, rogue (1 session), warlord, and artificer. None sparked my interest. The swordmage did for a bit and the wizard was fun because I built him to be a power-swap PC. I was bored to tears as a warlord, and the artificer felt EXACTLY like him except for being a ranged character. Other people who swapped characters felt similar, esp. those who swapped in the same ROLE.
* The Math. While D&D has never been forgiving, we found our math downright BRUTAL. In Spellgard we routinely fought monsters hittable on 16+ because we didn't optimize to within an inch of our lives. My swordmage landed his encounter power ONCE in 3 sessions! Save-ends powers were a joke; the 50/50 save mechanic meant more often than not that "kewl power" you just landed (easy target) had a duration of "1 rd" and were pointless against boss monsters (solos & elites) the creatures you WANT to debuff and fight!
* Poor modules. Spellgard was a long and boring slog through the tower of random encounters to meet a bad guy we didn't even know was the final boss until we killed him (anti-climax away). Perhaps WotC can't write good modules then? Well, Goodman Games (of which DCCs are a lifeblood to us) failed to put out much better a module in Hall of the Mountain King; rife with poor rule understanding (A level 9 monster's a decent challenge for 1st level PCs, says so right in the encounter budget!) and lousy encounters (Two ogres, 20x20 room. WHA?). To really bad examples? Probably. Bad enough that I felt 4e crippled two fairly good module writers? Yup. I can't see how the same companies that put out Red Hand of Doom and Cage of Delerium could release such poor work like this one edition later.
* Supplement Treadmill. As someone who bought every WotC release up to 2007 (when money trouble made it harder to buy the later stuff) I generally liked most WotC supplements. However, I grew to dislike the "staggered release" schedule WotC is using. I disliked how I had to wait for PHB2 and MM2 to get some 'Iconic" elements in the game (like druids and frost giants) and how characters without the "PowerSource Power" books are behind their enhanced cousins (esp. wizards, paladins and clerics). Sure a DDi subscription gives me access to all that stuff, but since I lack a laptop at game, I find (unlike 3e) supplements aren't optional, they're NECESSARY to compensate for design choices as well as stealth-errata (Expertise).
4 separate games. 3 different DMs. 10 months of gaming. We'd all tried it. We all WANTED to like it. It failed for us. Even our WoW lovers hated it. We've moved on to Pathfinder and everyone is happy.
My group tried no less than aborted 4e games since the game's inception.
1. I DMed a traditional D&D game from levels 1-5. The game died when my players wished to return to the 3.5/Eberron game I was running before 4e came out.
2. Another player ran a 4e Realms game lvl 1-5 (including Spellgard) before ending it due to conflicting schedules. No one was terribly upset to see it go.
3. My primary DM tried Twice. Once running a "humanoids" game (only monster races, not the classic races) designed to have a "for the Horde" feel. It made it 5 sessions level 1-3 (including the Hall of the Mountain King module from GG) before ending mid-dungeon because of player disinterest.
4. Convinced it was the very "WoW" feel of the monster-game, he tried again with "normal" races and classes (abet a homebrewed setting) that lasted 3 sessions before proving to us that no, it wasn't the setting, it was the rules all along.
I went into all four games gung-ho that 4e was amazing and everyone else would like it as well (In fact, all 3 DMs above bought into the game very hardcore before actually playing. No one had a "wait and see" attitude except a two players, one in each group). It was a bunch of things that wore us down.
* Slow, sluggish combats that took forever. We're not a huge "combat-heavy" group, so when a combat against 4 giant spiders takes 30 minutes to complete, we were considering playing some Mario Party instead...
* "Sameyness" of character classes. I played (since I had a PC die and one leave) a swordmage, wizard, rogue (1 session), warlord, and artificer. None sparked my interest. The swordmage did for a bit and the wizard was fun because I built him to be a power-swap PC. I was bored to tears as a warlord, and the artificer felt EXACTLY like him except for being a ranged character. Other people who swapped characters felt similar, esp. those who swapped in the same ROLE.
* The Math. While D&D has never been forgiving, we found our math downright BRUTAL. In Spellgard we routinely fought monsters hittable on 16+ because we didn't optimize to within an inch of our lives. My swordmage landed his encounter power ONCE in 3 sessions! Save-ends powers were a joke; the 50/50 save mechanic meant more often than not that "kewl power" you just landed (easy target) had a duration of "1 rd" and were pointless against boss monsters (solos & elites) the creatures you WANT to debuff and fight!
* Poor modules. Spellgard was a long and boring slog through the tower of random encounters to meet a bad guy we didn't even know was the final boss until we killed him (anti-climax away). Perhaps WotC can't write good modules then? Well, Goodman Games (of which DCCs are a lifeblood to us) failed to put out much better a module in Hall of the Mountain King; rife with poor rule understanding (A level 9 monster's a decent challenge for 1st level PCs, says so right in the encounter budget!) and lousy encounters (Two ogres, 20x20 room. WHA?). To really bad examples? Probably. Bad enough that I felt 4e crippled two fairly good module writers? Yup. I can't see how the same companies that put out Red Hand of Doom and Cage of Delerium could release such poor work like this one edition later.
* Supplement Treadmill. As someone who bought every WotC release up to 2007 (when money trouble made it harder to buy the later stuff) I generally liked most WotC supplements. However, I grew to dislike the "staggered release" schedule WotC is using. I disliked how I had to wait for PHB2 and MM2 to get some 'Iconic" elements in the game (like druids and frost giants) and how characters without the "PowerSource Power" books are behind their enhanced cousins (esp. wizards, paladins and clerics). Sure a DDi subscription gives me access to all that stuff, but since I lack a laptop at game, I find (unlike 3e) supplements aren't optional, they're NECESSARY to compensate for design choices as well as stealth-errata (Expertise).
4 separate games. 3 different DMs. 10 months of gaming. We'd all tried it. We all WANTED to like it. It failed for us. Even our WoW lovers hated it. We've moved on to Pathfinder and everyone is happy.
