What's this so-called MMO influence????

[Gundark]

You just needed better gear (endgame rogue here as well)

Heh...and thus why I quit woW

 

[Wolfspider]

ooh! Can I add one?

D&D 4e, like any MMO, is badwrongfun and those who play either of them need their toenails plucked off with pliers!

That was fun!

I'm not sure if your comment, even done in jest, really helps this thread remain civil....

 

[drakshasak]

I know KM only summarized so dont take this as hostility against KM

• Ease of Play Trumps Creative Detail. Videogames don't waste a lot of space on things that aren't directly play-able. Mario doesn't need much of a reason for saving the Princess. He does and it's fun. In WoW, the inability of characters to truly change the world and the static NPCs make it a better environment to game in (more stability), but kind of suck the 'living, breathing world' detail from it. It doesn't matter if it makes sense that Murlocks carry around magic rings that they don't use, but that the player can.
• Limits on DM Power. Videogames are constrained to a narrow set of options. Often, there are LOTS of them in MMO's, but they're still constrained. Any D&D advice that tells the DM to limit, to control, and to adhere to a baseline, can be seen as constraining to a videogame-style degree. The issue of balance crops up a lot with this, that many D&D players believe that you can have plenty of fun with highly unbalanced parties because the DM can compensate for this. In a videogame this isn't true, so you need to balance things, but the tabletop is a more organic experience.
• Pay To Play. While D&D has always had a sort of 'monthly fee' in the form of the newest splatbook, it was always optional. Making everything core and including an online portion (and all the mess that that entails) means that people feel obligated to pay for something every month that they may or may not want. The 'collectors mindset' that D&D has cultivated works to make people frustrated that they won't be able to complete their collection without paying by the month, and using electronic devices, which definitely have issues of permanence and portability to sort out, still.

Ease of Play Trumps Creative Detail
Where has this been hinted. I believe i have seen almost all of the preview and so on and i have never gotten that feeling. Most of what have been shown has been examples of mechanics. And i believe that the mechanics cant be too streamlined. The easier the mechaics the more time can be used on the world they are applied too. ( I really like white-wolf's vampire setting).
Limits on DM Power
Same as the above. i really havent gotten that feeling. on the contrary. most of the comments i see from people who have seen the books talk about how much easier it is for the DM to do his stuff.
Pay To Play
Okay this argument i can understand. i havent myself decided if i agree or not. it remains to be seen what we get from this service in the end.


Well that was my take on the main points. i hope people can see where im going at.

 

[HeinorNY]

Isn't it interesting, though, that so many of these roles line up perfectly in both games, even if the names are different?

WoW doens't have roles. It only has classes and optimized builds.

The division and classification of different roles for each class build is fan-made, they are not built in the system. And that's why WoW have so many disparities regarding classes/roles. Some classes are more diversified, as the druid that can cover 3 roles and some less, as the rogue that is mostly dps and cc. Two classes may cover the same role but one will be simply better. If WoW had roles the same way 4E will have, the roles would be evenly divided among the classes to better balance them.

WoW has roles as much as D&D 3rd Edition had them.

Player optimization simply reduced the best class' powers into the most useful builds, depending on the class, thus defining the best roles for the character. The same happened in WoW and it always happened in D&D.

In D&D 4E, roles are really into the design philosophy and they play a much more important part in the gameplay. They ARE part of the system, when you create and when you play it. The game is built on the idea of very defined roles. Designers are already doing the "optimization" process for players, or at least making it easier and clearer.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Where has this (ease of play over creative detail) been hinted. I believe i have seen almost all of the preview and so on and i have never gotten that feeling. Most of what have been shown has been examples of mechanics. And i believe that the mechanics cant be too streamlined. The easier the mechaics the more time can be used on the world they are applied too. ( I really like white-wolf's vampire setting).

The debates on "simulationism" vs. "gamism" get to the heart of this pretty okay, but as a shorthand, think about the approach that 4e is taking towards monsters. Monsters no longer have to be 'fair' according to the rules of the players. In requiring that, 3e added a lot of creative detail to monsters (Ah! It has a +20 in Craft (macreme)!). Now, the complaint was that a lot of this is irrelevant, but it is a creative detail that 4e is eradicating in favor of expedited play. Many are for this. Some loath it. And it does make the game more like a videogame, where there is no 'wasted space' on something creative. All killer no filler, so to speak.

Limits on DM Power
Same as the above. i really havent gotten that feeling. on the contrary. most of the comments i see from people who have seen the books talk about how much easier it is for the DM to do his stuff.

3e's philosophy of 'appropriate magic by level' is often cited in this, and 4e still has that, albeit to a lesser degree. The 4e hint of 'quest cards' is often called out as a point in this direction.

i hope people can see where im going at.

Hey, you're talking to the guy who is making a tabletop RPG based off of Final Fantasy. I'm all for videogame influence in the right context. I thought that D&D could definitely learn from it, and that streamlining the game would be one of the first things it learned. So I do understand the 'criticism,' I just don't see it as a bad thing, in general.

And I do see it misapplied pretty often.

It's not a totally invalid observation, though I do side with Mearls in finding MMO's boring as hell for the most part.

 

[Primal]

Most of the people crying MMO influence have never actually played a MMO, not to mention never played 4e, and basically have no idea what they're talking about.

One popular complaint from these people is that that the defender/striker/leader/controller thing is just like the tank/DPS/healbot thing in MMOs, which conveniently ignores the direct and explicit statements from 4e designers that defenders can do as much damage as anyone and don't use taunts, the obvious fact that leaders do a lot more than heal, and, of course, that nothing like controllers exists in the MMOs they're citing.

Actually, at least Paladins have sort of "aggro" or "taunt" mechanics implemented into their Smite Abilities ('Binding Smite', IIRC). As the Devs have described fighters being able to "stick to their enemies", I'm guessing they will have similar abilities as well.

 

[Remathilis]

Ease of Play Trumps Creative Detail. Videogames don't waste a lot of space on things that aren't directly play-able. Mario doesn't need much of a reason for saving the Princess. He does and it's fun. In WoW, the inability of characters to truly change the world and the static NPCs make it a better environment to game in (more stability), but kind of suck the 'living, breathing world' detail from it. It doesn't matter if it makes sense that Murlocks carry around magic rings that they don't use, but that the player can.

To be fair, this has less to do with "wasting space" and more to do with the limits of artificial intelligence vs. human creativity.

For example: Lets say you have a guard who requires a certain token to gain access to whatever he guards. A video game designer can only program "so many" reactions to the character's actions. It might take into account walking past, talking to, or combat, but it cannot take into sneaking past, having an actual conversation (as opposed to a dialog box or dialog tree), lying, distracting the guard and allowing another to sneak in, waiting for a change in the guards, finding another doorway in, using magic to circumvent the guard or door, etc. Its simply impossible for a computer to account for ALL of those possible ideas (much like how some poorly written D&D modules do not account for PC creativity), unlike a DM, who can either try to account for some of those contingencies or react on the fly to whatever plan the PC(s) come up with.

MMOs have a further problem: As a persistent world that hosts an entire game from levels 1-whatever, it has to provide a consistent game experience for all players (and characters) to experience. Onyx always has to be there for whatever group of characters challenge her, otherwise (if the world was truly non-static) the first group to ever do a quest would gain the spoils and new players would be screwed. This leads to a static, unchanging world by virtue of the fact the world HAS to be the same for my level one character as it was for your level one character or else it would not provide a consistent play experience for the thousands of players. D&D is typically played in small groups and is unaffected by what other groups or players do. So I can model my world based solely off my players actions and change it dynamically to fit their actions without taking into account some new player who will join tomorrow or what your D&D group did last week. (In this regard, regular linear video games do a better job of simulating the idea of PC actions affecting the larger world.)

Because, IMHO, these are problems only exist in video games because of the lack of a human "game keeper" to act as arbiter and storyteller. This will NEVER be a problem in PnP D&D, since the game will always require a dungeon master. Even the Virtual Tabletop will have a human, thinking DM who only must worry about his group of characters (vs. everyone else on the VTT) will do. Because of this, I don't consider this to be a particularly valid criticism of D&D, fourth edition, or any video-game influence on it, for no other reason that even the most slavishly devoted to RAW DM must, by virtue of his position, react in these two parameters to fulfill his job as DM, the rules cannot (nor will not) be able to do this job for him.

 

[IceFractal]

Since quest-cards have been brought up ...

Man, am I sick of people complaining about quest cards. The entire mention of quest cards was just one designer saying "writing down the ongoing quests on cards can be useful." And suddenly D&D has turned into a video-game? Because it uses cards? Has D&D turned into gambling because it uses dice? Has it turned into a calligraphy class because you write things on paper? Has it turned into a buffet because sometimes people bring snacks?

You know what? I use spell cards. And surprisingly, somehow the transition from looking at my spells memorized on lined paper to looking at them on cards has not turned the campaign into a MMORPG. It's not like there's anything "mythic" about writing quests down on some scratch paper.


And to address another point that was mentioned - individual quests. Some people felt that this was the real MMORPG influence, and destroyed the entire concept of a party. Does anyone remember an RPG called "The Mountain Witch"? Very rules lite, storytelling based game, probably about as far from a MMO as you can get? Well it uses the exact same thing. Each player has their own hidden objective (sometimes on *gasp* cards), and that's what generates most of the interesting parts.

 

[IceFractal]

And the rings thing? I find it amusing how, previous to 4E, there was some desire to give rings back the "legendary" status they previously enjoyed, rather than being interchangable with wondrous items. Now, of course, it's a terrible MMO idea.

 

[I'm A Banana]

some stuff

I'm sorry, I don't really think that these arguments are at all relevant for this discussion. It's enough to say that some people feel that these elements reflect videogame elements, and thus make those rules elements unwelcome in some games. How justified people are in feeling that way largely belongs elsewhere, I think.