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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5766935" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, that's not really the situation, is it?Wyatt's on record in a few different places as being dismissive of playing the game in a less combat-intensive way (the faerie ring quote from Worlds & Monsters plays into it, too).In addition, the delve format, and the first few published adventures for 4e certainly seemed to line up with the "chain of combat encounters" philosophy that Wyatt seems to be espousing there.Furthermore, the rules of the game that weren't dedicated to slaying monsters were few, far between, and fraught with problems (Skill Challenges and Rituals are in particular in my "good idea, bad implementation" camp). Your class's abilities are almost exclusively "attacks" and combat utilities. Monsters are also only there for combat, to attack the party, and then be slain. If it was only one single quote, or even a handful of them, it's entirely possible that many people would ignore it (as they frequently did Gygax's less-than-favorable moments). But the quote is emblematic of a philosophy that many feel is present in a big way throughout the entire launch of 4e. Not that a lot of players didn't ignore this philosophy in favor of whatever fun they have at their own tables (I know my groups do!), just that, yeah, I can see how that one quote, taken in its full context, is one of the primary examples of what a lot of people really don't like about 4e. It is an explicit part, in the core books, where one of the lead designers comes down to a DM and says, explicitly, "Your way of playing has no place in this new game." That, again, might not be what he really meant. But it's certainly not an irrational position to take. It's not very clear to everyone.Which is kind of the source of the disagreement, here. Folks on one side saying, "It's clear TO ME what he meant! Anyone who thinks otherwise is at best mistaken and at worst a hater who just hates and loves to hate."Folks on the other side saying, "It's clear TO ME what he said! Anyone who thinks otherwise is at best mistaken and at worst a fanboy who just blindly follows authority and can't see reality."I guess I'm seeing a lot more of the former in this thread specifically, though that may be just because the OP started with "How can anyone actually have a real problem with this?", and, once explained, people keep being shocked (shocked!) that this statement is problematic. I think Wyatt was doing the best he could to present the game to new fans, and I'm reasonably confident the intent was basically to say, "skip stuff that's not fun." However, the category of "not fun" somehow, to Wyatt, was objective as he was writing this. Whether that's a personal bias that leaked in, or a deliberate strategy 4e used in the early days (because marketing results showed that people had the most fun with combat encounters, so to make combat encounters the center of the game was the best thing for the game financially and for fun maximization, or whatever) is kind of an open question. The full context of the D&D game circa 2008 gives some evidence for the latter interpretation, though I find myself favoring the former, just because I can't believe that these smart designers would actually be that categorical in their dismissal of parts of the game that they themselves had enjoyed for years.</blockquote>

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