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"DnDSports": Competitive Play With Prizes
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<blockquote data-quote="Aoirorentsu" data-source="post: 7761142" data-attributes="member: 60129"><p>I totally get the desire to appeal to new players and continue growing the game. And it's even kinda cool that they're going back to the game's roots to appeal to the kind of players who originally migrated to D&D from war-games.</p><p></p><p>My objection to this is not so much that D&D "can't" have competitive elements. There's no wrong way to play. It's that other games are much, much better at doing them than D&D.</p><p></p><p>But back in the 70s, there were not competitive computer games that were accessible to a wide range of people. Now practically anyone with a PC can play LoL, and Overwatch's requirements aren't that onerous, considering. To say nothing of DOTA. The notion that D&D can crack that market strikes me as far-fetched. Like, if I were currently playing LoL, what about the tabletop D&D MOBA would appeal to me?</p><p></p><p>Competitive eSports live and die on balance, because balance between characters (along with level design) determines what constitutes a good strategy and what keeps those kinds of games interesting. Handwaving at balance the way the announcement does does not bode well. D&D5e is not designed to be balanced in combat the way that eSports games have to be. "Over a dozen DMs" is... not an impressive number of DMs. Moreover, D&D's combat system is, frankly, not that interesting anymore because elements of it have been copied and innovated on a million times. </p><p></p><p>D&D's recent explosion of success has been because people realized that you can use D&D to tell interesting stories together. To the extent that DnDSports diverts resources and attention away from cooperative storytelling, it is backtracking on precisely what has made D&D successful in the 5e era. It also appeals to the kind of player who Mearls specifically recently called out as the focus, and ultimate cause of the tanking, of 4e (which I really enjoyed, FWIW).</p><p></p><p>All of this is to say that the idea seems kinda poorly conceived, for a market that now has readily available and far superior substitute goods, on the assumption that you can appeal to that market for... reasons, while distracting from what has made D&D successful. Maybe there's room for both. But attention is finite and folks will be quick to abandon D&D if they think the culture is toxic, and competitive play encourages toxicity.</p><p></p><p>Maybe they'll do it better than their announcement suggests. *shrug*</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aoirorentsu, post: 7761142, member: 60129"] I totally get the desire to appeal to new players and continue growing the game. And it's even kinda cool that they're going back to the game's roots to appeal to the kind of players who originally migrated to D&D from war-games. My objection to this is not so much that D&D "can't" have competitive elements. There's no wrong way to play. It's that other games are much, much better at doing them than D&D. But back in the 70s, there were not competitive computer games that were accessible to a wide range of people. Now practically anyone with a PC can play LoL, and Overwatch's requirements aren't that onerous, considering. To say nothing of DOTA. The notion that D&D can crack that market strikes me as far-fetched. Like, if I were currently playing LoL, what about the tabletop D&D MOBA would appeal to me? Competitive eSports live and die on balance, because balance between characters (along with level design) determines what constitutes a good strategy and what keeps those kinds of games interesting. Handwaving at balance the way the announcement does does not bode well. D&D5e is not designed to be balanced in combat the way that eSports games have to be. "Over a dozen DMs" is... not an impressive number of DMs. Moreover, D&D's combat system is, frankly, not that interesting anymore because elements of it have been copied and innovated on a million times. D&D's recent explosion of success has been because people realized that you can use D&D to tell interesting stories together. To the extent that DnDSports diverts resources and attention away from cooperative storytelling, it is backtracking on precisely what has made D&D successful in the 5e era. It also appeals to the kind of player who Mearls specifically recently called out as the focus, and ultimate cause of the tanking, of 4e (which I really enjoyed, FWIW). All of this is to say that the idea seems kinda poorly conceived, for a market that now has readily available and far superior substitute goods, on the assumption that you can appeal to that market for... reasons, while distracting from what has made D&D successful. Maybe there's room for both. But attention is finite and folks will be quick to abandon D&D if they think the culture is toxic, and competitive play encourages toxicity. Maybe they'll do it better than their announcement suggests. *shrug* [/QUOTE]
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