What would it take for 4E to win over the old guard? (Forked Thread: Changeover Poll)

[Herschel]

No, Herschel, you aren't correct. I don't "hate 4e". In fact, I've bought not only the 3 core books, but 6 of the splat books for it as well. Why do that if I hate it? I do think it needs some work, but I say that about every game. However, this thread is a fork off of the other thread, in which a third of those polled said they'd tried 4e and switched to something else, and another third said they haven't even tried it. In my own experience, not one player in my town is even willing to try it, for various reasons. So my point is, what is it, if anything, that can reach out to the people who either haven't/won't try it, or who tried it and disliked it, because together that's over 2/3 of the ENWorlders polled, and a rather large and significant percentage of the gaming populace if extrapolated out, especially the older, more hard-core gamers of 25+ years.

D&D used to be the "game everyone played, the game you can always find players for"... well, I can't get a single person to actually play 4e! 3.5 is still the only game in town that people play, and I'm trying to find just what people think it will take to change that, or if I should stop buying 4e and hoping to eventually get some use out of the books...

Also, the "perfect" line wasn't meant to be sarcastic at all. I meant it as "4e is fine as it is, and people need to adjust to it, not it adjust to the people." But each line only has a 100 character limit. Maybe "perfect" wasn't the best choice of words, but it came from the classic "Why does everyone hate me, am I that terrible [sniff]?" "No dear, you're perfect just the way you are". So everyone saying "I like 4e, there's no option for me in the poll", yes there is, it's option 1. The next 2 boil down to "add to the game" and "make some core changes to the game", and the 4th option is "no changes are going to work for me, bring on the next edition..."

Re-read what you wrote here. Unless you live in a town of 16 people and are close with every one of them, this blanket statement is patently false. If you had the will to do so you would find people. I found a minis tournament back in Harbinger days to trade and to see what the game was about. In my normal circle, nobody was playing the skirmish game. But there were people out there. In fact, we had the biggest tournament scene in the country for years, yet I'd still run in to people who said they didn't know anyone who played it while they were right in game stores that ran tournaments. A couple guys encouraged me to put together a warband and play, and I did. I played all the way through Gen Con and beyond this year.

You wrote the questions and voted it needed major changes. If you were really interested in playing it, the question should have been worded differently and you voting differently. It doesn't matter what you bought, you wrote the questions and voted that it needed major changes. (repeated for emphasis).

You bought something you aren't happy with. You can try to say 'it's because everyone else doesn't like it, but it's not me it's them' but that's a crock.

Trying to make the team with D-Backing skills doesn't change that (but might have helped the Vikings and Colts this weekend ). So you bought something you didn't really like. I'm guessing everyone has at some point or another, even if it was just a gross beverage or bad pizza. If you cop ideas from it, it was still probably worth it, even if it wasn't what you expected. I have four books in a system I'll never use because I don't like it, but you can be assured I'm copping ideas from it for teh games I do run.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Unless you live in a town of 16 people and are close with every one of them, this blanket statement is patently false.

Do you live where he does? Are you in his head?

Then what's with the hostility, mang?

I...don't know what you're talking about for most of this post. The OP's preference would be for 4e to change, but the poll options are pretty expressly directed at people who aren't won over by 4e already. It's not really very interesting conversation to have a thread just full of furious praise, it's much more interesting to analyze peoples' problems and see if a middle ground might be reached.

So much nerd rage here...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I voted for "big changes," but in reality, those changes are big enough that its most likely I won't be back into the buying public of D&D until 5Ed, if ever.

If 4Ed is the shape of editions to come, I won't be back. Its a good game, but its not D&D to me. At least, its not a D&D I'd run- I can play just about any game on the market if its properly run.

OTOH, if D&D N-Ed takes a different tack in game design, I'll give it another chance.

 

[lutecius]

Like others in this thread, I have a hard time considering myself "old guard" because I am not attached to any particular dndism. But I’m 34 and hate 4e, so I guess I qualify.

At this point I don’t think more options or small changes can win me over.
The new setting, cosmology, races and classes are hit and miss (monsters are mostly miss) but that can easily be fixed with houserules or splatbooks.
I can also overlook silly artistic choices, low value for money and the marketing.
But my real beef is with some core mechanics and, I guess, the whole design philosophy. Balance and streamlining are all well and good, but not at any cost.

I know dnd always involved some degree of abstraction but I wanted more rule / fluff correlation, not less. This is what separates rpgs from boardgames. To me the worst offenders are:
- The daily/encounter system (for those who don’t know yet)
- All those power effects with far-fetched in game justifications, often the result of the contrived role distinction. In game action should inspire the rules, not the other way around.
- I'd like hps and ac to represent something. They should be less abstract (armor as damage reduction and all) not more.

Also flexibility and customisation are sorely lacking. The multiclassing "dips" seemed like a good idea but the implementation is terribly restrictive. Hope it isn't just for commercial reasons.


I don’t think a 4e Unearthed Arcana would work. This level of change would break 4e’s math and balance, which would make most 4e material useless anyway.
Likewise, allowing 3p variants like true20 would be cool but wouldn't benefit wotc because their products wouldn't be compatible.

 

[Jasperak]

You're operating under the assumption those critters aren't coming in MM2 (which I mentioned). Do you honestly think Frost Giants are no more? How many hundred splatbooks did 3E have?

So for another $30 I can have them. Sorry we've all been down this road before.

 

[Korgoth]

There's no salvaging it for me.

How can you put Zothique on a battlemat? How can you put anything there except a miniatures game?

I know miniatures games. If I'm going to play a miniatures game, I'm going to play a good one like Flames of War or Field of Glory. I don't need a long, plodding slog where even a horse has like 60 hit points and I have to keep spamming a blue thunderflash on it to get it to expire. That reminds me too much of a certain game that I'm not allowed to mention... you know, one about this world where people craft war all the time and you play it on an electronic difference engine?

I don't need that miniatures board/wargame. I need fantasy. I need weird vistas, inscrutable enigmas and vile necromancies. I need things that can be conveyed with words and suggested with motifs, but that can't be drawn in two dimensions on a vinyl mat.

 

[S'mon]

4e character generation and combat are both far too complex for me. They seem even worse than 3e, which itself is much more complicated than I like.

 

[Azgulor]

I agreed with all of this except the "trashing" the previous edition part. I've read this on quite a few posts and just don't understand it. I think it's a pretty safe statement to make that no edition or rules-set is perfect. Also, there were a lot of 3E players and DM's, myself included, that had (and still have) very real issues with certain shortcomings in 3E's rules. Now, I feel that 4E didn't fix those problems, so I've stuck with 3E with houserule "fixes" for the parts I don't like. But, I don't see how discussing those perceived problems with 3E, or talking about ideas and concepts to fix those parts that a lot of people felt were wonky, is "trashing" the previous edition. And I don't recall WoTC ever telling me or saying that I, and anyone else that preferred playing 3E, were wrong. That seems to be a very "personalized" and strong emotion on the bahalf of a concept and rule-set which obviously, doesn't care if it's bad mouthed or not.

My web-fu is weak at the moment as I fight off a sinus infection so I don't have it in me to hunt down the quotes I was referring to. Perhaps "trashing" is too strong. (By way of example, I recall the ability of players and DMs to handle the math surrounding Power Attack being held up as a problem.)

In my view, WotC presented weak arguments for the perceived flaws of 3e. Obviously, any rules set will have its share of flaws. I felt that many of the ones cited were extremely weak, however.

Perhaps a better way to put it is that I felt that there was a lot of weak "here's what's wrong with 3e" and not enough convincing "here's what's cool about 4e".

 

[Azgulor]

I read the poll options as very snide to 4e fans as well. Assuming that the 4e old guard that don't need the game to change must assume, in blissful ignorance, that it's perfect and then the 5e jab in the last option.

and way to gang up on the young new player folks. I thought new players were a good thing.

Ah, the one other thing that would increase my chances of 4e winning me over - the 4e fans grow thicker skins. I know it's THE INTERNET and all, but geez. (Adopts granpa voice) In the early days of the Edition Wars, us 3e-ers were outgunned 4:1 and still those 4e whippersnappers complained that that there was too many of us durn grognards...

 

[billd91]

You're operating under the assumption those critters aren't coming in MM2 (which I mentioned). Do you honestly think Frost Giants are no more? How many hundred splatbooks did 3E have?

Yes, as he pointed out... for more money.

Notice that he's just comparing 1st offerings - Monster Manual 1 (3.5) vs Monster Manual 1 (4e). So even if I was operating under the assumption that more coverage is coming, I may not be particularly happy with the coverage it's got now or compared to the same time last edition.