Pramas on 4E and New Gamers
- Thread starter CaptainChaos
- Start date
Imaro
Legend
hong said:
Yes, because everyone plays videogames (especially rpg's) though I would argue shooters, sports and fighting games are more popular than rpg's... You're assuming that all videogamers play rpg's, or even most do, and we all know what assuming does.
hong said:
Yes, but a NEW DM may not be adept enough to do this and feels like he is doing exactly what the book said he should. Maybe with some experience under his belt yes, but will the players stick around long enough in a game where they keep getting killed?
hong said:
Yeah, more money.
hong said:
Way to be condescending and insulting, but then again that's the tactic of last resort. Anyway let's test this 4 powers statement of yours. Let's start with a relatively simple character, a Dragonborn Fighter...
Racial Features:
Dragonbreath: blast 3 power (so you need to understand what a blast is vs. a burst. It also uses any ability of 3 you want to attack with...oh yeah and has a type (so understand that as well)
Dragonborn Fury: Whenever your bloodied add a +1 to attack roills. (so keep adding and subtracting this bonus as you are damaged and/or healed)
Combat Challenge: Every round you need to remember whether you hit or miss to declare whether you mark a particular target then remember that if said target attacks someone else they get a -2 and if said target moves or shifts you get an OA.
Combat Superiority: Remember to add your Wis mod to OA.
At-Wills(2)
Tide of Iron: attack and do damage then remember to push the target 1 square but only if it is smaller, equal or one category larger than your size, then remember you can shift into it's square. (Also the DM needs to remember to make the save if the creature is being pushed into hazardous terrain)
Cleave: attack and do damage, and if successful do your Str mod in damage to a different adjacent enemy.
Encounter(1)
Steel Serpent Strike: attack and do damage, if you hit the target is slowed and cannot shift until end of your next turn. (better know how the slowed condition works to use this power effectively)
Daily(1)
Villian's Menace: Attack and do different amount of dmg than normal, on a hit you have to keep track of a +2 bonus to attacks and +4 to damage against this particular opponent until end of encounter. On a miss you get a +1/+2
This seems like alot more things to keep track of than the 4 you claimed a first level character only had and there are many where you need to know the combat rules in order to use effectively or even to make an informed choice.
Buzzardo
First Post
Just read Pramas' review.
On target completely. I offer a different take on the whole thing:
An analogy to the "New Coke" fisaco of the mid eighties.
Having read most of the 4e PHB, I am of the opinion that 4e is an unmitigated disaster. Here are a few brief reasons:
1- The game is now a set of rules to support a hack & slash style of play. All prior editions were flexibile enough to support different styles and approaches to the game. 4e is the least flexible with respect to supporting different styles of play. It's not that 4e cant support a heavy role playing or deep story approach to the game... It's just that 3.5 is much better for those styles of play. The entire theme of the 4e PHB is combat, combat, combat. Bottom line... they stripped all the soul out of the game, and just left it as a souped up version of D&D minis.
2- Far from streamlining combat, they made it more unwieldy and less fun. One huge drawback of 3e is that when you go into the "big" fight at the end of an adventure, you are usually so armored up and buffed that you now have a dozen different variables to keep track of (Oh wait! I forgot there was a Bless. I did hit the dragon 2 rounds ago!). But that only happened in the big fight. Now in 4e, there is no such thing as a straight forward routine combat. Every combat now is a big fight and has half a dozen or more variables to keep track of, and to make matters much worse, they aren't the same variables for the entire encounter... They change ROUND by ROUND! Add to that in 3e you mostly had to keep track of modifiers on your own PC. Now you have negative modiers that stack up on your enemies, to track as well. Every single attack, by every single PC creates combat variables, EVERY SINGLE TIME. How is that fun?
3- Chris is right. They are going back to the well again to sell more books to the already converted. Problem is... 40% of the audience HATES it, many of whom will decide not to adopt. I hate it, and for the first time in 28 years of consitant gaming, will be returning an official D&D product to the store. Lets face it. It's not like there isn't enough 3.5 stuff out there to last me and my friends (who all hate it to varying degrees) the rest of our natural lives. This means WOTC will actually sell less books, and they will end up further fracturing an already fractured market.
4- Chris's point (I think) was that for D&D to be truly a success, it has to do two things. It has to hold the base, AND it has to reach out and bring in new blood. His assessment is that it fails to bring in new players. Which of course it does. It has failed in that regard as badly as prior editions.
I would add: It has also failed to hold the base. When 3e came out, there were a FEW low volume grumbles from 2e loyalists. 1e & 2e were both badly flawed as everyone now recognizes. The rare grumbles soon subsided. 4e is getting a strong backlash from a frightening percentage of the base. I myself am not saying I won't PLAY it. If I sit at a table at a Con that happens to be 4e... fine. But I won't invest in the books, and I certainly won't subscribe. I dont' think I am alone there.
As for measuring the overall success, there are only a few combinations:
Holds Base, Brings New Blood - Huge Success
Loses Base, Brings in lots of new blood - Moderate Success (see also McCain, John and Obama, Barak - very risky political stragegy)
Holds Base, Brings in no new blood - Moderate Failure
Loses Base, Brings in no new blood - Huge Failure
That's it in a nutshell. Now... Where do you think 4e will land on that scale?
My money says 90% chance Huge Failure.
8% Chance, Moderate Failure (This would mean that I have missed someting in my reading, and that given time at the table, will wake up and come around...but I doubt that)
2% Chance, Moderate Success. This means that a large segment of the base abandons and sticks with 3e, but something about 4e and the whole online approach really appeals like crazy to a younger audience. I doubt that too. Virtual tabletop will never be as cool as WOW to the young whippersnappers of today.
So there you have it... If you LOVE 4e... Great. I am glad you do. But it doesn't change the fact that WOTC has made a HUGE business blunder here, and the likleyhood is that 4e is headed for huge failure.
The net effect of all this won't be seen for a year or more. But here is my prediction.
The backlash will mount. Sales at WOTC will fall short of expectations, because new gamers aren't entering the market, and a LARGE segment of the base will not adopt. The mistake will become more and more clear. Just like new coke.
What does WOTC want? Really? It isn't to sell lots of books. They want high margin, recurring, online subscription revenue. Millions of users, all ponying up every month. Just like Blizzard. They could have had that by dealing properly with 3e, or a better implementation of 4e.
In the luckiest accident in the history of business, "New Coke" turned out to be CocaCola's best marketing evar. When they finally brought back Classic Coke after being off the market for a year... Sales skyrocketed, higher than ever, and stuck.
Let's see where WOTC is in a year. I could be wrong here, but my money says that they will finally admit the mistake they have made and look for ways to correct it. Hopefully it will be good for the game in the long run.
On target completely. I offer a different take on the whole thing:
An analogy to the "New Coke" fisaco of the mid eighties.
Having read most of the 4e PHB, I am of the opinion that 4e is an unmitigated disaster. Here are a few brief reasons:
1- The game is now a set of rules to support a hack & slash style of play. All prior editions were flexibile enough to support different styles and approaches to the game. 4e is the least flexible with respect to supporting different styles of play. It's not that 4e cant support a heavy role playing or deep story approach to the game... It's just that 3.5 is much better for those styles of play. The entire theme of the 4e PHB is combat, combat, combat. Bottom line... they stripped all the soul out of the game, and just left it as a souped up version of D&D minis.
2- Far from streamlining combat, they made it more unwieldy and less fun. One huge drawback of 3e is that when you go into the "big" fight at the end of an adventure, you are usually so armored up and buffed that you now have a dozen different variables to keep track of (Oh wait! I forgot there was a Bless. I did hit the dragon 2 rounds ago!). But that only happened in the big fight. Now in 4e, there is no such thing as a straight forward routine combat. Every combat now is a big fight and has half a dozen or more variables to keep track of, and to make matters much worse, they aren't the same variables for the entire encounter... They change ROUND by ROUND! Add to that in 3e you mostly had to keep track of modifiers on your own PC. Now you have negative modiers that stack up on your enemies, to track as well. Every single attack, by every single PC creates combat variables, EVERY SINGLE TIME. How is that fun?
3- Chris is right. They are going back to the well again to sell more books to the already converted. Problem is... 40% of the audience HATES it, many of whom will decide not to adopt. I hate it, and for the first time in 28 years of consitant gaming, will be returning an official D&D product to the store. Lets face it. It's not like there isn't enough 3.5 stuff out there to last me and my friends (who all hate it to varying degrees) the rest of our natural lives. This means WOTC will actually sell less books, and they will end up further fracturing an already fractured market.
4- Chris's point (I think) was that for D&D to be truly a success, it has to do two things. It has to hold the base, AND it has to reach out and bring in new blood. His assessment is that it fails to bring in new players. Which of course it does. It has failed in that regard as badly as prior editions.
I would add: It has also failed to hold the base. When 3e came out, there were a FEW low volume grumbles from 2e loyalists. 1e & 2e were both badly flawed as everyone now recognizes. The rare grumbles soon subsided. 4e is getting a strong backlash from a frightening percentage of the base. I myself am not saying I won't PLAY it. If I sit at a table at a Con that happens to be 4e... fine. But I won't invest in the books, and I certainly won't subscribe. I dont' think I am alone there.
As for measuring the overall success, there are only a few combinations:
Holds Base, Brings New Blood - Huge Success
Loses Base, Brings in lots of new blood - Moderate Success (see also McCain, John and Obama, Barak - very risky political stragegy)
Holds Base, Brings in no new blood - Moderate Failure
Loses Base, Brings in no new blood - Huge Failure
That's it in a nutshell. Now... Where do you think 4e will land on that scale?
My money says 90% chance Huge Failure.
8% Chance, Moderate Failure (This would mean that I have missed someting in my reading, and that given time at the table, will wake up and come around...but I doubt that)
2% Chance, Moderate Success. This means that a large segment of the base abandons and sticks with 3e, but something about 4e and the whole online approach really appeals like crazy to a younger audience. I doubt that too. Virtual tabletop will never be as cool as WOW to the young whippersnappers of today.
So there you have it... If you LOVE 4e... Great. I am glad you do. But it doesn't change the fact that WOTC has made a HUGE business blunder here, and the likleyhood is that 4e is headed for huge failure.
The net effect of all this won't be seen for a year or more. But here is my prediction.
The backlash will mount. Sales at WOTC will fall short of expectations, because new gamers aren't entering the market, and a LARGE segment of the base will not adopt. The mistake will become more and more clear. Just like new coke.
What does WOTC want? Really? It isn't to sell lots of books. They want high margin, recurring, online subscription revenue. Millions of users, all ponying up every month. Just like Blizzard. They could have had that by dealing properly with 3e, or a better implementation of 4e.
In the luckiest accident in the history of business, "New Coke" turned out to be CocaCola's best marketing evar. When they finally brought back Classic Coke after being off the market for a year... Sales skyrocketed, higher than ever, and stuck.
Let's see where WOTC is in a year. I could be wrong here, but my money says that they will finally admit the mistake they have made and look for ways to correct it. Hopefully it will be good for the game in the long run.
Maggan
Writer for CY_BORG, Forbidden Lands and Dragonbane
xechnao said:
A combination of events transpired to diminish the impact of Drakar och Demoner. The majority of the copies sold were version 2, from 1986 to 1989 or so. In one generation of swedish males, you can count on up to 90% having tried the game.
As other games such as video games and games like Magic entered the scene, the sales of the game fell sharply. From 1990 and onwards the game was but a shadow of its former self. An attempt to revive it based on a strategy borrowed partly from GW and TSR was somewhat sucessful, but then a tax debt in the states killed the company producing the game.
It has since been reworked and rereleased (in 2000) and is now Sweden's best selling RPG again. Not near the numbers of the 80s, but still enough to keep it going.
Interestingly enough, Sweden has enough roleplaying gamers to sustain a full colour print mag covering roleplaying in general, with a circulation of about 4000 or 5000. Something which is very hard to do, even in the states.
Drakar och Demoner is a BRP clone, btw. And also the basis for my thoughts on first mover advantages determining the dominant rpg player in different markets.
/M
But I guess the odds are 95% against that. 
Imaro said:
Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, Splinter Cell... they're all RPGs. They just get put into different buckets for marketing and critical analysis purposes. Oh, you may say, but in these games you happen to be on rails. This is true, and irrelevant for the purposes of knowing what having an in-game persona is, which is all that you need to know coming to D&D.
And said NEW DM is also likely to be playing the monsters dumb, yes?
I know of no game more complex than a cardboard box where you always start off at 100% system mastery. Even in WoW, newbies can run into things too hard for them.
Money is the cornerstone of a modern capitalist service economy.
It is very simple.
HIT the bad guy in front of me.
If the bad guy in front of me is a boss monster, HIT it with Villain's Menace then cross off the ability.
If Villain's Menace is not available, HIT it with Steel Serpent Strike, then cross off the ability.
If a bunch of bad guys are clumped in front of me, BREATHE at them, then cross off the ability.
Sure, you won't be at 100% tactical efficiency, but for the first-ever session of a game in a genre that you apparently have never heard of before, you shouldn't expect to be.
