D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Alzrius]

4E was essentially torpedo by WotC long before launch by really three major factors:

Plus a couple of minor ones. Remember when the designers openly admitted to holding back popular monsters from the first Monster Manual in order to encourage sales of subsequent volumes? Things like that did not help their case with people who were on the fence about converting over.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's some rather revisionist history. The game was basically stuffed before anyone even knew about that stuff, because there were the three huge bad decisions I mentioned above. This place was not looking forwards to it, and indeed there was a ton of anger before we really knew anything about the mechanics.

Once we were past the launch, the game had essentially already failed - nowhere near as many people as expected had converted, and that wasn't because of the rules initially, but because of marketing and perceptions. The continuing discussion, yes, centered around power design and so on, so you're not wrong there, but that was essentially people who'd already decided 4E was not for them discussing it, and obviously they'd moved on past the launch and were then discussing mechanics. The Warlord is a great example, because it wasn't a "huge problem from day 1", it was something people who'd already given up on 4E (as well they might) would point to as a particularly good example of a thing they didn't like. Which is fine - legitimate even - but let's not pretend 4E sold amazingly then people just handed in their rulebooks or something. It failed from the get-go, before things like that were a major issue.

5E's mechanics would have been interpreted in the most negative possible light, rather than as an apology or reprieve, and the fact that they were so much more simple than the 3.5E mechanics would not, in 2008, have been seen as a broadly good thing.

I see your points essentially still pushing the 4E didn't fail because of the mechanics line.

Online tools failure doesn't matter if people hate your product irl they're not gonna play it online either.

OGL up to a point yes but if 4E was popular the fans would have flocked to it regardless of the GSL.

That video you referenced had very few views back in 2007/8. If it's that Kobold and red dragon one.

Soon after 4E died online it was about as popular as a single OSR category. Put togather the OSR combined was a magnitude more popular let alone 3E/Pathfinder.

With 5Es runaway popularity it kind of destroys your arguement. 4Es entire premise was wrong combined with rushing it out the door for an overhaul of that scale. Takes around 3 years to design a popular edition, 2 years to revise one. That was very apparent in 2012 playtest material they weren't going in that direction.

Didn't they change course in 4E design around halfway through in effect cutting that 2 years design down to 13 months or something?

 

[Zardnaar]

Plus a couple of minor ones. Remember when the designers openly admitted to holding back popular monsters from the first Monster Manual in order to encourage sales of subsequent volumes? Things like that did not help their case with people who were on the fence about converting over.

PHB was worse. Missing classes and races big faux pas espicially when 3E brought back ones cut from 2E.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Plus a couple of minor ones. Remember when the designers openly admitted to holding back popular monsters from the first Monster Manual in order to encourage sales of subsequent volumes? Things like that did not help their case with people who were on the fence about converting over.

Oh absolutely. It was just one error after another. Unforced faults large and small. It's very hard to see how 4E could have succeed with any rules-set with the number of horrible mistakes they made.

Even, if they had say, a rules-set which was very much evolved from 3.5E (probably more extreme than Pathfinder, but keep the generally 3.XE concepts and approaches), I don't think the sales would have been great, and I don't think we'd have seen a strong conversion.

The reasons would have been different again. Every change would be seen as "there to make it easier to make into an MMO", because WotC themselves basically implied that (unintentionally). People would also see it as being "lazy" and "trying to sell us the same material again", and whilst with DND2024, we may see a fairly small change, that seems good because most people are pretty well-disposed to DND2024 (plenty of time to mess that up WotC! So don't!)

With 5Es runaway popularity it kind of destroys your arguement. 4Es entire premise was wring combined with rushing it out the door for an overhaul of that scale. Takes around 3 years to design a popular edition, 2 years to revise one.

I have no idea what you're trying to say after the first sentence here, it doesn't even look grammatical. 5E's runaway popularity is mostly about timing and cultural changes. If you released 5E's rules in 2008, they'd only have been a little more successful than 4E's were. If you released 4E's rules in 2014, they'd have been only somewhat less successful than 5E's were. Hell, if you released 4E Essentials rules in 2014, as a 5E (and assuming 4E had been "5E" or "3.75E"), I think they'd be about 80% as successful as 5E has been.

The rules weren't the major problem. They were a problem, but any major rules-change would have been seen incredibly negatively in the light of the stuff WotC was doing.

Your "hardly any views" and similar arguments make zero sense when your basis for claiming the rules were a problem relies on a far smaller sample set (basically a handful of messageboards with a grand total of a few thousand users).

I see your points of Essentially still pushing the 4E didn't fail because of the mechanics line.

This seems like edition-war flamebait so I'm not engaging with that, but if you want an edition war, you're going to get blocked, because I'm not interested in that, I'm interested in a more rational analysis.

 

[MGibster]

Was 4E the edition that started pushing shadow everything as enemies or was that 3.5?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Was 4E the edition that started pushing shadow everything as enemies or was that 3.5?

3.5E started this trend. Over the course of 3.XE, we saw more and more shadow enemies. Often with excellent artwork, note!

4E doubled-down on it, with plenty of shadow-y-type enemies I think from pretty early on.

So we can blame both for that. We can certainly blame 4E for not taking stock of whether it was a good idea lol.

 

[Zardnaar]

Oh absolutely. It was just one error after another. Unforced faults large and small. It's very hard to see how 4E could have succeed with any rules-set with the number of horrible mistakes they made.

Even, if they had say, a rules-set which was very much evolved from 3.5E (probably more extreme than Pathfinder, but keep the generally 3.XE concepts and approaches), I don't think the sales would have been great, and I don't think we'd have seen a strong conversion.

The reasons would have been different again. Every change would be seen as "there to make it easier to make into an MMO", because WotC themselves basically implied that (unintentionally). People would also see it as being "lazy" and "trying to sell us the same material again", and whilst with DND2024, we may see a fairly small change, that seems good because most people are pretty well-disposed to DND2024 (plenty of time to mess that up WotC! So don't!)


I have no idea what you're trying to say after the first sentence here, it doesn't even look grammatical. 5E's runaway popularity is mostly about timing and cultural changes. If you released 5E's rules in 2008, they'd only have been a little more successful than 4E's were. If you released 4E's rules in 2014, they'd have been only somewhat less successful than 5E's were. Hell, if you released 4E Essentials rules in 2014, as a 5E (and assuming 4E had been "5E" or "3.75E"), I think they'd be about 80% as successful as 5E has been.

The rules weren't the major problem. They were a problem, but any major rules-change would have been seen incredibly negatively in the light of the stuff WotC was doing.

Your "hardly any views" and similar arguments make zero sense when your basis for claiming the rules were a problem relies on a far smaller sample set (basically a handful of messageboards with a grand total of a few thousand users).


This seems like edition-war flamebait so I'm not engaging with that, but if you want an edition war, you're going to get blocked, because I'm not interested in that, I'm interested in a more rational analysis.

The 4E concept was wrong for mass consumption.

Look at critical role and the way new players are playing 5E. A rules heavy game that wasn't derived from 3.5 wouldn't have worked regardless. IMHO of course.

In 2008 a varient or simplified 3.X would have done better (no Pathfinder needed).

Are you familiar with Star Wars Saga Edition? Its kind of a 3.5/4E hybrid something like that was probably the right way to go IMHO.

5E big success early was simplifying the rules with optional extras. That Basic set sold 800k in NA alone and that was a few years ago.

Rapid edition cycle didn't help people weren't sick of 3.5 enough in 2007 when 4E was announced. Game only came out 2003 but likely underperformed expectations hence 4E.

 

[MGibster]

Rapid edition cycle didn't help people weren't sick of 3.5 enough in 2007 when 4E was announced. Game only came out 2003 but likely underperformed expectations hence 4E.

Rapid cycle edition is part of why I didn't buy into 3.5 in 2003 as I simply didn't feel as though the changes justified purchasing the core books again. I tried 4th edition when it was released in 2008 but didn't care for it. I started playing World of Warcraft a few months later and pushing my keyboard to activate abilities really reminded me of 4th edition. Though I will say, one thing I liked about 4th edition is that it seemed like it was designed for characters to be useful in just about any encounter.

 

[Mordhau]

Yeah but look at what didn't creep into 5E. 4E type classes and the warlord.

If they're claiming 4E is an MMO it's really about powers recharging eg encounter powers. That's class design.

Throw in healing surges and the game being a grindfest because of the surges, class design etc that's most of it.

This may suggest that the designers thought it might alienate the fanbase.

It doesn't mean they were right to think so. It seems likely now that 5e was probably an overcorrection.

(You may have thought based on edition war comments that Barbarians with fire auras were a complete dealbreaker too, but the Storm Herald barbarian didn't even seem to attract even a whimper of protest when it was released).

It may also just suggest that they just didn't know how to effectively make a Warlord class in 5e as it was designed.

 

[Zardnaar]

This may suggest that the designers thought it might alienate the fanbase.

It doesn't mean they were right to think so. It seems likely now that 5e was probably an overcorrection.

(You may have thought based on edition war comments that Barbarians with fire auras were a complete dealbreaker too, but the Storm Herald barbarian didn't even seem to attract even a whimper of protest when it was released).

It may also just suggest that they just didn't know how to effectively make a Warlord class in 5e as it was designed.

Storm Gerald was in a splatbook.

No one cares to much what goes in them.

Storm herald conceptually could be done in 2E. That's not a deal breaker by itself.