Games with "terrible" follow-up editions

[Staffan]

So the only point you can use to compare the two is that classes have roles? That's always been true, it just wasn't codified. Are Rangers main healers or guys who protect the back line in D&D? No? They do damage? Ok.

The difference is, I think, that 4e classes were designed to the role, as opposed to other editions where classes were designed to theme, and roles just sorta happened as a result of that. It also lead to a narrowing of some classes. For example, fighters became a pure melee class (because that's where a tank needs to be), whereas a 3e fighter could be an archer, duelist, horse-based knight, or any of a number of other concepts. The archer concept, in turn, got moved to the ranger who lost their magic (weak as it was), because the new ranger was a Martial Striker, and Martial characters don't do magic. This made a lot of people not recognize classic classes anymore, and since classes were closely tied to roles and roles were the most MMO thing about 4e, that's what people blamed.

Another thing that lead people to read MMO into 4e was the adventure/encounter design, where a lot of effort was spent on setting up encounter locations, complete with starting locations of various enemies. That often felt video-gamey – maybe not MMO specifically, but video-gamey.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It's like they wanted to combine peanut butter and chocolate and instead combined fish and cheese.

Which can be done with skilled minds working at it…which is rarely the case.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh, didn't know that. I have all the 5E books myself cause the art is amazing. Haven't got to play it yet though. Maybe I should get to reading them finally...

They changed the lore for 5e, and everything i wanted out of it i got from all the previous editions. FFG gave me an excuse to move on.

 

[Micah Sweet]

7th Sea 2E pretty much killed any further interest in playing 7th Sea at all, whether 1E or 2E, among my prior gaming group in Austria. I backed it for access to the entire catalogue of 1E pdfs, but the 2E books have basically been gathering dust.

Yeah, the 2e project was a mistake from top to bottom.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, structuring the entire "engine" around cooldown abilities with outrageous, flashy effects like an MMO is enough to warrant a comparison on its own.

Throw in other things, like the foundation of PCs and Monsters based around MMO "combat roles" (Controller, Leader, Defender, Striker), and there is a reason the comparison pops up in just about every 4e discussion.

Also, a personal observation of mine, the entire game seems built from the ground up with programing logic in mind, which I think leads to a "video game" type of feel as well.

The multicolored, compartmentalized presentation didn't do them any favors either.

 

[practicalm]

Paranoia: The Fifth Edition was an abomination.

Never saw it because I liked the 2nd edition, I saw no reason to move on.
Funny because 1st edition Paranoia was a mess with their skill trees. 2nd edition was much better. I never really looked at the later editions.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

D20 Star Wars was a big step down in emulating Star Wars from WEG Star Wars.

D20 Call of Cthulhu is an even bigger step down from Chaosium Call of Cthulhu.

Basically, shovelling an IP into the d20 system because you can doesn't make for an improvement.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Never saw it because I liked the 2nd edition, I saw no reason to move on.
Funny because 1st edition Paranoia was a mess with their skill trees. 2nd edition was much better. I never really looked at the later editions.

To be fair....you really shouldn't be playing Paranoia for the crunch regardless of edition.

 

[heks]

i would generally agree with that (although i think it worked FAR better for 'star wars' than 'call of cthulhu.')
also! as 'shadowrun' has come up, so many times, has anyone had any experience porting the 6th ed stuff to a different system?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

i would generally agree with that (although i think it worked FAR better for 'star wars' than 'call of cthulhu.')
also! as 'shadowrun' has come up, so many times, has anyone had any experience porting the 6th ed stuff to a different system?

I think the character level stuff was fine in d20 SW but the vehicle combat was where it went off the rails. This is probably why I like KotOR but not the system in general.

Where d6 SW comes out on top is the same system is used for everything from wookies ripping arms off, bullseyeing womp rats from your T16, to blowing up a Star Destroyer.

Also the Dark Side Point mechanic in d6 was the single greatest mechanic in any RPG ever devised. It literally seduces the Jedi PLAYERS to embrace the dark side.