Was 4e design based around the suite of proposed D&Di tools? EDIT: found quote.

[Scott_Rouse]

snip

So, to be clear, are you saying that the expected limitations of the ddi did not influence 4e rules design? A "Yes" or "No" answer would be peachy.

RC

I will say no. We made the game we thought people would want to play (and what we wanted to play) and would buy.

I will also say I disagree with the premise that a game system would need to be nerfed for digital applications. One could design an extremely complex rules system that could be run via a computer based system. For example Magic: The Gathering Online has over 6000 unique cards in the system. The game has a level 5 judge AI that manages over 36 million possible rules combination's in real time. In my mind there seems to be little if any reason that one would need to nerf a rule like movement on a x,y, or z axis for a digital application.

 

[Obryn]

...and can I note that there are plenty of reasons to reduce or eliminate all-day PC flight without resorting to explanations involving battlemats or software limitations?

-O

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think you've been watching too many cable TV pundits.

I think that Scott can (and has....Thank You Scott!) answered that question himself.

EDIT: And, for the record, The Rouse, I would tend to agree with you that online applications shouldn't necessarily nerf play, given what computers are capable of doing today. I'm just tired of the "Avoid A Direct Answer" Dance, and greatly appreciate your answering firmly. XP to you!


RC

 

[Ycore Rixle]

B) We knew we wanted to do a suite of digital tools. Yes these could have been done for 3.5 but given development times and factoring in the impending need for 4e it made sense to do A & B together.

Ah, now this actually makes sense to me. This is a reason I had not thought of for how computers would influence 4th edition development, but not the 4e rules. I think that may have been the source of what I wasn't getting: I was thinking of 4e development as synonomous with 4e rules development, when in fact there is more to it than that (in particular, amortizing computer dev costs over a longer game lifetime). Thanks Scott.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

For example Magic: The Gathering Online has over 6000 unique cards in the system. The game has a level 5 judge AI that manages over 36 million possible rules combination's in real time. In my mind there seems to be little if any reason that one would need to nerf a rule like movement on a x,y, or z axis for a digital application.

How did they translate Chaos Orb over to the digital version of MtG?

 

[Ycore Rixle]

I wish you and Ycore would just state your problems with the 'digital influence' in a way we can actually talk about! Are you mad for some reason? Do you think 4E is worse for it? Do you think the new edition came too early because of it?

I said in my post that I have no problems with computer influence (or digital).

As for the rest... do you really want to talk about it? This should probably go in another thread. But I'll try to make it pertinent to this one, and I'll try to limit it.

Yep, I'm mad. It's ok, I'll live. But here's one thing that irks me about 4e: there is a culture in 4e that believes that words don't mean what they say. And I totally get that this is mostly just me, and it doesn't bother other people. So blame the internet for letting me foist my personal pet peeves all over the globe.

But here are some examples of words with no meaning in 4e: pathfinder paragon path doesn't have any powers or abilities to find paths; demons per the MM don't know fear but they are afraid; trip doesn't mean knock something down off its legs. There are many more, including power titles (by design, which is totally valid, just not my cup of tea - actually it can be my cup of tea, but not in combo with the rest).

This thread seems to me to touch on the same issue writ large: WOTC has distanced itself from the idea that computers influenced the design of 4e, and then when some quotes surface that say computers influenced the design of 4e, we're told that we're reading too much into those quotes. As if those quotes had no meaning.

We weren't reading anything into those quotes. Quoting is not reading into. The quotes just flat out said what they said.

Now, Scott has supplied an elegant solution, which is that computers influenced the development of 4e but not the rules development of 4e. I can see that answer. It's a good answer.

But it's not what Scott and others said in the slashdot interview, and it's not what Bill said in Races and Classes.

It's just not. There's no reading into it necessary. Words mean what they mean. They might not be important words, or words representative of the whole picture. That's cool.

So that's what I was irked about, since you asked. Not computer influence. I think a strong argument can be made - was made in the WOTC offices - that it would be silly not to consider computers in the design of a tabletop game with sufficient resources.

 

[Raven Crowking]

There is certainly a contingent -- smaller on EN World than some other places, due to good moderation -- who are more than happy to attempt to subvert any attempt at rational discourse if the conclusions drawn might not be what they would prefer. For example, in this thread, the attempt to get a clear answer was met with some hostility. One might wonder why that is?

Certainly when the question was phrased clearly, The Rouse was capable of answering it clearly and without rancor. Heck, without Gamorean guards, even.

IMHO, we should expect clear and honest answers. IRL, of course, it is often surprising when we get them.


RC

 

[Scott_Rouse]

How did they translate Chaos Orb over to the digital version of MtG?

Chaos Orb and some of those early cards are not in the MTGO system.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It should be noted, however, that a simulator could be devised to translate the card to the online game, if WotC wanted to do so.

RC

 

[AllisterH]

How did they translate Chaos Orb over to the digital version of MtG?

Translating Chaos Orb would actually be easy if you think about it. Chaos Orb is simply a random number generator linked to the cards on the table. Simply write a script that generates the number and visually it would be easy as well.

The only reason Chaos Orb would not be translated to MTGO is mainly because it is banned in practically every format you can think of. Only Open would allow for it and relatively few people play the Open format (even without Chaos orb, the brokeness of Open leads to few fans of it)