Imaro
Legend
Needs citation.
You don't know the difference between subjective and objective? If not, I'm not the one to give you a lesson and if you do... well I'm sure you can figure out which fall into what category.
Needs citation.
When your parent company gives you a 50 mil goal, with a 100 mil stretch, and development resources commensurate with those goals, and you pull down less than 50 mil, it's a financial failure - even though you were competing in a 20 mil market.4e may not be to your tastes, it may have been a financial failure (debatable), it may have died a premature death due to various factors
It was an astounding feat of design from the PoV of a long-time D&Der (this would be me) long since resigned to the many problems facing D&D being fundamentally insoluble.-- but it was an excellently designed game.
Nope. I understand how it can look that way, if you consider *your* playstyle preferences, habits, or expectations from many years of playing a certain ed a certain way with a certain group to be fact. But, since I was called out for casually tossing out known quantities without back them up, I went ahead and gave (another - Imaro had given some, too) example /how/ those classes were different.The first is that I have noticed that you often state your playstyle preferences as if they were fact
LFQW is a complaint about what is, certainly, and that 4e did away with it is also descriptive.There is a difference between normative (what ought to be) and descriptive (what is).
I'm happy to define terms, the best definition of balance I've ever seen is simply: a game is better-balanced the more meaningful, viable choices it can present the player with.Now, you might have very strong preferences regarding what is, and isn't, good design; I know that we have previously discussed, inter alia, our differences regarding what constitutes "balance" in a game.
It's also fine to discuss facts. But, as soon as the facts start to turn out to support one conclusion over another, it becomes very convenient to start claiming everything is subjective.it is fine to discuss preferences, but it is much harder to discuss a preference when that preference is asserted as a fact.
There's nothing incompatible there. Whatever reason the design team had for sticking closely to the AEDU framework in the PH & PHII, then tweaking it in the PHII, and abandoning it in Essentials, AEDU still presented balanced, LFQW-erasing, clearly differentiated classes.So it's very difficult to square the comments of the designer (smaller variations due to the timeframe that were only, later, modified) with your insistence that other people could not view the classes as "same-y."
Surveys of player preference consistently rate the Fighter highest & most-played: when it was the simplest class in 1e, when it was significantly more complex (especially to build) than the Barbarian in 3e, when it was, as a defender, pretty close to the middle of the pack in terms of complexity, in 4e, when it was again relegated to relative simplicity in Essentials, and when it was given a bone-simple and a couple of somewhat less simplistic options in 5e. The archetype of the fighter is familiar from heroic fantasy, it's relatable, iconic, it's always been the most popular class, no matter what D&D did to it, mechanically.one thing you tend to discount is people's strong desire for a simple class. Surveys of player preferences consistently show that the simplest classes rate as the highest; moreover, surveys of classes in use consistently show that the simplest classes are the most played
That's a new one. The story I always heard was that lack of a license left Paizo with nothing to develop for 4e, so they had to do something. When the GSL came out, it was awful, and they went ahead with PF.That said, 4e did fail, and it failed in ways that were predictable. I described 4e as snakebitten, and, in some ways, it was, but in other ways ... look, Paizo got a lead out because Jason Buhlman went and playtested 4e, and reported back that 4e was ... well, what it was. So Paizo was able to concentrate on developing PF instead of waiting to see if a 4e license would come out.
No, I do not. I am fine with people playing what they like. I am not fine with people maligning things they don't like for reasons unrelated to that dislike, that get the facts wrong. I am not OK with people begrudging others the game they like, and setting out to destroy it.But there seems to be this lingering issue that you seem to find the fault in people who enjoy things you don't for the failure of the system
Yep, called it:Now, we've been on this marry-go-round before, so having demanded facts and having received them, you'll retreat into the claim that it's all subjective, that the facts - that you demanded - don't matter.
(though many of the things you listed fall into the realm of personal preference as opposed to making an objectively better game).
... your subjective preferences do not make your game an objectively better edition than any other one.
Yep, called it:
It's fair to say that the objective qualities of a game don't in any way negate subjective preferences. Indeed, you can prefer something in spite of it having objectively bad qualities, or even /for those very qualities/. And it's nobody's place to stop or convert you (I mean, unless you exercising your preferences constitutes a clear & present danger to others). Humans having free will and all...
...but it's not fair to say that subjective preferences negate objective qualities.
Oh, you went dark on that tangent, and now were back to the subjectivity portion of the ride.Lol... did you??? The only way this is true is if you are saying every one of Joshua Randall's assertions are purely objective facts...
Y'know what, I'm going to skip the personal stuff - it's silly, we're both old-timers who love(d) the game in it's 1e form... we have too much common ground to go there.I'm just going to quote this part for the "whoosh" component.
So, the design goal in question was to create a game that was functional at all phase of play, not just the middle bit. I'm not sure how we're supposed to objectively judge a game that doesn't work for ~half it's presented arc of play as no better/different from one that does.Subjective 1:
The design goal makes for a better RPG or D&D.
No, the /fighter/ always does well, whether it's simple or not in the edition in question. The Cleric, Wizard and Rogue also tend to always do well, even though two of them are among the most complex classes in the game, in every ed. And the Barbarian, even when the simplest class (3e & 5e, for instance, though in 5e, the Champion is the simplest sub-class), does not do as well as the "Big 4."I know you don't. And that's fine. But all we have are surveys (preferences) and revealed preferences (what people play), and simple classes always, always, always do well.
Emphasis mine that wasn't the original claim but ok. I'm not sure how one can look at the 5e Fighter especially the Battlemaster and think the Wizard is better in combat than him but I'm willing to be convinced... Can you explain this or is this purely about having the same number of things to call out as "moves" in combat?