PLayer's pre-opinions more important than quality of system

[ProfessorCirno]

I'm one of those people on the line between 4e and 3.x...mechanically.

Let me explain.

4e mechanics intrigues me, which is to say it interests me in a neutral manner. I find some of them to sound amazingly excellent. I find others that make me want to run away.

However, I did very specifically state this was just the mechanics.

To put it diplomatically, I have...heavy disagreements with how the 4e fluff is looking and being presented.

Were I offered a 4e game after it comes out, I would consider it, but only so long as it didn't use 4e fluff.

Does this make me a rabid and crazed lunatic, foaming at the mouth and denouncing everything I see as horrible, shying away from the big scary word "CHANGE," for no apparent reason aside from me (supposed) close mindedness and hatred towards all things new?

Possibly.

I don't think so, myself. But why would you trust me? I'm a rabid and crazed lunatic.

 

[Stalker0]

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

So, I'm inferring from your post that you don't think 4e can stand on its own merit.

We can't simply allow our players to get their own books and read them. We can't simply set up a game, gather our friends, roll up characters and play the game.

Heavens no, if we do that, then our flies won't enter the parlor.

4e is to lame to win the approval of players without us coddling their conversion?

I, for one, will assume my players are smart enough to form their own opinions. If 4e sucks, my players will know it. if 4e rocks, my players will figure that out all on their own.

No coddling needed.

Sheeesh, with all this talk of breaking them in gently, brainwashing the stubborn non-believers, using coddling tactics to get them hooked, I'm almost ready to start believing those wackos who tell me that D&D is a cult...

Do we have a secret handshake?

The whole point about that post was to convince the people who DIDN'T want to try 4e, the people who thought it would suck, so never gave it a chance.

 

[muffin_of_chaos]

It seems pretty obvious that 4E was designed for two reasons...to combat flaws built into 3E mostly pertaining to balance, and to make D&D more like popular MMORPGs.

If you're happy with 3E, it means you've either successfully accounted for the deeply-ingrained lack of foresight in 3E regarding balance issues that was the cost of spending time rethinking 2E (and can be achieved to some variable degree of success with help from Monte Cook or Pathfinder or such), or you don't care about balance over your comfort level/what you've experienced to be fun mechanics compared to 4E's quirks.
Which is sweet. I wish I could accept 3E, I wouldn't have to learn new rules or buy new stuff.

If you're unhappy with 4E because it seems to be copying MMORPGs, that's fine. It obviously isn't *possibly* in the same realm as any current MMORPG simply because of the DM/player dynamic, but if you don't like combat mechanics borrowed from MMORPGs, fair enough.

However, there is definitely a problem that can occur when a trusted DM or player who hates 4E rubs that bias off on others. I've DMed a proto-4E game with people who love 3.x, and they obviously find reasons to hate it that range from the irrational to the vindictive to the nonsensical. And then the other players don't like it either.
And the imbalance is that it's easier to show hatred towards something than appreciation, in gaming groups. I've found, at least.
But the second-order problem is there is no fix to the problem. It's always existed for adherents of different game systems and probably won't ever change.

Threads like this probably don't help, unfortunately. I see where you're coming from, Kitirat, but it can't be proven that 4E is just Better than 3E, and that anyone who doesn't accept that is ignorant. You can prove that it's different, and try to convince people that the differences are superior, but you can't do that with the implied premise that they're stupid or bitter, intentionally or not.
I'd suggest just sticking with trying to win over your DM/players if you want to play 4E badly.

 

[neceros]

I find it humorous that people who don't apparently like 4e come in here guns blazing because the op wants people to like 4e.

I'd agree that Fourth Edition has some uncalled for dislike of it simply because of the marketing these days. Too many people can see bits and pieces and make judgment on those little tid-bits they see, then tell everyone they know (Who don't know as much and take their word on it) that it sucks.

Do I think everyone who dislikes 4e are closed minded or sheep? No. Do I think the general populace is? Yes. It's easy to hate something because it's different.

If you generally don't like it for some reason I can't see, then go with it. Don't get hostile because people want you to like something; it's not really in our best interest to make other people change their minds: I don't want to game with people who think negatively about it.

 

[LordArchaon]

Meaning: give people a near zero-cost chance to just look at the books, and the game will speak for itself. There is no coddling here - there was answering of questions, but no attempt to make judgments for them.

When people feel forced to do something, they'll resist. When they feel like they have to pay for something, they'll resist. When people feel you're trying to sell them on something, they'll resist. When you give them the chance to make up their own minds, they'll do so.

This is what i tried to say. In fact, I was first of all referring to general behavior in front of big changes.
I know that generalizations are bad or felt bad (because if generalizations were intrinsically bad, science would be bad), that's why I spoke of opinions. I also spoke of direct experience because of the everyday talking with my players, and indirect experience because of ALL the posts about home-made 4e demos on this forum.

@DM_Blake:

My "statistics" weren't statistics, and I guess you know it. I just used the form of statistics to represent roughly some clearly understandable proportions that I see in the gamers world. If you don't see them, why don't you answer with your views about them? If you don't like percentages, you could describe me your views using different quantitative adjectives.

So, how do we distinguish between the people who try the game and don't like it because they are stubborn and filled with madness, and the people who try it and don't like it because they simply don't like the game?

Maybe they don't like the game because their complete blindness to logical evidence prevented them from changing their minds.

Maybe everyone who doesn't like 4e is simply stubborn and mad.

Yeah, I like where this is going...

Again, I was referring to (studied, and not by few or incompetent people) behavior of people in front of change. If you pay attention, I never said "4e", nor D&D, not even once in that first sentence(s).
And however, there's an easy way to distinguish the two typologies you say: stubborn ones are the ones that before trying, already have bad opinions about it. The second typology starts out with no feelings or opinions about it and will surely bring out many specific pieces of argumentation about what he did or didn't like, as opposed to the first typology, which will more likely stay focused on his first thoughts, that may be "it's like a videogame" or other already-said-many-times things, or simply "I don't like it, full stop", without explaining why or what... This "generalization" doesn't always work because when a normal approach occurs, (which is, the "stubborn" or even "open-minded" people buy and read the books, as you say) the stubborn may have an occasion of changing his mind alone, reading the book, which is a lot easier, while the open minded who maybe simply didn't like the game for some issue related to the limited nature of the preview rules, could discover that the full rules, on second thought, look much better.
These again, are my opinions, and are, again, things that any psychologist could tell you. I'm not a psychologist, I'm just interested in it.
However, if you think it a different way, you could also for example tell us your opinion, and given the emphasis you gave to the illogical nature of what I say, you could also give me logical arguments that contradict mine, and I will be happy to change idea...

Assuming your statistical breakdowns have any bearing on reality to begin with, I still think it's wildly assumptive to assume the levels of enthusiasm amongst play test proposers and play test participants.

And even my points were very simple: if someone proposes a 4e test these days, it's because he's an ENWorld and Gleemax user who connects nearly everyday. How many non-enthusiasts do you think may act like that? And do you think that for someone who never saw Gleemax nor Enworld, the amount of information this person knows about 4e, a not yet released product, can be defined "normal"?

And here I go on to explain the part that confused you.
I'm just saying that if a 4e enthusiast, which passes much time a day in search of news about 4e, talks about it to a non enthusiast player, the effect he will obtain is that of passing as someone who wants to "sell something", who's "coddling" you. Just as you say it's not good to do, and me too, same opinion.
In fact, I concluded my post talking about presenting the new game in "neutral/natural" way, which means "with no coddling".

So all your aggressiveness was maybe caused by my wording, which is that of a non native speaker in first place, and of someone who's speaking about generally "difficult to accept" psychological matters.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I find it humorous that people who don't apparently like 4e come in here guns blazing because the op wants people to like 4e.

I'd agree that Fourth Edition has some uncalled for dislike of it simply because of the marketing these days. Too many people can see bits and pieces and make judgment on those little tid-bits they see, then tell everyone they know (Who don't know as much and take their word on it) that it sucks.

Do I think everyone who dislikes 4e are closed minded or sheep? No. Do I think the general populace is? Yes. It's easy to hate something because it's different.

If you generally don't like it for some reason I can't see, then go with it. Don't get hostile because people want you to like something; it's not really in our best interest to make other people change their minds: I don't want to game with people who think negatively about it.

Very little turns me off MORE from 4e then posts like this. You described precisely what ISN'T happening. I don't think a single person jumped on the original poster for saying he wanted people to like 4e - they jumped on him for suggesting that NOT wanting to play 4e meant something was wrong with you. It's getting more and more irritating to discover that, unless I adore and never complain about 4e, I'm some horrible bigot. I also find it humerous (in a horrible bleak way) that "not everyone that dislikes 4e are close minded sheep. Just MOST of them."

 

[LordArchaon]

I'm one of those people on the line between 4e and 3.x...mechanically.

Let me explain.

4e mechanics intrigues me, which is to say it interests me in a neutral manner. I find some of them to sound amazingly excellent. I find others that make me want to run away.

However, I did very specifically state this was just the mechanics.

To put it diplomatically, I have...heavy disagreements with how the 4e fluff is looking and being presented.

Were I offered a 4e game after it comes out, I would consider it, but only so long as it didn't use 4e fluff.

Does this make me a rabid and crazed lunatic, foaming at the mouth and denouncing everything I see as horrible, shying away from the big scary word "CHANGE," for no apparent reason aside from me (supposed) close mindedness and hatred towards all things new?

Possibly.

I don't think so, myself. But why would you trust me? I'm a rabid and crazed lunatic.

If this was an answer to my post, I would like to clarify that I was referring to people who was much more negative than you about 4e.

But to answer your problem, I think you can agree with me if I say that the 3e core rulebooks didn't have any fluff.
The fluff they had was there to inspire the players and to incite the DMs to expand, to invent.

We didn't see 4e books yet, but I can pretty much be sure that being the definition of fluff the same, 4e has only very little more of it than 3e. Which is to say, it has nearly no fluff in it. The little fluff they put was to inspire the players to and incite the DMs to expand, to invent.

They just decided that with 4e they wanted to line-out a drafty initial game world, to make this "inspirational/inventive" phase a little more optional and a little more fast. They give you those fluff bits so that if you're lazy, or don't wanna spend money on campaign settings, you still have a SORT OF campaign setting in the first rulebooks.

Me too for example, I would NEVER EVER use the given names for Tiefling and Dragonborn lost empires (maybe not even Tiefling and Dragonborn race names at all), nor their story. But I see those things being so completely marginal, if not completely separated from what 4e is, that they're totally irrelevant. BUT the few pieces of fluff I like, and the richer artwork, inspire me just better than those found on 3e.

So fluff is like that: you may like it or not like it, but fortunately, it isn't a problem if you don't like it. It would be more of a problem to not have fluff at all.

 

[neceros]

Very little turns me off MORE from 4e then posts like this. You described precisely what ISN'T happening. I don't think a single person jumped on the original poster for saying he wanted people to like 4e - they jumped on him for suggesting that NOT wanting to play 4e meant something was wrong with you. It's getting more and more irritating to discover that, unless I adore and never complain about 4e, I'm some horrible bigot. I also find it humerous (in a horrible bleak way) that "not everyone that dislikes 4e are close minded sheep. Just MOST of them."

This is my point.

I don't care if you like 4e or not. I just don't like to see people attacked either way. I mostly see the 4e likers attacked. My post was not an insult, but an observation. I apologize if it sounded insulting.

I explicitly said that people don't like change, and stated that if you don't like 4e it doesn't mean you're wrong.

Both sides need to stop being cynical.

 

[Henry]

When people feel forced to do something, they'll resist. When they feel like they have to pay for something, they'll resist. When people feel you're trying to sell them on something, they'll resist. When you give them the chance to make up their own minds, they'll do so.

So, how much of each of our readings comes from pre-conceived notions on each of our parts?

Old management seminar I took: People don't mind change; they just don't like BEING changed. For our group, I think the opinion looks to be one about third favorable, one third undecided, and one third unfavorable; but the one thing we ALL share is both a curiosity, and a desire to pick up the 3 main books whether we like it or not, because it's still D&D, we're still hardcore gamers, and we do play in conventions, gamedays, one-shots, etc. So even the ones unfavorable to it are at least willing to give the whole game a chance when it arrives. WotC will be getting 7 or 8 sets of "book I" from us, at the very least, even if they don't get any more than that.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

wow, people who like 4e are "open minded" and people who don't aren't or are sheep who are manipulated by those who aren't. Classy.

Oh, bonus points to the guy that explained how people who don't like 4e are not used to "new fangled" notions like logic!

When did EN world become the Fox News of the gaming community?

You are a bitter, bitter man.

And Fox News rules.*

Wis


* Actually, it sucks. But it sucks less than all the other news channels.