With 5e here, what will 4e be remembered for?

[Emerikol]

I think "forced" is emotive and silly, but I will agree with "encouraged"!

I guess I should have added "if they wanted to continue playing the same kind of game they had played." The rest of your post I'm pretty much in agreement with.

 

[BryonD]

Abstract surely isn't the same as "never meat". Why do you think it is?

I quoted you and other people and now you are just chasing the language in circles.

I think THP are a pretty annoying mechanic in every edition so I avoid them. The latter suggestion is a fine optional rule, but needlessly fiddly for normal play, imho.

Fair enough. I've never had any issue with them and find the valuable. Again, it is easy to see how these types of differences have huge impacts on the play style preference.

You didn't answer my other question: " If a fighter with 100 HP was hit 10 times for a total of 57 damage, would you limit the Warlord to healing only 47, leaving the 1 HP/ hit as actual injury?"

 

[BryonD]

That 3E was an "incremental change", and that 4e "didn't try to retain any of the prior feel of D&D" is likewise contentious - I know I'm not the only player who returned to D&D for 4e because it did a better job than any earlier edition of capturing the prior feel of D&D. (Whereas 3E is a dramatic change from classic D&D, in my view.)

For the record ( ) I agree that 3E was a highly dramatic change.
I don't know that I buy 4E being any closer to prior editions. But they are both so radically different that there is no way I could argue with someone saying it felt that way to them.

But, either way, 3E was a huge change.

 

[TrippyHippy]

That doesn’t seem accurate. ….

Forgive me if I don’t quote all your post back to you, as it was quite long. I did read it all though.

I don’t really feel comfortable discussing the tragedy surrounding former a WotC employee, and I’m not sure how appropriate it would be. However, my point is that if the game was clearly projected to be profitable and doable as an compatible and integrated electronic online game, they would have done so. There was certainly a drive to do so, going on the articles and interviews that came out around the release of 4E.

I’m not sure about the technical differences between WoW and other online games - I don’t play any of them and have little interest in online gaming - but I was just holding up WoW as an obvious example of the type of online game that WotC was influenced by, among many influences, when designing 4E. That’s not a controversial point stating whether it was right or wrong to do so, btw, just that it had a degree of influence over certain aspects like Roles and at-will powers, etc.

I’d certainly add the ’tangible’ aspect to the ‘visible’ aspect I highlighted before - they were both brought in as design goals to appeal to casual gamers. My point here, however, is that D&D isn’t a miniatures battle game, nor is it a german-style board game or an MMO. It’s D&D. The game shouldn’t have to change itself to attempt to capture a market based on appealing to fans on these other games. It should stand alone as a classic in it’s own right - with the fundamentals in place of what made it a unique, visionary experience to many people the first time they played it.

From my experience, the thing that always appealed to me - and has kept me in the hobby for 30 years or so now - was the whole ’theatre of the mind’ aspect. The idea of playing in a shared, interactive fantasy without the need for visual, tactile or tabletop representation of any kind. Having a game called D&D that focussed on such things was a detraction from the central appeal to me. I say that with the understanding that that is the appeal of a lot of other RPG fans too - and that is why there was dissent.

 

[BryonD]

So the divisions, the cracks, go way back. People started playing D&D-esque games as a direct alternative to playing WotC D&D long before 4E came out.

That is certainly very true so far as "Dungeons and Dragons" (TM) goes.
But D20 as a system was so dominate that it was common to hear complaints about stagnation and lack of innovation in the marketplace.

 

[BryonD]

Regarding WoW:

I saw a handful of things in 4E that made me think they took inspiration from WoW. But none of them were bad because of that. As a matter of fact, I thought they did a good job and pulling in some fitting pieces. And certainly there was not nearly enough that I ever thought 4E was videogamey. I didn't agree with that position.

Of course, I don't like 4E as a play experience but respect that many people do.
I also respect that 4E did feel videogamey to a lot of people.

I don't have links anymore or anything. So I will preemptively concede lack of proof. But there were comments from WotC, or at least unofficially from staff, that they wanted to attract WoW players. This did not mean they wanted video game players to feel at home playing a table top version of a video game. They saw more than an order of magnitude more people "pretending to be an elf" in cyberspace and thought they should be able to get a large share of them to pretend to be an elf around a table. This tied into the idea that losing existing fans would not be a problem because they would pull in 5 to 10 new players for every one they lost.

 

[Zardnaar]

Regarding WoW:

I saw a handful of things in 4E that made me think they took inspiration from WoW. But none of them were bad because of that. As a matter of fact, I thought they did a good job and pulling in some fitting pieces. And certainly there was not nearly enough that I ever thought 4E was videogamey. I didn't agree with that position.

Of course, I don't like 4E as a play experience but respect that many people do.
I also respect that 4E did feel videogamey to a lot of people.

I don't have links anymore or anything. So I will preemptively concede lack of proof. But there were comments from WotC, or at least unofficially from staff, that they wanted to attract WoW players. This did not mean they wanted video game players to feel at home playing a table top version of a video game. They saw more than an order of magnitude more people "pretending to be an elf" in cyberspace and thought they should be able to get a large share of them to pretend to be an elf around a table. This tied into the idea that losing existing fans would not be a problem because they would pull in 5 to 10 new players for every one they lost.

Failing to attract those new players in signifigant numbers and losing your old fans is a bit of an own goal though.

I saw 4E as a more advanced version of the old D&D minis skirmish game.

 

[Nagol]

Regarding WoW:

I saw a handful of things in 4E that made me think they took inspiration from WoW. But none of them were bad because of that. As a matter of fact, I thought they did a good job and pulling in some fitting pieces. And certainly there was not nearly enough that I ever thought 4E was videogamey. I didn't agree with that position.

Of course, I don't like 4E as a play experience but respect that many people do.
I also respect that 4E did feel videogamey to a lot of people.

I don't have links anymore or anything. So I will preemptively concede lack of proof. But there were comments from WotC, or at least unofficially from staff, that they wanted to attract WoW players. This did not mean they wanted video game players to feel at home playing a table top version of a video game. They saw more than an order of magnitude more people "pretending to be an elf" in cyberspace and thought they should be able to get a large share of them to pretend to be an elf around a table. This tied into the idea that losing existing fans would not be a problem because they would pull in 5 to 10 new players for every one they lost.

Here's one from Andy Collins found here:

...When we were all playing 1st and 2nd Edition, we didn't cut our teeth on MMOs or console gaming or Facebook or any of those things. At best, maybe we had experience playing Monopoly or games like that, Risk, so that D&D was a totally foreign thing. That's just not true anymore.

People today, the young kids today, are coming into exposure from D&D after having playing games that have very similar themes, often have very similar mechanics ... they understand the concepts of the game. So in some ways they are much more advanced as potential game players. But in other ways, they are also coming from a background that is short attention span, perhaps, less likely interested in reading the rules of the game before playing.

And I'm not just talking about younger players now, but anybody. I know when I jump into a new console game, for instance, the last thing I want to do is read the book. I want to start playing. And that's a relatively new development in game playing and game learning. And we've been working to adapt to that, the changing expectations of the new gamer.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

The OP asked what 4E will be remembered for. The thing is, I don't think what was actually true about the edition matters; it's more what people see.

So, based on this thread and similar arguments across the internet, I will say it will probably be remembered for three things:

1. Division - It doesn't matter what the reality is, the simple truth is that there is a very, very visible division within the community that started when the edition was announced and simply did not die; it still remains, even to this day, and by all appearances is just as strong as when it started.
2. Failure - WotC dropped support after... how long? 3.5 years? It doesn't matter what reality is; a lot of people are most likely to see that simply as a failure of the system.
3. Pathfinder - Pathfinder really, really owes its existence to 4E. There's pretty much no questioning that. If 4E had been better handled, likely Paizo would never have made Pathfinder.

So, no matter what really occurred, I think those are the items it will be remembered for.

 

[BryonD]

If 4E had been better handled, likely Paizo would never have made Pathfinder.

It depends on what you are looking at.
If WotC had handled their 3PP policy better (even just communicating it better, not necessarily doing something different in the end), then Paizo may have not pulled the trigger on Pathfinder.
But even then, if 4E was what 4E was, then there was going to be a vast pent-up demand in the marketplace. Without PF, there would be some other game or group of games that would be blamed for how things ended up for 4E.