D&D 5E Neuroglyph's "30 Minutes with Mike Mearls" Interview

[Manbearcat]

I'm primarily an MMO player. Here's how I see 4E moved closer to MMOs (at least those of the WoW generation)

1, More defined roles. MMOs of that generation are heavily governed by the Trinity (tank-healer-damage), and the mechanics enforce those roles. As a result, classes tend to heavily specialize into their role. 4E classes aim at more defined roles than classes in previous editions. Before 4E, classes may have fallen into a role de facto. In 4E, classes were put into roles de jure.

Alright, some tangible points to interact with. Good deal. Piece by piece.

This was one I mentioned above. Whereas you see MMO roots in the reasoning for making the combat roles, I (like many others) hold that these roles have always been inherent to D&D combat. Fighters and Paladins were expected to hold choke points and to interpose themselves between the bad guys and the squishy artillery/controllers as far as back as I've been running games (1984). Further, the warrior class of D&D (and the melee rules in general) had means to do so even way back when. Rogues and Monks were skirmishers and were expected to find ways to deploy their damage and stay mobile (because any prolonged melee meant certain death). Clerics's engineering afforded them the primary support role of buffing and healing (and divining and smiting). Wizards were meant to control enemies (Grease, Sleep, etc) and deploy their artillery (fireball, MM, etc).

The only thing 4e did was make this paradigm transparent and coherently engineer more tactical depth into each of the classes with respect to those roles (especially martial classes) such that they can (1) meet a standard level of performance in their expectant roles, (2) make "dyanmically fun and tactically engaging" the standard (rather than the purview of a few select classes - spellcasters), and (3) so that new players and old players don't get confused by "what exactly is this guy supposed to do (eg the 1e and 3.x monk)?" That is the problem it solved; the 3.x Fighter and the 1e/3.x Monk. Look at Heinsoo's (4e is his D&D as 5e is Mearls') editorializing all throughout 13th Age. The virtue of transparency and codification is expressed there and it has nothing to do with MMOs.

And finally, while each class had a primary role, they all were quite effective in secondary roles. A Fighter is easily built to be a baseline Striker as well as having his Defender capabilities. A Fighter that is built this way and is ignored will outperform Strikers in damage output. A Paladin as a secondary Leader can be quite effective. Curiously enough, that follows their archtypical shtick.

2. The encounter as the central unit. Most MMOs approach each encounter fresh. HP are back to full, resources are back to the starting point, etc. The state of the PC as combat starts is independent of what happened in previous encounters. Prior to 4E, this was very much not true for D&D. The initial state of the PC depended heavily on the previous enounters. 4E, especially with elements like encounter powers, moved a lot closer to the MMO state.

I don't agree with this either from an MMO perspective nor from a 4e/TTRPG perspective. First the MMO:
I'm not sure how (meaning casual or in a raiding guild) you engaged with WoW, but I can firmly tell you that what you describe bears no resemblance to my play period:

a) Everything from farming instances for mats, to trash clearing to bosses, to instance or world PVP never, ever had "the encounter as the central unit of play" and "everything recharged per encounter". Those made up the vast majority of play. In farming instances and trash clearing, the mode of play was to SPRINT from start to finish, never rest, grab every freaking thing you can, keep moving constantly, and basically tax the instance or raid force to their limits in their resource rationing overhead. This was all for the sake of speed and to keep people mentally fresh and engaged (as you do this very often). In world or instance PVP, you don't get to dictate the resource scheduling of the opposition so you're constantly trying to work out your own malleable refresh schedule while ablating their own resources. But there are no "hard resets". The "encounter isn't the central unit of play."

The only part where "the encounter was the central unit of play" and "everything was expected to be recharged" was indeed boss fights. That is an excruciatingly small part of overall play (and the paradigm certainly bears no resemblance to 4e!)

b) The discrete "conflict-charged scene" (the encounter) is absolutely fundamental for most all Indie games. This is the primary locus of play and resolving it (i) via thematic decisions which address a basic premise and (ii) consulting the resolution mechanics, all to "find out what happens", is how play resolves itself. This is what 4e does with Skill Challenges and combat (both infrastructurally and from a design ethos pespective). In play, it (should - there is no accounting for user error) manifest a thousand times more like Dogs in the Vineyard, Dungeon World, or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (with conflict-charged action scenes followed by a transition followed by more conflict-charged action scenes) than it does anything like WoW.

The "encounter as primary locus of play" is Indie TTRPGing ethos. It isn't WoW ethos.

Finally, regarding resource refreshing, 4e play doesn't remotely bear out the "hard reset" that you've conveyed. Goodness no. The only "hard reset" per encounter is overall HP (assuming you have surges available) and Encounter Powers. In Skill Challenges, you have Secondary Skills (1:1 for difficulty rating) and Advantages. Most of play isn't dictated by those things. The considerable portion of decision-making in standard 4e play is the work-day/strategic deployment/rationing of Surges, Dailies (PC and item), and Action Points. Those all have a "hard reset" schedule based on an Extended Rest, not a Short Rest. Again, not like WoW. More like D&D of the past...but spellcasters are refreshing their "heroic staying power" (healing surges) on a daily schedule just as front-line combatants and all characters are refreshing their "big (narrative) guns" (dailies) rather than just spellcasters. APs are refreshed on Milestones which is a different paradigm still. This does not bear resemblance to WoW.

3. Powers for all classes, especially non-magic ones. Before 4E, warriors just attacked. In 4E they used specific powers. This is closer to an MMO non-magical class.

This just isn't true. Its not true in Pathfinder, in 3.x, in Dungeon World, and not true in AD&D 2e C&T. Further, I don't even think you can claim that it was true for 1e. Positioining and melee control such that getting foes in your "vortex of withdraw and die and lesser foes eat all of these extra attacks per round" was central to effective 1e Fighter play.

Now its true that 4e increased the baseline tactical depth of martial classes (and yay for that!) by giving them an array of Exploits along the uniform, class scheduling paradigm inherent to 4e. However, thiat scheduling paradigm is not remotely like WoW and it was done for the sake of class balance and work-day predictability along a curve (which wasn't a WoW thing...it was a TTRPG complaint that had been manifesting for over a decade).

4. More emphasis on tactical movement, including positioning and things like knockbacks, etc.

Absolutely there is more emphasis on tactical movement and dynamic combat. 4e combat looks nothing like WoW because of it. Turn-based games with an action economy never could aspire to such a thing anyway. 4e's dynamic movement, imposition of forced movement, prolific immediate actions (this is key and not mentioned above in your post...because its inherent to a turn-based, action economy game - eg not WoW), and interaction with the battlefield (challenging/difficult/hindering terrain, hazards, traps) was a direct response to the (oft complained about - also see the incoherence of the Monk as melee skirmisher in 3.x) utter stagnance of combat in 3.x (due to many intersecting reasons, including the terrible action economy of the martial classes due to "Full Attack").

The melee control capabilities and dynamic movement of 4e looks many times more like NHL Hockey, NFL Football, the X-Men, or unit-based combat (martial skirmishes with multiple combatants, each with a pivotal, discrete role to fill) than it does WoW. And both of those things serve to provoke a visceral sense of realism (at least to someone with my background) when engaging with the combat engine.

In summation, I think if people would compare 4e combat to something like a theoretical, squad-based "Magic the Gathering" game or FF Tactics, it still wouldn't be correct....but it would make a whole lot more sense than this totally (and I mean totally...and also utterly) disonnected from reality comparison to WoW. It just seems so forced due to its sheer wrongness. Having run well over a thousand hours of 4e games (with indie GMing principles) and certainly logged waaaaaaaaaaay more than 1000 hours of WoW at the highest level of play, I don't even come close to seeing this comparison.

Looking at Heinsoo's statements, his 13th Age design ethos (which he makes transparent in the book), looking at the Indie movement/ethos, and looking at the evolution of the D&D at the time (which wanted to address many 3.x issues that were often complained about) is where you will find the 4e design ethos and its product engineering. Not in WoW.

Now I can get on board with you and Iosue when you state that transparent role prescription is certainly a boon to brand spanking new roleplayers who are coming from a CRPG or MMORPG background and no TTRPGing background. But those roles were always prescribed, they are just now better engineered and more transparent. Perhaps there was designer conversation outlining the prospect that better engineering and greater transparency in class roles would be a boon to luring new roleplayers of that background. Wouldn't surprise me. That seems sensible. That is as far as I'll go with the 4e designed as the TT version of WoW meme.

 

[pemerton]

Here's an example of Rob Heinsoo saying, "WoW players coming to Fourth Edition will probably be comfortable with the idea that Fourth Edition player characters get to make an interesting choice of a new power or ability every time they go up a level. That was missing from earlier editions of D&D."

But this is really just a version of "no dead levels" - which I think is also a feature of most PF and 5e classes. It was a feature of 3E, too, as far as skill points are concerned.

And a game like Rolemaster had this as a feature since 1982 - at every level you have to spend points across the range of skills (which, in RM, includes combat and magic) that you want for your PC.

So it seems to me that this is like saying "WoW players coming to 4e will probably be comfortable with the fantasy tropes and a wide choice of races with different look and background flavour". That is, it's true, but it's not picking out a feature of the game that is particularly WoW-inspired or that is particularly video-gamish.

 

[Dausuul]

Apparently at WotC they made 4e with that minority in mind, assuming such minority was playing the game "right" or was to be rewarded for their loyalty. Which kind of makes sense, but if the majority doesn't follow up, you can't blame them either...

I didn't get the impression they felt the minority was "playing the game right." Rather, they thought the minority was much more representative of the majority than it really was. It's an understandable mistake; we ENWorlders make it all the time, assuming the rest of the D&D world is as plugged in to the game's online community as we are.

I'm not going to get into the discussion of WoW's influences or lack thereof on 4E, which topic has been beaten to death repeatedly ever since 2008. That is the deadest dead horse that ever died. I do think that 4E should have been subtitled "The Experimental Edition." If Ryan Dancey is to be believed, WotC was put in a position where they pretty much had to shoot for the moon with 4E. Faced with utterly unrealistic revenue targets, they had no choice but to take big gambles, try bold new things, and hope for the best. The nature of experiments is that they fail a lot more often than they succeed, and while we can argue over whether 4E was a success by D&D standards, there's no question it never came close to the explosive growth Wizards was aiming for. But even failed experiments provide valuable information. 5E owes a lot to 4E both in what is included and in what isn't.