4E - 18 Months Later: Love it or hate it?

[Clavis]

Mixed bag. I played it for several months and enjoyed it, but not as much as Classic or 1st Edition. It seems tightly focused on a particular play-style consisting basically of linked tactical combats utilizing a menu-list of predetermined options and played out with miniatures. Fighting definitely seems to be the focus, at the expense of everything else. Sometimes I'm in the mood to play a game like that, sometimes not. I'm never in the mood to DM such a game.

 

[ppaladin123]

I voted "mixed bag", I like it well enough to keep playing with my established group which has embraced it, but not enough to be willing to run it regardless of the group. I guess my real opinion is "I guess a 4e game is better than no game".

One thing I found interesting about this poll is the distribution of the responses. I expected a bell curve, instead there is a strong bimodal distribution towards love and hate. To me that shows how polarized the community's opinion of 4e is.

I think it has more to do with being a voluntary poll. People with strong emotions one way or the other are more likely to participate. There is little reason to come here to post, "meh" or "mixed bag," though obviously a few people do.

I am sure the advent of 4e has caused some polarization but you have to be careful about drawing conclusions from a voluntary poll on a website that is already unlikely to be representative of the rpg gamer population at large.

 

[darjr]

I love savage worlds too. I, however, missed push/pull and other things from 4e and added them to Savage Worlds. I think others have done something similar.

 

[DMfromdimensionX]

I voted hate it. There isnt one big reason why really, just a bunch of little things that all add up to making playing or running it an unpleasant experiance for me. If it had been a long time since playing and it was 4e or nothing i would play it if the group were good, but otherwise the few sessions i tried were enough to convince me i dont want to play anymore.

 

[Novem5er]

Love it!

I've been running a 4e game off-and-on since January and my group is eager to play every week (though we skip a week quite frequently).

Simply put, I will NEVER DM a different version of D&D again, especially not 3.x!

Now, there are some flaws in the game... mainly that combats do take up too much time, and that often the combats feel very "gamey". Fortunately, we have a good RP group that does more roleplaying than fighting. We like the fights, but I wish the transition between "story" and "encounters" was a little smoother or more transparent (as another poster said ealier).

Still, I do like the system... all the character options... and DDI is pretty amazing. No more flipping pages during a session. I'm just waiting for the next set of adventure tools.

 

[Mercule]

I LOVED 4E when it first came out. Each successive expansion book has made me less and less enamored with it. I am down to "LIKE". I like the monster books, I like DMing (it's so easy to do) but I don't really like the power creep that I see with each new book.

Ha-ha. I have to agree, to an extent. It isn't so much the power creep, for me. Just the general "more of the same". Don't get me wrong. I like a lot of the new classes (I'm indifferent to the entirety of the Primal source, but the rest are cool). I was just hoping for more interesting bits.

I think the underlying mechanics of 4e are the best edition, period. The devil is in the details, though. It would have been nice to see each power source behave more uniquely, even to the point of making each its own mini-game to support varied play styles. Psionics looks like the sort of difference I'd like, but I'm afraid WotC is going to screw it up and use that model for other sources, too.

I think Kafen had some really good points on the non-combat stuff. I'm not talking skills, but the castle building, etc. Really, though, that was the strong point of 1e. Gygax really liked that historic feel.

My biggest issues with 4e aren't with the game mechanics, though. They're with some of the mentality at WotC.

I despise the 4e treasure parcels, as an example. I don't really mind the basic concept, but it's almost enforced. I like random treasure that's occasionally crappy, but there's no way for me to generate random treasure. And, the thing that absolutely infuriates me -- to the point of not wanting to use Dungeon -- is that the modules make you add the treasure in yourself. Of all the freaking stupid concepts. Treasure is one of the most annoying activities in creating my own adventures. What the heck am I paying WotC for? Yeah, the maps are nice, and the adventure seeds are cool, but treasure is part of the deal. Building encounters is easy enough in 4e that I'd almost prefer the 3e Map-a-Week feature. I've been running the AP, but the current module (Umbraforge) doesn't even include locations for the parcels -- what a cop out.

The major reason my group decided to go with D&D over Hero or Storyteller was because of the support offered via modules -- I'm darn short on time. This half-assed handling of modules is enough to guarantee I'll never "love" it.

Too bad, really. As I said, the base mechanics absolutely rock.

 

[Hussar]

Put me in the Meh who cares column. Haven't played it. Like a lot of what I see and I'd like to give it a run, but, at the moment, don't care all that much as I have other games which are working for me.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I voted dislike. 4e certainly cleaned up and simplified some of 3e's complexities and it presumably has drawn in some people to the hobby, but there are numerous design choices I don't agree with and an amazing number of seemingly arbitrary changes to an established winning formula..

 

[qstor]

I voted dislike. I play once and a while but I'm enjoying Pathfinder more. There's no regular Pathfinder games around me.

Mike

 

[Imaro]

I really tried to like 4e, but I genuinely dislike it. It's just not something me and my group enjoy enough to want to play over other games. 4e has actually caused me to give D&D a break and get back into Earthdawn... which my group is loving (and honestly I'm beginning to think it does D&D style fantasy, and especially 4e type D&D fanatsy better than D&D does.) If I do get back into d20 it will probably be Pathfinder and not 4e.