D&D General New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E

[Belen]

Kinda.

4e hyperfocused each class and each skill into a playstyle. 4e actually provided more distinctive playstyles than every edition before it

Just not in the PHB.

I disagree.

4e had different combat styles with the 4 class roles. Those combat roles played differently as it placed you into a lane within combat but the overall play style of the game was defined into one experience. This was the combat-focused tactical game where everyone knew their role.

Now, 3.5 had pushed the game in this direction and 3.5 was so heavily focused on the tactical, grid-based game that it was a huge focus of discussion in the community and within organized play.

4e, in my opinion, was hyper-focused on solving those problems while also solving the problems of fewer or bad DMs. 4e made it far easier to be a DM. The rules are clear and concise. Of course, that also meant that poor DMs or newer DMs then focused on combat because the rules focused on combat. I had a friend who never thought he could be a DM that really embraced 4e and ran games because things were defined enough that he could focus on that narrow lane of play.

Again, the vast majority of players were not on the boards or in organized play. Previous editions supported many different styles of the game and was elastic enough that they could all be D&D.

For me, 4e was a terrible experience. I hated the system. It was great for the board games or the tactical miniatures style of play but I did not want to play.

 

[Eric V]

Actually designing classes with multiple roles if classes shared powers would be easy

The fighter would choose between getting a Mark or Damage boost at level 1.

Ranger would get a Hunters Quarry that dealt bonus damage or a slow.

Didn't we basically get classes with multiple roles after Essentials? Slayer is just a fighter in the striker role, for example.

 

[Oofta]

They are both true. There is a vast amount of both 4e fluff and mechanics in 5e - but it's deliberately been painted and renamed to disguise it.

On the one hand, I say that 5E was inspired by rules from previous editions, including 4E but get told by @EzekielRaiden that I don't know what I'm talking about. Then there's this weird strawman that influence from 4E has been "disguised". What does that even mean? It wasn't copied over verbatim, but we certainly have rules influence, things like healing word or the concept of short rests. Yes, the structure has been modified because they didn't want 4.5, they wanted 5E.

But they reverted the basic approach, tone, and flexibility of the game back to older versions. Some of the lore stuff, certainly. Lessening the importance of alignment (while going back to the old 9 alignments) We have some races like warforged. A couple of classes and subclasses kind-of-sort-of have powers. But the biggest influences on how the game works all came from pre-4E.

To me the clearest example is the cosmology.

The default cosmology is an example if you use it. But it's not "disguised", it's just an evolution from previous editions.

 

[MwaO]

it sold less than any other edition, including 3e


the difference is the timeline, not the trajectory

According to multiple designers who worked at WotC, it outsold 3e. The issue wasn't that it did poorly. The issue was that it was expected to be a $50 million/year revenue game by Hasbro, they thought they were going to have a working virtual game table, and therefore would be able to charge ~$15/month to say 200k players($36 million/year).

And instead, there was no working virtual game table, in part because of a murder-suicide by the head of WotC's digital person who had way overpromised what he was capable of doing — he had basically promised in essence Steam+WoW+CharacterBuilder/Compendium as talked about in the video, and instead, they had to charge about $7/month to 70k players, who could use one subscription to build all the PCs($5 million a year)

So did it out revenue 3e? Yes. Did it get anywhere near Hasbro's ridiculous expectations? No.

 

[billd91]

According to multiple designers who worked at WotC, it outsold 3e.

Well that’s a question, isn’t it? I do remember WotC people saying sales of initial print runs had exceeded 3e’s. But I haven’t seen much comparing the two editions overall. Now we’ve got Ben Riggs working on the history of 4e, also working from insider sources, reporting that 4e ultimately sold fewer Players Handbooks than 3e.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

On the one hand, I say that 5E was inspired by rules from previous editions, including 4E but get told by @EzekielRaiden that I don't know what I'm talking about. Then there's this weird strawman that influence from 4E has been "disguised".

I mean, what else do we call it when the developers literally do take a mechanic and its name from 4e, but present it as though it were a brand-new idea?

Because that's a thing that actually happened. "What I like to call 'Passive Perception'" is, pretty much verbatim, something a flagship designer said about 5e, without once mentioning that that's literally both the name and the mechanic exactly as used in 4e. As though he had invented the concept himself, for that article. And yes, the rest of the article followed that exact same approach, as though it were unveiling a genuinely new idea. (The idea of "take 10" had already existed, but outright "passive checks" was a 4e concept, as far as D&D goes.)

When truly copying a mechanic wholesale, not translating but literally copying, 5e's designers tried rather hard to mask that connection. Of course, most things "taken" from 4e were, as I said, butchered or in some cases outright inverted to directly oppose what 4e did. But a few things actually did make it through copied or only lightly translated--and almost all of them, their connection to 4e was carefully ignored or unmentioned.

 

[Eric V]

I mean, what else do we call it when the developers literally do take a mechanic and its name from 4e, but present it as though it were a brand-new idea?

Because that's a thing that actually happened. "What I like to call 'Passive Perception'" is, pretty much verbatim, something a flagship designer said about 5e, without once mentioning that that's literally both the name and the mechanic exactly as used in 4e. As though he had invented the concept himself, for that article. And yes, the rest of the article followed that exact same approach, as though it were unveiling a genuinely new idea. (The idea of "take 10" had already existed, but outright "passive checks" was a 4e concept, as far as D&D goes.)

When truly copying a mechanic wholesale, not translating but literally copying, 5e's designers tried rather hard to mask that connection. Of course, most things "taken" from 4e were, as I said, butchered or in some cases outright inverted to directly oppose what 4e did. But a few things actually did make it through copied or only lightly translated--and almost all of them, their connection to 4e was carefully ignored or unmentioned.

LOL...I remember reading this article and thinking "Wait...wha...?" and wondering how this was being taken seriously.

 

[MwaO]

Well that’s a question, isn’t it? I do remember WotC people saying sales of initial print runs had exceeded 3e’s. But I haven’t seen much comparing the two editions overall. Now we’ve got Ben Riggs working on the history of 4e, also working from insider sources, reporting that 4e ultimately sold fewer Players Handbooks than 3e.

Even if that were true, that's comparing apples and oranges. Total revenue is what counts and DDI was a very large amount of total revenue.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I disagree.

4e had different combat styles with the 4 class roles. Those combat roles played differently as it placed you into a lane within combat but the overall play style of the game was defined into one experience. This was the combat-focused tactical game where everyone knew their role.

As a 4e player my role was whatever I made it. 4e's defined roles ensured that at a minimum everyone was functional within at least one combat role (no 1e or 3.X monks here) and ensured that no one was best at everything (no 3.x CoDzilla).

But two fighters could easily be more different in combat than two melee fighters in previous editions even if it took from memory six feats for a 3.X fighter to approximate a basic attacking first level fighter in 4e who had chosen no feats and no powers. And no one was confined to just one role unless they wanted it.

For that matter I at one point made a second level human fighter that made fourth level 3.x human rogues turn green with envy about how skilled and flexible they were. And I found the 4e out of combat experience to be far more flexible than "spells uber alles" in the way that crippled 3.x and harms 5e.

 

[Oofta]

I mean, what else do we call it when the developers literally do take a mechanic and its name from 4e, but present it as though it were a brand-new idea?

Because that's a thing that actually happened. "What I like to call 'Passive Perception'" is, pretty much verbatim, something a flagship designer said about 5e, without once mentioning that that's literally both the name and the mechanic exactly as used in 4e.

When truly copying a mechanic wholesale, not translating but literally copying, 5e's designers tried rather hard to mask that connection. Of course, most things "taken" from 4e were, as I said, butchered or in some cases outright inverted to directly oppose what 4e did. But a few things actually did make it through copied or only lightly translated--and almost all of them, their connection to 4e was carefully ignored or unmentioned.

You just told me Thursday that I was wrong when I said some of the rules in 5E and other games were inspired by 4E. Now they do use ideas from previous editions including 4E but they're terrible rotten bastards for not including a detailed explanation of where the idea came from?

WTF does "hard to mask the connection" even mean? They don't come out and say "Your AC is inspired by the original design, then in 3E it went from negative numbers to positive". Why the **** would they? Why would they ever declare where a concept came from? It's not relevant to the rule in any way whatsoever. As far as passive perception we had take 10 in 3E so, no 4E did not invent that idea they just came up with a different name for it. Does that mean that 4E copied the idea from 3E but tried to hide it for nefarious reasons? Or is it just that they carried over some concepts from previous editions.

I just don't get why you work so hard to take offense if anyone mentions 4E in anything but glowing terms.