Gort
Explorer
Also known as "horrific".
The Truth About 4th Edition.
- Thread starter Oni
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Also known as "horrific".
JediSoth
Voice Over Artist & Author
I thought it tasted familiar!
Interesting interview. Sometimes I wonder if giving answers that can be interpreted so widely (as this thread shows) is intentional. After all, good or bad, if people are talking about your game, that's better than if it vanishes off the radar altogether. A wise man once said "There is no bad publicity"...which may actually be a paraphrase.
JohnSnow
Hero
Windjammer, I think that you bring up an excellent point. But, I will also say that I've been in this situation with my group. With 4e, the turn lag is minimal. With 3e, it was extreme. Being held/paralyzed/petrified/unconscious was the worst. It's like: "well, I'm gonna go order the pizza while you guys kill the monsters. Who wants pepperoni?"
The issue I discussed, by the way, wasn't the battlegrid. It was placing an encounter in a closet. But it was just an example of a situation that took a player out of the action. And that is an issue. In older editions of D&D, it's a systemic issue.
Now, those things can still happen in 4th, but at least the greater number of saving throws (for say, petrification or death) and the "save ends" system keep them from being "instant out" situations. Generally speaking, nobody walks away from the table mid-combat (except in the case of "real" interruptions).
I have just one final comment. Not everyone gets the same sense of satisfaction out of watching other people do stuff. That's why, I think, so many people thought 3e bards were "lame." But at least when you've given them a boost, you feel some sense of attachment to their success. When they're just "in your group," it's easy to feel like they're the ones getting to have fun while you just have to sit there.
I am not sure lets see what kind of player would want to leave his PC to play with dices....
Maybe the player who wants to leave his pc to play with...
Cards World of Warcraft TCG
Miniatures World of Warcraft Miniatures Game
His phone Two more WoW-related iPhone apps off the App Store
A board game? Two more WoW-related iPhone apps off the App Store
Maybe, someone who wants to play with dices even.... Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maybe some of those people would like to leave the PC to play with dices? Perhaps you should think about all of the offline products WoW makes before saying "No one would ever want to see WoW offline products" Just because your angry that people compare 4E to wow sometimes does not mean you have to be offended by it.
re
Thanks you Andy Collins. I may not like your vision of D&D as far as 4e goes, but I appreciate the honesty.
Now I don't have to listen to people tell me I'm wrong about 4E being based on MMORPGs and board games. And when I say I don't like my RPG games based on those type of games, I don't have to be told I'm being a hater or that I'm wrong.
It's right there in print.
When we anti-4E people say the term simplified, we don't have to have people jump all over us. The designer said the game was simplified meaning it doesn't require the same type of mental investment as previous editions regardless of how others want to paint it. It was specifically built with a simpler ruleset to accomodate shorter attention spans than we who still love a good, long book over a video game.
Once again, thank you Andy Collins for clarifying. I'm not going to bag on 4E anymore. All that I do not like about it is part of the system and was built that way.
I prefer my games built on literary traditions, not video games, anime, and board games. Though no matter what a designer does some of that will seep into every game system including previous editions of 3E, 4E is the least transparent rules system yet as far as story goes. I'm glad I now have confirmation from the designers.
I appreciate honesty a great deal. And Andy Collins is a straight shooter and I appreciate that type of candor. And I will play the MMORPG based on the 4E rules in a D&D world. I know quite well that the older D&D rules were poorly designed for MMORPGs and videogames in general. I look forward to a much, much better 4E based series of video games. You did a great job designing a set of rules that will look very cool on an MMORPG game. That I cannot argue with.
Thanks you Andy Collins. I may not like your vision of D&D as far as 4e goes, but I appreciate the honesty.
Now I don't have to listen to people tell me I'm wrong about 4E being based on MMORPGs and board games. And when I say I don't like my RPG games based on those type of games, I don't have to be told I'm being a hater or that I'm wrong.
It's right there in print.
When we anti-4E people say the term simplified, we don't have to have people jump all over us. The designer said the game was simplified meaning it doesn't require the same type of mental investment as previous editions regardless of how others want to paint it. It was specifically built with a simpler ruleset to accomodate shorter attention spans than we who still love a good, long book over a video game.
Once again, thank you Andy Collins for clarifying. I'm not going to bag on 4E anymore. All that I do not like about it is part of the system and was built that way.
I prefer my games built on literary traditions, not video games, anime, and board games. Though no matter what a designer does some of that will seep into every game system including previous editions of 3E, 4E is the least transparent rules system yet as far as story goes. I'm glad I now have confirmation from the designers.
I appreciate honesty a great deal. And Andy Collins is a straight shooter and I appreciate that type of candor. And I will play the MMORPG based on the 4E rules in a D&D world. I know quite well that the older D&D rules were poorly designed for MMORPGs and videogames in general. I look forward to a much, much better 4E based series of video games. You did a great job designing a set of rules that will look very cool on an MMORPG game. That I cannot argue with.
Barastrondo
First Post
To me, the concept of missing turns is related to the concept of the railroaded game. Now, it's very different in form and context to have a GM who dictates the flow of events and the players are largely there for show, compared to mechanical effects that add up to "lose a turn", but the basest core impulse is the same: "you can't do anything now, just listen to me/the rest of us resolve what's going on." Pretty much in the same way that in-character setting rewards and out-of-character mechanical rewards both scratch the "you get something" itch.
I think the ideal is certainly that players should be interested in what's going on in the game, and it's a good sign you're doing something right if everyone at the table is enraptured by one player back-and-forthing with the GM for fifteen minutes. But it's not doing something wrong if players don't retain as much interest in an activity that they aren't allowed to participate in at present. It's like watching someone play a video game; some people enjoy it, others are going to find something else to do unless they get a controller as well.
I think the ideal is certainly that players should be interested in what's going on in the game, and it's a good sign you're doing something right if everyone at the table is enraptured by one player back-and-forthing with the GM for fifteen minutes. But it's not doing something wrong if players don't retain as much interest in an activity that they aren't allowed to participate in at present. It's like watching someone play a video game; some people enjoy it, others are going to find something else to do unless they get a controller as well.
Jeremy Ackerman-Yost
Explorer
Looks like Njall beat me to the punch, but I already typed it so....
You seem to be conflating threat boosting auras (Righteous Fury for paladins) with Taunt effects. These are entirely different things.
Threat is an linear scale, not a percentage one. The UI presents it as a percentage, but the underlying mechanics are linear and based directly on dps. If you do 300 damage with no talents or auras effecting that damage, you receive 300 threat. If I do 150 damage, I have 150 threat. The UI presents that to me as having 50% of your threat, but the internal game mechanics are I have 200, and you have 300.
If you are, say an arcane mage with threat reduction talents, that 300 damage might do only 0.60 threat per damage, or 180 threat, whereas I with RF up do 200 damage and get 2.7 times that much threat if it's Holy damage and 1.4 times that much threat if it's white damage. Let's say it's all Holy, so I get 540 threat for that Holy damage. Now the UI reports to you that you have 33% of my threat, but the underlying mechanics are that you have 180 threat, and I have 540.
Taunt effects bump you up above the person who currently has the most threat. In that respect, Taunt itself is binary. It works, bumping you up, or it does not. It sort of temporarily makes threat Ordinal, rather than linear. (NOTE: Even with Taunt, threat is NEVER percentage based). If you already have aggro, Taunt does nothing at all. So, "the more you use taunt spells the faster your taunt meter goes up" is bunk. If you currently have aggro, Taunt does nothing at all. However, if you consistently use abilities that have the tag "This ability causes a high amount of threat" which means it adds a raw number modifier to the damage for extra threat, you will see your threat meter increase more rapidly. Alas, even with the percentage scaling they put in with WotLK, they had to keep threat modifiers like that so they can keep tank damage lower for PVP reasons.
In any case, the threat system in WoW is not nearly as nuanced as the marking system in 4e. But then, there's not a person behind the monster, but a very limited number driven AI.
I was MT for a pretty successful guild for a long time as a paladin. Before paladins could tank, I was a healer. I know the mechanics pretty well.
You seem to be conflating threat boosting auras (Righteous Fury for paladins) with Taunt effects. These are entirely different things.
Threat is an linear scale, not a percentage one. The UI presents it as a percentage, but the underlying mechanics are linear and based directly on dps. If you do 300 damage with no talents or auras effecting that damage, you receive 300 threat. If I do 150 damage, I have 150 threat. The UI presents that to me as having 50% of your threat, but the internal game mechanics are I have 200, and you have 300.
If you are, say an arcane mage with threat reduction talents, that 300 damage might do only 0.60 threat per damage, or 180 threat, whereas I with RF up do 200 damage and get 2.7 times that much threat if it's Holy damage and 1.4 times that much threat if it's white damage. Let's say it's all Holy, so I get 540 threat for that Holy damage. Now the UI reports to you that you have 33% of my threat, but the underlying mechanics are that you have 180 threat, and I have 540.
Taunt effects bump you up above the person who currently has the most threat. In that respect, Taunt itself is binary. It works, bumping you up, or it does not. It sort of temporarily makes threat Ordinal, rather than linear. (NOTE: Even with Taunt, threat is NEVER percentage based). If you already have aggro, Taunt does nothing at all. So, "the more you use taunt spells the faster your taunt meter goes up" is bunk. If you currently have aggro, Taunt does nothing at all. However, if you consistently use abilities that have the tag "This ability causes a high amount of threat" which means it adds a raw number modifier to the damage for extra threat, you will see your threat meter increase more rapidly. Alas, even with the percentage scaling they put in with WotLK, they had to keep threat modifiers like that so they can keep tank damage lower for PVP reasons.
In any case, the threat system in WoW is not nearly as nuanced as the marking system in 4e. But then, there's not a person behind the monster, but a very limited number driven AI.
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Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
It's certainly not system-specific; I remember one 2e combat against a dragon where one round took one hour. I thought I was going to have to impale myself on my pencil to stay awake.
That reminds me, if ever a 4e based video game comes out, I want to see how different the fighter's marking is compared to WOW's taunt from a casual player's viewpoint who doesn't know the inner mechanics. I am sure an AI has to be implemented for the monster to react to the mark, since no human to decide for them.
avin
First Post
You almost offend me asking to realize that there's a Wow RPG
Now, tell me how many of the 10+ million Wow players have played that.
Enter the game, go to a Capital and ask on /trade about this game.
Wow RPG = fail.
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