Confessions of a 4E Detractor

[ProfessorCirno]

Perspective is sometimes hard to get when one keeps one's nose to the monitor. While I know there'd be detriments to doing so, I have oft wondered what would happen to the tone of the place if we just closed EN World for a week forcing everyone - posters, mods, everyone - to take a break and do something else.

Did we do that once before, albeit on accident? ;p

(What really got me hot was people telling me my perspectives were somehow invalid.).

This was the big, major factor for bringing out my rage and irritation. Being looked down on and told that there was something wrong with me if I didn't like 4e.

To an extent I do fault WotC for part of the change we are seeing. I believe that building up 4E by casting down 3E, was a clear part of their marketing strategy. That caused a lot of anger in the minds of those players who still enjoyed 3E, and led to much of the division we are seeing today. We are ultimately responsible for our own actions, but the initial rules were set by WotC.

This was the other bit. It seemed every single preview had very little emphasis on "4e is great" and for more emphasis on "Man, remember how much this and that in 3.5 sucked? Oooooof course you do." I was initially really, really upset with the DMG which seemed to tell me how boring I was time and time again, until it finally clicked for me - this book wasn't made for me. I already know how to DM. This book is for the people who are just getting into the hobby.

Once that clicked with me - and once I had a somewhat sobering visit to my hometown - I think a lot of my frustrations regarding 4e melted away. Maybe I was justified in it, maybe not, but my rage for 4e was because I felt the edition was supposed to be something I liked and wanted, and it wasn't. I felt kinda cheated. But eh, horribly enough, apathy can cure many problems. I've got bigger fish to fry soon enough - maybe I can blame the rage on lazy summer days? ;p. I suppose the right way to say it is "I no longer care, and I've never felt better because of it."

 

[CleverNickName]

No worries, mate. You weren't one of the worst, by any stretch

Tell me about it. I can no longer see the posts of a few posters here, the OP not included or even considered.

I'm probably not on anyone's list of Most Annoying People at ENWorld. But I know when I am being civil and when I'm not.

For a while, it was the later. But I'm feeling much better now.

And really, I just wanted to clear the air and let everyone know where I stood on 4E. I've gone back and forth between 4E ROX! and 4E SUX! so many times, that I have started to get "but you were the one who said" responses to my posts. So I thought it might be time to set the record straight.

 

[cougent]

To an extent I do fault WotC for part of the change we are seeing. I believe that building up 4E by casting down 3E, was a clear part of their marketing strategy. That caused a lot of anger in the minds of those players who still enjoyed 3E, and led to much of the division we are seeing today. We are ultimately responsible for our own actions, but the initial rules were set by WotC.

Only 45? Hell ... you're a youngster. That feeling gets worse the longer you play.

I definitely think WotC mishandled the whole marketing presentation spin on the "4dventure"; and I don't have a better way they should have done it in mind; but I am not a marketing guru either... and neither were they obviously (nor did they hire any). I can't fault them from a purely business standpoint, after all they are here to make money not friends... but in this line of business they are closely related to each other and I think they may have forgotten that for a while. Wal-Mart can PO every 3rd customer that walks through the door and still sell billions and make millions... any company the size of WotC with the sales they have does that and they are in trouble... just sayin'

Yeah, I am too old to be considered a valuble consumer and too young for the senior citizen discount... bummer!

 

[Sonny]

Yeah, they paid me on it and that was the last I heard of it. You want a quick rundown?

There was an adventure that involved the pyramid from Phlan and a sarrukh that was there and up to no good.

There was a writeup of Phlan, which basically made liberal use of material from the 2E Moonsea supplement. I set it up so that there was still stuff to do in Phlan - still ruined areas that had yet to be explored, still monsters occasionally crawling out of them, etc. The thing was about 17,000 words long, and not only did it never get posted to the web, but I was also never told of any level of dissatisfaction with it. It simply disappeared. That made me a sad panda, but I got over it because such things tend to happen in this business.

Thanks! It's too bad when things like this happen. Even worse when it's place fans like me have waited years for an update on.

At least I know it was in good hands. Plus now I know it made use of Sorcerer's Isle and the Sarrukh.

 

[Khairn]

I think it was a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't... I never saw anything that I felt was "bashing" 3e in anyway. I think what they were, at least trying to do, was justify why they felt the changes needed making, as opposed to them being seen as change for changes sake, orjust a way to get more of our money. (Although those accusations still happened.)

I completely understand the tight-rope that WotC was walking, and I also understand that this is a very subjective matter. But from the very first announcement at last year's Gen-Con where 3E rules were associated with badwrongfun, WotC justified the necessity for the rule changes by explaining how bad the existing edition was. IMHO, that marketing strategy set the stage for the schism we are dealing with today.

Hopefully it will eventually die down. But I personally think it will take a couple of years. Just an opinion.

 

[Toras]

Like the OP, perhaps I have not been as civil as I could have been discussing 4e. I suspect much of the antipathy that I hold for this addition stems from the actions of WOTC during its writing and now.

The lose of Dragon/Dungeon bother me, as does it treatment of Freelancers. Much of what they've done flavor wise to both the settings I enjoy and hoped to see further support of, and to the authors that had writting them bother me. That the Digital Intiative is a debacle offends me professionally, since I believe that myself and a mad chip could have made more progress by this point. And frankly, I have friends whom the "cleaning house" hurt, and that pisses me right off. That it threw kinks in a few of the things I was working on as well doesn't help either.

While I doubt I will be involved further with 4e as a system, I should remember that it is indeed just a game and that the well done flavor of the past can still be found on Ebay and the like.

To its credit, 4e did want me to like it from a mechanical standpoint. Skill challenges and free form rules, love it. But the combat and power system as made me realize how much of what I did in 4e was either outside the rules or as much inspite of them as because. Using a pillar as a weapon and a way of reaching out and touching someone. Breaking a wizard's casting hand. Using gnomish inventions. Having a wizard turn me into a titan and going godzilla on a horde. Blinding a beholder's main eye with a caltrop and a good roll. Harpooning someone. Going skyship to skyship with a monk using jump and a grappling hook. The list goes on.

It was realization that I didn't want more of 3e in my combat, I wanted it lighter and more freeform. My character was not a glorified chess piece and we weren't thusly constrained. We can lure them into traps as much as they us. Burn the dungeon down and loot the ashes. I prefer stunts to powers for my fighters and thats not D&Ds fault, but its showing it to be less the game for me.

 

[Hussar]

I completely understand the tight-rope that WotC was walking, and I also understand that this is a very subjective matter. But from the very first announcement at last year's Gen-Con where 3E rules were associated with badwrongfun, WotC justified the necessity for the rule changes by explaining how bad the existing edition was. IMHO, that marketing strategy set the stage for the schism we are dealing with today.

Hopefully it will eventually die down. But I personally think it will take a couple of years. Just an opinion.

Like you say, it is entirely subjective. To me, it never seemed like they were bagging on 3e any more than anyone here at En World bagged on elements of 3e. The points they brought up were, IMO, pretty much the same points that I had debated (sometimes on either side) here or on other boards in the past. I never got the "badwrongfun" vibe at all. I got a "Hey, we have this problem with the rules, so that's why we changed 'em" vibe.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Although not thrilled with 4E, my gripe is more the GSL than 4E itself.

This is where I'm at, too. The APL excites me. If Necromancer is online, I will give 4e a go, provided someone else DM it, and allow the APL from Expeditious Retreat (and Ari).

Looks like they're trying to fix that, so I'm taking a wait and see approach, again.

I can't fully agree with that, because I want the game somewhere between 3e and 4e, that WotC could have released but didn't. I'd love an OGL for 4e so that someone could produce that game.

Perhaps 5e?



RC

 

[freyar]

Like you say, it is entirely subjective. To me, it never seemed like they were bagging on 3e any more than anyone here at En World bagged on elements of 3e. The points they brought up were, IMO, pretty much the same points that I had debated (sometimes on either side) here or on other boards in the past. I never got the "badwrongfun" vibe at all. I got a "Hey, we have this problem with the rules, so that's why we changed 'em" vibe.

Can I ask if you read all the Design & Development articles? I'm not being snarky, just curious. Because in this one, Mike Mearls gave an extremely abbreviated list of what he called "the possibilities" for encounters for first level characters in the 3e rules:

According to the rules, a 1st level party could face a single Challenge Rating 1 monster, or an Encounter Level 1 group of beasts. That seemed reasonable, until I started designing adventures. The rules presented the following possibilities:

* One gnoll
* One troglodyte
* Two orcs
* Two hobgoblins
* Four goblins

(Now, I wasn't around the game in 2000, but weren't there kobolds?) He then went on to say

Despite what the game told me, a low-level party could take on three or four orcs without a massacre (for the PCs, at least).

like the RAW told you 1st level characters weren't allowed to face an EL2 encounter.

Were there honestly people who debated this here back when 3e came out? Or ever? Because this was one thing that turned me off WotC's 4e PR campaign -- what seemed like blatant disingenuity about the 3e rules. I'm personally on the fence about the 4e rules, but it really did seem like they had a deliberate smear campaign against the 3e ruleset.

 

[Henry]

Were there honestly people who debated this here back when 3e came out? Or ever? Because this was one thing that turned me off WotC's 4e PR campaign -- what seemed like blatant disingenuity about the 3e rules. I'm personally on the fence about the 4e rules, but it really did seem like they had a deliberate smear campaign against the 3e ruleset.

People have debated the Encounter Level rules ever since 2001 or so, and whether something SHOULD be a given CR, or whether multiple melee creatures presented the same encounter strength as multiple magic-based creatures, ad infinitum. The 3E Rules forum was rife with it for years, with the end result being a lot of variant systems (Wulf Ratbane's EL rules being quite popular) and a lot of people (myself included) just saying, "eyeball it" instead of even trying to make a system work. That wasn't disingenuous, it was quite true.

I will say that for all the supposed bad press the WotC people were giving 3e, they also gave it a lot of good press. People will slam Dave Noonan for saying how much better 4e is than 3e, but I distinctly remember him saying that the first time he saw 3e, he said he had found a set of D&D rules he could play without a bunch of house rules. (This was one of the first few podcasts, I remember, before they could start talking about 4e in detail.) Beyond that, a certain amount of hype for a new product is expected, in my opinion. I don't fault Tide for coming up with a "New and Improved" version, when the old formula was fifty cents cheaper and worked quite well for me.

The only time I ever screamed bloody murder for a product change was New Coke -- too much like Pepsi, for a reason -- but most other things have a certain amount of "this is better in many ways" spiels that come with it.