The Impasse

[Gothmog]

Whatever. The people that blindly defend WotC and 4E are often even more irrational than they claim us "4e haters" are.

Heh. This is highly amusing. Jack99 answered every one of your problems, point by point, citing examples where needed and you're dismissing him as "blind". You've made a very solid and convincing case for the existence of "blind h4ters". Priceless.

 

[tenkar]

So, Blind Defenders use which power source in 4e?

On that note, which 3.x splat book had 4ed Haters in it? Is it OGL?

Sorry, I can't make a serious comment when an argument comes down to the school yard equivalent of "I know you are, but what am?"

So, who'se up for a game of Rolemaster? We have Classic, Express, Fantasy Role Play, HARP, or should I dig out the original rules?

"One Game to Rule Them All, and in the confusion blind them"

 

[Rel]

Here's the thing - if you want to engage in any sort of fruitful discussion of 4e (or any game) with fans or designers of the game it's probably best to refrain from statements that are designed to provoke hostile reactions. I know that when I see someone enter a discussion in attack mode I'm disinclined to treat them with any level of seriousness.

It is possible to discuss 4e in a critical manner. Posters like Kamikaze Midget, Lizard, and Reynard do it on a regular basis. The trick is to show respect for the experiences and insights of your fellow posters even when you disagree with them. It also helps if your criticism of the game is informed criticism.

Examples of Informed Criticism

• 4e's lack of Profession, Perform, and Craft skills messes with my sense of immersion because it makes me feel like my character has no life outside of adventuring.
• 4e's monster stat blocks don't tell me enough about a creature's overall abilities to use that creature in a simulationist way.
• There aren't enough utility powers that have a use outside of combat.
• Rituals take too long to cast. This limits my ability to use magic creatively in tense situations.
• The 4e Monster Manual doesn't give me enough information to effectively use creatures, especially new creatures.
• KM's Wrought Paper Tiger critique.

Of course, that's assuming discussion is your aim.

Ladies and gentlemen of ENWorld, I would encourage each and every one of you to read and then re-read Campbell's excellent post here. It is a succinct and insightful guide to the "best" way to post in matters such as these. If you do this, engage in mutually respectful debate, underpinned with polite and thoughtful crtique, you will never invoke the wrath of the moderators. And it matters not a whit where you fall upon the gaming spectrum regarding any edition of any game.

If you engage in personal insults, sweeping insults and petty jibes then things are likely to end poorly for you.

Read and re-read. Then think before posting. Thank you.

 

[SSquirrel]

I'm sorry, but there are a great chunk of companies out there that if you call them to ask about a rumored new product (or whatever), you will hear the token "Microsoft/Apple/etc does not comment on rumors". If you are releasing a new edition in 3 years, do you really go ahead and tell people then "Hey it's 2009, we're gonna have a new edition out in 2012. Not as backwards compatible as some would like, but we think it will be pretty fun. Oh yeah, keep buying our current edition the next 3 years. Kthxbai!". Sorry, that is just asking to never sell another product until you release your new one.

Rememebr, people started asking WotC "Hey are you gonan release a new edition next year" probably about 6 months after 3.5 went out the door. Do you really expect them to address that?

The shaking your fist comment wasn't an insult either. They could have said something like "There are certain inevitabilities in life. Death, Taxes, and a new edition of D&D. It will happen when it happens". The farmer shaking his fist at the sky is just an amusing image to me, one I've seen many times in various media. IMO, if you can read that and see it as an insult, it's possible that you may just be looking for something to be insulted by.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

You can disagree with someone or something or a vague decision without making it bad or evil.

Do I think the MM4e is a bad deal compared to the 3.5 ones? Sure. That doesn't make it bad or evil. There's tons of people who disagree with me, and they're the target audience, not I. If anything WotC is giving it's consumers exactly what it wants. That's not bad or evil. Quite the opposite; that's exactly what a "good" company should be doing.

Oh, and CEOs aren't all the Green Goblin. Nor do they have some bizarre divine mandate to do whatever they want with the company. Once again, they have a responsibility to the shareholders and consumers, and to the board of directors.

 

[Kzach]

Whatever. The people that blindly defend WotC and 4E are often even more irrational than they claim us "4e haters" are.

Hating an edition of D&D is just silly. Posting to a messageboard about how much you hate it is even sillier.

What you need, is a cookie.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hating an edition of D&D is just silly. Posting to a messageboard about how much you hate it is even sillier.

What you need, is a cookie.

We have cookies* on the d4rk side!

*If you bake them.

 

[Thasmodious]

I know that the corporations didn't create the economic crisis,

Not to get too political here, but actually, they did. This "blame the consumer" nonsense is white noise from those that got us into this mess through staggering greed and unrestrained gambling. Read up on the credit default swaps market.

Blaming undereducated Dave the factory worker because he believed his banker when the banker said "we've got the perfect program created just for families like yours!" is ludicrous. These programs were designed by the best and brightest highly educated financial minds in the world for the purpose of handing out high risk credit then trading and speculating with a balloon of fake wealth backed by air. At one point, the value of the default swaps exceeded the combined GDP of every nation on the planet. The more risky credit the banks handed out, the more "bets" they could place on default speculation, which they would then trade amongst themselves creating an artificial, completely unregulated market of fake wealth. Uncontrolled, rampant corporate greed, and the world governments that allowed this to go on (principally, but not solely, the US government) are where exactly all the blame lies.

Sorry to get "political" in the thread, but this "blame the blue collar worker for wanting to own his own home and trusting the slick banker in his 3-piece suit and for not being an expert on international finance" thing really pisses me off. It's a smoke and mirrors act engineered by the people responsible for this mess to try and redirect blame, and disseminated by people who still believe an unregulated market is self-correcting. That's been soundly, terribly, and abruptly disproved. Unless by self-correcting you mean - spirals out of control until it bursts, plunging the world into an economic crisis that was easily avoidable with a bit of regulation.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread... um, WotC good. Fire bad. As long as D&D is made by gamers, we are in good hands, as far as I am concerned.

 

[xechnao]

This is good for the game- taking ideas that worked well in other games allows the game to evolve and stay current with the public's interests. But just because an idea or theme is used DOES NOT make the game simply an MMO or minis battle game. 4e does focus a lot on combat, but that doesn't mean that 4e can ONLY handle combat. 4e's design philosophy is that roleplaying doesn't need so many rules to handle character interaction as some other systems do, and that DMs and players should, you know, actually ROLEPLAY a situation rather than simply roll dice to solve the outcome.

Of course people are free to have their own opinions, but stating their opinions as incontravertible facts, then berating the game and its fans as sycophants of WotC shows their judgement and ability for rational discourse to be questionable at best.

Yes, but even yourself you are presenting the premise I have highlighted above and what you expand on it as a fact. In my opinion this has not been good for the tabletop game. The choice of the source of influence that is. Some MMO are popular but perhaps the reason they are popular is because of their level of optimization for their medium and its capacities-personal computers online. Tabletops are another medium and have different strengths. Perhaps choosing a different source of influence, even one found in a video game but that its strength was some more general or universal idea of entertainment could be more appropriate. For example "the sims" is a game that such ideas could be found. Similarly in MMOs one could look for more universal things as for example research the fact that people like to form guilds. You would have to see what kind of people engage in this sort of activity and why, for what reasons. Research the engagement nature of the hardcore gamer and the casual gamer seperately. See then what game you want to build -with what kinds of various natures regarding the engagement or experience it offers. But this is something deep and not that simple as just trying to grab the most relevant on first impact gameplay mechanic of a game of a different medium that happens to work wonders there and try to import it to your game. IMO and IMO this has been a fail of 4e.

Take original D&D. How it was developed. Yes, the original D&D game was developed through a different process. The research on its sources of influence was different -much more connected to the nature of the final product IMO.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yes, but even yourself you are presenting the premise I have highlighted above and what you expand on it as a fact. In my opinion this has not been good for the tabletop game. The choice of the source of influence that is. Some MMO are popular but perhaps the reason they are popular is because of their level of optimization for their medium and its capacities-personal computers online. Tabletops are another medium and have different strengths. Perhaps choosing a different source of influence, even one found in a video game but that its strength was some more general or universal idea of entertainment could be more appropriate. For example "the sims" is a game that such ideas could be found. Similarly in MMOs one could look for more universal things as for example research the fact that people like to form guilds. You would have to see what kind of people engage in this sort of activity and why, for what reasons. Research the engagement nature of the hardcore gamer and the casual gamer seperately. See then what game you want to build -with what kinds of various natures regarding the engagement or experience it offers. But this is something deep and not that simple as just trying to grab the most relevant on first impact gameplay mechanic of a game of a different medium that happens to work wonders there and try to import it to your game. IMO and IMO this has been a fail of 4e.
Take original D&D. How it was developed. Yes, the original D&D game was developed through a different process. The research on its sources of influence was different -much more connected to the nature of the final product IMO.

Do you imply that WotC did not research their audience and just "blindly" (to use the operative word in this thread) picked up everything from MMOs or CRPGs and tried to force it into D&D?

I doubt that. I don't feel like that was the case.
I think they looked at aspects that lead to interesting and engaging gameplay in games, and some examples of that can be found in MMOs or videogames, but a lot also exist in traditional RPGs. There are differences between these mediums, but that still does not mean that nothing can be transplanted. I am pretty certain that most RPG designers - including those at WotC - understand their medium pretty well.

Stories can be told in movies or novels. You will have to adapt the story. Likewise, you can import mechanics from an RPG to an MMO or vice versa. You need to adapt the details of the implementation, but if the basic idea is sound, it is possible. (Whether your specific implementation works - just as with story adaptions to different media - is another matter.)