Hussar
Legend
Again, context is so important. Remember, the point of 4e was to take D&D, which was hovering somewhere in the 20-30 million dollar industry range and basically double the market and make it a core brand for Hasbro. The only way to do that is if you have a LOT more people playing.
The vehicle for that was obviously the online tools. You were supposed to have a character visualizer and link to the online tools for building your character. You could then load up your Xbox or PC and get onto the VTT and start play. It would almost look like a 24/7 game convention. The idea was that you wouldn't have steady groups, per se. You'd be playing with strangers a lot of the time. Just like RPGA play.
Which, when you have that context, makes so many of the design decisions for 4e very obvious. You want people to be able to pick the game up quickly, so, every class follows a similar advancement track. You want players to understand what's going on very quickly, so, you standardize effects. You want to make things as easy as possible for content creators, so, you make the math very explicit and clear as well as divorcing the PC rules from the monster rules.
On and on.
Which, at the end of the day, is going to make your game look a lot like other games forcused on large numbers of strangers playing together. Thus, MMO's and CCG's tend to share similarities, simply because they are solving the same problems.
The vehicle for that was obviously the online tools. You were supposed to have a character visualizer and link to the online tools for building your character. You could then load up your Xbox or PC and get onto the VTT and start play. It would almost look like a 24/7 game convention. The idea was that you wouldn't have steady groups, per se. You'd be playing with strangers a lot of the time. Just like RPGA play.
Which, when you have that context, makes so many of the design decisions for 4e very obvious. You want people to be able to pick the game up quickly, so, every class follows a similar advancement track. You want players to understand what's going on very quickly, so, you standardize effects. You want to make things as easy as possible for content creators, so, you make the math very explicit and clear as well as divorcing the PC rules from the monster rules.
On and on.
Which, at the end of the day, is going to make your game look a lot like other games forcused on large numbers of strangers playing together. Thus, MMO's and CCG's tend to share similarities, simply because they are solving the same problems.
