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<blockquote data-quote="LightPhoenix" data-source="post: 4064662" data-attributes="member: 115"><p>Great post Zelc! Lots of interesting discussion to be had here.</p><p></p><p>I think the psychology part is dead-on. People don't like to lose. People like to have fun. The definition of "lose" and the definition of "fun" may be different between different people and different games, but the idea is the same no matter what game you are playing. That includes sports, that includes video games, that includes card games, and board games... the whole gamut. Heck, it's even interesting to apply that to life in general.</p><p></p><p>There's a joke concept on the Bioware Dragon Age forum of how everything can be solved with a toggle. The sentiment behind the statement is that on the surface it's that easy, but in actuality it's not, and then people want toggles for everything to customize their game. I think the same applies to WoW, and the same applies to D&D. It's simply not realistic from a work-time aspect to provide options for everyone for everything. Then the game never gets released, and/or it's unfocused because you've spent so much time on toggles you don't make a fun game.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, there's a line that has to be drawn, and that line will always draw dissent. Hopefully, if you've done your research, that dissent is a vocal minority and not a true majority view. With D&D, (hopefully) WotC did research and found that save-or-die effects were not fun for a majority of people, because they were an instant lose people had no (okay, little) control over. So, they were removed from the game, to try and get people to lose less, and have fun. Will it work? Who knows. It was a line they drew, a risk they took, and without it the game remains more unfocused.</p><p></p><p>As an aside, this is the sort of issue I think the SRD/OGL license was made to address. I've mentioned my views on the OGL before, and I won't go into them here for fear of derailing the thread. However, if some enterprising person wanted to introduce save-or-die spells back into the game, they could do that. In that essense, WotC allows for a degree of freedom in their system. Hopefully the GSL allows for that as well.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="LightPhoenix, post: 4064662, member: 115"] Great post Zelc! Lots of interesting discussion to be had here. I think the psychology part is dead-on. People don't like to lose. People like to have fun. The definition of "lose" and the definition of "fun" may be different between different people and different games, but the idea is the same no matter what game you are playing. That includes sports, that includes video games, that includes card games, and board games... the whole gamut. Heck, it's even interesting to apply that to life in general. There's a joke concept on the Bioware Dragon Age forum of how everything can be solved with a toggle. The sentiment behind the statement is that on the surface it's that easy, but in actuality it's not, and then people want toggles for everything to customize their game. I think the same applies to WoW, and the same applies to D&D. It's simply not realistic from a work-time aspect to provide options for everyone for everything. Then the game never gets released, and/or it's unfocused because you've spent so much time on toggles you don't make a fun game. Anyway, there's a line that has to be drawn, and that line will always draw dissent. Hopefully, if you've done your research, that dissent is a vocal minority and not a true majority view. With D&D, (hopefully) WotC did research and found that save-or-die effects were not fun for a majority of people, because they were an instant lose people had no (okay, little) control over. So, they were removed from the game, to try and get people to lose less, and have fun. Will it work? Who knows. It was a line they drew, a risk they took, and without it the game remains more unfocused. As an aside, this is the sort of issue I think the SRD/OGL license was made to address. I've mentioned my views on the OGL before, and I won't go into them here for fear of derailing the thread. However, if some enterprising person wanted to introduce save-or-die spells back into the game, they could do that. In that essense, WotC allows for a degree of freedom in their system. Hopefully the GSL allows for that as well. [/QUOTE]
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