D&D 4E Are powers samey?

[lowkey13]

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[doctorbadwolf]

Right, but the thing is (channeling a little Wittgenstein and Gusdorf here) language is imprecise, and the noly thing more imprecise than language is feeling, and internal machinations within our skulls.

There's different ways to try to get at what people are thinking- famously, Socratic questioning can force a person to clarify their thoughts (but trust me, it doesn't work so great in real life, as opposed to an artificial classroom setting). But for the most part, people try and articulate what they think matters, and that is true for them.

I can go through a laundry list of reasons why editions 2e, 3e, and 4e were not appealing to me; if I had to pull a single "gestalt" for 4e, it would be something between "not similar enough to TSR-era D&D" and "not easy for me to run ToTM."

But, yeah, the powers do seem kind of "same-y" to me. Just like attack cantrips in 5e! It doesn't mean that there isn't a material and fascinating distinction for other people, just .... not for me.

And I think that's where the "whoosh" of lack of understanding comes in. When someone likes something, you want other people to like it; often times, it is baffling that other people don't like this thing! It's a weird inability that we all have to see from a different perspective, to truly understand that other people just don't like it.

Personally, the one thing that I have found that has somewhat tempered that in me is being married. I have, at long last, come to terms that there will be things that I like that, no matter what, my S.O. will not.* And you have to be okay with that.


Because being okay with those difference is a lot better than the couch.


*There is this video series on Yacht Rock that you can find on Youtube that is the absolute funniest thing ever. Well, I know so. My SO respectfully disagrees.

Thing is, I don’t have much trouble understanding that someone doesn’t like the thing I like. Your specific complaint about 4e stated above doesn’t bother me in the least. It makes sense.
The samey complaint doesn’t make sense, so until I figured out a rational explanation for it, it bothered me. And it doesn’t just not make sense, that’s too mild. Without connecting the “overwhelmed by choice so the details effectively disappear” phenomenon that I’m told many humans experience pretty easily, the concept of 4e powers being samey looked like “this band sucks” as a complaint about Led Zeppelin or some other highly skilled band. The subjective feeling behind it may be true for that person, but the objective statement used to express that feeling is literally objectively false.

 

[FrogReaver]

In general, don't try to tell people what they should agree or disagree with. It makes it much less likely that someone is going to give the least damn what you have to say after that.

Kind of like telling someone what they should or shouldn't be saying... yea? According to you, people shouldn't be saying they hate 4e, they shouldn't say why they don't like 4e, etc.

Why on earth would that be important, even if we agree that it indicated anything about the actual game, rather than about what the games look like at shallow glance, which I don't?

The point was that there are different viewpoints of sameyness and we interact with those on an individual level differently. Whatever sameyness there is in 5e just doesn't bother people to the extent that the sameyness in 4e did.

The only argument I've seen without scoffing for the supposed sameyness of 4e is that too many options packaged in the same format, in a system where you have to review several every round and every time you level up, and where reading a class involves reading dozens of them, cause many players' eyes to glaze over and stop actually reading what the powers do. In 5e, those players don't play casters, IME, and don't choose Battlemaster fighter, or if they do, the least fun part of the experience is choosing their limited-use packaged abilities (ie, their powers).

I liked 4e. I like 5e better. I like caster's and battlemasters in 5e. 4e is more samey to me than 5e.

The thing is, that is a wholly separate and distinct thing from powers actually being samey. It's like if someone goes to a car lot, and they spend too much time reviewing 10 different models of sedan from the same group of years

I'm following the analogy...

(ignoring the 2000's, in which the manufacturers managed to make dozens of sedans in name, but only about 4 in practice),

But that sounds like 4e to me. Dozens of powers in name but only a handful in practice.

and eventually feeling like they're all the same. ANyone who actually knows the vehicles knows that they each have different interiors, safety and luxury features, quality and cost of parts (ie how long they'll last and how much they cost to fix or replace), they accelerate differently, handle differently, etc, and that even the casual driver would know the difference if they just had 2 or 3 to choose from. They objectively aren't samey, insofar as samey can have a useful meaning.

Fairly minor differences IMO. 4 door sedans in a given price range are very samey because there's always a little give and take to balance them around that price point (ala 4e and balancing abilities to keep class power in balance).

The biggest difference with 4 door sedans is that you have some that cost $20,000 and some that cost $50,000. Those can be more different because the one is a straight upgrade over the other in nearly every respect.

But if "samey" can include "they drive very differently and owning own vs the other is a significantly different experience" then samey isn't a word with a coherent, sensible, usable, definition. At all. You might as well be saying 4e powers are floogerely.

Different perspectives. I can look at the cars and note the most minor of differences and conclude they are not samey. That's certainly one persepctive. I can zoom out a little more and say there's some differences but they are fairly minor and thus samey. Or I can zoom out all the way and see the cars as virtually identical.

Now more importantly - the reason the various makes and models sale and we don't all just buy whatever is "the best car for that price" is because we all individually weight different features importance more (subjectivity).

 

[lowkey13]

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[doctorbadwolf]

Kind of like telling someone what they should or shouldn't be saying... yea? According to you, people shouldn't be saying they hate 4e, they shouldn't say why they don't like 4e, etc.

I haven’t done anything like that. If you’re going to respond with strawman-esque accusations of bad faith attempts to silence people, then don’t reply to me again.

?

But, "This band sucks," is not an objective statement! It's like my friend who can't (won't) watch anything but anime. She has made statements like, "Legion sucks." (After I recommended it, because ... well, super heroes?).

Quality is going to depend on the viewer. Objective is measurable and observable- it's facts, not opinions or interpretations. Things being "suck-y" or "same-y" is always going to be subjective.

To be more specific:
Led Zeppelin, classically, has four members. (O)
Robert Plant has the best rock voice ever. (S)
LZ is one of the top ten highest selling bands in history. (O)
JP is a guitar god. (O)
LZ sucks, because its music is way too same-y. It all sounds like the Eagles. (!) (S)
LZ almost had Steve Winwood as the lead vocalist. (O)
LZ is the heaviest band ever, man, GET THE LED OUT! (S)
I like LZ because it reminds me of that time I ate too many mushrooms. (S)

We too often conflate subjective and objective, but once we get past facts, it's all subjective, and that's okay. Absent some outside, verifiable, measurable definition of "same-y" or "suck-y" statements regarding those qualities will always be subjective.

Quality of musical composition within a genre and context isn’t actually subjective.
A group of people can be objectively bad at making music, at playing their instruments, at composition, and they can be objectively good at those things.

I don’t especially love Zeppelin, but they are objectively good at those things, regardless of anyone’s subjective feelings about them and their music.

just like Freebird is a fairly middle of the road composition, but also one of my favorite songs. (Even though I don’t actually like the band, as people or as a band)

 

[lowkey13]

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[FrogReaver]

Right, so B should just say they don’t like it.

Explain this in relation to your strawman accusation.

 

[Garthanos]

Related to my other post, above, I think that magic the gathering feels "samey" for some people for exactly the same reason 4e does, even though there is an incredible amount of difference in what the things actually do while you are playing the game.

A person stares at the choices, and reads them all, and tries to understand them all, and the math that underpins them, and for many people doing this for a certain threshold of powers or cards leads to an "eyes glaze over and I don't care anymore" effect, where it might as well be all the same. Most people don't self-evaluate all that much, so might as well be and is aren't easily distinguished.

They experience "sameyness", even though the powers and cards are actually very, very, different from one another.

Give them 2-5 choices, or even a dozen choices that they'll only usually be considering half of at a time, and even if those choices are more similar, they can easily seem less similar, because the "overwhelmed by too many options that each require some review to understand" effect doesn't kick in. The rogue and fighter are vastly more different in 4e than in any other edition. Two rogues are more different from eachother in 4e than in any other edition. But that doesn't matter to someoen who has hit that wall. In 5e, they look at the rogue, they know that they get a handful of stuff early on, and they can choose between 3-12+ (depending on PHB only vs all sourcebooks) archetypes that will also give them a few things early on. It's...grokable, for people who don't thrive on huge numbers of options and in depth customization.

5e also puts it's depth of customization behind a screen, and walks you through a little maze where most times you make a choice the last choice and the next choice are both out of sight. You're very rarely choosing between dozens of things that fill the same category at once, unless you're choosing spells.

IME, people who experience sameyness in 4e, or MtG, or indeed in GURPS, don't love being told it's a perception of sameyness, not actual sameyness, but...it is. It's caused by the countertintuitive fact that many humans stop seeing distinctions between the options in front of them when there are too many options in front of them.

Well now... blink blink.
I am one who likes dense choice levels but that is obviously a taste difference.

Inversely looking at 5e martial classes I see the core fighter class as inflexible instead of giving me 4 partly flexible classes with distinctions by roles as a larger choice each with greater flexibility than the battlemaster they gave me 2 who are comparably locked in (and no the sub-classes barely tweak to another battle field role in my opinion ) seems a real problem to me
And yes the milestone based short rest abilities with the battle master its only a mild shifting from that. It seems back to the martial classes by being martial are the least flexible in combat not just out of combat.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Here's my current take on the argument.

Most (not all) 4e powers boil down to:

a) power = roll to hit -> if yes, deal damage (and +special)
b) else, power = roll to hit -> if yes, inflict condition (and +special)
c) else, power = movement (and +special)

That being said +special can take a multitude of form. Honestly, 4e managed to pack an unbelievable about of variance into the +special compartment. For some, that compartment is diverse enough to create sufficiently disparate powers that feel unique in use.

For other, however, those there packages (a, b, and c) are not sufficiently diverse enough, no matter how many unique instances of +special may exist. They expect +special to stand alone (e.g. power = +special).

That's my take on the argument anyway. No one's wrong, we'll all just coming from different perspectives.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So .... there are things that people can measure. And then we can say whether we think those things are "good" or "bad" based on other factors.

But...
1. you run into a lot of trouble when you start ascribing quality to that; and
2. you run into more trouble when you say that your measure of "quality" precludes someone else from making a subjective statement like, "That sucks."

Let's unpack this a little.

For example, you can have a number of different types of music, many of which may (or may not) be "quality" from your point of view. Let's go through some:
1. Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart.
2. Philosophy of the World, the Shaggs
3. 4' 33", John Cage
4. Orpheus, Trond Reindholdsten
5. Final Countdown, Europe
6. Gummo, 6ix9ine
7. On the Corner, Miles Davis
8. Islands in the Stream , Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton
9. Cotton Fields, Leadbelly
10. Rock Me, Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Now, I chose all of these because they are, to one degree to another, considered important in some way. Each of these will have defenders, some are considered seminal works.

But I do not doubt, for a second, that you will also find people that will say that one, or more, of these SUCKS.

Because quality is inherently a subjective quality.

If it wasn't, if quality was OBJECTIVE, then we would all like the same things. Because as you should well know, a person's musical ability is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient condition for success (cue the Sex Pistols!). And ability is not the same thing as quality.


EDIT- all of which is to say ...if someone complains about something and you disagree with them (in terms of quality, or a subjective opinion), it is usually better to realize that it is a subjective opinion rather than elevate it to an objective opinion that has to be rebutted. Or, to use the old quote, "Yeah, but that just like, your opinion, man."

The bolded text is simply untrue. Observably untrue. People with the same exact, as in the same in every detail, opinion on the quality of a work can have very, very different feelings of whether they enjoy the work.

Spoiler: For instance, one of my best friends hates Stairway To Heaven

. Well, two of my best friends, but only one is relevant to this example.
We agree on literally every point we have ever been able to think of to test with regard to the song. I love the song, and he hates it. We agree that it is overplayed, overrated but of very high quality, that the guitar work is technically astute but doesn't try to do more than the song needs, that the vocals are exactly right for the goals of the composition, that the lyrics and the instrumental elements are exactly in sync in terms of evoking the intended aesthetic and theme, and that people get too damn nostalgic and weepy about what is, at the end, just a good song. Not the best song ever, not even necessarily in the top 100 rock songs of all time, just a good song.

But I love it, and he hates it. He recognizes that he hates it for reasons that have nothing to do with it's objective qualities, and doesn't try to claim that it's bad, he just doesn't enjoy thsoe times where he is forced by circumstance or a friend who is a jerk to sit through it.

My other friend becomes relevant here, in comparison. he hates it, and claims its a bad song, and when pressed on the idea that it's "bad" simply reveals that he doesn't know much about music, and that he is very strongly influenced in his musical preferences by the degree to which a song is "overplayed". Which was irritating at first, because someone claiming that something is bad/sucks/other synonym for "of low quality" when there are objective measures by which one can analyses such a thing and it doesn't make sense in that context is irritating. Now I understand what is actually underpinning his opinion that the song is bad, and he just says he doesn't like it rather than saying it is bad, unless he is intentionally trying to goad me (we be like that).

Again. I do not care what you like outside of curiosity and the context of having a discussion about things we like. "You" here refers to everyone. I don't care if someone dislikes 4e. I care that my wife got tired of 4e because it lead to us switching to 5e, and at first that kinda sucked but now I'm loving 5e about as much as I love 4e, and I can add in stuff that I miss from 4e pretty easily.
Someone I don't actually play games with, though? Nah.

It's never been about what other people like, for me.

When someone in a discussion context makes an argument that doesn't make sense, I'm gonna challenge that. I expect more from people than the ignorant "this band sucks" with no ability to even explain what they don't like or examine what underpins their view of it. I'm not ever going to expect less from people than I do.

Explain this in relation to your strawman accusation.

What? Are you joking?