D&D 4E Are you happy with the coverage of 4e so far?

[JVisgaitis]

Just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on the coverage of 4e so far. Personally, I'm very excited about the new edition. Everything I have been reading is great. A lot of the stuff that I have issues with is being fixed, the changes all seem well thought out, and WotC has made me really want the new edition which is certainly a good thing.

What I'm up in the air on is the current coverage for the game. Thanks to EN World (and Glyfair), we're getting a lot of information on 4e from various sources, but I feel that what we've gotten so far has been a bit too sparse for my tastes. They were saying that the internet age would be great for 4e to help get the info out to masses, but I don't think they are taking advantage of it at this point. If we didn't have the blogs to go off of (and from what I understand they weren't planned to continue after Gencon) we wouldn't have anything.

I especially think that the D&D Insider website could be more informative. I'd like to see all of the art collected in one area, a really good FAQ, and definitely some of the articles that were around in Dragon prior to 3e's release especially the 10 Things to Play 3e Now article.

When I see members of the EN World community collecting info into PDFs to distribute to the masses, it seems like WotC might be dropping the ball in some areas. It would have also been nice to know what selection process was in place for playtesters for 4e (was there even a selection process or did they just pull names out of a hat?) before it went down instead of saying yep, we're done. RPGA members should now be notified that they are selected to playtest 4e. I'd love to see a website kit like some companies do for MMOs or other video games that are coming out. That would be sweet. See here for an example of what I mean: http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/community/fansiteKit/

They could start a fan art section on the D&D website, give us regular and scheduled updates (other then the blogs) so we know when things will be updated, and try and get the community involved. Isn't this what Gleemax and the Digital Initiative are for? I want to do something! I don't know if I'm being unfair or I'm just overly enthused and want info in an unrealistic timeframe, but I certainly have a need to do more then, "Keep playing D&D and enjoy your current campaign."

What do you all think? I typically suck at polls, but I'll add one here and see how it goes.

 

[MerricB]

I'm pretty happy with it so far. I expect that in October, with the magazines coming fully online, it will improve. It'd better!

Cheers!

 

[Blind Azathoth]

I'd really like to see more coverage.

This is not a novel, or a video game, or a movie, or a television series. There is no plot to spoil; revealing too much about the game before it appears probably won't ruin anyone's enjoyment of it. The idea of keeping "surprises" for release strikes me as rather silly. Releasing more information earlier means that more potential players can have their voices heard, and consequently have a greater effect on the development of the game.

If, for instance, Wizards decides to put a race or a class in the core rules that everyone winds up despising, which is the better option: letting people see it a little earlier, which ruins the "surprise" but allows WotC to avoid putting something the fanbase hates in the Player's Handbook, or letting people see it only after it's far too late to do anything about it? They've said that fan opinion is helping them decide on what direction to take the game in--if that's so, I should think it obvious to let the fans know just what's going on before it's too late for them to make much of a difference.

Not that I don't have confidence in the designers--I'd just have more confidence if I knew what they were actually doing.



Plus I wanna see if the Druid is core.

 

[broghammerj]

I hope you have your ring of fire resistance on I have a pretty similar opinion and took a lot of heat for it in my previous post:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=206843

There are people here who believe we are expecting too much too fast. I would argue WOTC made the announcement of 4E too soon. There appears to be a lot of material still in flux. Todays news page says there is a problem with races that may not see the light, but again we get treated with kid gloves and don't know anything about what that might be.

This edition is sold as the one that will streamline the game, fix all the problems, and most of all be fun. Yet we have several contradictory things coming from DnD Insider.

1. The racial advancement apparently has a hang up on one race.

2. You shouldn't convert your current campaign, but per the blogs that is exactly what WOTC did.

3. The warforge apparently are indestructible which needs to be resolved.

4. Related to #3 there is something they are working on with DR- "but the really odd thing is that his damage resistance (any DR, really) ignores psychic damage and poison damage. I’m not sure things ought to work that way; it seems to me that some sorts of damage ought to bypass DR by their very nature."

5.They are using undeveloped material for their internal playtests- Several of us needed new races. Luckily, we had some versions kicking around. These hadn’t been developed yet, but we used them anyway.

6. As of 9/7 they are working on multiclassing- "Here's a tidbit: we're working on multiclassing right now. One of my directives to the dev team was that I'd like to play a CENSORED ranger/cleric/wizard in a playtest. We'll see if we make that work."

My problem is the edition is supposed to fix all these issues, but instead of a completed work that needs some polishing we are looking at a work in progress. DnD Insider is giving narrative descriptions of new things in 4E but nothing of substance.

I don't believe 4E is a money grab. The money grab comes from the preview books they're planning on releasing.

 

[Sun Knight]

The level of coverage is fine. What it is uncovering is not.

 

[broghammerj]

The level of coverage is fine. What it is uncovering is not.

Care to elaborate?

 

[Irda Ranger]

Care to elaborate?

I'd rather he didn't; not here at least. Plenty of other threads for that.

I'd rather we either got more, or less.

The 4e designers are in a tough spot. They've been told to (1) talk, and (2) say nothing. Not anything really interesting, anyway, since (1) they can't "reveal small parts without revealing the whole" (as Mearls said), and (2) they've made the decision to not "spoil the surprise" of the Wizard's Presents books.

I think it's dumb to keep surprises. Like Blind Azazthoth said, I can't see how it would cut into sales. Anyone reading these blogs is going to buy a PHB pretty much no matter what. I'd rather they let more out.

But, if they're not going to let more out, I wish they blogged less. It's insulting to people as smart as the designers of 4e to make them talk about something they love, but not actually say anything substantive. That puts both the writers in a tough spot, and also bothers me to read.

Grr.

 

[green slime]

Reading their descriptions of their internal playtests, its not encouraging to see the lack of any real definitions at all. What exactly are they then testing? Strikes me as an exercise in random dice chucking, out of which they pull something out of their rear end and say "Hey, that was cool!"

I've lost the faith.

 

[Celebrim]

If it was software, I'd expect the release date to slip.

I'm annoyed by several things.

First, I'm annoyed by the obvious fact that the game being designed is not one for which I am the intended audience. I have said before how the reason I came back to D&D is that 3rd edition could not have been more like I wanted it to be had I designed it and I mean that literally. From what I've seen of 4e, its less like they looked at what was wrong with the game and set out to fix it, and more like some other DM is implementing his own largely untested house rules which at best will produce an interesting variant game of the sort that DM always wanted to have. They keep wanting to 'fix' problems I don't have.

Second, I'm annoyed by the statements of the sort, "X was bad. So we did Y. Now X isn't bad any more." The reason this is annoying is that all too often, Y has nothing to do with X. So maybe X got fixed, but if it did it wasn't because Y got changed. Equally annoying are some of the posters who know suddenly defend element Y to the death, on the grounds that they never liked X, even though 4 weeks ago they would have passionately argued against it.

Thirdly, I'm annoyed by statements of the sort, "We've fixed Z.", where Z is clearly not even yet in play testing, but still in the middle of development. How do you know you've fixed multiclassing if you've not finalized the rules on multiclassing or the base classes yet? How do you know you've fixed the races if the race's definitions are still in flux?

The only thing heartening thus far is that even here in this bastion of optimism and excitement about the game, only about a 3rd of fans seem happy with any given change. So at least I'm not alone.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I really think w are getting and speculating too much on 4E. I would like to see it slow down quite a bit.