When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[Jeff Wilder]

To the OP. well Jeff, did you find anything helpful in all the fire and smoke.

Given that I've come to think that maybe my original question -- which I'm still not sure I expressed well (and might be inexpressible) -- is unanswerable, I'd say that, strictly speaking, "helpful" didn't happen. "Interesting" and "insightful" did, though, and those are at least as good, me being me.

Although I don't have a philosophical problem, personally, with edition war threads, I'm disappointed that this thread devolved into one -- albeit for the most part a remarkably polite one! -- which is why I stopped posting. Although I don't like 4E, I'm really not interested in slamming it (or defending 3E), and I honestly don't think the particular edition has anything to do with the question I was trying to ask. But, again, I'm not sure I ever successfully asked the question.

4e is the RPGA edition. [...] Jeff, were you fired as a fan? Nope, but, I'll bet dollars to donuts you weren't an RPGA member.

I was (past tense) a member, but only because of the free stuff that was available just for reporting sessions of home-game play. I tried Organized Play on two or three separate occasions over the last eight years and found it disastrously "not my thing" each time. The difference in playstyle, between what I enjoy and what I saw (and was told) to be necessary for OP success, was huge.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Until the classes are balanced against each other so that each class can hold its own against a mixed group then you have not reached a state of balance and are relying on the balance of functions of the group at each level, which still causes specific classes/roles within the party to work better that others at certain levels. You have just taken wizards overpowered at higher levels to make them overpowered in the odd levels* and underpowered in the even ones to make it more spread out.

Actually I think this is the type of balance 4E was not aimed at.

I think an all Defender (or even all Fighter) party will work, but I suppose nobody tried it.

The concept of roles both for monsters and classes seems to be an intentional element to say: "This is what makes them different. Consider this when building encounters or forming a party".

The latest Arena/Gladiator articles have some interesting content regarding duels and the strengths of the different class rolls against monster roles.

The goal of class balance in 4E is that no class overshadows another class. You don't see the Wizard wreaking havoc and the Fighter feeling useless.

It doesn't matter for balance that an All-Rogue or All-Striker party will have different strength and weaknesses then a mixed party or an All-Leader or All-Warlord party.

Balance is not the same as homogenity.

Earlier editions created a "balance over the level range" model - low level spellcasters are weaker then low level fighters, but excel over them at higher levels. But this balance was deemed "flawed" since groups didn't always cover all levels, and even if they did, their weakness and strength lasted to long. The "imbalance" between roles just means that the Defender will shine more in the first encounter this game session, and the Controller more in the second. The time you "suck" or the time you "rule" are shorter.

 

[jdrakeh]

So, because Mouseferatu is espousing an opinion you don't like and giving good news that you'd rather not believe he's being deceitful?

I think it has less to do with Ari than it does with the strong belief held by some that 4e is bad in all ways and, therefore, anybody who says anything positive about it at all is either lying and/or misinformed. For example. . .

Staunch haters were calling Mike Mearls a liar when he posted the sales figure comparison between 4e and 3e some months back simply because they refused to believe that 4e was selling well.

And, of course, some haters have accused ENWorld, Paizo, RPGNet, and other independently owned RPG sites of being in WotC's hip pocket because they aren't actively engaging in a campaign to smite 4e from store shelves.

Basically, the entire hobby is currently operating in a climate of paranoid fear and prejudice. This will largely come to pass in the near future, but some people who can't let a grudge go will form their own, insulated, communities of frothing hate.

We're basically experiencing the post-3x release fallout all over again. We're simply more exposed to it this time around, because what was then an entertainment luxury (the Internet) is now a common household fixture.

 

[Windjammer]

Just as I had feared.
I guess we share a pet.

I strongly disagree with you guys. Something the designers officially confessed cannot possibly termed a "conspiracy theory".

Wolfgang Baur: Why does Wizards use the Delve format for adventures designed for home consumption? Isn’t it more of a
tournament format?
Andy Collins: Here’s the question I’m going to answer. It’s my best guess for what you’re trying to learn: “Why does Wizards use the same encounter layout in published adventures as in Delve-style events?” The encounter layout aims to make it as easy as possible for a DM to see all the relevant information he needs to run the encounter—to minimize page flipping and book references, for example. Delve-style events at conventions led the way in identifying this need. DMs running such events often have no time to prep before rolling initiative. We saw that all DMs could use a more helpful format for encounter presentation. Few among us have as much time to prep for games as we used to, so making the game easier to run is helpful no matterwhere you’re playing.
James Wyatt: This format was designed to give you (the DM) everything you need to run an encounter on a single spread of two pages, and that’s just as helpful in a home game as it is at a convention. (The name “Delve format” does come from the fact that it’s an outgrowth of using it for our Dungeon Delve at GenCon—but the goal was to get it on a single page that would be on the DM’s clipboard.)
You’ve got enough going on behind the screen without having to shuffle back and forth between a map on one page, room descriptions on another page, and stat blocks on still another page — which is what our previous format made you do.
Wolfgang BaurWell, it’s a question from the readership, and I admit it’s a little opaque. I think the real question behind- the-question might be more like “Why do you use the Delve format/layout when I don’t like it?”.
But moving swiftly on...

Another RPGA regular:

Looking over Races and Classes, I'm not convinced that D&D 4th Edition is going to be a poor game. It looks like some reasonably smart people, who care about the gaming experience, have been working hard to release...
...a game that I'm not interested in picking up and playing.

To explain why, I have to give a little backstory.

Years ago, during the young days of AD&D 2nd Ed., I helped the RPGA run modules at conventions, and the reality of the situation was that the directors and probably the module writers were expecting the DMs to come to the table either not having read the adventure beforehand, or --at best-- cursorily glancing through it fifteen minutes earlier that day.

That reality imposed drastic restrictions on the complexity of adventure plotlines and the kind of encounters DMs could handle. Every RPGA module I ran had a very straightforward, "railroady" if you like, plot, with typical and unsurprising encounters.

And it is those conditions for which WotC designed the Delve format. They had a cadre of volunteer DM's running pre-generated PC's through a dungeon at Gen Con, and they needed an efficient way to deliver the right kind of information, clearly and quickly.

When I decide to run players through a pre-written adventure in my home campaign, I expect to sit down, read through things ahead of time, and take notes; I try to anticipate my players' tactics ("Going through the front door of a Hill Giant lair? Oh, please. They're far more likely to try to cut through the thatched roof.") and look up relevant rules.

In short, I don't need a Delve format.
The crunch changes in 4th Ed. looks to me as if they came from the same perspective that gave us the Delve format: making it easier to run and play the kind of D&D you find at conventions.

Everything I've seen of Fourth Edition suggests that the game that WotC wants to sell me is a tactical combat game, with some role-playing to make it cool. Like Warhammer, or Chainmail, or DragonDice. And I already own DragonDice.

It may be a perfectly good game, but it's not one I'm interested in buying.

To summarize:

"Delve-style events at conventions led the way in identifying this need. DMs running such events often have no time to prep before rolling initiative." (Andy Collins)

"(RPGA) Module writers were expecting the DMs to come to the table either not having read the adventure beforehand, or --at best-- cursorily glancing through it fifteen minutes earlier that day. That reality imposed drastic restrictions on the complexity of adventure plotlines and the kind of encounters DMs could handle. Every RPGA module I ran had a very straightforward, "railroady" if you like, plot, with typical and unsurprising encounters."(Chris Mortika)

Question: How do you deal with customer feedback.

Mike Mearls: So-so. We get and look out for a lot of feedback, but it's not that simple. I mean, you guys say one thing and do another. Stephen Rodney-McFarland has a good story about that back from the times when he organised RPGA. Lots of people complained RPGA only had hack and slash modules. So the RPGA put up roleplay heavy modules. Guess what: no one downloaded them. So the RPGA switched back to where it had been.

No wonder. If I only got 15 minutes to prepare a module, I'd hardly run something like Standing Stone.

Linear module design comes from the delve format WotC used for convention play. They then enforced convention standards to home groups. WotC effectively wants to cater for DMs with 15 minutes of prep time, meaning, the module cannot be written in such a way that, upon glancing it through quickly before you run it, you don`t get all the potential connections between core events in the game. (I can attest that you can run the H-series modules in exactly that way.) As a result, 4E modules almost exclusively are zips from one place to the next, where "place" is a euphemism for a tactical combat encounter.

I should say, however, that I do not think this approach to module design is inherent in the ruleset to a degree that you can't go around it. But the bias towards convention-friendly play is undeniably there, for better or worse.

 

[Samuel Leming]

Basically, the entire hobby is currently operating in a climate of paranoid fear and prejudice. This will largely come to pass in the near future, but some people who can't let a grudge go will form their own, insulated, communities of frothing hate.

We're basically experiencing the post-3x release fallout all over again. We're simply more exposed to it this time around, because what was then an entertainment luxury (the Internet) is now a common household fixture.

There will always be loudmouths, but I don't think there are really that many of them. Not enough that we can really say the entire hobby is infected with this fear and prejudice.

From what I see, the 4e transition is not proceeding at all like 3e did. By this time back then most of the groups I knew that had tried 3e had switched over. With 4e people I know are giving it a spin but I'm not seeing very many people switching over(except on a couple of message boards). It really doesn't seem to be any real emotional thing to it. Just kind of a 'feh' attitude.

Sam

 

[jdrakeh]

From what I see, the 4e transition is not proceeding at all like 3e did. By this time back then most of the groups I knew that had tried 3e had switched over. With 4e people I know are giving it a spin but I'm not seeing very many people switching over(except on a couple of message boards). It really doesn't seem to be any real emotional thing to it. Just kind of a 'feh' attitude.

Sam

I think you might be viewing the past through rose-colored glasses I am in the unique position of having once been as rabidly anti-3e as some people here are currently rabidly anti-4e.

I can say with certainty that myself and other, like-minded, folks were still actively trolling ENWorld with madness similar to what people are now posting here about 4e well over a year after the game (3e) had been released.

Indeed, even after the release of 3.5, there were still small groups of posters here who were very vocal about how much 3x sucked and posted almost exclusively to remind others of that (although by that time, I wasn't one of them).

Those folks claiming that there wasn't such a huge schizm back when 3x was released, really do need to go back and pour over the old ENWorld and RPGNet forum archives. Therein, ye shall find nigh-legendary asshattery!

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Those folks claiming that there wasn't such a huge schizm back when 3x was released, really do need to go back and pour over the old ENWorld and RPGNet forum archives. Therein, ye shall find nigh-legendary asshattery!

My hat is 3e is nigh-legendary! Edit: Note this is not my actual position...

This is a really interesting thread, and I tend to agree with Kamikaze Midget (although I'd like to add something):

There is no such thing as "the D&D audience", and if there was, it wouldn't know what it wanted.

D&D players cover such a wide range of playstyles, and D&D DM's cover another wide range, that whatever WotC would have come out with would have made a subset of those people very angry and upset that they weren't being catered for.

I'm fortunate that I'm one of the ones that 4e does cater for - but it could easily have gone a totally different way, say, if they'd included a dice pool system a la White Wolf.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Can we please stop talking about Ari and go back to Edition Wars?

For my milage: WotC probably formed 4e based on customer feedback, but that doesn't mean that the release went exactly as planned. It's quite possible that the D&D audience has no idea what it really wants

I think I agree with that. I didn't know I would like hit points until I tried them for a while with 3E, for example. (I started RPGs with Shadowrun, which uses a "realistic" wound system and a death spiral)

Until I tried the Iron Heroes villain classes, I didn't know that what I wanted and needed was simpler stat blocks for monsters and NPCs. I used to think I liked this simulation stuff (of course, I didn't know of this term then.)

But maybe I am special. There was a time I didn't believe I'd like Pizza, either... *ahem*

 

[Psion]

I strongly disagree with you guys. Something the designers officially confessed cannot possibly termed a "conspiracy theory".

1) Who called it a "conspiracy theory"? I, in the post I linked, was expressing my reasons to fear the shape of 4e. And in retrospect, it seems I was right.
2) The designer confessed it, but you disagree with us? So, you disagree with the designer?

 

[Psion]

I think it has less to do with Ari than it does with the strong belief held by some that 4e is bad in all ways and, therefore, anybody who says anything positive about it at all is either lying and/or misinformed.

You know, considering that you have a history of assuming people are "trolls", I don't think you are in the best position to judge others for making assumptions about people's goals and motivations.