Perhaps because 'business motives' usually boil down to 'make more money'. There's nothing to be suspicious about.
Unless the business in question is the Parallax Corporation, in which case, suspicion is warranted. They're tricky...
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What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?
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Unless the business in question is the Parallax Corporation, in which case, suspicion is warranted. They're tricky...
ExploderWizard
Hero
No real reason right now. Unfavorable change will hit everyone sooner or later as long as change keeps happening.
renau1g
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Yeah, that's my point Dave. Thanks Vyvyan.
P.S. I'm not trying to "win" anything. There's nothing to win. I was asking an honest question of another gamer. There's actually not even an argument, it's a question to someone about a comment they made.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Actually, that is one of the suspicions. The cited reason was piracy. Like I said, a little more straight talking would be appreciated. While I think earlier edition fans would still be disappointed, that's not the same as being disgusted by a flimsy reason like piracy.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
It's not up to you to diagnose the emotional connections people make. Someone could certainly have a longer-term emotional involvement with a favorite artistic work like Forgotten Realms than they do with a younger and not-very-well-liked pet. Personally, I can think of a number of non-living things I like more than one of our cats. Yet my wife seems emotionally attached to him, so I there he is.
Ehhh. I like 4E, I disagree with a lot of the points made against it, but I do know somewhat what he is talking about - a focus on effect rather than source. I have a player who keeps asking rules questions about "that random feat I have, that gives all my defense boosting powers a bonus." The feat is a Dragonmark - something that should be a core part of the character, but instead is literally just another option spotted in the character builder and chosen for numerical value. That's just how some players roll.
The thing is, the exact same thing was true when I played with the same group in 3rd Edition. I haven't seen anything change - save perhaps that the ease of use of the Character Builder does make it easier to flit through options and snag stuff based on bonuses rather than flavor. Essentially, it makes optimizing easier for the non-optimizers.
In any case, I don't think 4E is at fault for this sort of experience. It comes down to the DM and the players, and if someone is bugged by it, they should bring it up to their group. I've got a game that sometimes gets like this - but I know that is how most of the players like it, and so that's fine. And at other times, they do delve into RP. They just usually have it focused on background elements of the character, rather than what weapons they are using or feats they have taken.
It's all what you do with it. DaveMage commented that renau1g 'lost his argument' by saying that a wizard, in 4E, could cast any number of spells and not worry about anything other than the damage. The point being made was that the player could do that, just like a fighter in earlier editions could just say, "I swing, 11, miss. I swing, 17, hit for 8 damage. I swing, 13, miss." Or the wizard could say, "Magic Missile, 8 damage. Ray of Frost, 17, hit for 2 damage. Flaming Sphere, DC 18 Reflex, 7 damage." The fact that they use slightly different mechanics (automatic hit, ranged touch attack, reflex save) didn't remove the player's ability to render them mundane if damage was all he cared about.
And at the same time, in either edition, the mage could play up the differences in the powers, either descriptively or mechanically. The fighter can insert more action and interest into their attacks. Take the effects, and describe them cinematically and heroically - not "slide him 4 squares" but instead, "send him reeling backwards across the blood-stained ground!"
It comes down to the player. Can 4E result in a game that is just some numbers thrown around a table? Sure - just like any edition of D&D. I don't find it worthwhile to try and imply someone is wrong that they have experienced that. But I also don't think anyone can put the blame on the system alone.
As it is, I don't think anyone can be blamed for wanting WotC to encourage more use of imagination and description when it comes to powers and attacks. At the same time, I don't think WotC can be entirely faulted if a group doesn't do so - in the end, they can't force anyone to play other than how that person wants to play. They might be able to influence it, but in the end, if you've got a group that has taken on a mentality where they don't even care what weapons they are wielding, than the problem is rooted in the player rather than the game.
I'd have to disagree. 3rd Edition made God himself into a D&D player. And if WotC had continued publishing it, it would have converted the entire population of invisible, phase-shifted martians into players, too. We would have been receiving first contact with alien species later this year if it wasn't for 4th Edition.
... statements which are all as unverifiable as what you just posted. We can certainly say, from anecdotal evidence, that there are some new players playing 4th Edition. But is that any more relevant than the Pepsi drinkers who started drinking New Coke?
We don't know. And we have no way of knowing it.
And although we have more evidence of the market splitting than we do of new play acquisition, it's still highly anecdotal just how severe that split may be.
We know that 3rd Edition reconsolidated the D&D player base, brought lapsed players back into the fold, and introduced new players because WotC shared (some of) its marketing research with us back then. AFAIK, WotC has done nothing like that with 4th Edition.
It's probably useful at this juncture to point out that a lot of us who remain 3E fans welcomed 4E with open arms. There are clearly problems with 3E and fixing some of them was going to require a new edition. (Much like it took 3E to fix a lot of the problems people had with 2E.)
But we didn't get a new, improved edition of the core gameplay that stretched back to 1974. We got a fundamentally different fantasy roleplaying game designed to do fundamentally different things (albeit it with the same trademark on the cover).
And that's why Pathfinder is capable of succeeding in ways that pre-3E retro-clones aren't.
(I'm not saying that Pathfinder was, IMO, a sufficient fix for the 3E problems. A properly produced WotC 4th Edition could have and should have gone farther. But since Paizo doesn't have the D&D trademark, I think they made the right decision in a more conservative clean-up.)
That is very easy to say, but you have to remember something - traditionally, the only money these folks get is from distributing copyrighted content.
In the music business, the artists currently typically get very little from the basic distribution of their content (album sales). The artists aren't really losing much from pirated songs - and folks like Trent Reznor can then find other ways to connect to fans and sell them things they want other than just the original art (which, for all intent sand purposes, is really a loss leader as far as the artist is concerned).
But the fandom of RPGs is small, and we are more attached to the content than the personalities behind the content - so opportunities to connect with the fans and sell them something other than the content are thus few, and difficult to find or create.
Thus, protecting distribution of that content is paramount to them. It is so important to them that they can be less-than-rational at times. Forgive them - it is a new era, and they're only human. They take time to adjust and find new ways to work - the DDI, for example. They'll find other hooks, given time, and maybe then they'll get less paranoid.
I think the point is that this is, in ways, the definition of fan entitlement. He feels as though WotC actively destroyed something that was his - but it isn't, and never was. What he might own is the various campaign books and novels and adventures of earlier versions of the realm, all of which he still has. And can use, and run games in, and enjoy to his heart's content.
WotC won't be releasing more products that directly support them (though I imagine some products, such as Ed Greenwood's articles in Dragon still could.) But a company not offering him future purchases is, I'm sorry, not equivalent to them killing his pet. And the attitude that says that it is - well, honestly, that's not somethign WotC can be held accountable for.
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