The Impasse

[Maggan]

Groups with clear DPS, tank and healers? Come on guys, let's get the thing straight.

4E is frankly MMORPG inspired. That's not bad per se, just is.

And MMORPGs are D&D inspired. That's not bad per se, it's just the way it is.

A quick question from someone who doesn't play MMORPGs. What is DPS?

/M

 

[ppaladin123]

And MMORPGs are D&D inspired. That's not bad per se, it's just the way it is.

A quick question from someone who doesn't play MMORPGs. What is DPS?

/M

D.P.S. = damage per second. It is quick measure of a striker's efficiency/performance.

 

[tenkar]

I will give it a try.

The specific example is the gaming (gamist?) challenge they have put as the basis of 4e.

In MMO games are about two distinct things. An arcade part (which is the technical skill of hand-eye coordination) and tactical part (which is the knowledge of the secrets of the game and their mastery: being able to remeber them). You have to be successful in both but usually there is some space to compensate for non optimum performance in one if you perform perfectly in the other and still achieve an optimum overall result.

Can someone point out the actual Arcade Part of MMORPGs for me. I click on hot keys and use wasd to move, but with the posible exception of Tabula Rasa I haven't experienced the arcade "twitch" skills needed in a true arcade game or first person shooter.

Just curious, as the OP lists this as one of the two distinct things of MMO games, and its one I haven't been seeing myself.

 

[xechnao]

And you still haven't given me an example. You say that they took tactics from video games (as if they had never existed in RPGs before 4E, except that even you note that 3E had this aspect!) 4E did not implement the tactical part. What you denoted as "tactical" is something that happened in various forms in many role playing games, including previous editions. (Most notably 3E with its introduction of both system mastery - e.g. understanding the "tricks" of the system to create your optimum build - and tactical aspects like flanking and all the miniature related rules)

The example I have given you is the whole game design. I would also note that system mastery and the tactical aspects you are talking about are essentially the same thing -two different gears but of the same overall mechanism. It is true that 3e had this too in various instances -including an instance similar to WoW's direction but not only. Of course WoW's implementation was much deeper and made better -4e borrowed from the development WoW had achieved in that direction. So while the direction of classic D&D's tactics were forcing a balance (or were trying to) of various different events spread around on adventuring, WoW and 4e's are balanced against the same type of encounter: a collaboration of the note roles (DPS, healer, defender etch) against obstacles that favor this kind of collaboration to be beaten. 3e was trying to balance both: adventuring and encounters. It had to offer some kind of more concrete way of how performance in one could enhance performance in the other and the players could end up balanced -it did not and this was up to the DM.

But after you noted this, you went on to a different topic that is not related to tactics. You talk about running a game world. You seem to be trying to make a connection to the tactical component, but I still don't get how this connection is supposed to work. At the moment I think it's immaterial to what you are actually talking about (without this lessening the relevance or interestingness of what you are talking about. It just doesn't make it any easier to understand what you are talking about.)

Perhaps with my explanation above it could be more clear now.

I am trying to get what you are talking about when you talk about "verbal input" or personal or social relationships?
Are you talking about mechanics that model something like "NPC x is my nemisis?" or "I seduce the Princess" or even "I am in love with the Princess and I have a personal stake in anything regarding her well being and her relationship to me?"

People try to build or defend their relationships. One should have mechanics for these things in-game. Because people feel these things socialy and tabletop games are social games achieving to connect the two among the players (on the intra-player interactions) would be awesome IMO.

Generally I would say that no game constraints things it doesn't describe, of course it doesn't facilitate it either. But 4E design doesn't choke anything of this aspect. And it actually has - with its Quest Mechanic tools to describe social or personal relationships. Quest: "Kill Nemesis" and Quest "Marry the Princess" are of course very simple, but the few games I know in this regard have actually pretty similar concepts. If the player spends time on one of his "stakes", he gets mechanical benefits. (In some games, these are Hero Points or Possibilities, in 4E it's XP).

I am not sure about your point. Games have certain goals and games are structures. This means that one is predisposed to act in certain ways-choices are limited. If a game lacks a kind of structure it could very well be that the optimum choices of this hypothetical added structure are in conflict with the choices of the original structure because the final result or outcome has to be a shared one among the structures: one may make one choice/decision/input each time. To understand this think of how the arcade input and tactical input of MMOs can not give two different inputs in-game regarding what has happened.

Since 4e is build on collaborating in a certain way to beat certain obstacles and human social relationships run differently I see points of conflict or incompatibility here.

 

[xechnao]

Can someone point out the actual Arcade Part of MMORPGs for me. I click on hot keys and use wasd to move, but with the posible exception of Tabula Rasa I haven't experienced the arcade "twitch" skills needed in a true arcade game or first person shooter.

Just curious, as the OP lists this as one of the two distinct things of MMO games, and its one I haven't been seeing myself.

I remember when I was playing Ultima Online I had to be quick on engaging disengaging, choosing and activating spells, moving around in respect to areas of effect and stuff like that. Everything that needs timing or synchronization is considered arcade more or less. Of course there are levels of difficulty and what I consider an arcadey challenge for myself, for you it could be a walk in the park.

 

[Rechan]

What's laughable is that the same claims being made about 4th edition were made about 3e when it came out. There was a huge online upset between 2e and 3e players. The "Videogameness" was all there.

But, that's not going to get this anywhere. Well, I think there's no way to salvage this discussion anyhow, but I'm still going to add to the pile.

I understand those who dislike 4e because it doesn't suit their playstyle. Honestly, if 4e had come out first, and the 3e ruleset was the new edition, I would not switch. Because I dislike the third edition system. The system, among other things, encourages a simulationist "The rules represent the physics", and that hard-rules feel has no appeal to me whatsoever. Setting the two systems beside eachother, and seeing their differences (plus my experience with 3e), I would not go from 4 to 3.

But I do not have anything against 3e players. If you've found what you enjoy and you know it, good; it's better than playing something you're unhappy with.

In this very thread, not two pages ago, people were arguing whether game systems should have rules for social interaction. If people can't agree on that, then there's no way to get everyone to agree on one edition versus the other.

Sometimes it feels not like a matter of "What game do you play", but a matter of identity. As a poster pointed out earlier, Rolemaster has five editions, and no one fights about those. But what people do fight about are Mac vs. PC, or Politics, or Sports Teams. Instead of it being about D&D, it's about "Us" vs. "Them".

 

[Obryn]

Exactly how do you get "maybe" from what I said. Do you really think that just saying we are't going to talk about a possible new edition of D&D right now would have destroyed WotC and D&D? D&D is a very small part of WotC, and 3.5 products continued to sell fairly well after the announcement and release of 4E. Which one of us has the blinders on?

As soon as you announce a new product in an existing line, you are effectively competing with yourself. If, tomorrow, Apple announced there'd be a new iPod in July, many consumers would either (1) bargain-hunt, or (2) wait for the new shiny.

Now, I know I stopped buying 3e books after the announcement. I know at least some others did, too - and I'm tempted to say "many". I also remember some post-Gen-Con wrap-up threads from 3pps which said, more or less, the 4e announcement cut their sales. It's safe to say that 3e was losing more customers than it was gaining.

Now, of course the market didn't completely dry up. I never said it did. It simply shrank - which I think you acknowledge by saying 3e products sold "fairly well". If your profit margin is small to begin with, like everyone in the RPG industry, you simply can't continue to have the same expenses while making less product.

That spells ruin. If your profits shrink appreciably, you can't spend as much on research & development. If you don't spend money on R&D, the final product is likely to be of lower quality.

That's what all of these doomsday scenarios amount to - a simple shrinking of profits, perhaps as "slight" as 10%-20%, can affect you for years to come.

And I get "Maybe" from your post because, if you go from saying "No" to saying something else, anything else you say is basically a Maybe and, in all likelihood a Yes. This includes "No comment."

-O

 

[SSquirrel]

Changing 4E structure for a recommended 5 man group comes right from Wow.

I seem to recall the standard assumed D&D group of 2E being a DM and 5 players as well. That way you could have one of each of the 4 core classes and still mix in a bard or paladin or whatever else. My 2E PHB is in my daughter's room in a box, so I'm not about to risk waking her up to verify this

 

[Burrito Al Pastor]

D.P.S. = damage per second. It is quick measure of a striker's efficiency/performance.

DPS is also a slang term for a character class with a high-DPS role. If you're Teh Hardcorez, it may also be pronounced "Deeps".

DPS = Striker
Tank = Defender
Healer = Leader
CC = Controller

CC stands for "crowd control". It's for effects which remove an enemy from combat without actually killing him, like polymorph or fear.

Is 4e derived, in part, from MMOs? Yup. They're directly derived from the MMOs that are directly derived from D&D. 4e fans like to pretend that 4e has absolutely no inspiration whatsoever from World of Warcraft. In my experience, they're pretending this to ward off attacks from people who have an axe to grind with 4e or WOTC. (Alternately, they may simply be ignorant of the obvious design similarities, which is likely the case if they've never played a contemporary MMO.) The issue here isn't if 4e share conceptual design ideas with MMOs. The issue here is this:

Why would that be a bad thing? You can't get a playerbase the size of Cuba to play your game if your basic conceptual game design isn't on the ball. Complaining about assimilating good ideas from MMOs strikes me as being a bit like saying that a movie can't be good if it was adapted from a book.

I don't think I've ever seen any compelling reasons why it's in any way problematic if 4e took a single idea from World of Warcraft.


By the way, this thread is hilarious. Keep it up, guys.


(P.S. - from what I've seen, party roles weren't lifted from MMOs, teamwork and tactics weren't lifted from MMOs, a five player party size wasn't lifted from MMOs, monsters of disproportionate power weren't lifted from MMOs, and powers weren't lifted from MMOs. So, then, what was? Discuss.)

 

[mudbunny]

4e fans like to pretend that 4e has absolutely no inspiration whatsoever from World of Warcraft. In my experience, they're pretending this to ward off attacks from people who have an axe to grind with 4e or WOTC. (Alternately, they may simply be ignorant of the obvious design similarities, which is likely the case if they've never played a contemporary MMO.)

I would tend to say that 4E "blind supporters" like to pretend that no influence came from WoW (or other MMOs) or computer games. People who have a more realistic viewpoint say "Where the inspiration came from doesn't matter. What matters is what the devs *did* with the inspiration", as you mentioned above.