D&D General 6E But A + Thread

[Zardnaar]

How do you mean this? Was 4E not literally designed to address the common pain points of 3E? Imbalanced classes, too many skills, trap options, unreliable CR, etc?

They listened to people whining online.

Most D&D players are casuals. Not powerganers. Then as now I suspect most games ended at level 7ish.

To break 3.5 you generally needed multiple books (that casuals don't have).

The Druids an exception but wasn't very popular. Cleric needed complete divine and the knowledge to break it. Maybe at higher levels that no one plays without complete divine..

I suspect most tables didn't enounter the problems of 3.5 which were mostly theoretical imho.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They listened to people whining online.

Most D&D players are casuals. Not powerganers. Then as now I suspect most games ended at level 7ish.

To break 3.5 you generally needed multiple books (that casuals don't have).

The Druids an exception but wasn't very popular. Cleric needed complete divine and the knowledge to break it. Maybe at higher levels that no one plays without complete divine..

I suspect most tables didn't enounter the problems of 3.5 which were mostly theoretical imho.

Yeah, I never did. But we only played 3e for a few years before switching back to TSR's game.

 

[Zardnaar]

If I was a 6E designer the last thing I would do would be listen to ENworld lol.

A good chunk here are not actively playing or struggle to find games. We also swing older and are a small minority of D&D player base. By default we are mostly hard core players and out of touch.

I'm playing and communicating with younger gamers and im out of touch lol.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, I never did. But we only played 3e for a few years before switching back to TSR's game.

I did but my campaigns usually last about a year. We didn't have the massive problems in 3.5 but 3.0 we did as we made it to 15ish.

Usually didn't have S tier builds. Closest we came was a duelist, cleric,paladin and shadow adept illusionist or wizard. Well for internet builds vs S tier builds.

One player put together a Bard that was fairly OP reasonably early (lvl 6-8). She was more powerful than anything else except naive Druid at those levels.

I had 50 odd books and still lacked sone for certain builds.

 

[payn]

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Then what happened @EzekielRaiden ? Sounds like WotC did everything right. Did 4e fail due to a series of bad luck circumstances alone? Because we have strong evidence that isn't the case.

Alone? Obviously not. They did make several mistakes.

But it is just as obviously wrong to say that they totally ignored customer feedback, built a game nobody wanted, and then were shocked by the results.

4e also didn't fail. Per reports from actual former employees. Great myth though.

The only thing it failed to do was hit the absolutely impossible sales standards set for it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is logical, you just don't like the implications. Your feelings about it are valid, but they don't change anything.

Logic requires self-consistency. Without self-consistency, it becomes pure GIGO. Logic cannot preserve truth values if you feed it inconsistent premises. That's literally why Gödel's work in mathematics was so important. He proved that any system which had sufficient rules to do really basic arithmetic was necessarily either incomplete (there are statements it can express, which are true, but which it cannot prove are true) or inconsistent (it can prove all true statements it can express...and also a bunch of false statements it can express). Inconsistency is a far greater enemy than Incompleteness for logic, and thus mathematics has accepted that it can never systematically prove all actually true statements in any single axiomatic system.

So, it being inconsistent means it is illogical. There is a reason for this illogic, yes. Having a reason for choosing to be inconsistent does not suddenly make the inconsistency logical.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Alone? Obviously not. They did make several mistakes.

But it is just as obviously wrong to say that they totally ignored customer feedback, built a game nobody wanted, and then were shocked by the results.

4e also didn't fail. Per reports from actual former employees. Great myth though.

The only thing it failed to do was hit the absolutely impossible sales standards set for it.

To be fair, the people who owned and commissioned 4e considered it a failure, and their opinion on the matter trumps that of the people who designed it. I agree that under any other company the money it made would have made it a success, but then it would likely have made far less, since it wouldn't be called D&D.

 

[mamba]

How do you mean this? Was 4E not literally designed to address the common pain points of 3E? Imbalanced classes, too many skills, trap options, unreliable CR, etc?

no idea, I don’t think it was ‘just’ meant as an improved 3e however. Aren’t these things you would want to address in any case? Seems to be what most people would address while making the version they want to make.

In any case, the 4e designers did make the version they wanted, rather than the version some UAs told them the people would want, and not checking what the people were looking for turned out to be a major issue for it

 

[Minigiant]

Then what happened @EzekielRaiden ? Sounds like WotC did everything right. Did 4e fail due to a series of bad luck circumstances alone? Because we have strong evidence that isn't the case.

4e didn't fail.

4e didn't take over RPG and meet Hasbro's expectations due to a series of bad luck circumstances

MCDM, Lancer, and others have proven there's an audience for that style of gameplay, even if it's smaller than the blue ocean 5E is going out to

Fantasy RPG community is too divided to get what Hasbro ever wants ever again without another global pandemic channeling everyone to popular containing D&D elements.