Blog posts on DDI should be free

[Mark]

I've clearly done all I could to avoid edition wars here and the mods will have to deal with those who tried to instigate them when they get the chance.

 

[jdrakeh]

Saying that 73 pages of rules corrections is a lot has nothing to do with other editions. I am not saying it is inferior to other editions. I am saying that is problematic on its own merits.

And yet, in this thread, you've compared it to other editions at least once, rather than criticizing it on its own merits.

From what I saw, there wasn't really that much that didn't work and we're looking at roughly eight years. But this isn't a contest or edition war. I'm just looking at what the last year and a half has wrought.

You unfavorably compare the current edition of D&D to past editions and then disclaim "this isn't a contest or edition war" in the very same breath. By your own admission, if this was, in fact, not a contest or edition war, you wouldn't have made such a comparison but, instead, judged the game on its own merits.

 

[Lanefan]

All I can say, without regard to any previous edition, is if 4e really does already have 73 pages of errata that's not a good sign.

I could see such things happening if my buddies and I sat around until we'd designed a game and got it published; yeah, there'd be errata all over the place and rightfully so. But we're amateurs. These guys are supposed to be professionals, 4e was (in theory) playtested into the ground before release, and the designers had 30+ years of RPG design history to draw on; given those factors, I think all involved are well within their rights to have expected 4e to be error free on initial release.

No matter how you spin it, the very existence of any errata means that it is not error free.

Lanefan

 

[jdrakeh]

No matter how you spin it, the very existence of any errata means that it is not error free.

At the risk of digging for myself what is already a surely deep hole deeper: nobody spun it that way. FWIW, the whole reason I don't play D&D 4e is because of the errata (I was waiting for all of it to make it into printed rule books, but eventually gave up on that).

 

[AllisterH]

Um,to those complaining about the errata, have you actually looked at how the errata is stated? I think a couple of people mention this but I don't think you guys are truly understanding why we say this...

It's the format that makes it so beefy.

Contrast for example the errata issued for DRAGON magazine articles at the end of the document with the errata issued for say Divine power.

For example the errata for "Hymn of Resurgence" was.

Add "until the end of your next turn" to the Hit line and change "burst to blast".

This errata actually took 20 lines to actually state this.

The errata not only has the ERRATA, but the REASON why it was changed AND the entire power written with the new ruling.

And this is easily 90%+ of the errata in the document. It makes it look way more beefy than it is.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

As a point of comparison. The 3.5 errata totals 76 pages. The 3.5 FAQ is 116 pages long. The FAQ is mostly errata disguised as "clarifications" in that most of the answers told you things you couldn't possibly know from reading the rules in question.

This doesn't include the errata or FAQ for 3.0, which was even longer.

And I know from experience that there were a huge list of errata that never got released for 3.5 when WOTC basically gave up and created 4e instead. I know this because I was a Triad member for Living Greyhawk where all the DMs were required to use the RAW without any changes or house rules. Because of this I got many, many e-mails sent to me asking me rules questions. Most of which I couldn't answer because no matter how many times *I* read the the rules, FAQ, and errata, I couldn't find a clear answer anywhere.

Near the end of 3.5e, the Circle(who were in charge of Living Greyhawk and our "bosses") asked us on behalf of WOTC if we had any outstanding rules issues that repeatedly came up so they could issue a large amount of errata(apparently, because they wanted to "finish" 3.5e before 4e came out, but we didn't know that at the time, we just figured they were finally trying to fix the game enough that we could stop dealing with all the rules questions in the future). We came up with a very large list of questions and complaints we had received. Most of which were never errataed or fixed before WOTC decided to stop doing errata for 3.5e.

 

[jdrakeh]

As a point of comparison. The 3.5 errata totals 76 pages. The 3.5 FAQ is 116 pages long. The FAQ is mostly errata disguised as "clarifications" in that most of the answers told you things you couldn't possibly know from reading the rules in question.

I suspected that there was more errata for 3.5 than 4e simply because it had been around much longer (and because I remembered the FAQ), but I couldn't be bothered to tally up all of it myself (I started to, but I figured that those determined to condemn 4e based on the 73 pages of errata would just ignore such a tally). Thanks for taking the time to do that.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I am not saying it is inferior to other editions. I am saying that is problematic on its own merits.

Due to nowing the actual content of the errata and not merely a page count, I have to disagree here.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Due to nowing the actual content of the errata and not merely a page count, I have to disagree here.

Errata, WotC Style:

Errata for: General RPG Discussion - Blog posts on DDI should be free:
Page 6, Post #119
Typo/Clarification: The sentence contains a typo and is badly constructed. The correct sentence should be:
Taking into account the content of the errata and not just the number of pages it takes, I have to disagree here.

 

[AllisterH]

*LOL*

Nice Mustrum...but actually true.

That is what 90% of the errata in the actual document is....I pretty sure I can get those pages to under 15 pages EASILY and I probably can shrink it to 10.