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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 3924567" data-attributes="member: 54877">Actually, my concern is two-fold, and different than the what you are discussing:A. I believe that there are artistic trade-offs to be made with engineering, that are acceptable.  I'm not talking about this building is 100% engineered well (whatever that means) and this other building is 100% engineered well, so we'll pick the one that has prettier paint.  That's just style and substance.  I'm not even talking about the second building is 90% engineered well, but since we only needed 70%, that's good enough, and we'll go with the one with nice architectual elements.  That's trade a little substance for style.  Rather, I'm saying that sometimes the engineers get so bogged down in the details, they miss the macro picture on the substance.  The architect comes in and says, "Hey, the building you have rated at 100% is actually about 85%, because you didn't take varying traffic flow into account.  The second building is actually about 90% when you consider traffic. We could do a traffic analysis and delay the building another 24 months, but my gut tells me I'm right."  And the engineer with a smidgeon of common sense comes back and says, "Well, you'll exceed the minimum you needed in my area of expertise no matter which one you pick, so knock yourself out."  Other engineers might be so enamored of getting the best in his area that he can get, he'll say the heck with other concerns.So it's not just making occasional exceptions for the sake of fun.  It's saying that sometimes the best engineered solution is not the best solution.  That is, there is an "art" to design itself, same as GMing is not pure science. My impression of 4E thus far is that the team as a whole is enamored with engineering the same way that some of the Soviets got enamored with concrete--it produced buildings that stayed up, but not necessarily ones where the plumbing worked--never mind the aesthetic judgements.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  (And just because Frank Lloyd Wright can do some amazing things with concrete, it does not follow that it's a good choice for Joe Architect when he builds your house.)B. Related, I'm a bit concerned that the team is falling into the habit of thinking that pretty paint on the building will be enough to satisfy the "art" side.  It's not really the art I care about.  I want an "elegant" design, and it takes engineers a long time to get to "elegant".  They eventually get there.  I just don't want to live in a concrete house whilst they do.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> Which is all ironic, because I'm usuallly pretty much a "form follows function; style is irrelevant except what you bring to the table yourself" kind of guy.  But I'm extreme that way.  The thought that the whole design team might be more extreme than me in that regards makes me kind of nervous.And in complete fairness, I'm not absolutely convinced this is the case.  This is simply a nagging concern that the limited information thus far has produced.</blockquote>

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