That bothered me as well - good as a variant or alternative race, but should not have been "core" Basically, it caused you to rewrite/rethink older edition adventures and settings to now include these races, which may or may not have been there before.
4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.
- Thread starter Evenglare
- Start date
That bothered me as well - good as a variant or alternative race, but should not have been "core" Basically, it caused you to rewrite/rethink older edition adventures and settings to now include these races, which may or may not have been there before.
S
Sunseeker
Guest
No, you didn't. You clarified that later. Originally you stated it
and
I pointed out quite clearly that the majority of the "Traditional Core" was indeed there. Afterward you suggested that the things it lacked(gnomes, bards, druids, illusionists, better charm and illusion spells) were
It wasn't until your statement
That you clarified that these were things you used, and that you liked to upgrade your campaigns to the latest addition, so you wanted them because you used them. You WANTED them to be there because YOU used them. Not because they were part of the ridiculous "traditional core" argument you've been flaunting, not because these were core elements in your mind, but simply because YOU use them in your games.
So lets get down to it: What's the real motivation here? Are these "traditional core" elements that make D&D, well, D&D? Or are these specific elements that you enjoyed and would like to see continued? Because I'm really getting tired of hearing this farcical argument of "Oh, they didn't include 'traditional core' therefore it's not D&D." when in fact, they did include the vast majority of the traditional core.
If these are elements you used and enjoyed and not having them was a bummer, fine, I totally understand that, but be honestand don't lambast the game for something it clearly did not do.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
I am being honest. And those were elements of the traditional core from dating back to 1e. They are a part of what has made D&D what it is. Why should I refrain lambasting a game for not including them in favor of new stuff just because they apparently weren't important to you? I don't care whether or not you agree with me. I've stated my case because you asked, but if you're going to refuse to accept my sincerity in this then I've got nothing more to say to you.
GreyLord
Legend
THE POINT OF THE MESSAGE AND IMPORTANT PART IS FARTHER BELOW MARKED AS "IMPORTANT PART", SKIP TO THAT IF YOU WANT TO tl;dr ON THIS FIRST PORTION.
[parallel=Dannyalcatraz]
I'll try to be as neutral in my language as possible:
I like 3.X Ed as a FRPG, but not as D&D. As I've said before, its kind of like New Coke: for all of its strengths and how it addressed the well-researched concerns many voiced online, it was too big a departure for many of the market's core from what came before to mesh with the product identity of prior editions. We got a good foreshadowing of that from the developers' prerelease comments and information released on the internet and other locations in regards to 3.X, and they were not kidding.
What this did, functionally, was turn off 20 million ex-D&D players from even trying it because it lacked that continuity. (though I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, they did sell over a million core books over the first year, I'll give the benefit of the doubt that they were able to get 5 million ex-D&D players, though it probably was lower then that and a LOT of those were new blood rather then ex-D&D players or even old D&D players coming back to the WotC game)
I personally have the rare perspective of playing in a campaign that dates back to 1975, and has been converted through each edition of D&D up to and including the controversial 2ed. But we couldn't do that with 3Ed- too much had changed. Those few PCs we tried to convert played radically differently than they had over the prior decades. Some PCs were not supported until later supplements- not surprising- and still others remain unsupported to this day. In fact any Fighte/Magic User or other multiclass could not be adapted according to the official conversion book to be anywhere close to what they had been in the previous editions.
The thing is, when I look at the marketing tools and market share that Hasbro/WotC had in 1999-2001, I really think 3.XEd could have succeeded as a distinct FRPG from WotC as opposed to the fate suffered by Everway. I also think that it would have fared better as a distinct game without the encumbrance of trying to handle all those legacy issues & sacred cows like Vancian Casting or even being a class-based RPG. Despite my love of many of D&D's sacred cows, I honestly think they weighed down 3.XEd's pretty good mechanical engine.
In fact, case in point that it could have been successful without being called D&D is perfectly represented by an evolution of it's ruleset called Pathfinder today.
Hell- stripped of classes, alignments, and other D&D legacy mechanics, it might have been perfect for the launch of a Diablo RPG...[/Parallel]
Yes, I'm an old school gamer.
Yes, I play Pathfinder....but all those people that whine that 4e is not D&D, IN MY OPINION are getting the payback they deserved when the older gamers complained that though 3e may be a great game...it wasn't D&D...and the 3.X gamers told everyone else to shut the heck up and quite their whining.
4e up until PHB 3 actually had some items MORE IN COMMON with AD&D and traditional D&D than 3.X, inclusive of NOT having classes as skill packages and having them as actual archtypes, having monsters with static XP and static values along with the ability to quickly create opponents out of the MM rather then designing them with levels and everything else.
So, overall 4e being called D&D no more bothered me than 3.X being called D&D. 3.X was a drastic change, so was 4e. Neither was a real continuation of the AD&D or D&D mindset created in the 1970s. Hence comments that 4e failed because it wasn't D&D really have no bearing on whether it suceeded or failed in my opinion.
More apt is was the sense of decreasing returns. If you believe the numbers that 25 million people had played D&D over the years...then we say only 5 million played 3.X...that's still a pretty big number. It's only 1/5 of the total though.
Now if we take only 1/5 of that to transfer to the next edition, 4e...that's only 1 million. A LOT to be certain....best seller upon release...but no where near the 5 million of the previous edition.
Of course if that holds true...DDN is in BIG trouble...if it's a decreasing return which could indicate only 200,000 play DDN???
IMPORTANT PART
I think some of the problems were the same that D&D has ALWAYS HAD when going to another edition. This is represented by what I parodied. It's represented by what I stated above.
People dislike change. When you change you invariably are going to lose a LOT of the people already using your product. IN the change to 4e, that was a LOSS of MANY who were playing 3.X at the time. It is easier to stick with what you know than to change. You have to attract new blood in order to replace that loss.
As I see it, 4e didn't attract the new blood to replace the numbers that they lost. I think with DDN they are trying not to lose as many, maybe even possibly bring back ex players...BUT the problem remains...if they lose more players than they can gain with new blood in the transition...they'll have a continuing problem and perhaps the same problems they have had previously.
END IMPORTANT PART.
I think 4e is a good game overall. I think it suffers from trying to give too much to each class. At first it's not too bad, but after 30 levels you have so many powers sometimes it's hard to keep track of them all.
In this case I ascribe simple is better. I AM a Pathfinder fan, truthfully. I think their classes give just as much as 4e...BUT they present it in an easier to track and simpler, more straightforward manner than Daily, Encounter, or Utility power formats. I think the core 4e mechanics are extremely solid, but when tossing in the powers system it makes it more complex than many want to deal with at high levels.
I think 4e would have been held in wonderful esteem if it had been a separate game...but I think that it still would have had problems selling eventually because of what I stated above, the power system can cause more deterrents than many feel like dealing with. AS some would say...I play a fighter because all I want to do is hit things and kill it. They don't want the complexity of having multiple daily, encounter, and utility powers to keep track of.
3.X I think would have been successful if marketed correctly regardless...and I would use Pathfinder as an example. It's actually been rising in popularity over the past year or so from what I can see, and that's with a name completely separate from D&D.
The other problem that happened with 4e that didn't help it is obviously perception. With 3e at least they tried to put up the illusion that they were appeasing old time fans, even to the extent of settling up with Gary and others. 4e it seemed they went out of their way to completely screw with fans.
Forgotten Realms is a case in point. I play 4e as well. I DID buy the Campaign guide and the Players guide. HOwever, they lost me with everything else. I have no interest in the Realms they created for 4e. I have no interest in Spell Plague or Abeir, or a world without Mystra (though in some ways they brought her back...). They are now discussing the Sundering...we'll see if it patches things up to bring me back or not.
However, that's a good example of something they did that had no real practical use. Why upset fans for NO gain (at least from what I could see). Made no sense.
NOT WITHSTANDING...I still find 4e a good system overall. I find that it's skill system allows for more roleplaying options overall (that's ROLEPLAYING as opposed to having to ROLL for Every skill under the umbrella of skills and others) and outside of combat it tends to have a more openness towards roleplaying. It's dependent on DM's who push the roleplaying aspect though, I've seen plenty of combat only focused games.
So 4e I think is a good system, but I'm not entirely convinced it would have been successful under a different name or on it's own without the legacy of D&D propping it up.
[parallel=Dannyalcatraz]
I'll try to be as neutral in my language as possible:
I like 3.X Ed as a FRPG, but not as D&D. As I've said before, its kind of like New Coke: for all of its strengths and how it addressed the well-researched concerns many voiced online, it was too big a departure for many of the market's core from what came before to mesh with the product identity of prior editions. We got a good foreshadowing of that from the developers' prerelease comments and information released on the internet and other locations in regards to 3.X, and they were not kidding.
What this did, functionally, was turn off 20 million ex-D&D players from even trying it because it lacked that continuity. (though I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, they did sell over a million core books over the first year, I'll give the benefit of the doubt that they were able to get 5 million ex-D&D players, though it probably was lower then that and a LOT of those were new blood rather then ex-D&D players or even old D&D players coming back to the WotC game)
I personally have the rare perspective of playing in a campaign that dates back to 1975, and has been converted through each edition of D&D up to and including the controversial 2ed. But we couldn't do that with 3Ed- too much had changed. Those few PCs we tried to convert played radically differently than they had over the prior decades. Some PCs were not supported until later supplements- not surprising- and still others remain unsupported to this day. In fact any Fighte/Magic User or other multiclass could not be adapted according to the official conversion book to be anywhere close to what they had been in the previous editions.
The thing is, when I look at the marketing tools and market share that Hasbro/WotC had in 1999-2001, I really think 3.XEd could have succeeded as a distinct FRPG from WotC as opposed to the fate suffered by Everway. I also think that it would have fared better as a distinct game without the encumbrance of trying to handle all those legacy issues & sacred cows like Vancian Casting or even being a class-based RPG. Despite my love of many of D&D's sacred cows, I honestly think they weighed down 3.XEd's pretty good mechanical engine.
In fact, case in point that it could have been successful without being called D&D is perfectly represented by an evolution of it's ruleset called Pathfinder today.
Hell- stripped of classes, alignments, and other D&D legacy mechanics, it might have been perfect for the launch of a Diablo RPG...[/Parallel]
Yes, I'm an old school gamer.
Yes, I play Pathfinder....but all those people that whine that 4e is not D&D, IN MY OPINION are getting the payback they deserved when the older gamers complained that though 3e may be a great game...it wasn't D&D...and the 3.X gamers told everyone else to shut the heck up and quite their whining.
4e up until PHB 3 actually had some items MORE IN COMMON with AD&D and traditional D&D than 3.X, inclusive of NOT having classes as skill packages and having them as actual archtypes, having monsters with static XP and static values along with the ability to quickly create opponents out of the MM rather then designing them with levels and everything else.
So, overall 4e being called D&D no more bothered me than 3.X being called D&D. 3.X was a drastic change, so was 4e. Neither was a real continuation of the AD&D or D&D mindset created in the 1970s. Hence comments that 4e failed because it wasn't D&D really have no bearing on whether it suceeded or failed in my opinion.
More apt is was the sense of decreasing returns. If you believe the numbers that 25 million people had played D&D over the years...then we say only 5 million played 3.X...that's still a pretty big number. It's only 1/5 of the total though.
Now if we take only 1/5 of that to transfer to the next edition, 4e...that's only 1 million. A LOT to be certain....best seller upon release...but no where near the 5 million of the previous edition.
Of course if that holds true...DDN is in BIG trouble...if it's a decreasing return which could indicate only 200,000 play DDN???
IMPORTANT PART
I think some of the problems were the same that D&D has ALWAYS HAD when going to another edition. This is represented by what I parodied. It's represented by what I stated above.
People dislike change. When you change you invariably are going to lose a LOT of the people already using your product. IN the change to 4e, that was a LOSS of MANY who were playing 3.X at the time. It is easier to stick with what you know than to change. You have to attract new blood in order to replace that loss.
As I see it, 4e didn't attract the new blood to replace the numbers that they lost. I think with DDN they are trying not to lose as many, maybe even possibly bring back ex players...BUT the problem remains...if they lose more players than they can gain with new blood in the transition...they'll have a continuing problem and perhaps the same problems they have had previously.
END IMPORTANT PART.
I think 4e is a good game overall. I think it suffers from trying to give too much to each class. At first it's not too bad, but after 30 levels you have so many powers sometimes it's hard to keep track of them all.
In this case I ascribe simple is better. I AM a Pathfinder fan, truthfully. I think their classes give just as much as 4e...BUT they present it in an easier to track and simpler, more straightforward manner than Daily, Encounter, or Utility power formats. I think the core 4e mechanics are extremely solid, but when tossing in the powers system it makes it more complex than many want to deal with at high levels.
I think 4e would have been held in wonderful esteem if it had been a separate game...but I think that it still would have had problems selling eventually because of what I stated above, the power system can cause more deterrents than many feel like dealing with. AS some would say...I play a fighter because all I want to do is hit things and kill it. They don't want the complexity of having multiple daily, encounter, and utility powers to keep track of.
3.X I think would have been successful if marketed correctly regardless...and I would use Pathfinder as an example. It's actually been rising in popularity over the past year or so from what I can see, and that's with a name completely separate from D&D.
The other problem that happened with 4e that didn't help it is obviously perception. With 3e at least they tried to put up the illusion that they were appeasing old time fans, even to the extent of settling up with Gary and others. 4e it seemed they went out of their way to completely screw with fans.
Forgotten Realms is a case in point. I play 4e as well. I DID buy the Campaign guide and the Players guide. HOwever, they lost me with everything else. I have no interest in the Realms they created for 4e. I have no interest in Spell Plague or Abeir, or a world without Mystra (though in some ways they brought her back...). They are now discussing the Sundering...we'll see if it patches things up to bring me back or not.
However, that's a good example of something they did that had no real practical use. Why upset fans for NO gain (at least from what I could see). Made no sense.
NOT WITHSTANDING...I still find 4e a good system overall. I find that it's skill system allows for more roleplaying options overall (that's ROLEPLAYING as opposed to having to ROLL for Every skill under the umbrella of skills and others) and outside of combat it tends to have a more openness towards roleplaying. It's dependent on DM's who push the roleplaying aspect though, I've seen plenty of combat only focused games.
So 4e I think is a good system, but I'm not entirely convinced it would have been successful under a different name or on it's own without the legacy of D&D propping it up.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
I expect those who want the first book to include all "traditional core" elements may be disappointed -- with how modular 5e is shaping up to be, it seems a lot like the first book will be very stripped down. Then each individual group will add on different elements to make their own kind of game -- a core defined by each table, rather than by WotC.
GreyLord
Legend
I would take issue with anyone who says 3.X had the traditional cores and 4e did not. 4e reverted to the cores of classes not being skill packages, classes being archtypes, monsters with set XP and easy to set up monsters.
The idea of changing the entire system and tossing out the old ORIGINATED with 3e, and 4e was simply following that line of thought by tossing out 3.X's old rules just like 3e had tossed out AD&D's old rules.
What made D&D what it was got lost in the transition to later editions FAR before 4e.
4e had other problems that came with it that I can absolutely accept as difficulties. One of them was that it did not keep as many of the 3.X (note that's not OLD SCHOOLERS OR OLDER GAMERS...it's SPECIFICALLY 3.X) players.
3e didn't have this as major of an obstacle because by the time it came around, the numbers playing AD&D had dwindled significantly. Instead it had the difficulty of bringing BACK MANY OF THE LAPSED D&D players. A totally different problem, one that it succeeded upon to a degree.
I don't think 4e drew back many lapsed D&D players simply because if 3e didn't bring them back, they surely were not going to come back for 4e typically as they already gave up with the new and shiny with 3.X edition. So 4e had to do a retention of players...and whether it succeeded or not...is rather a moot point currently I think as DDN is on the horizon. It's target audience was new players and 3.X players...and personally, I think it failed at least on one of those counts if not both, at least when looking at retaining a majority of at least the 3.X players.
Still, I think 4e has it's fans...but complaining that it wasn't D&D...hah...unless your going to hold 3.X to the same standards...I'd request you stay off the boat.
If we count 3.X as D&D (and in this post I will) then 4e surely was D&D also. Even if it took getting the PHB 2, it had Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Humans, Half-Orcs, and Gnomes. In addition it had other races that BECAME POPULAR UNDER 3.X (that's right, they became popular with 3.X, not 4e initially) which would include Eladrin, Dragonborn, Genasi, and Drow (though they should have included Half Dragons as those were ALSO highly popular for some reason in 3.X, especially in the later years).
4e had all the core inclusive of Fighters, Clerics, Rogues, Wizards, Paladins, Rangers, Druids, and Bards. It even included other classes which became HIGHLY popular via 3.X inclusive of Warlocks and Sorcerers. It also included classes which 3.X had skipped over, namely the Assassin (prestige classes don't count as REAL, FULL UP Classes in my book).
It did have some bizarre additions later however, of which I can't say I was completely fond of. Just like 3.X you didn't have to use it if you didn't want it though.
Double post...AGAIN!
Amusing, but way off of my point.
I brought up Everway for a reason: when WotC published Everway (a very innovative & fun FRPG), they were a company with market share and a hot product, yes, but also with overstretched capital- a classic cash crunch encountered by many successful and growing businesses. They could not financially support Everway with any kind of real marketing or product support. So it was killed off as a product in 1995, and eventually sold off. A few years later, while still struggling a bit with cash flow, WotC was bought by Hasbro.
In contrast, WotC was a much healthier company in 2006-2008 than it was in 1999-2001. There is no comparison: they had an established and stable product as opposed to a growing one. Their licensees were producing products that were adding to the brand's value. Technology had significantly decreased costs of releasing a new product, especially considering the potential of e-publishing and the DDI.
And tying it into M:tG would have scratched an itch that a LOT of fans of that game had been clamoring for...myself included. There is great economic potential in satisfying a known gap in the market.
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In 2008 I was burned out on 3e and potentially receptive to 4e. I didn't have a problem with 4e 'not feeling like D&D' though 4e's Encounter-centric style was certainly very different from the traditional exploration-centric style I associate with D&D. In other ways such as the relatively weak power of magic and the shallower power gradient, 4e was much closer to what I wanted from an FRPG than 3e had been; in some ways closer than 1e - though I think these days I know enough that I can easily run 1e to get the lower-power feel I want; I did that in a ca 1st-4th level 1e online Yggsburgh campaign recently.
I was initially deterred from 4e in 2008 entirely by the presentation - the IMO godawful-ugly covers of the three core rulebooks, the business-briefing presentation that I found uncomprehensible, what seemed like unnecessary complexity with umpteen different subsystems just to make a PC. When I finally played 4e in 2009, having made a Fighter PC with the then-new electronic charbuilder, I loved the game and was converted. Later on I picked up a copy of "Worlds and Monsters" and found all the evocative prose and art that was missing from the 4e DMG.
So, presentation - for me, WoTC's initial fail was on the presentation and editing, not the game itself. If they had not branded it as D&D it's very unlikely I would have ever played it.
I was initially deterred from 4e in 2008 entirely by the presentation - the IMO godawful-ugly covers of the three core rulebooks, the business-briefing presentation that I found uncomprehensible, what seemed like unnecessary complexity with umpteen different subsystems just to make a PC. When I finally played 4e in 2009, having made a Fighter PC with the then-new electronic charbuilder, I loved the game and was converted. Later on I picked up a copy of "Worlds and Monsters" and found all the evocative prose and art that was missing from the 4e DMG.
So, presentation - for me, WoTC's initial fail was on the presentation and editing, not the game itself. If they had not branded it as D&D it's very unlikely I would have ever played it.
Personally I think that the "traditional core" of D&D is simply outdated. Lets be hones, D&D began as hack and slash dungeon crawler and a lot of its traditional core values tie into that. But I think PnP players don't look for hack & slash games any more. Video games can do them a lot better. What PnP rpgs still can do is character and world interaction and an adapting story. Sadly 4E made it quite clear that those things take the backdrop by not even trying to present a believable world. Instead the world was just there to give the combat context (The magic item costs for example or the scaling environmental challenges by character level)
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