D&D 4E 4e and Computer Games

[FadedC]

Ah that's right KOTOR 1 was a good game (but let's not talk about KOTOR 2). But still it wasn't quite d&d and had a real time combat engine that obscured the rules more then it used them. What really made it good was the storyline and not the mechanics. Of course that's true of many of the best games it seems. Planescape and fallout for example had some of the worst combat and character balance I've seen in any game. But you didn't care because the story was good.

Icewind Dale was halfway decent and made a reasonable attempt to follow 3e rules. Still it was real time so it didn't exactly follow rules on move and standard actions, etc.. The only 2 turn based 3e games we've seen were pool of radiance and ToEE. Pool of Radiance wasn't awful but it was kind of uninspired and fairly simple. But at least it was a finished product. TToE had a really elegant system and made great use of the 3e rules. Sadly it was pushed out the door half finished and was almost completely unplayable.

 

[bowbe]

So, WotC won't see a dime of the money required for a software company to license the D&D property?

...I can't even stress how wrong this is.

Correct, and agreed. Not wanting to link link link but look it up for yourself. Hasbro has the video game rights, those are licensed to Atari/Infogames through 2017 for a mere pittance of 19 million dollars. If you think thats wrong/foolish, again look at the dollars raked in by COD4 and the money involved in the GTA franchise.

EA offered 2 BILLION for Take Two Interactive/Rockstar Games. I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure that in video game dollars a REAL and QUALITY Dungeons&Dragons title utilizing the advances in videogame graphics that next gen consoles and high end computer systems offer is worth a lot more than 19 million dollars. I mean lets be real here. As cool as so many people feel World of Warcraft is... it still isn't D&D, even if D&D is starting to take some leads from design and dev of WoW. (I know, I know OMG OMG Don't SAY THAT HERE hahaha!... ok kids whatever lol. Take a breath. WoW is afterall more D&D than D&D is WoW despite any rules variants for the table top games. Hell... at one point Blizzard was partnered with WOTC for some table top product. Diablo anyone?)

Even more wrong to me in all this is that the guys working their juevos off on 4e rules set wouldn't see a scrap of that mind boggling amount of money or likely even be credited for their work.

I'm pretty sure nobody from WOTC in the 3ed/d20 days even has their name credited in the booklet for KOTOR or KOTOR 2. I looked and couldn't find mention of them anywhere. Maybe I missed it.

Case

 

[Surgoshan]

I'd like to see a step back in D&D computer games. I think the desire for pretty graphics and such have impaired the story. NWN2 barely runs on my computer and, let's face it, the story's not that great (and it's still buggy as hell). I wouldn't mind if the graphics didn't push the envelope of next-gen technology, but looked merely a step up from current technology. Of course, this would have to be accompanied by a Torment style level of storytelling and player choice having a real effect.

As the various styles of actions; I think that could be accomplished by having an action queue only for standard actions, making minor actions automatic (even if they vary by race/class), and making moving separate as well.

And as for abilities that require/tie-in to movement, you could provide the player with the option of choosing movement as part of selecting the ability (yay autopause) and then the player choose if/where to move with the computer being aware of the limit of how far he can do so. I'm picturing the PC having an ability selected and the mouse moving over the terrain and a line connecting it with the PC to show the path the PC would have to take.

 

[FadedC]

EA offered 2 BILLION for Take Two Interactive/Rockstar Games. I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure that in video game dollars a REAL and QUALITY Dungeons&Dragons title utilizing the advances in videogame graphics that next gen consoles and high end computer systems offer is worth a lot more than 19 million dollars. I mean lets be real here. As cool as so many people feel World of Warcraft is... it still isn't D&D, even if D&D is starting to take some leads from design and dev of WoW. (I know, I know OMG OMG Don't SAY THAT HERE hahaha!... ok kids whatever lol. Take a breath. WoW is afterall more D&D than D&D is WoW despite any rules variants for the table top games. Hell... at one point Blizzard was partnered with WOTC for some table top product. Diablo anyone?)

While it's true that a succesful D&D MMORPG could make a ton of money, the other side of the coin is that MMORPGs cost a ton of money to develop and run, and most fail miserably. Quite a few companies have spent millions of dollars developing them only to pull the plug and not release it at all. Of the ones that do make it to market, many end up losing money (in addition to the millions of dollars and years of time spent in development). Even Microsoft once pulled the plug on a MMORPG they had spent millions on, deciding it was a lost cause and refusing to throw good money after bad.

The point of all this is that while WoTC doesn't get any of the money from a succesful releases they at least also avoid the staggering losses of an unsuccesful one. Not quite a completely fair deal of course, but at least there is some free publicity in the mess.

 

[VannATLC]

I don't think he was referencing a MMPORG.

More COD or Rockstar/GTA.

Go re-theme GTA for DND. See how it goes.

Actually, I just fell in love with that idea.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I don't think he was referencing a MMPORG.

More COD or Rockstar/GTA.

Go re-theme GTA for DND. See how it goes.

Actually, I just fell in love with that idea.

I charge my stallion over those wenches!

 

[Baumi]

I think that a 4E Game is much harder to create than for 3E since the Powers have much more fiddly bits than before (Minor- & Immidiate-Actions, Powers that Move enemies or add a Bonus to secondary Targets,...), which is to much micromanagement for Real-Time. And while easier to manage in Turn-Bases Games, I do think that that system will be to complicated for the average Gamer and hard to use on Console-Controllers.

I'm sure that we will see plenty of 4E Games, but many powers will have to be rewritten for them...

 

[Scrollreader]

Actually, I think the best game for the new rules, to stick to them as closely as possible, would be turned based, like as already mentioned, Final Fantasy Tatics style. it has a grid, allows movement abilities to be useful, and from what we've heard, it's likely a character won't have /that/ many powers to keep track of the fiddly bits for.
I know I'd buy it in a heartbeat, but I don't know how big the market really is for those kinds of games. I haven't seen the market exactly flooded with them. (I'm a big Turn Based Tactical fan. Gimme more FFT and more XCOM, damnit)

 

[FadedC]

Actually, I think the best game for the new rules, to stick to them as closely as possible, would be turned based, like as already mentioned, Final Fantasy Tatics style. it has a grid, allows movement abilities to be useful, and from what we've heard, it's likely a character won't have /that/ many powers to keep track of the fiddly bits for.
I know I'd buy it in a heartbeat, but I don't know how big the market really is for those kinds of games. I haven't seen the market exactly flooded with them. (I'm a big Turn Based Tactical fan. Gimme more FFT and more XCOM, damnit)

Oddly enough the #1 market for tactical turn based game is handheld games, like the DS or PSP. You get a fair number of them on there and they actually tend to be good. Console games get some too, but on the PC? Almost non existant. Kind of ironic because it's the opposite of what you would expect.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Oddly enough the #1 market for tactical turn based game is handheld games, like the DS or PSP. You get a fair number of them on there and they actually tend to be good. Console games get some too, but on the PC? Almost non existant. Kind of ironic because it's the opposite of what you would expect.

Indeed! And I really like turn-based games.
Temple of Elemental Evil luckily worked pretty fine on my PC (at least the one I head several years ago ).
I also loved Jagged Alliance 2 (But not as much as the seemingly countless modders that still improve on the game to this day!) and Silent Storm (despite the Panzerkleins).

The problem with turn-based games might be that they aren't that great for multiplayer game needs, and today, multiplayer is often seen as a must-have on PCs and other internet-connected devices. (History Line 1914-1918 was a game I can remember that tried to improve 2-player play with dividing turn and attack turns, but that doesn't work so well for other game types.)