4th edition: Not happy with the new direction.

[Dannager]

This is a place that is open to all aspects of 4th edition discussion whether it be positive or negative. Also, I have no problem with people disagreeing with me, it's certain people that come in here and try to derail the thread,

How is it derailing the thread to ask you to explain what you mean when you say something? The fact that you even consider this derailing the thread is actually kind of disturbing.

 

[Dannager]

But mechanically, they're the same.

Except they're not, right? In order to be mechanically the same, they would have to be mechanically indistinguishable from one another. Every power has mechanical differences from every other power. The issue is plainly not one of sameness, but rather one of similarity.

Unless the "same" that you're talking about refers to a specific part of the mechanics, like the mechanic for seeing if a power works (which, again, isn't even the same in many cases - there are tons of powers that involve no d20 roll at all, including some attack powers!), but frankly this strikes me as little more than saying "All books feel the same, because they're all written on paper!" You have to accept that the reason it's called the core mechanic is that it's present in nearly everything you do. That doesn't suddenly make everything homogenous, anymore than having the (roughly) same set of internal organs makes all humans homogenous.

 

[wlmartin]

If the shoe fits. If I ask someone, "Why do you feel that X is the same as Y?" and their response is, "X is the same as Y because X is the same as Y," let's face it: I'm not going to have flattering things to say about how they participate in a discussion.

I agree

It is fine for posters to express an opinion, we aren't all going to research facts and figures before making ANY post on this or other forums.. That being said if we are posting something that is boring and an unpopular subject, their argument holding weight isnt going to be much of an issue since they may not get a response or if they do not from many.

When you bring up a subject that strikes at the core of the entire D&D player base such as Switching Editions or Errata Changes or Plans of the Publishers then it is going to attract a lot of attention. It is fine if your opinion was simply that and no-one would ever fault you for expressing it however when you are called on your opinion and a debate ensues you have 2 real directions

1 : Walk away, accept that what you were bringing to the table has nothing to compete with the opposing point of view and keep your dignity
2 : Challenge the point of view with your own and debate the merits of yours and your challengers point of view.

Following the second direction is fine if your opinion is backed up by thoughtful and (if possible) factual evidence.. this makes for great forum discussions and what a lot of us look for when joining a forum.

If you challenge the point of view and are not able to offer anything to further the discussion, you either post falsehoods or repeat something you already said --- you are not going to earn much respect from others and will do nothing more than make yourself look stupid.

Put up or shut up is a very valid saying for such discussions... I love heated discussions but ones where it seems like nothing gets resolved, its 2 (or more) people just shouting at each other... thats called an argument and arguments have no place in intelligent web forums.

 

[wlmartin]

<snip>

Stop it!
I just read 3 of your last posts (they should have been in one post, but no worries) and every single one of them deserved a +1

Only I can't give any more to you...

I will just have to note it down and +1 you x3 in the future

That is the GREAT thing about being a member of a community that is something you are passionate about and speaks to the kind of person you are. You can like football, You can like movies but unless it is the core of who you are, you will find more uncommon than in-common with people who are obsessed with those things.

I love D&D... my fav hobby and if I ever get around to making a tattoo it is going to be of the Dragon TSR Logo!

It really shows though when I sit here agreeing more with people in this forum than I have agreed with anything said online or offline by others... Birds of a feather and all that.

If there is one thing D&D does more than other hobbies is bring people together. You can play a game of footy for an hour but a game of D&D takes hours and you bond more with people in that time. Add to that the typical D&D player possibly didn't have the best social outgoings growing up or even in later life so being able to bring those types of people together has an even stronger impact in my opinion.

The result is that you can bond and find things in common with random strangers just because they are card carrying members of the D&D army.


Well done man, keep it up! - (saves me from replying half as much since you seem to have the same POV as me!)

 

[OpsKT]

I get the distinct impression that this thread is a reaction to getting your previous thread (EDIT: Threads) shut down.

Look, not many people are going to agree with you. It shouldn't surprise you that most 4e fans like 4e, and pretty much no one believes it's going away any time soon. Our focus is primarily on how the current game can be improved, because the community consensus is that there's a ton of room for 4e to grow into, on every level.

So, I mean, we get that you don't like 4e, or Essentials, or whatever. But your credibility frankly takes a heck of a hit when you hang onto thoroughly discredited notions like the idea of 5e being "right around the corner". Trust me, if there was evidence of that, you'd have people agreeing with you en masse. There just isn't.

This person had the same issues at the Wizards boards.

On the plus side, the ignore feature here completely eradicates a person's posts for your perspective. Doesn't even leave the placeholder.

 

[Zaran]

So the elemental book should have some sorcerer stuff. That means it is not just be targeting essentials builds. That's a good thing.

 

[wlmartin]

This person had the same issues at the Wizards boards.

On the plus side, the ignore feature here completely eradicates a person's posts for your perspective. Doesn't even leave the placeholder.

I dislike that in Chat or Forums.

All you get is 20 people shouting and screaming at thin air... you feel left out

 

[enigma5915]

@ForeverSlayer

I understand how you are feeling with 4E. When 4E first came out I was enamored with the system. As time progressed, I discovered that my enjoyment of 4E was waning and the system was not as good as I perceived at the onset. I just recently discussed this in a thread “disillusionment with 4E.” With that said, I realized that something could be done to rectify this problem and that was for me to make what I was wanting. I just started developing my own classless system. I figure an elegant solution is possible if I put my mind to it. The D&D system itself would have to change to drastically for it to become classless and would no long be D&D, IMHO. This does not mean that another classless based RPG system could not provide the “D&D” experience that you and others are looking for, in fact, not only do I believe it can be done, I think it could be better than D&D. This is a matter of my opinion of course and everyone has plenty of those to spare. If you are interested in discussing a classless option in some detail, I suggest we start a thread in the general or industry forum. I am really enjoying the work I have done up to this point and I welcome any ideas, comment, criticism, complaints, opinions and such. Though I would prefer more thoughtful discussion, any input is useful.

 

[zoroaster100]

The main thing I'm concerned about in terms of new direction is this thing about situation cards, which just seems like a transparent ploy to try to duplicate the economic success of Magic: the Gathering in terms of turning people into card collectors by twisting the game of D&D with a new unnecessary complication. I despise that approach and will be greatly disappointed if it prevails at WOTC. Other than that I don't really mind the Essentials revision to the Fourth Edition.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I didn't have time to refer to this thread for a while, so my apologies for stepping back several pages.

I think we may have a confusion of definition.

I would instead say that tactically they are almost nothing alike. A striker isn't a controller - the results of the use of their powers is drastically different. On that I'll agree.

But mechanically, they're the same. Same power structure, same mechanic for seeing if a power works. The results are different, but the root mechanic - the basic structure of how a power is built, and what a player does to use it - really is the same. That unification and simplification is supposed to be one of the selling points of the system, and is what allows them to balance various classes more easily and completely.

I mean, look back at 1e - the poster child for hodgepodge mechanics. Wizards and thieves used completely different mechanics. One used spells, another used a chart rolling percentile dice. That's what I call different mechanics. Psionics then had a completely different structure off on the side, which might be applied to any character. By comparison, 4e classes really do all use the same mechanics.

The issue at hand is that you can't please everyone - what is a selling point for one person is a drawback for another. Some folks like that similarity, as it means after playing one character, they don't have as great a learning curve when they play other classes. Other folks feel it renders the game kind of boring, without variety.

I, myself, do find the unified mechanics a little lackluster. Maybe bland is a good word for it. I tend to prefer systems where the mechanics you use add to the flavor, rather than remain neutral, even though varied structures inevitably leads to a system that's harder to balance and use. But, I don't think 4e is so dull that I think the system ought to be trashed - I'll play it as readily as any other system. But I recognize it as a place where they chose to make things easy, rather than interesting.

The issue is the 'closure' of the rules. That is the characteristic of a single unified resolution mechanic that each instance of its use is a process which is consistent with all the others. This allows the rule system to be much more expressive and flexible because different parts of it can 'talk to each other'. AD&D was really hobbled by the fact that every part of the system was speaking a different language. So for instance you couldn't really have effects which boosted someone's 'next die roll' or helped them 'climb better' because each of these concepts didn't mean a specific thing. If it was a rogue doing the climbing then everything would have to be expressed in % terms, but if it was some other class of character doing the climbing then (well actually nothing, in 1e only a thief COULD climb at all, kind of the extreme of this problem).

Thus I argue that 4e is actually vastly more expressive as a system than previous editions where everything was a special case and if somehow in the course of play it became desirable to have these different things come together in some fashion then it had to be cobbled together. For example take enhancement bonus and weaplements. In AD&D and 3.x you can't even EXPRESS THE CONCEPT of "an item that makes it easier to attack with magic" and even if you can create something that conceptually DOES that (by say fiddling with saves) it isn't working on a basis that is similar enough to magic weapons that you could say something like "well, you can make a +2 item" and something like a 'weaplement' (which just falls out of the 4e rules by accident) simply cannot exist.

3.5 DID actually go a long ways down this road, just not all the way. In information theory the general expression of this is that the number of semantic elements which are compatible with each other generates a set of valid combinations that are the square of the number of said elements. If we have a 4e style game with 10 'elements' then there are 100 permutations. If you have an AD&D style game where only a few elements are valid combinations you have a sum of a set of smaller expressions, and the same 10 elements might only generate a fraction of the number of useful permutations.

Personally I think the issue with 4e has nothing to do with 'sameness of mechanics'. It has more to do with overload of specific game elements. There are for example such an enormous number of powers that inevitably they begin to overlap and lose any real distinctiveness. If even a small fraction of the fighters 492 powers feel like 'spells' to the players, then any given fighter can easily stop seeming distinct from a wizard. This is amplified by the way all the powers tend to blend into each other to a large degree because with so many they have endless overlapping minor variations of effects.

4e doesn't need different mechanics for different classes, not at all. What it needs is a small and highly distinctive set of POWERS for each class. It is perfectly fine for those powers to use the same mechanics as in fact those mechanics are amazingly expressive.