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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8965920" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Both of these arguments are rather poor and don't actually reflect what happened though.It isn't balance people dislike. People actually really do dislike imbalance. It's why there were so many hand-wringing threads about whether silvery barbs was OP or not. You don't get threads like that if balance is pointless. Trying to pursue &quot;fun&quot; in and of itself is like trying to pursue &quot;happiness&quot; in and of itself. It sounds nice, but in practice it doesn't work. Actually achieving happiness generally requires that you dedicate yourself to some particular thing, because you really want to and because you enjoy doing it, and then almost magically you find that you become happy in the doing. Fun works in very similar ways (being, in some sense, a form of happiness.) People are just so used to having to force things into being what they want, they don't realize there are other approaches.What people mistake for &quot;balance&quot; is stuff like enforced uniformity and denied or frustrated contextualization. But neither uniformity in general nor restrictions on how context-specific you are allowed to be are bad in the abstract either. Moving to the unified d20 mechanic was one of the best design decisions of WotC D&amp;D, making the game substantially easier to learn without taking away any of the interesting complexity of actual play. (I'm sure some old-school fans will quibble over that claim though.) Likewise, everyone recognizes that games are necessarily limited and require some degree of abstraction in order to function. No one is expecting the player to physically swing a sword in order to make an attack roll. But abstraction necessarily means a bit of lossy compression; you have to accept that some details won't be considered relevant even if you think they should be supremely relevant.So the problem is, and has always been, people not getting the right mix of uniformity and diversity, of details and abstractions, of &quot;balance&quot; and variability. And there are several ways in which 5e simply drops the ball on this front. It just covers that up with &quot;well it's the DM's job to figure literally everything out, so we're totally cool.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8965920, member: 6790260"] Both of these arguments are rather poor and don't actually reflect what happened though. It isn't balance people dislike. People actually really do dislike [I]imbalance.[/I] It's why there were so many hand-wringing threads about whether [I]silvery barbs[/I] was OP or not. You don't get threads like that if balance is pointless. Trying to pursue "fun" in and of itself is like trying to pursue "happiness" in and of itself. It sounds nice, but in practice [I]it doesn't work.[/I] Actually achieving happiness generally requires that you dedicate yourself to some particular [I]thing,[/I] because you really [I]want[/I] to and because you enjoy doing it, and then almost magically you find that you become happy in the doing. Fun works in very similar ways (being, in some sense, a form of happiness.) People are just so used to having to force things into being what they want, they don't realize there are other approaches. What people mistake for "balance" is stuff like enforced uniformity and denied or frustrated contextualization. But neither uniformity in general nor restrictions on how context-specific you are allowed to be are bad in the abstract either. Moving to the unified d20 mechanic was one of the best design decisions of WotC D&D, making the game substantially easier to [I]learn[/I] without taking away any of the interesting complexity of actual [I]play.[/I] (I'm sure some old-school fans will quibble over that claim though.) Likewise, everyone recognizes that games are necessarily limited and require some degree of abstraction in order to function. No one is expecting the player to physically swing a sword in order to make an attack roll. But abstraction necessarily means a bit of lossy compression; you have to accept that some details won't be considered relevant even if [I]you[/I] think they should be supremely relevant. So the problem is, and has always been, people not getting the right [I]mix[/I] of uniformity and diversity, of details and abstractions, of "balance" and variability. And there are several ways in which 5e simply drops the ball on this front. It just covers that up with "well it's the DM's job to figure [I]literally everything[/I] out, so we're totally cool." [/QUOTE]

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