What on earth does "video-gamey" mean?

[Doug McCrae]

This thread itself shows the problem. If I saw someone say 4e is videogame-y I wouldn't assume they mean it has a heavy emphasis on combat as that makes no sense, virtually all rpgs do, particularly D&D.

I would assume they mean MMOs, especially World of Warcraft and that they're referring to the names of the class roles (which came from City of Heroes), stickier tanks, better class balance and disenchanting. All genuinely videogame-y elements of 4e, none of which make it a worse game. The class balance in particular is a big winner, for me.

This is the problem with vague language. You mistakenly assume people's positions are more sensible than they are.

 

[Tsyr]

Ah, so you use 'videogame-y' to mean 'anime'.

No, I respect anime.

In all seriousness, no, I don't mean anime. I use the term "video game" if I mean the term "video game".

In an MMO, I might have 10 abilities as a fighter that all do damage. One is named "Leaping Thrust" and one is named "Thousand Strikes" and one is named "Storm Hammer", but they all do damage. It's a fancy way of saying "I hit the guy with my weapon", but by making the player hit more buttons, its supposed to be more fun.

 

[Ginnel]

Umm guys

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=230454

Thank you

 

[Tsyr]

Umm guys

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=230454

Thank you

This isn't really an edition war thread, it's a discussion over a common complaint. If a mod tells us to knock it off, cool, but I don't think we're breaking the rules as is.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

In an MMO, I might have 10 abilities as a fighter that all do damage. .

With my lack of MMO background I'll just use this as more of a jumping off point that anything else...

If those 10 abilities were ONLY damage dealers it would strike me as boring. Someone up thread mentioned fighters having the choice of trip and grapple and other things. Fine. These do exists for everyone and their animal companion to use whenever they want.

I have never seen trip used very often and the only time I have seen grapple used the PC was decked out with feats and abilities so if he grappled other stuff happened. Don't ask for specifics, it has been long enough that I don't remember them all.

So I will ask, what is the difference between a fighter that grapples/trips and then uses feat X to deal damage and a fighter that uses ability Y to deal damage and then trip/grapple?

 

[Stoat]

It is odd that you can get an extra healing surge by pressing up up down down left right left right B A and start.

 

[Wormwood]

Umm guys

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=230454

Yeah, but that's for overt edition wars. Crypto-, quasi-, or backdoor-edition wars are an entirely different matter.

Or so it seems.

 

[ChaosShard]

Having spent far too much time playing WoW (around 50 days worth of time /played on my tanking Warrior alone), I feel able to help straighten this whole agrro thing out.

In WoW the Warrior, Paladin and Druid have 'taunting' abilities. These abilities force one or more enemies to attack the character that uses it for around 3 seconds. The mob (monster) has a slight chance to resist the taunt, in which case, it does whatever it was doing before, probably eating the mage.

In 4e, the Fighter and Paladin mark the enemy, telling them that there are repercussions for not attacking them. The enemy/monster/npc is never forced to attack the character, although they risk damage for attacking others.

In WoW, a monster is controlled and forced to act a certain way.

In 4e any marked enemy is free to do whatever it likes, but it will know that the trained killer in front of it will pound on it the second it looks away.

This system is a form of agrro control. In my eyes, however, there is nothing wrong with that. The Fighter and Paladin need some mechanism to protect their buddies, and the Goad (CW, I think) feat was (IIRC, please correct me if I'm wrong) a skill-check based form of the WoW Taunt, and forced the enemy to direct its attacks to you. The difference is that the ability is now

: A class feature, so it doesn't require spending a feat to obtain, and

: Not designed to force the monster to do anything, only to give the enemy discouragement against attacking anyone else.

 

[frankthedm]

That depends on the implementation and description. Based on a 4e example: If you just say "The kobold is marked and gets a -2 on all attacks, except for attacks against the fighter", that is a completely gamist description. But you could redo the same description like "The kobold is locked into a brutal melee with the fighter, their weapons clash and one tries valiantly to find an opening in the others defense. Their struggle is so intense, that it has become really hard for the kobold to focus its attention elsewhere."

Suddenly you have a much better description of aggro control.

Except that description only works if marking was limited to those in melee reach, which it is not.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

1) Everything is about combat now. Now don't try the "I still roleplay!!!!" dodge, that's not the point. Look at the wizard for a good example of this. Wizards were durn fun to play if you wanted them to be. You got all sorts of neat spells in with combat spells. Now, wizards are blasters. By contrast, bards are gone (Yeah, to return, if you wanna pay more for them), because they aren't as strong a combat class. Like it or not, the mechanics seem to be way more combat focused now.

Feather Fall, Jump, Disguise Self, Levitate, Arcane Gate, Fly, Mass Fly, Mordenkainen's Mansion, Time Stop and a bunch of other Utility spells are now all about combat? All 50(ish?) of those Rituals are too? And skill challenges?

Man, I must have the wrong copy of the PHB....I need to get whatever copy you've been reading 'cause I've always wanted to smash me some orcs in the face with a Tenser's Floating Disk!