Update Madness!

[Dice4Hire]

I do not DDI, but I would find it quite annoying to have things changed on my sheet involuntarily when I leveled up. That should not happen.

 

[Talok]

For most part, my gaming group and I really like 4E and are having fun playing it. There's just thing that's been getting me (and the rest of my players to one degree or another) down lately... Updates.

And in advance, please, forgive my occasional hyperbole. It's likely the frustration soaking through.

The regular addition of new stuff doesn't bother us so much, but constant revisions and errata of what's already there. It's wearing me out.

First, following the updates and errata seems to be so much more of all or nothing proposition than it was in past editions...

D&D 4E is so heavily invested in the online tools that, while it's possible, it's not easy to run a game or build characters without them. Of course, the online tools are all automatically updated (and cannot be customized) such that if you don't use all the errata, the tools become troublesome to use. There isn't even a way to look up what a rule was like before it had been updated. The online tools only provide the most recent update.

By the same respect, the few rulebooks we collectively own (why buy most of them, when we can simply pay a modest monthly fee to access all of them via the online Compendium?) quickly become hopelessly out of date. My PHB and DMG are functionally useless for rules adjudication at the table.

So, we either stick close to the online tools and use all of the errata and updates, or we pare back almost all the way back to just using the three original core books and use none of the errata and updates.

Also, maybe it's just me because I don't slavishly follow the update announcements, but so many of the changes seem to be so very obscure and subtle that we don't notice them (even though they sometimes make a surprising impact on game play) until weeks after they're released.

All in all, it feels as if the rules are changing on us from week to week, and we can't rely on anything working in the same way from one session to the next.

We're talking over the possibility of switching over to another, more "stable", system when our current campaign concludes, but we don't really any suggestions toward that end.

I'm just curious if anyone else is having similar botherations.

You're not the only one that's sick of updates. The updates are out of hand. Feats, classes, paragon paths, and powers seem to change on a monthly basis. WotC should be more professional and try to do some real playtesting before releasing their products. At this point, 4E has been "updated" to a different edition than was released 3 years ago. The updates are so back they nearly killed LFR gaming in my area.

 

[delericho]

The hardest part of all of this though, is that the company ends up having to straddle the line between customer annoyance and commerce. If a book (or a video game, or a movie for that matter) has been penciled in for a specific release window... they usually are pretty tied into it based upon the projections of the money that will go out to support its release, and come into the company because of its purchase. This includes things like distribution, and marketing, where time and space has been set aside in the schedule for this item... and just saying "screw it, let's push it back four months!" because of additional time to check things is not always an option. As a result... sometimes things get released when they probably could have used a few more passes in editing or QA.

While that's true, they currently work to a schedule that allows a certain amount of time for playtesting/editing. The way to fix this issue (if they're serious about it), is to move future books to a schedule that allows for a greater amount of time for playtesting/editing.

That is, don't push books back to make room for extra testing - build the extra testing into the schedule from the start.

Of course, this means that every book will take longer up-front to produce, which is a significant barrier to it being done. In the long run, it probably saves money, but it can be a difficult sell...

That's certainly doesn't excuse the company for its shortcomings... but it definitely I think contributes to the idea that patching it after the fact is an important part of production. Which is fine for video games...

It's not really 'fine' for video games either. It's just that the market has somehow become accustomed to accepting bad software as a matter of course.

Move away from the printing of books, and they can patch their game rules just like a video game after the fact, causing less difficulties than they would with paper.

Indeed. Move to digital-only distribution, and they are free to treat the game like bad software. Yay!

 

[DEFCON 1]

While that's true, they currently work to a schedule that allows a certain amount of time for playtesting/editing. The way to fix this issue (if they're serious about it), is to move future books to a schedule that allows for a greater amount of time for playtesting/editing.

I can certainly understand and agree with this philosophy at this point of 4E's life cycle. Books are less frequent, and there aren't many (if any) "required" books from the perspective of the players of the game that need to be released.

But I don't think this philosophy works at the beginning of the game's life cycle. I mean, the first Player's Handbook was released in the summer of '08, Martial Power in the fall of '08, Arcane Power winter '09, and Divine Power spring (or was it summer?) of '09. That meant if you were playing a cleric or paladin, you were waiting almost an entire year for your splatbook of extra goodies anyway. Could you imagine the uproar if WotC decided to push every one of these splatbook back four months for additional playtesting? What kind of reaction would they have gotten if Divine Power wasn't going to appear until the fall of '09? I think they would have gotten crucified.

Based upon the amount of errata that Divine Power has received... I suspect that most players would prefer to get books earlier so they can be actually be used, and let the chips fall where they may in terms of the few items within it needing eventual rebalancing... then delay books upwards of half a year just to reduce the number of those items two or three years in the future. I know I certainly would rather get the splatbook earlier than later, because after all... even when the errata finally appears, it doesn't necessarily have to be used.

 

[delericho]

But I don't think this philosophy works at the beginning of the game's life cycle. I mean, the first Player's Handbook was released in the summer of '08, Martial Power in the fall of '08, Arcane Power winter '09, and Divine Power spring (or was it summer?) of '09. That meant if you were playing a cleric or paladin, you were waiting almost an entire year for your splatbook of extra goodies anyway. Could you imagine the uproar if WotC decided to push every one of these splatbook back four months for additional playtesting? What kind of reaction would they have gotten if Divine Power wasn't going to appear until the fall of '09? I think they would have gotten crucified.

Bear in mind that the PHB/DMG/MM would also have been delayed, and so the gap would probably be about the same. (Actually, the initial 4e release in particular could have used a delay - about another year of playtesting would have been good.)

In the specific case of the splatbooks, IMO they shouldn't actually have released those books at all. The best format for that material is as randomised cards.

Of course, then they really would have been crucified...

 

[DEFCON 1]

The best format for that material is as randomised cards.

Of course, then they really would have been crucified...

Although the Mythbusters proved that you really can't cause injury by throwing playing cards at someone... I would have fully expected several hundred thousand people attempting it anyway, had WotC done this.