Why won't you switch?
- Thread starter Kzach
- Start date
Sunderstone
First Post
My main reason for not switching is the flavor of 4E as other posters have stated. Too much deviation from the classic D&D elements (imho). Also some rule changes , particularly magic and Wizards. Each revision also becomes more miniatures heavy as well. While I like using minis for some main battles, I hate the way it slows down a game for every other battle.
Also imho, most broken things in D&D come from poorly-balanced Splatbooks. Be it combat options, classes and PrCs, high-powered races, spells etc. At least we have the option of not having to use it. Then with all these options we get rules bloat as well. So what does WotC do... they say the game is broken (when they are the ones that broke it) and we need to make a new edition because all of us arent having fun.
So instead of releasing a new edition with better (faster?) rules, they want to change everything now, even the stuff alot of us like. AND they will now add Splat into the core because it might sell better to the younger more mainstream crowd.
Then theres the WotC "our way or the highway" steamroller...
1) DDI - now we have to pay a monthly fee for access to additional material, no more free enhancements.
2) Paying for a "preview" of 4E. I still laugh at this blatant money grabber. "Please waste your money and pay us for a peek at what we have in store for you. Even though it all may change before release". Previews like brochures should be free if you are trying to sell folks on something that may or may not be needed at this time.
3) Charging other publishers $5k for an early draft of 4E. They should be giving these out to these companies at no charge with an NDA. It will only help them sell more 4E anyway. And alot of us know some of these independant folks put out really good material, in some cases better material than the in-house WotC staff.
4) The OGL thing.
5) The "No negative comment" policy.
3.5 is fine for us. My group pretty much is Core only anyway even though I allow the environmental books, Planar Handbook and the XPH (which no one has used yet). We even stopped using the PH2 because of the "warcrafty-ness" (and all but one of us play warcraft pretty much daily).
P.S. Grappling might be a tad clunky in 3.5, but it works fine for us.
Also imho, most broken things in D&D come from poorly-balanced Splatbooks. Be it combat options, classes and PrCs, high-powered races, spells etc. At least we have the option of not having to use it. Then with all these options we get rules bloat as well. So what does WotC do... they say the game is broken (when they are the ones that broke it) and we need to make a new edition because all of us arent having fun.
So instead of releasing a new edition with better (faster?) rules, they want to change everything now, even the stuff alot of us like. AND they will now add Splat into the core because it might sell better to the younger more mainstream crowd.
Then theres the WotC "our way or the highway" steamroller...
1) DDI - now we have to pay a monthly fee for access to additional material, no more free enhancements.
2) Paying for a "preview" of 4E. I still laugh at this blatant money grabber. "Please waste your money and pay us for a peek at what we have in store for you. Even though it all may change before release". Previews like brochures should be free if you are trying to sell folks on something that may or may not be needed at this time.
3) Charging other publishers $5k for an early draft of 4E. They should be giving these out to these companies at no charge with an NDA. It will only help them sell more 4E anyway. And alot of us know some of these independant folks put out really good material, in some cases better material than the in-house WotC staff.
4) The OGL thing.
5) The "No negative comment" policy.
3.5 is fine for us. My group pretty much is Core only anyway even though I allow the environmental books, Planar Handbook and the XPH (which no one has used yet). We even stopped using the PH2 because of the "warcrafty-ness" (and all but one of us play warcraft pretty much daily).
P.S. Grappling might be a tad clunky in 3.5, but it works fine for us.
Celebrim
Legend
1) A new edition is a significant investment in money, time, and thought. I've already invested quite abit into the 3rd edition. To move from it, I need an actual compelling reason. I haven't got that so far. I'm simply not going to move just because its the latest new thing. I'm rather surprised at how many people said that they would move to the new edition sight unseen.
2) The new edition seems to heavily emphasize D&D as a board game or tactical wargame. Quite a few people on the board have praised that, but if I wanted to play a skirmish game or a board game I would. I want more depth from the rules set, more 'simulation' if you will, when I'm playing a RPG. If I think they are getting in the way of the players imagination, I'll remove the minatures from the board. With the heavy emphasis on shoving the enemy around the board to line them up in your area of effect, it seems like it will be even harder to abstractly run 4e without minatures than it was in 3e. All I really had to worry about in 3e was conceptual adjecency (to run AoOs).
3) The new edition seems to be going for streamlining the rules set. Rather than fixing problem areas in the rules, the general design paradigm seems to be 'if it causes complexities' do away with it. I want a complex game. There is always a loss in resolution by going simplier. Third edition seemed to me to be a very happy balance between ease of play and preparation, and simulation depth. I know alot of people wanted a 'simplier' game. I wasn't one of them.
4) The new edition is wedding way to much fluff to thier crunch. It's redefining alot of the games historic elements. This is perfectly fine if you are a new player or you just play WotC games 'out of the box', but some of us have been playing for more than 25 years now and we have existing ideas about flavor, setting, and other conventions. Adopting 3e invalidated almost all of my 1e house rules, but it didn't invalidate my flavor. That's not clearly true about 4e.
5) To be honest, Mearls is not my favorite designer in the WotC stable. He's got interesting ideas, but I don't like alot of where he takes them. Specifically, I see 'Mearlsian' design as featuring lots of tokens to keep track of (only Mearls would think 'petrification tokens' are an elegant solution to 'flesh to stone), a balance between spellcasters and non-spellcasters by making all classes spellcasters in everything but name, and having a sweet spot geared toward the introductory part of the game. His stuff looks like it plays great at 1st level - probably better than D&D has ever played at that level. But I'm not so sure that its actually simplier or better than what we already have at higher levels.
6) The game seems to be tamer and safer than what I'm used to playing. Alot of the things that made success difficult are being removed from the game. This is highly conjectural on my part, but I have a strong feeling that the new edition is relying heavily on 'tactical illusionism'. Normally 'illusionism' refers to a DM technique where the players are made to feel that the have free will because they are being presented with a great many choices. However, the DM is secretly dictating that every choice actually leads to the same outcome. For example, the PC's encounter a fork in the road. The two roads look very different and head in very different directions. But not matter which one they take, that road will lead to the 'Lost City of Foorgidor' and the DM will adjust his map accordingly. By 'tactical illusionism', I mean presenting players with a reasonable number of seemingly relevant choices in combat, however none of these choices is actually both critical and difficult to discern. The player feels like they are making crucial choices, because they achieve a great deal of success, but in fact there isn't much difference in outcome between highly skilled players and novices. I can think of several games that are like this, for example, Cosmic Encounters, Bohnanza, and several variaties of dominoes. The game superficially appears deep and is emmensely fun at first, but after playing it a while you realize that for various reasons it really isn't that interesting. I think 'per encounter powers', the removal of effects that tend to steal 'turns' from participants, the standardization of what you can do in a turn (it seems everyone has a move and a attack), and so forth lends itself to this sort of illusionism. Once you realize that in every fight you are basically doing the exact same thing (a feature probably hidden by the rumored rapid advancement), I think its going to wear.
7) Some of thier specific choices seem really wierd. I can somewhat understand doing away with Vancian magic, but replacing it with a highly inflexible and limiting 'per encounter' system when much more flexible options had been devised for 3rd by various vendors seems bizarre. The notion that clerics 'need' to attack every round, and so hense thier successful attacks heal thier allies just irritates me as someone who enjoyed playing clerics in 3rd. Apparantly 1st level PC's will have multiple HD, but we don't seem to expect 1st level NPC's to have multiple hit die. This is just a wierd way of stating that starting PC's are actually (in essense) third level (especially because we can assume that they have other advantages over NPCs). I pretty much know why rings can't be used by characters below 10th (we'll have to get used to refering to 9th as 'low level'), but even if I understand the reasoning taken altogether it just seems wierd and out of place.
8) I don't like the 'take it up to 11' they've been doing with fiends. It appears that 'Orcus' was in fact a quite suitable codename for the project. I know alot of people think this is much of what makes 4e cool, but it just seems lame to me.
9) Probably lots of stuff I forgot. (Like for example, reading through some other people's post I'm reminded how much I HATE the art previews I've seen, and how much they seem to tell me about the age of 4e's target audience.)
2) The new edition seems to heavily emphasize D&D as a board game or tactical wargame. Quite a few people on the board have praised that, but if I wanted to play a skirmish game or a board game I would. I want more depth from the rules set, more 'simulation' if you will, when I'm playing a RPG. If I think they are getting in the way of the players imagination, I'll remove the minatures from the board. With the heavy emphasis on shoving the enemy around the board to line them up in your area of effect, it seems like it will be even harder to abstractly run 4e without minatures than it was in 3e. All I really had to worry about in 3e was conceptual adjecency (to run AoOs).
3) The new edition seems to be going for streamlining the rules set. Rather than fixing problem areas in the rules, the general design paradigm seems to be 'if it causes complexities' do away with it. I want a complex game. There is always a loss in resolution by going simplier. Third edition seemed to me to be a very happy balance between ease of play and preparation, and simulation depth. I know alot of people wanted a 'simplier' game. I wasn't one of them.
4) The new edition is wedding way to much fluff to thier crunch. It's redefining alot of the games historic elements. This is perfectly fine if you are a new player or you just play WotC games 'out of the box', but some of us have been playing for more than 25 years now and we have existing ideas about flavor, setting, and other conventions. Adopting 3e invalidated almost all of my 1e house rules, but it didn't invalidate my flavor. That's not clearly true about 4e.
5) To be honest, Mearls is not my favorite designer in the WotC stable. He's got interesting ideas, but I don't like alot of where he takes them. Specifically, I see 'Mearlsian' design as featuring lots of tokens to keep track of (only Mearls would think 'petrification tokens' are an elegant solution to 'flesh to stone), a balance between spellcasters and non-spellcasters by making all classes spellcasters in everything but name, and having a sweet spot geared toward the introductory part of the game. His stuff looks like it plays great at 1st level - probably better than D&D has ever played at that level. But I'm not so sure that its actually simplier or better than what we already have at higher levels.
6) The game seems to be tamer and safer than what I'm used to playing. Alot of the things that made success difficult are being removed from the game. This is highly conjectural on my part, but I have a strong feeling that the new edition is relying heavily on 'tactical illusionism'. Normally 'illusionism' refers to a DM technique where the players are made to feel that the have free will because they are being presented with a great many choices. However, the DM is secretly dictating that every choice actually leads to the same outcome. For example, the PC's encounter a fork in the road. The two roads look very different and head in very different directions. But not matter which one they take, that road will lead to the 'Lost City of Foorgidor' and the DM will adjust his map accordingly. By 'tactical illusionism', I mean presenting players with a reasonable number of seemingly relevant choices in combat, however none of these choices is actually both critical and difficult to discern. The player feels like they are making crucial choices, because they achieve a great deal of success, but in fact there isn't much difference in outcome between highly skilled players and novices. I can think of several games that are like this, for example, Cosmic Encounters, Bohnanza, and several variaties of dominoes. The game superficially appears deep and is emmensely fun at first, but after playing it a while you realize that for various reasons it really isn't that interesting. I think 'per encounter powers', the removal of effects that tend to steal 'turns' from participants, the standardization of what you can do in a turn (it seems everyone has a move and a attack), and so forth lends itself to this sort of illusionism. Once you realize that in every fight you are basically doing the exact same thing (a feature probably hidden by the rumored rapid advancement), I think its going to wear.
7) Some of thier specific choices seem really wierd. I can somewhat understand doing away with Vancian magic, but replacing it with a highly inflexible and limiting 'per encounter' system when much more flexible options had been devised for 3rd by various vendors seems bizarre. The notion that clerics 'need' to attack every round, and so hense thier successful attacks heal thier allies just irritates me as someone who enjoyed playing clerics in 3rd. Apparantly 1st level PC's will have multiple HD, but we don't seem to expect 1st level NPC's to have multiple hit die. This is just a wierd way of stating that starting PC's are actually (in essense) third level (especially because we can assume that they have other advantages over NPCs). I pretty much know why rings can't be used by characters below 10th (we'll have to get used to refering to 9th as 'low level'), but even if I understand the reasoning taken altogether it just seems wierd and out of place.
8) I don't like the 'take it up to 11' they've been doing with fiends. It appears that 'Orcus' was in fact a quite suitable codename for the project. I know alot of people think this is much of what makes 4e cool, but it just seems lame to me.
9) Probably lots of stuff I forgot. (Like for example, reading through some other people's post I'm reminded how much I HATE the art previews I've seen, and how much they seem to tell me about the age of 4e's target audience.)
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Are you sure?DrakkenKaiser said:
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Celebrim, I pretty much completely agree* with your post (#54) here...you've saved me a bunch of typing.
* - Except you lost me on the very last sentence. The art - at least, what I've seen of it so far - of 4e is a *huge* improvement over 3e. So far, I've bought exactly one 4e-related thing, that being Worlds + Monsters, and I bought it only for the art.
Oh, for what it's worth, I may be one of the few non-switchers to whom money is not a significant reason for the choice not to switch. In fact, I'll probably end up buying at least the PHB and DMG regardless, to plunder ideas out of....
Lanefan
* - Except you lost me on the very last sentence. The art - at least, what I've seen of it so far - of 4e is a *huge* improvement over 3e. So far, I've bought exactly one 4e-related thing, that being Worlds + Monsters, and I bought it only for the art.
Oh, for what it's worth, I may be one of the few non-switchers to whom money is not a significant reason for the choice not to switch. In fact, I'll probably end up buying at least the PHB and DMG regardless, to plunder ideas out of....
Lanefan
DungeonmasterCal
First Post
It has nothing to do with edition hate or fear of change. It's all economics. My players and I talked about it at length, and while I'm sure I'll buy the 3 core books for the sake of owning them, we'll not be switching. We've just invested too much money in 3.x to make the switch attractive to us.
Why I wouldn't switch:
1) IF 4E happens to be just too easy. I like games that are easy to learn but hard to master. It will surely be easy to learn, but if it's also easy to master, or if there is nothing to be mastered, I won't like it. When the rules make sure you won't make a sucker character, they may also not allow you to make a badass character. When the rules make sure your character won't be ineffective in combat, they may also not allow you to be extremely more effective than anyone else in combat. When the rules "protect" the newbie they may also restrain the veteran. This reason will make sense to some people and no sense at all to others because those are just feelings I had. SWSE feels like there is nothing to be mastered. It feels like an easy game to me. If 4E also gives me that feeling, I won't like it.
1) IF 4E happens to be just too easy. I like games that are easy to learn but hard to master. It will surely be easy to learn, but if it's also easy to master, or if there is nothing to be mastered, I won't like it. When the rules make sure you won't make a sucker character, they may also not allow you to make a badass character. When the rules make sure your character won't be ineffective in combat, they may also not allow you to be extremely more effective than anyone else in combat. When the rules "protect" the newbie they may also restrain the veteran. This reason will make sense to some people and no sense at all to others because those are just feelings I had. SWSE feels like there is nothing to be mastered. It feels like an easy game to me. If 4E also gives me that feeling, I won't like it.
Jeff Wilder
First Post
In the interest of full disclosure, I was never planning to switch to 4E completely, because I just have too much invested in 3.5, which I like very much. I have 15 or so 3.5 books on my shelf I haven't even read yet.
However, until recently I was planning to buy the core books so that I could play in 4E games, if either of the other two DMs in my group decided to switch. And until recently I was certainly not a 4e-hater, and actually defended WotC's decision to release a new edition so (relatively) soon after 3.5.
So what changed?
The 1-1-1-1 rule. Honestly, if that's the kind of change that WotC wants, then WotC and I have diverged way too much for me to enjoy 4E, even as a player. This change actually drove me away from DDM, a game I loved, because it's just too fourth-wall-breaking for me to handle.
Again to be fair, I do have to admit that I saw signs of the divergence between my game-wants and WotC's earlier than this ... like other posters, I raised eyebrows at the anti-3.5 tone of WotC's marketing at the GenCon '07 announcement, and as the "3.5 is bad, mmm'kay" marketing continued and intensified, my unease grew.
But all that said, up until I learned of the 1-1-1-1 rule, WotC was gonna get $90 more of my money for the core 4E books. Now they won't. And given that I'm pretty much the center of my group -- in that I rarely miss sessions, and we play every session at my house, using all of my stuff -- if I am not willing to play 4E, most of my current group won't play it, either.
I imagine this is a pattern that will play out over and over and over, throughout the hobby.
But I wish WotC luck, and I wish 4E adopters luck. Personally, I'm experiencing a certain euphoria knowing that soon I'll have a complete rules-set, and won't be spending $300-plus a year on rules supplements for a long time to come.
However, until recently I was planning to buy the core books so that I could play in 4E games, if either of the other two DMs in my group decided to switch. And until recently I was certainly not a 4e-hater, and actually defended WotC's decision to release a new edition so (relatively) soon after 3.5.
So what changed?
The 1-1-1-1 rule. Honestly, if that's the kind of change that WotC wants, then WotC and I have diverged way too much for me to enjoy 4E, even as a player. This change actually drove me away from DDM, a game I loved, because it's just too fourth-wall-breaking for me to handle.
Again to be fair, I do have to admit that I saw signs of the divergence between my game-wants and WotC's earlier than this ... like other posters, I raised eyebrows at the anti-3.5 tone of WotC's marketing at the GenCon '07 announcement, and as the "3.5 is bad, mmm'kay" marketing continued and intensified, my unease grew.
But all that said, up until I learned of the 1-1-1-1 rule, WotC was gonna get $90 more of my money for the core 4E books. Now they won't. And given that I'm pretty much the center of my group -- in that I rarely miss sessions, and we play every session at my house, using all of my stuff -- if I am not willing to play 4E, most of my current group won't play it, either.
I imagine this is a pattern that will play out over and over and over, throughout the hobby.
But I wish WotC luck, and I wish 4E adopters luck. Personally, I'm experiencing a certain euphoria knowing that soon I'll have a complete rules-set, and won't be spending $300-plus a year on rules supplements for a long time to come.
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Brewhammer
Explorer
Aus_Snow said:
That's my chief gripe as well.
I'm also not thrilled about the MMO feel of the new group dynamic. I read one blurb recently talking about defenders and controllers and I didn't know if I was reading about 4ED or City of Heroes.
Not wild about the Tiefling or 'Dragonborn' either.
I'm also not at all on board with the way the FR campaign setting is being forced through a meat grinder. You could turn Eberron into Toon Town for all I care, but I don't like the Realms getting "rebooted."
But yeah the big one is that I didn't see a need for 4th Ed. And I've got about a bajillion 3 & 3.5 Ed. sourcebooks and supplements sitting on a shelf telling me the same thing.
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