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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6256092" data-attributes="member: 82106">We'll have to agree to disagree. I've spent 28 years now as a lead software engineer. I know all there is to know about writing code, and a LOT about user interaction and usability analysis, etc. 4e would be a b**%ard to implement. Every class requires 100's of powers, feats, and class features. They're not all very simple either. Some are even pretty open-ended (though not many). Lots of others create subtle exceptions that then have to be considered in the "core" part of the game engine. In its essence the old SSI engine was quite simple. There are really very few exceptions and special cases in the core of 1e. Spells of course in a refereed PnP game can be pretty open-ended, but they mostly have either A) almost entirely 'story' effects which no CRPG engine can handle except as special "use it here to unlock" type exceptions (and 4e has the same issue with rituals); or B) they have a pretty cut-and-dried effect and any other possible utility is ignorable (IE you can blast enemies in Pool of Radiance with a Fireball, but you can't set things on fire). Again B also comes up in 4e, as it would in any RPG in some form.All this is largely aside though because the REAL fault with 4e would be in terms of user interaction and playability. Given how key out-of-turn actions and reactions are to the mechanics of the game you're entirely limited to turn-based CRPG, and nobody has successfully introduced one of those to the market in literally 20 years. Its a dead genre. Even assuming you would raise this genre from the dead and garner the interest required to fund a game you still have a rather cumbersome game as a result where the player is constantly being prompted to decide whether or not to trigger some effect at virtually every enemy action. It would just be a huge drag and a poor user experience. Heck, it was accused of being that as a PnP game and computerizing it would just emphasize that issue even more. 4e is just a bad example of an RPG to try to turn into a CRPG. In fact TBH ironically I can't think of a worse one (there probably are some, but you'd have to venture into indie games to find them probably). DW for instance would be literally impossible to implement as a CRPG, it would be a pointless exercise.I also agree with Halivar, D&D is just not worth that much to the computer game studios. The big ones have major brands of their own like Dragon Age, Warcraft, etc and the smaller studios have a rich heritage of material to pilfer to create something new. They can even skate in pretty close to the feel of older editions of D&D if they really want to. I'm sure someday SOMEONE will make another D&D branded CRPG, but its virtually certain to be based on either legacy rules (Basic would be pretty cool for a retro feel), or on some variation of DDN.</blockquote>

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