D&D 4E Edition Experience - Did/Do You Play 4th Edition D&D? How Was/Is it?

[billd91]

Oh I don't deny lots of people said it. Lots of people say a lot of things. But in a simple factual sense, it was not a valid claim. There was virtually no "MMORPG influence" in 4E. I asked people at the time to point out what they thought was WoW-influence or MMORPG-influence, because I was an active WoW player at the time, and someone who played MMOs since 1999 with EQ, I couldn't work out what the heck they meant.

And whilst I got a lot of angry, hate-filled responses, no-one ever specified anything except "WoW has roles, and 4E has roles, so 4E's roles are derived from WoW and like WoW are bad and dumb". Literally not a single other part of 4E's design was pointed to as WoW/MMORPG-influenced. Nor was anyone able to explain this further than "Well Defenders are exactly the same as Tanks..." or the like, which is patently false. They operate in completely different ways.

And that's it - roles. That's all they ever said.

And welcome to the return of the Edition Wars in which your emotional associations are valid (like 4e finally feeling like you were taking part in a fantasy story) but a critic’s, like 4e feeling like a MMORPG, are not.

 

[TwoSix]

Oh I don't deny lots of people said it. Lots of people say a lot of things. But in a simple factual sense, it was not a valid claim. There was virtually no "MMORPG influence" in 4E. I asked people at the time to point out what they thought was WoW-influence or MMORPG-influence, because I was an active WoW player at the time, and someone who played MMOs since 1999 with EQ, I couldn't work out what the heck they meant.

And welcome to the return of the Edition Wars in which your emotional associations are valid (like 4e finally feeling like you were taking part in a fantasy story) but a critic’s, like 4e feeling like a MMORPG, are not.

Welp, only took 68 posts or so. About what I was expecting.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Re-editing.

 

[Randomthoughts]

Couldn't find a response that matched my position but the closest was "I played it and remember liking it." I loved 4e. It brought me back to D&D (and Dark Sun no less) after a long hiatus from B/X, 1e and 2e. I was fortunate to stumble into a group that ended up being one of the high points of my gaming experiences.

Really enjoyed the electronic tools and the ease of the system to GM. My adventures were completely home-brewed and character-centric. I really loved how the only things I ran adventures with only the adventure write-up (including monster stats), character sheets, dice and the Rules Compendium.

Interestingly enough, I didn't run it like a typical 4e, and that's probably a reason why I enjoyed it so much. I focused on set piece battles instead of attrition combat and used Skill Challenges extensively, even in lieu of throw-away combats.

I'm not running 4e now, but I'm preparing to run a hexcrawl using a VTT during this crazy time. What better time than now, right?

The worst thing about 4e? The edition wars.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And welcome to the return of the Edition Wars in which your emotional associations are valid (like 4e finally feeling like you were taking part in a fantasy story) but a critic’s, like 4e feeling like a MMORPG, are not.

Now you're actually actively misleading people about what I've said.

I said - "It felt like an fantasy story to me". That's a feeling, not an argument or valid criticism.

You said - "It felt like a game to me". That's a feeling, not argument or valid criticism.

I did not say anything against you saying that. Don't act like I did, that's outright deceptive. It's totally valid for you to feel like it was a game and not like a fantasy story. Because that's a feeling. They're both valid, because neither involves a claim of fact, and both speak from experiences we've actually had (playing a game, reading a fantasy novel).

But the specific claim wasn't that D&D 4E was as a matter of fact inspired by WoW, and took elements form WoW, and as I've illustrated, this was not true on a factual level. That's a matter of fact, not feelings. If you "feel like" 4E was like WoW, that's a "feeling". Which is fine. The only problematic element is that most people who claimed that didn't play MMORPGs, particularly WoW, and several have now admitted here (something not all of them said at the time), that they never actually played 4E, just read the books. It would be like me saying something "feels like climbing Everest", which is fine as a figure of speech, but this was meant literally, not figuratively, and given I've never climbed any mountain, let alone Everest, it would be a weird claim for me to make.

The most common claim, specifically, was that Defenders worked just like Tanks in MMOs. This isn't a matter of feelings. This a matter of fact. As a matter of fact, they didn't.

Also, did you honestly read all of my post? Because it seems like you didn't.

 

[3catcircus]

Played one session of 4e. Hated it. Hated the marketing surrounding it which felt like it was implying that people who didn't like 4e were stupid. Hated the active removal of archived 1e - 3e stuff on the WotC website. They actually went out of their way to hide or delete tons of adventures, web enhancements for existing products, and various articles on 3e that added stuff (The Mind's Eye articles on psionics, Epic Insights, The Far Corners of the World spells, The Border Kingdoms and the Perilous Gateways articles for Forgotten Realms, etc.) Thousands of pages worth of articles, essays, insights, sage advice, errata - all hidden or deleted. For example, in 2000, you could download the L2 Assassin's Knot adventure for free. Go to archive.wizards.com and click on the 2000 archive - its the first entry from 2000. The article pops up. The downloads are gone. Other articles in the archive don't even go to the article - most of them show a "down for maintenance" webpage. One could argue about them removing previous published products that ended up on store shelves. But to remove web-only content? Madness.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But to remove web-only content? Madness.

It's kind of unfair to blame 4E for that, given the exact same thing happened to 4E content when 5E came out, and indeed a lot of this stuff got removed at various points from the WotC site. I mean, hell, at one point they had every issue of Dungeon and Dragon up for download, then they took them down again.

 

[pemerton]

I didn't run it like a typical 4e, and that's probably a reason why I enjoyed it so much. I focused on set piece battles instead of attrition combat and used Skill Challenges extensively

Isn't that what typical 4e looks like? How else would it be done?

 

[Randomthoughts]

I never really played the Essentials set. Can anybody who did comment on how they felt to play and run for compared to the original classes? From a quick browse, it did feel like they were more distinct than the original classes (not a value judgement).

So, I might be getting my facts (especially time lines) as to what constituted part of the "Essential" lines. In general, I felt pretty neutral to the whole thing but there were some great products.

IIRC, the Rules Compendium was part of that, and I found that product to be indispensable. The Monster Vault and Monster Vault: Threats of Nentir Vale were well done IMHO and I liked Heroes of the Feywild, more so for the lore. I mined that when I ran a one-shot set in the Feywild.

I didn't care much for the new Essential player guides (Heroes of Fallen Lands/Forgotten Kingdoms) but I do recall playing at GenCon one summer, where a fellow gamer brought a slayer - a simple damage-dealing machine - that fit his play style perfectly. I had an optimized Psion (to the extent it could be lol), while his tactics literally consisted of "I'll swing my sword at it". So...different strokes?

 

[Umbran]

I played a bit of this. It was an interesting design, and I suppose if a GM I knew asked me to play it, I would. But I probably wouldn't run a campaign of it at this point.

I think the general design would have been better applied to a different underlying property, possibly different genre, without the history and expectations D&D carried with it.