D&D 4E Rant on the 4E "Presentation"

[Vigilance]

If thats true, that explains a lot of why we're not seeing anything.

Its also equivalent to a movie company charging admission to the trailers for their new releases.

Stupid marketing. Which is what the complaints are about.

No, it's the equivalent of Halo3 not telling you about all the new gameplay mechanics before you buy the game.

 

[Vigilance]

NO, its not.

This game is less than 2 months away.

It's 8 months away for us.

Just because Wizards is going to send it to the printer soon, doesn't mean they should feel compelled to spill all the game's secrets.

And we've already seen a complete monster write-up.

I'd be willing to bet we see a lot more specifics next year.

Really, why dish secrets now? Everyone is going to forget over the holiday season. We're all going to be looking for a Wii, or playing the new X-360 hotness or spending time on planes to see family playing Brain Age.

Better to wait until everyone is partied out, then start dishing the serious dirt.

IMO obviously.

 

[The Little Raven]

...On the "this time with 3e thing" there was a LOT more info out there 6-8 months out. Its just that that was a lot more than 2 months in.

With 3e, the fundamentals of the game had changed much more dramatically than they will with 4e. A lot of the information they released back was based on the idea that the D&D system was changing in a huge way to actually become consistent. It introduced the d20 system, and gave D&D a whole new life. In short, it was a revolution for D&D. 4th Edition is nowhere near that revolution, so there's nowhere near as much new information for it as there was for 3rd.

 

[JoeGKushner]

No, it's the equivalent of Halo3 not telling you about all the new gameplay mechanics before you buy the game.

Seroiusly, can you explain this? Now maybe if you said, "It's the equivalent of the Art of Halo not telling you about all the new gameplay mechanics before you buy the game" or something I could see where you're coming from but when yo uget Halo 3 you pretty much get all the gameplay mechanics as a player you need to know. I mean, are you looking for 0,1,0,1,0,0,1,1,1, or some other code?

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

In fact, that's where the best-publicized mistakes in print come from, bored layout designers who get a little too inventive with their filler copy and don't find it in the final check.

I used to do the layout for a small newspaper. This happened... on more than a few occasions.

 

[Vigilance]

Seroiusly, can you explain this? Now maybe if you said, "It's the equivalent of the Art of Halo not telling you about all the new gameplay mechanics before you buy the game" or something I could see where you're coming from but when yo uget Halo 3 you pretty much get all the gameplay mechanics as a player you need to know. I mean, are you looking for 0,1,0,1,0,0,1,1,1, or some other code?

I know that Halo didn't reveal some key gameplay elements, like the new equipment in the game, stuff that had never been in a Halo game before, until the public Beta. Things like the "deploy equipment" button.

For many of the early presentations of the game, MS would say "we won't tell you what the 'X' button does, but it's going to be AWESOME".

So roughly 4 months before the game was released, you could find out how the game played in multi-player (but absolutely nothing about the single player differences or story), but to get into that beta you had to BUY a full game.

People were saying "where are the specifics" before the multiple Q&A's they've done in the podcasts and they were saying it after.

People were demanding specifics before they released an entire monster stat sheet, and they were demanding them after.

Clearly, releasing specifics just leads to demands for MORE specifics.

I just don't understand why people expect them to release everything they know now. As someone pointed out, the books are probably close to final.

And? If they know we have to know?

A lot of my questions were answered by that monster write-up, along with a lot of the Q&A from the podcast.

I can see having questions, but saying "they're giving us nothing specific" seems to me to be way overstating the case.

Off the top of my head, we've heard:

1. Specific character ability examples.

We've been told about characters taking a second wind as a reaction and recovering hit points.

We've been told about characters making a counterattack with an arrow as a reaction.

We've been told about spellcasters using their staff to inflict damage and drive a character back a few squares.

We've been told about a rogue attacking and then taking a free 3 square movement away from the character he attacked.

2. Specific monster examples.

They went through several specific questions in the monster podcast, including having the author come up with mixed monster groups on the fly.

We've seen a full monster stat sheet.

3. Magic Items

Not a lot here yet, but we have heard you'll still have items, but they won't be quite as important.

I mean, really, it seems to me we're getting a fair amount of fairly specific information.

We're certainly not getting nothing but vague generalities.

They just can't tell us everything now.

Chuck

 

[JoeGKushner]

In some ways though, that's information that doesn't do a lot of good outside it's context.

I'll be... 'happy' when we have definitive lists of core races, classes, spells, etc... as opposed to "game mechanic X is so cool and from this example that doesn't really tell you anything."

 

[DandD]

Cool is the most favoured word of the game designers.
We'll see probably lots of it in the upcoming preview-books, telling us how cool that is going to be, and how cool they thought that that change was, and the coolness of the concept behind.

 

[broghammerj]

No, it's the equivalent of Halo3 not telling you about all the new gameplay mechanics before you buy the game.

Chuck sorry to disagree with you on this type of analogy. Computer games are totally different. Half-life was arguably one of the greatest computer games of all time. Halo has probably eclipsed it in popularity, but at the time Half-life was huge. When Half-life 2 was coming out they pimped the crap out of their new graphics and physics engines with a demo videos. How did they do it? Showed us videos of how the physics worked and interacted in the environment. In essence, how the gameplay mechanic worked.

 

[broghammerj]

In some ways though, that's information that doesn't do a lot of good outside it's context.

I'll be... 'happy' when we have definitive lists of core races, classes, spells, etc... as opposed to "game mechanic X is so cool and from this example that doesn't really tell you anything."

Joe, I am glad you are sounding off on this. You are someone who is relatively "respected" around here. Others like myself don't get a lot of street cred because we have low post counts or don't like to hear ourselves post. Note that does not imply that all people with high post counts just like to see their thoughts online.