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Felorn
2012-05-02, 02:39 AM
All I want out of this thread is to see why many people hated 4e so much. Please no rude or snappy comments, only well thought out ones. I've noticed most of the hate comes from 3.5 players, but a couple older gamers, mainly grogs that hate everything newer than 1e, too. I've heard the oh so common its "WoW on paper", "its a video game with dice", and the worst of the worst, "there is no roleplaying". I would rather hear significant reason, not, its not D&D. Please no flames I'm just wanting to know legit reasons why people hate it.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-02, 02:49 AM
{{scrubbed}}

Felorn
2012-05-02, 02:51 AM
All I want out of this thread is to see why many people hated 4e so much. Please no rude or snappy comments, only well thought out ones. I've noticed most of the hate comes from 3.5 players, but a couple older gamers, mainly grogs that hate everything newer than 1e, too. I've heard the oh so common its "WoW on paper", "its a video game with dice", and the worst of the worst, "there is no roleplaying". I would rather hear significant reason, not, its not D&D. Please no flames I'm just wanting to know legit reasons why people hate it.

Boci
2012-05-02, 02:58 AM
All classes based off the same formula is a big one for me. All classes are also the same tier, thus reducing the versatility of the game system. And their is always the problem of martial character's with daily powers.

Fatebreaker
2012-05-02, 02:59 AM
All I want out of this thread is to see why many people hated 4e so much. Please no rude or snappy comments, only well thought out ones. I've noticed most of the hate comes from 3.5 players, but a couple older gamers, mainly grogs that hate everything newer than 1e, too. I've heard the oh so common its "WoW on paper", "its a video game with dice", and the worst of the worst, "there is no roleplaying". I would rather hear significant reason, not, its not D&D. Please no flames I'm just wanting to know legit reasons why people hate it.

I think the problem you'll run into is that much of the dislike for 4e stems from subjectivity. It's a good game, solid rules, clear goals, balanced classes, that sort of thing. It's got some mechanical shortfalls, and there are things it doesn't cover, but a lot of those are things it doesn't want to deal with in the first place. It makes changes from previous editions, and if one of those changes was your baby, then you're going to be mad no matter how good a game 4e is, because it doesn't have the thing that mattered to you.

It's a tactical skirmish simulator over which you can add roleplaying elements to the degree that suits your game. If you like that, you're good. If you don't, you're not.

Or, like SD said:


This is inviting a big flamewar thats not worth the effort. Run little man. Run.

Good luck, Felorn. I hope you get your answer. I would leave you with one question:

Why does it matter?

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-02, 03:51 AM
All I want out of this thread is to see why many people hated 4e so much. Please no rude or snappy comments, only well thought out ones. I've noticed most of the hate comes from 3.5 players, but a couple older gamers, mainly grogs that hate everything newer than 1e, too. I've heard the oh so common its "WoW on paper", "its a video game with dice", and the worst of the worst, "there is no roleplaying". I would rather hear significant reason, not, its not D&D. Please no flames I'm just wanting to know legit reasons why people hate it.

Please note I (for the most part) don't agree with these complaints, so 4E defenders please keep this in mind before the flames come in. But here are the most common (constructive) complaints I've seen about it:

1. Every class uses the same subsystem for its powers, the AEDU system (At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility). There are a few tiny variations (like the Wizard's spellbook) but these aren't enough: Compared to 3.5 where there were all sorts of different ways a classes abilities could work like Vancian, Maneuvers, Incarnum, etc. Playing a Warlock felt very different from playing a Warblade in 3.5, and this has been lost in 4E.

2. The multiclassing system, even with the addition of hybrids, is extremely restrictive compared to what 3.5 allowed. One thing you could do in 3.5 is have a character who transforms over time: A barbarian who has a sudden divine revelation and becomes a cleric, a Barbarian 5 / Cleric 15. 4E's multiclassing/hybridizing doesn't really support this, it has to be kept purely in your character's fluff. The reinforcement of a character through game mechanics is a powerful thing, and this is part of a class system's purpose.

3. 4E has a "padded sumo" effect. Especially at higher levels, it takes tons of rounds to take anything down because hit points are so high relative to damage.

4. Classes have few truly unique powers, with many powers simply being slight edits of one another. This, combined with problem 1, is the reason behind the "samey" feel of 4E games.

5. Skill challenges. Instead of solving a noncombat encounter by, you know, being creative and having fun, you just roll X times and see what numbers came up.

6. Many people don't like the idea of magic items being common things that every character is decorated head to toe with (The "Christmas Tree" effect). 4E exacerbated this problem by making magic items more necessary for characters to function properly than ever.

7. While 3.5 relied on distances somewhat, 4E's new tactical combat made playing without a battle map next to impossible. Many attributed this to WotC just trying to sell more miniatures.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-02, 04:00 AM
Wow. I find it so eerie that every few months, there's a thread that says the exact same things in its OP and which always devolves into edition wars.

Some people hate 4e. Some people hate 3e. Some people hate PF. Some people hate all three. Some people don't hate any of those. Some people hate some things of each.

5e is just around the corner and 4e is about to be discontinued.

Let. It. Go.

Grinner
2012-05-02, 04:00 AM
It was a huge change from previous editions, which had tended toward increasing complexity, but the same basic experience.

As for the so-called lack of roleplaying, I'd attribute that to the genericalness of each class's abilities and the lack of fluff in the core books. Really, D&D has never enforced RP. It's always been about killing monsters and taking their stuff. :smallwink:

{{scrubbed}}

Edit:

Wow. I find it so eerie that every few months, there's a thread that says the exact same things in its OP and which always devolves into edition wars.

Some people hate 4e. Some people hate 3e. Some people hate PF. Some people hate all three. Some people don't hate any of those. Some people hate some things of each.

5e is just around the corner and 4e is about to be discontinued.

Let. It. Go.

Consider the possibility that he wasn't around for the last thread. :smallconfused:

Mordokai
2012-05-02, 04:07 AM
I got this... I don't know where, anymore. But I liked it enough to save a copy on my hard drive, so I can now do some copy/pasta for you.


Criticism
Some of the criticisms leveled at 4e include:
Power-based combat is too similar to MMOGs, in particular World of Warcraft.
The powers themselves are very cookie-cutter in nature, as most rely on a number of stock effects (such as "Slide", "Slow", "Stun", "Spend a healing surge", etc.)
The fluff descriptions of the powers are incomprehensible. The world-fluff is also generally silly - even if some argue it is actually unnecessary to pay attention to the core fluff at all it still feels like a bad writer's fantasy heartbreaker. Examples also include the infamous Bear Lore check which requires an unusually high Nature Knowledge check to know that bears use their claws to attack. Give that one a second to settle before you continue reading.
Characters are too durable, reducing the fear of death and TPK. On the other hand, a series of playtest combats carried out by Touhoufags show that a party that knows what it's doing and uses group tactics well will cut through encounters several levels higher than themselves like a hot knife through butter.
Lack of content and rules to cover various situations are rationalized with "OH YOU JUST LET THE DM COME UP WITH AN AD-HOC SOLUTION AND WING IT." This wasn't any less viable in any other edition, but now this is somehow played off as a strength.
The skill challenge system, which was supposed to cover non-combat action sequences, was completely broken as-published, to the point that difficulties were inverted (in many cases it was impossible to accrue four successes before two failures on a complexity 1 skill challenge, while it was often nearly impossible to fail a high-complexity skill challenge), and the published examples of negotiation made Fighters completely useless in skill challenges because their lone class social skill, Intimidate, generated automatic failures (which was completely against the intention of the skill challenge rules). The mechanics have since been errataed into a more usable form.
Some feel that the decrease in rules, while welcomed, didn't go far enough. Some people wanted to open up the DMG and see "BULL**** IT." Many people want to pay hundreds of dollars for books with no content. Afterall, that's what "streamlined" is, right?
Overreliance on unimaginative 'adjectivenoun' naming conventions, for instance: Darkleaf Armor: Darkleaves from the gravetrees of the Shadowfell give this armor its protective properties..
Lack of non-combat content such as crafting. This criticism partially refers to the reduced skill list and partially to the fact that the greatest focus of the game are obviously the Powers which are largely combat-oriented. The "Adventurer's Vault" item supplement that came out adds to the strength of this argument; it reads like a WoW item encyclopedia.
Fragile system: play like the devs or break the game.
The Mongol dilemma--soldiers on horseback can defeat a number of the game's monsters by virtue of the monsters not having decent ranged attacks.
Giving a flying monster a bow breaks the game.
Blatantly obvious RNG-sodomizing powers that were somehow overlooked.
Various broken abilities that demonstrate a lack of playtesting and/or willful disregard for legitimate concerns (Orbizard, Demigod epic destiny, rangers soloing Orcus, and so on).
Complete lack of internal consistency: assuming a dynamic world in which NPCs are cognizant (and thus not static "mobiles" to kill for XP and loot) causes the game to break down.
The entire economic system is a cluster**** of not-sense-making.
Vastly dissociated mechanics: how do I describe what's going on in a way that makes sense? Too many powers cripple the ability to narrate a cohesive scene outside of a completely metagame interpretation.
Daily powers for non-casters. "I can only swing for 6[W] + Strength damage once per day!"
Entire armies of high-level minions die in a sandstorm.
Healing surges; cartoon-character healing.
A lack of diversity and interesting classes caused by the standardization of all powers and classes.
Classes based on mechanics rather than fluff + mechanics. (Stat combos are not classes. "Does damage" is not a class concept.)
Shoehorning the game into hackan 'n' slashan mode.
Use of Dungeons and Dragons terms in 4e abilities that don't make any sense. Examples: The 'Sleep' spell doesn't put anything to sleep in 4e terms, 'Disintegrate' doesn't disintegrate, spells and rituals named after characters, even though there is no way to research spells and rituals, among others.
Elimination of iconic spells, class features, and whole classes in the name of balance--try playing an enchanter, summoner, or necromancer in Core 4e. Try playing a druid in Core 4e. Or a ranger with an animal companion. Or a witch with a familiar. Or a bard. Or a monk. (EDIT: Actually most of these classes have been deferred to other books [sold separately] rather than outright eliminated. Good news is they're all considered 'core,' as though the term still had meaning.)
Exception-based design wanking, plus **** like the four different "evil eye" variations. Includes ability interaction and "How the hell do I adjudicate this?"
Usage of page 42 to replace actual rules.
HP bloat resulting in grinding and "padded sumo" at higher levels
Solo encounters suck--they're boring grindfests.
Ritual system is retarded.
Instead of eliminating the 15-minute workday, the devs put everyone on the 15-minute workday schedule.
Swathes of poorly-written and vaguely-worded mechanics.
Everyone playing the same class is generally superior to everyone playing a different class.

Note, if memory serves, this came out rather soon after 4E was released, so some of those complaints are bound to be already rectified, at least to a degree. I haven't been playing 4E in forever, so I can't say how much excatly.

For the record, I happen to like 4E. It's a solid system for what it does, but I still think a vast majority of those complaints are valid.

PersonMan
2012-05-02, 04:07 AM
I've never truly hated it, but I didn't like how everything was changed. The reason I don't really like it that it took something (a massive degree of versatility via multiclassing, hordes of classes and PrCs and great mechanical diversity) away to gain greater balance, which for me has never really been a problem. I've tried 4E and combat doesn't seem to be all that interesting (although, to be honest, I was using a premade character, which was probably part of the problem). I used my daily and encounter powers and the fight wasn't over, so I was reduced to 'do something really minor' early in the battle...at level 10.

These are problems that, for me, take away any incentive to further learn the system.

Knaight
2012-05-02, 04:08 AM
I had a long post, but the forum ate it. So, to briefly recap: I'd consider 4e a messy system, generally lacking in mechanical elegance, that suffers from its connection to the rest of D&D, which shares these flaws. For instance, there is an overabundance of different scales (attribute ranges, skill ranges, defense ranges, so on and so forth. These could be on a single unified scale, but they aren't, and while it's better than with earlier editions it's still sloppy). In addition to this, 4e was generally streamlined poorly, and tended to lose more than it gained: the loss of diagonal movement rates was a tiny gain in streamlining, where an abstract system would have easily worked. 4e also implemented new features poorly, such as skill challenges that initially got easier when they were supposed to get more difficult due to how the math played out, and the whole At Will/Encounter/Daily system, which strongly forces a certain in game schedule, despite At Will/Per Scene/Per Chapter being an obvious option that bypasses this. It also continues D&Ds legacy of failing horribly outside of combat situations, and with the removal of most non-combat spells and the questionable implementation of rituals that includes the one thing early D&D sort of managed well.

That's not to say that it is some sort of horrible system, merely that it clashes with what I value in a system. I value mechanical elegance, it lacks it. I value good non-combat mechanics, it lacks them. I consider crunch something to be avoided if possible, it has too much of it. Looked at from this perspective, it's a mess. However, that leaves a great many games that are far worse, with 4e having a comfortable distance from the bottom of the barrel (granted, part of that is RaHoWa and FATAL seeing that the barrel is very, very deep).

The short version: 4e suffers because it is D&D, and D&D has had a lot of flaws from the beginning. The excuses for said flaws (e.g. the absence of any material to work with) have long since dried up.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-02, 04:09 AM
Hey, now. Don't be an ass. He's just asking an honest question.


I didn't mean to be. These things just devolve into war flames so much that it realy IS not worth it.

tcrudisi
2012-05-02, 04:10 AM
I'm going to go a different tact. I started with 1e, went to 2e, then 3e, then 4e. Each time, I swore I wouldn't change. Then ... I tried it. And after a while, it grew on me. Now I can't go back to any of the older editions. They just don't appeal to me any more, for various reasons. Each edition has improved as far as I'm concerned.

I have a lot of friends that still play 3.5/Pathfinder. Some play 4e as well. The ones that only play 3.5 rarely give me a valid reason for disliking 4e. They'll throw the tropes out there that it's "like WoW" or "not enough roleplaying." In that regards, I think it's a failure of the DM and not the system. Heck, you can play GURPS as all combat, too. That's not a failure of the system if you do it that way, it's a failure of the DM.

So, to that end, my answer to your question is this:

People hate 4e because it's fashionable to do so. There are still old-timers who love AD&D and won't change. If the internet had been around back then, they would have been far more vocal about it. It just so happens that 3.x coincided with the internet boom. So when 4e came out, when some people didn't switch, it became a thing. It became known. Suddenly, it's easier for people to stay with 3.5 just because there's an easier way of contacting other like-minded individuals.

I believe you will see the same thing happen when 5e comes out. A large portion of the players will stick to 4e and complain about 4e. The 3.5 players will probably also complain about 5e. Then you'll hear the same things, only about 5e. "There's no roleplaying" or "it feels too much like a 3.5 vs. 4e thread war." The usual complaints that you hear now. There's no pleasing everyone and with the advent of the internet, everyone can make their opinions well-known and still find like-minded individuals who share those views.

If you take away the internet, I bet there's only a small fraction of 3.5 players left. It would be too hard for them to find games and fellow players. Back in the past, you had to move to the new system if you wanted to keep playing. The internet made it to where that was no longer necessary.

So I don't think that it's anything with the system, per se. I think it's mass media.

Anyway, if you'd like to discuss this further, feel free to PM me. I won't check this thread again for the sake of my sanity. It /will/ devolve into a 3.5 vs 4e thing and it will just make me want to pull out my hair. Good luck.

Cleavon
2012-05-02, 04:23 AM
Please note I (for the most part) don't agree with these complaints, so 4E defenders please keep this in mind before the flames come in. But here are the most common (constructive) complaints I've seen about it:

1. Every class uses the same subsystem for its powers, the AEDU system (At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility). There are a few tiny variations (like the Wizard's spellbook) but these aren't enough: Compared to 3.5 where there were all sorts of different ways a classes abilities could work like Vancian, Maneuvers, Incarnum, etc. Playing a Warlock felt very different from playing a Warblade in 3.5, and this has been lost in 4E.

2. The multiclassing system, even with the addition of hybrids, is extremely restrictive compared to what 3.5 allowed. One thing you could do in 3.5 is have a character who transforms over time: A barbarian who has a sudden divine revelation and becomes a cleric, a Barbarian 5 / Cleric 15. 4E's multiclassing/hybridizing doesn't really support this, it has to be kept purely in your character's fluff. The reinforcement of a character through game mechanics is a powerful thing, and this is part of a class system's purpose.

3. 4E has a "padded sumo" effect. Especially at higher levels, it takes tons of rounds to take anything down because hit points are so high relative to damage.

4. Classes have few truly unique powers, with many powers simply being slight edits of one another. This, combined with problem 1, is the reason behind the "samey" feel of 4E games.

5. Skill challenges. Instead of solving a noncombat encounter by, you know, being creative and having fun, you just roll X times and see what numbers came up.

6. Many people don't like the idea of magic items being common things that every character is decorated head to toe with (The "Christmas Tree" effect). 4E exacerbated this problem by making magic items more necessary for characters to function properly than ever.

7. While 3.5 relied on distances somewhat, 4E's new tactical combat made playing without a battle map next to impossible. Many attributed this to WotC just trying to sell more miniatures.

This pretty much explains it. Well, it explained the reasons that I would have typed up.

Personally, I like Pathfinder. To each their own though.

*EDIT* I didn't see this gem. Gotta comment on this.



People hate 4e because it's fashionable to do so. There are still old-timers who love AD&D and won't change. If the internet had been around back then, they would have been far more vocal about it. It just so happens that 3.x coincided with the internet boom. So when 4e came out, when some people didn't switch, it became a thing. It became known. Suddenly, it's easier for people to stay with 3.5 just because there's an easier way of contacting other like-minded individuals.

I believe you will see the same thing happen when 5e comes out. A large portion of the players will stick to 4e and complain about 4e. The 3.5 players will probably also complain about 5e. Then you'll hear the same things, only about 5e. "There's no roleplaying" or "it feels too much like a 3.5 vs. 4e thread war." The usual complaints that you hear now. There's no pleasing everyone and with the advent of the internet, everyone can make their opinions well-known and still find like-minded individuals who share those views.

If you take away the internet, I bet there's only a small fraction of 3.5 players left. It would be too hard for them to find games and fellow players. Back in the past, you had to move to the new system if you wanted to keep playing. The internet made it to where that was no longer necessary.

So I don't think that it's anything with the system, per se. I think it's mass media.


People hate 4e because it is fashionable to do so, and the internet is the only thing keeping 3.5E and other editions alive.

I LOVE when someone speaks out their posterior.

Do I think some people hate on 4E for that reason? Of course!

On the other hand, say that the entire "4E is garbage" movement boils down to just a "fashionable hatred" is ludicrous.

I don't hate it exactly, but it is certainly not the edition for me, as described in the post I quoted first.

I guess some people really like to keep the ball rolling though. Then leave the thread...

missmvicious
2012-05-02, 04:24 AM
There are four big reasons I loath 4th edition.

The first being learning more rules. I just only want to dedicate so much of my brain power to D&D and 3.5 was here first.

Secondly keeping the rules straight, they are really close to 3.5 in name for a lot of rules but they are different enough to frustrate me.

Thirdly is my first DM was really really terrible in 4e and it left a god awful taste in my mouth I can't get rid of.

Lastly the lack of rules, by having a rule for 3.5 it cuts back on the waiting I have to do for my DM because I can tell what RAW dictates in like every possible situation. And its easier to tell if your DM is being a prick if he is breaking rules to do it. In 4e DMs have a lot more power but not the experience with the rules to judge fairly.


Also I have a hard time reading the books. No idea why its harder to follow for me, but I can barely get any of the 4e to stick.

I am playing in a 4e campaign IRL right now and its not 100% awful but I am often frustrated so I am not won over yet.

Killer Angel
2012-05-02, 04:25 AM
The ones that only play 3.5 rarely give me a valid reason for disliking 4e. They'll throw the tropes out there that it's "like WoW" or "not enough roleplaying." In that regards, I think it's a failure of the DM and not the system. Heck, you can play GURPS as all combat, too. That's not a failure of the system if you do it that way, it's a failure of the DM.


While there's undeniably some truth in this, I would say that the game system can improve or decrease the motivations (?) behind roleplay.
GURPS got disadvantages and quirks that (at least in the old editions) are explicitly required to be "played" or removed.
If a game system, for the monsters, presents a simple stat block for combat, it gives minimal depth to them, representing the critters as a mere sack of xp. On the other side, you have AD&D monster's manual, that comes with a page, for every monster, with ecology, habitat, and so on.
The style of play indeed is in the hands of the DM and the players, but the system can give more or less tools for the task.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-02, 04:30 AM
It boils down to a few major reasons for me. And while one or two them, on their own, might not have ruined the whole thing for me, the simple amount of them all put together kind of kills the overall experience for me. And it's hard to figure out where to start, since it's very ubiquitous and covers many aspects of both the system and the settings based on it.

But I suppose I can start with the one thing that pissed me off the most.

The settings and storyline information.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can handle a lot in this area; in many cases I already have, as I wasn't one of those who abandoned Star Wars when the prequels hit, and I actually stuck it out with Heroes until it inevitably got cancelled (both against my own better judgement, I must admit). But I can't think of a single area outside of maybe Dark Sun that 4th edition didn't whip out a hatchet for and start hacking away at. Proceeding to strip away just about everything that made it tick or made it unique, and leave it as an empty, hollow shell containing nothing more than an echoing void. Or to insert needless concepts that either did not need to be there or changed what already was. Or at least that's what it felt like.

And even in this area, I'm not sure where to start, but I think I'll start off with one of my favourite settings from 2nd edition. Planescape.

A setting whose status and iconic aspects were mostly ridiculed, though not mentioned by name, in many of the pre-release documents. Statements and titles like 'the great wheel is dead' and ridiculing the now-absent aasimar for their name were pretty much at the top of that list. One of the little essays in the pre-release documents went on about how the great wheel was basically a stupid idea and had little planes and concepts for every one of the alignments to create a sort of 'needless symmetry'. So one of the two major settings that helped to define my interest for Dungeons & Dragons was basically outright annihilated by the simple fact of the designers not caring for it.

And then we had the needless changes to the Forgotten Realms. Many people have already ranted at length about the Spellplague, the removal or killing off of most of the deities, revisions to the way in which many of the races worked, shoehorning in of 4th edition classes and concepts, and a very irritating time skip.

I also have additional problems with the mechanics (many of which have been raised already), but to me... it's all very forgivable if I can enjoy the story and the setting. However, I couldn't do that with 4th edition. It changed far too much of what I liked, and didn't leave enough for me to enjoy what was left.

Partysan
2012-05-02, 04:36 AM
Simple. The people who liked 3.5 (myself included) had a game with a lot of flaws that they still liked very much and they expected a new edition to correct those flaws so the game they knew would come closer to perfection. Instead, 4E made a 180° turn and did the opposite in many areas than 3.5 did. Because of that, people felt estranged from their game and reacted defensively.
A lot of what made people like 3.5 was completely lost in 4E. 3.5 had an extensive library of features, feats and abilities which rewarded system knowledge and inspired a huge array of varying character builds and ideas. In fact, I myself almost consider the building in 3.5 more fun than the actual playing. Of course this also means you have to work for the build, which is bad for beginners who will easily make very weak characters, balance was a mess generally. 4E achieved balance, but they did it by making character builds extremely rigid. Thus, the people who liked delving into the books and building characters in detail felt patronized and called the game "dumbed down" (which, in a way, it is).
The video game aspect mostly comes from all character abilities being made into "powers" with specific cooldowns. There is no just normal "attack" anymore, people just have a "weapon attack" power. It's a flavour thing for the most part, but a significant one if you will.
The "roleplay" thing stems from the power system as well, to a degree, since the specific powers basically disallow anything the character does not have a power for (a problem that also crept into 3.5 by making many things into feats, implicitly disallowing it without the feat, but it's worse in 4E). The second roleplay impediment is 4E's increased reliance on miniatures. Many people didn't actually play with minis all the time and with 4E this becomes pretty much impossible, letting people feel "milked" since they're supposed to buy the minis and also going more in the direction of a tactical wargame again instead of an RPG system.
Now, D&D did evolve from tactical wargames, mind you, but D&D was never a game where the mechanics really helped the roleplaying. In most cases it was impeded by the rules, and some people feel that aspect is even worse in 4E, butthis is a contested topic so I guess I'll leave it with the reasons I listed.

Ashtagon
2012-05-02, 04:38 AM
For me, the biggest fault with 4e is that you simply cannot play the kind of game I like to play with it. I enjoy semi-realism, where your life is on the line in a fight. This was possibly in all editions up to and include 3.x. But in 4e, even a 1st level character can expect to take on a few orc mooks and live to tell the tale.

Other issues...

* Healing surges. You can only fluff it as "I caught my breath" so many times.
* Minions. They make more sense by being CR-5 (or whatever number) than by having specific mechanical limitations.
* Boring Mechanics. Everyone on the at-will/encounter/daily system.
* Grid Combat. I don't like having to use a grid.
* No Progression. Higher levels are just more of the same with bigger numbers. In 1e, and especially in BECMI, there was an assumption written into the rules that you would gradually shift the campaign from armed hobos to founding empires and establishing a legacy. Sure, you can do that in 4e, but the rules don't encourage it.

Of course, for the kind of game I suspect it was made for (fantasy medieval superheroes), it seems to work well.

Feytalist
2012-05-02, 04:40 AM
I personally dislike 4e for what it did to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. That's about it.

Truth be told, the two 4e games I played weren't all that bad. It helps if you think of it as a totally different game. You don't expect Vampire the Requiem to feel like D&D, so you shouldn't expect 4e to feel like 3.5/PF. The main complaint I have is that all my 4e games felt so... samey. All the sessions felt all the same. Do the same thing over and over. Whether that was a result of the system itself or the DM I wouldn't be able to say.

JadePhoenix
2012-05-02, 04:40 AM
If you take away the internet, I bet there's only a small fraction of 3.5 players left.

You do know Pathfinder sells more than 4e, right?

Grac
2012-05-02, 04:43 AM
Others have said the reasons why people hate 4E now. But back when it came out? Ahh, things were different.

When it first came out, people hated it, and much more than now, but the reasons were different: first up is the simple fact that WotC denied they would be bringing out a new edition for a couple of years and went on a minor propaganda campaign to that end, but within two weeks it was leaked they had been in development for something like 5 months, and we're close to publishing.
There was also the stuff with the horrible adds deriding former editions, and portraying the players of previous editions (including 3/3.5) as idiot nerds.

The rules they hinted at? Most people loved them (though it is important to note that they were saying that 4e would be essentially a fantasy version of Star Wars SAGA Edition, which would have been the most awesome thing ever, but you know...). So yeah, there were high expectations, but the main motivator of hate at the time was the way they treated the fanbase.

pasko77
2012-05-02, 04:50 AM
People hate 4e because it's fashionable to do so.

Wow, that's incredibly patronizing and plain wrong.
I was enthusiast of the new version and appalled when I first read the PHB.

So, no, it wasn't for fashion.

Partysan
2012-05-02, 04:51 AM
Didn't see that the thread existed twice, so here's my answer from the empty twin:

The people who liked 3.5 (myself included) had a game with a lot of flaws that they still liked very much and they expected a new edition to correct those flaws so the game they knew would come closer to perfection. Instead, 4E made a 180° turn and did the opposite in many areas than 3.5 did. Because of that, people felt estranged from their game and reacted defensively.
A lot of what made people like 3.5 was completely lost in 4E. 3.5 had an extensive library of features, feats and abilities which rewarded system knowledge and inspired a huge array of varying character builds and ideas. In fact, I myself almost consider the building in 3.5 more fun than the actual playing. Of course this also means you have to work for the build, which is bad for beginners who will easily make very weak characters, balance was a mess generally. 4E achieved balance, but they did it by making character builds extremely rigid. Thus, the people who liked delving into the books and building characters in detail felt patronized and called the game "dumbed down" (which, in a way, it is).
The video game aspect mostly comes from all character abilities being made into "powers" with specific cooldowns. There is no just normal "attack" anymore, people just have a "weapon attack" power. It's a flavour thing for the most part, but a significant one if you will.
The "roleplay" thing stems from the power system as well, to a degree, since the specific powers basically disallow anything the character does not have a power for (a problem that also crept into 3.5 by making many things into feats, implicitly disallowing it without the feat, but it's worse in 4E). The second roleplay impediment is 4E's increased reliance on miniatures. Many people didn't actually play with minis all the time and with 4E this becomes pretty much impossible, letting people feel "milked" since they're supposed to buy the minis and also going more in the direction of a tactical wargame again instead of an RPG system.
Now, D&D did evolve from tactical wargames, mind you, but D&D was never a game where the mechanics really helped the roleplaying. In most cases it was impeded by the rules, and some people feel that aspect is even worse in 4E, but this is a contested topic so I guess I'll leave it with the reasons I listed.

Rhaegar14
2012-05-02, 04:53 AM
It's generally the system's versatility, I've found. Let's take everybody's favorite (or most hated) Drow Ranger, Drizzt Do'Urden, for example. Drizzt is a Drow Ranger who dual-wields scimitars and is heavily implied (based on description) to use Dexterity as his primary ability score.

In 3.5e, I can make Drizzt work as he's meant to in the books with a Swift Hunter Ranger. I have to jump through hoops to get him to be reasonably competent, but I can make it happen. In 4e, I literally CAN'T make a Ranger-type character (as in the fantasy archetype, not necessarily the class) that dual-wields scimitars and runs off Dexterity, and I can't even get him to dual-wield scimitars if I want him to have his panther.

For a more extreme example, let's look at his rival, the assassin Artemis Entreri. Entreri is a Dexterity-based character who wields a dagger in his main hand and a sword in his off-hand, and is also an extremely skilled assassin and rogue. In 4e, I can't get a Dex-based dual wielder for sword-and-dagger with Entreri's skillset EVEN A LITTLE BIT. It just doesn't work.

These examples are excluding use of the horribly-gimped Essentials classes (some of them work, but the one that would help here, Scout, is really, really bad when compared to standard Ranger). 4e's customizability has gotten better, as is to be expected, as more and more splat has come out, but at the end of the day it's simply not as versatile a system as 3.5e.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-02, 05:00 AM
People hate 4e because it is fashionable to do so, and the internet is the only thing keeping 3.5E and other editions alive.

I LOVE when someone speaks out their posterior.

Do I think some people hate on 4E for that reason? Of course!

On the other hand, say that the entire "4E is garbage" movement boils down to just a "fashionable hatred" is ludicrous.

I don't hate it exactly, but it is certainly not the edition for me, as described in the post I quoted first.

I guess some people really like to keep the ball rolling though. Then leave the thread...

While I definitely wouldn't agree that the internet is the only thing keeping 4E alive, I think there's a tangible effect.


Imagine you're a newbie player just getting into this big scary Tabletop thing. You're curious about this "D&D 4E" thingy so you decide to go on the internet and see what other people have to say about it.

Instantly, you encounter a tidal wave, a chorus of "4E is WoW with the servers down" and "Pathfinder r0xx0rz." After reading all of this, are you going to be as enthusiastic as you were before about getting into 4E, or are you going to be swayed by all the seething hate toward it you see around?


The question is, how many of these new players go to 3.5/Pathfinder instead of 4E, because of the hatebase against 4E? I'm willing to bet it's not insignificant.

Jimbob
2012-05-02, 05:43 AM
For me it was to soon after 3.5 was released and with every book they had printed I wanted to try and use as much of it as possible before I moved over to 4e.
But funnily enough we as a group, had taken the dive into 4e a week before 5e was announced and now we are saying excatly the same as we are loving 4e.

But im sure I will still end up buying the core books when they come out and let them collect dust for a few years till I get round and reading them.

Reaper_Monkey
2012-05-02, 06:15 AM
Because I found GURPS and realised I could make a better game myself, so did. Technically this was still during 3.5ed with early whispers of 4e (but enough whispers to get a general idea of where it was heading), but sure enough when 4e hit it really couldn't contend in any way and so failed to win me over.

Shivore
2012-05-02, 07:37 AM
Well I only just recently got into tabletop RPGs so I like to think I was able to look at the different editions without the bias that a lot of people cannot help to bring to the table. Although this also means I haven't got any hands-on experience with the different editions.

So when I was deciding what version to learn I did research and what I found seemed to be that, in short... 4E is actually a decent game. Not a bad RPG. But it is not D&D. It doesn't feel like D&D, as a previous poster mentioned 4E feels like a game of medieval super-heroes instead of a more D&D esque team of "armed hobos" growing towards "founding empires and establishing a legacy".

I particularly have to second the bit about level 1 players being so powerful. I watched the Robot Chicken D&D game and I didn't realize they were level 1 characters until near the end... I was SHOCKED! In my mind level 1's should not have been able to overcome those obstacles so easily.

Seemed to me 4E would be fun to play. But for my preference, I just decided PF would be even more fun.

kaomera
2012-05-02, 08:00 AM
Quite a lot of people manage to not like / not play 4e without it becoming a big deal. I think where the hate comes in is:

1) Someone describes why they do not enjoy system X; this is an entirely subjective distinction, so others who do enjoy system X will disagree and may find it unfair (and sometimes it is unfair).

2) There are a finite number of players and DMs out there, and so differing preferences may make it more difficult to get the game you want; some players may even end up joining a game they don't want to be in...

3) There is a finite amount of support out there - even with PF you've split things up; some players are going to be resentful that material they otherwise would have liked is aimed at a system they don't.

navar100
2012-05-02, 08:10 AM
1) The classes are the same. I'm aware of the different styles of Leader, Defender, Striker, Controller, but almost all the powers can be summed up as "Do X dice of damage and bad guy is inconvenienced for a round or someone moves." where X and the severity of the inconvenience slowly increments as the levels progress. I will grant Wizard has some powers that are not like this, but it's the only class that stands out of the original book, but otherwise also has lots of powers that do this. The only thing really different about the X dice of damage is its label. Fighter is damage. Cleric is radiant damage. Wizard might have one power for fire damage, another power for necrotic damage. Such labels could matter for particular monsters, but it's really interchangeable.

2) Magic doesn't exist. "Magic" is just another word to mean "sword" or "arrow". Similar to point 1), A spellcaster casting a spell is just a warrior using an attack power. It's the same game mechanics to do and in effect. Rituals is supposedly magic, but it's frustrating. It nickels and dimes you for everything and is a chore to do. They admit Rituals were purposely designed to be frustrating, ergo, admitting they hate player characters doing magic.

3) Magic items combine points 1) and 2). 99% of all magic items do the same thing: Give a +# to hit and damage and once a day do an extra few dice of damage. The number of dice of damage increments slowly but otherwise do the same exact thing as another magic item but with a different damage label. In addition, you are limited in the number of magic items you can use. Healing potions aren't. All they do is give you the privilege of spending a healing surge resource you already have after you used one in combat. The 1% magic items that aren't the same are things like portable hole and bag of holding. Magic items are not magic items. They are "dailies". Note: I don't object to the Healing Surge concept, only that healing potions aren't really healing potions.

4) While I don't object to the Skill Challenge concept, I do object to how they set DCs. DCs are arbitrarily set to the level of party. Just picking numbers out of thin air for example purposes only since I don't have the book with me: If some task, say swinging on a chandelier, is DC 20 at 1st level, that same exact task would be DC 25 at 5th level, 30 at 10th level, 35 at 15th level, etc. The chandelier does not know the level of the character attempting to swing on it. If it's DC 20 at 1st level, it should always be DC 20 regardless of character level. If that means a 10th level character will always succeed then so be it. A 10th level character is just that good and should be just that good.

5) Because everything is based on half level + modifiers, relative percentages don't improve. Several months ago someone did the math and pointed out that if a 1st level Fighter needs to roll a 12 to hit same level opponent, he needs to roll a 12 at 5th level, a 12 at 10th level, a 12 at 20th level, etc. Being high level then is almost meaningless because you're never game-mechanically better. When I'm a high level warrior at some level above 1, I want to hit my same level opponent on a Natural 2. Being high level should mean I'm that good.

Lhurgyof
2012-05-02, 08:17 AM
All I want out of this thread is to see why many people hated 4e so much. Please no rude or snappy comments, only well thought out ones. I've noticed most of the hate comes from 3.5 players, but a couple older gamers, mainly grogs that hate everything newer than 1e, too. I've heard the oh so common its "WoW on paper", "its a video game with dice", and the worst of the worst, "there is no roleplaying". I would rather hear significant reason, not, its not D&D. Please no flames I'm just wanting to know legit reasons why people hate it.

I didn't like that there is not as much character customization, mechanics-wise as there was in 3.5.

Plus I was used to 3.5, spent a lot of money on the books and didn't want to invest in/learn a new game.

valadil
2012-05-02, 08:26 AM
Honestly, I blame RPGA for quite a bit of it. I think a lot of people went with LFR and Encounters as a way to try 4e without committing to it. That was a great idea in theory, but in practice didn't work out. Sanctioned games like that aren't as fluid as home games. There just isn't as much room to go off in your own direction and so you end up feeling stifled. I think there are a lot of gamers out there who tried 4e this way and didn't realize it was the environment they were playing in, not the system, that was limiting them.

Anxe
2012-05-02, 10:10 AM
I think Craft Cheese touched on all the points that I would've made and a few more.

I don't have much personal experience with 4E as my group is in the middle of a rather long and complex 3.5 campaign. I'm looking forward to trying it out once the current campaign is completed. New experiences are usually fun!

Malachei
2012-05-02, 10:16 AM
My impression is that people disliked 4e because in trying to maximize balance, it took away options and, in a way, leveled the field so classes became very similar in their basic mechanics.

Talya
2012-05-02, 10:27 AM
Please note I (for the most part) don't agree with these complaints, so 4E defenders please keep this in mind before the flames come in. But here are the most common (constructive) complaints I've seen about it:

1. Every class uses the same subsystem for its powers, the AEDU system (At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility). There are a few tiny variations (like the Wizard's spellbook) but these aren't enough: Compared to 3.5 where there were all sorts of different ways a classes abilities could work like Vancian, Maneuvers, Incarnum, etc. Playing a Warlock felt very different from playing a Warblade in 3.5, and this has been lost in 4E.

2. The multiclassing system, even with the addition of hybrids, is extremely restrictive compared to what 3.5 allowed. One thing you could do in 3.5 is have a character who transforms over time: A barbarian who has a sudden divine revelation and becomes a cleric, a Barbarian 5 / Cleric 15. 4E's multiclassing/hybridizing doesn't really support this, it has to be kept purely in your character's fluff. The reinforcement of a character through game mechanics is a powerful thing, and this is part of a class system's purpose.

3. 4E has a "padded sumo" effect. Especially at higher levels, it takes tons of rounds to take anything down because hit points are so high relative to damage.

4. Classes have few truly unique powers, with many powers simply being slight edits of one another. This, combined with problem 1, is the reason behind the "samey" feel of 4E games.

5. Skill challenges. Instead of solving a noncombat encounter by, you know, being creative and having fun, you just roll X times and see what numbers came up.

6. Many people don't like the idea of magic items being common things that every character is decorated head to toe with (The "Christmas Tree" effect). 4E exacerbated this problem by making magic items more necessary for characters to function properly than ever.

7. While 3.5 relied on distances somewhat, 4E's new tactical combat made playing without a battle map next to impossible. Many attributed this to WotC just trying to sell more miniatures.

Thank you for this very emotion-neutral, very well-thought-out, very constructive post on this rather sensitive topic.

(Note, you may not agree with those reasons, but they all hit the nail on the head for me. Other than 6. I don't think it's really possible to be MORE dependant on magic items than 3e was -- which is why the challenge of making reasonably viable Vow of Poverty characters has always been fun for me.)

slaydemons
2012-05-02, 10:37 AM
my answer is going to be one I heard about in a post long long ago, I like chocolate ice cream, I think chocolate ice cream is the best.

eggs
2012-05-02, 11:45 AM
4e is everything I wanted when 3e was in print.

But in play, its mechanics get in the way of the game I most enjoy playing - it draws out combat, breezes through out-of-combat encounters, promotes use of explicitly pre-adjudicated character actions and encourages splatbook-diving toward Optimal Character Generation.

These are qualities of D&D in almost editions, but 4e's design goals made them the most clear. So 4e's release meant the realization that D&D isn't the only system - and it isn't even a particularly good one for me, or some of my players.

Maxios
2012-05-02, 11:57 AM
When I was young, my father told me about Dungeons & Dragons. I read about Dungeons & Dragons, I played Baldur's Gate, I played Icewind Dale, I played those two PS2 Baldur's Gate games.
I even played DDO with my father for a while. Then he buys the 3.5 Basic Game, and we play it together and I absolutely love it. Then, right before my father and I go buy a crapload of 3.5 books, we heard that there was a 4th edition coming out.
So I waited for months and months and finally, 4e comes out. I buy the Player's Handbook, the DM's Guide, and the Keep on the Shadowfell. I eagerly read the Player's Handbook and saw that the rules played out like frickin World of Warcraft (a game I played for a grand total of three days before realizing how bad it was and stopped)!
Then I read the DM's Guide and saw the part about Skill Challenges, something that I personally thought was idiotic. Eventually, my father and I played the Keep on the Shadowfell (him DMing and playing two PCs, with me playing three PCs), and for the first time saw the 4e rules in action, and really disliked.
Since then, I've played 4e a grand total of four times, one of which was on these very forums. Eventually, I discovered the 3.5 Player's Handbook, the 3.5 DM's Guide, and the 3.5 Monster Manual. I read through them all, and love the rules present within a lot more then the 4e rules.

Pinnacle
2012-05-02, 11:59 AM
When I'm a high level warrior at some level above 1, I want to hit my same level opponent on a Natural 2. Being high level should mean I'm that good.

Being high level also means they are that good.

Solaris
2012-05-02, 12:23 PM
Please note I (for the most part) don't agree with these complaints, so 4E defenders please keep this in mind before the flames come in. But here are the most common (constructive) complaints I've seen about it:

1. Every class uses the same subsystem for its powers, the AEDU system (At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Utility). There are a few tiny variations (like the Wizard's spellbook) but these aren't enough: Compared to 3.5 where there were all sorts of different ways a classes abilities could work like Vancian, Maneuvers, Incarnum, etc. Playing a Warlock felt very different from playing a Warblade in 3.5, and this has been lost in 4E.

2. The multiclassing system, even with the addition of hybrids, is extremely restrictive compared to what 3.5 allowed. One thing you could do in 3.5 is have a character who transforms over time: A barbarian who has a sudden divine revelation and becomes a cleric, a Barbarian 5 / Cleric 15. 4E's multiclassing/hybridizing doesn't really support this, it has to be kept purely in your character's fluff. The reinforcement of a character through game mechanics is a powerful thing, and this is part of a class system's purpose.

3. 4E has a "padded sumo" effect. Especially at higher levels, it takes tons of rounds to take anything down because hit points are so high relative to damage.

4. Classes have few truly unique powers, with many powers simply being slight edits of one another. This, combined with problem 1, is the reason behind the "samey" feel of 4E games.

5. Skill challenges. Instead of solving a noncombat encounter by, you know, being creative and having fun, you just roll X times and see what numbers came up.

6. Many people don't like the idea of magic items being common things that every character is decorated head to toe with (The "Christmas Tree" effect). 4E exacerbated this problem by making magic items more necessary for characters to function properly than ever.

7. While 3.5 relied on distances somewhat, 4E's new tactical combat made playing without a battle map next to impossible. Many attributed this to WotC just trying to sell more miniatures.

Ding!
This is a lot of why I dislike 4E. I also dislike it because of the races they picked, the classes they picked for the PHB, and the general overall feel of the game. Why? 'Cause it doesn't even look like D&D. I'm allowed to dislike a game for not being D&D when I want to play D&D. I don't at all understand the arguments that that's an invalid point when we're talking about something we do for enjoyment.


People hate 4e because it's fashionable to do so. There are still old-timers who love AD&D and won't change. If the internet had been around back then, they would have been far more vocal about it. It just so happens that 3.x coincided with the internet boom. So when 4e came out, when some people didn't switch, it became a thing. It became known. Suddenly, it's easier for people to stay with 3.5 just because there's an easier way of contacting other like-minded individuals.

I'm afraid I must disagree. The proportion of players I've encountered is pretty heavily skewed towards 3.5E, and most of the 4E players also play 3.5E. Very few of them are on the D&D portions of the internet. Very few of them speak well of 4E.

I loved AD&D (what's now called 2E), by the way. I also love 3.5E. Third Edition still retains the feel of the old game, but it added to it. It added a lot, and it streamlined some, and overall felt like a sequel. 4E is a reimagining by someone who never read the book but they watched the movie (it's the same thing, right?). Don't get me wrong, there are some good ideas in there and some stuff I've pulled for my 3.5E game... but overall, it's not my game. It's not the Dungeons & Dragons I grew up playing. I want my fighter to play differently than the wizard or rogue. I don't want my fighter to play pretty much the exact same as them, and none of them to play like the D&D characters I've played for years.

Disagree with me? Fine. It's your opinion. You're not only entitled to it, I respect that your tastes differ from mine. But I still don't like 4E. I don't ask that anyone change their minds about what games they like. I ask that they respect that maybe, just maybe, we have reasons other than "It's WoW with improved graphics".

erikun
2012-05-02, 12:33 PM
I think I've figured out the problems I've had with D&D4: it is too much of a game. The character starts with big, flashy abilities that they use in combat, which encourages them to get into a lot of combats to try them out, which levels them up, which gets them more abilities to use in combat. As such, most of the system involves being in combat, which most of the system encouraging characters to be in combat.

Does this stop players from doing other things, like exploring or roleplaying? Of course not. And a group who wants to do such things can do them freely with D&D4, just as much as any other system.

However, when you see a group who wishes to play D&D4 specifically, then it isn't unreasonable to assume that they're playing for a specific reason: to get into combat and make use of their flashy abilities. Not every group does so, of course, but I can wonder why the ones that don't aren't playing Burning Wheel or Heroquest or some other version of D&D. A lot of groups intentionally playing D&D4 are no doubt playing it for reasons related to the D&D4 system.

Magesmiley
2012-05-02, 12:43 PM
For me, I think that 4E tried too hard to be like an MMO, rather than a table top RPG. MMOs and table top RPGs are both are good types of games, but they really need to try to play to their strengths rather than mimic what the other is better at.

Borrowing concepts is fine, but to me, 4E was trying too hard to be a paper version of an MMO, and as a result it neglected or lost too many of the things that you can have in a game where you sit down to play a game with your friends.

Snowbluff
2012-05-02, 12:56 PM
Take everything I like about 3.5 as a system.

Subtract everything I like.

You get Pathfinder.

Subtract the remainder that gave the system depth. Add Healing Surges and Powers.

You get 4e.

Tyndmyr
2012-05-02, 01:03 PM
All I want out of this thread is to see why many people hated 4e so much. Please no rude or snappy comments, only well thought out ones. I've noticed most of the hate comes from 3.5 players, but a couple older gamers, mainly grogs that hate everything newer than 1e, too. I've heard the oh so common its "WoW on paper", "its a video game with dice", and the worst of the worst, "there is no roleplaying". I would rather hear significant reason, not, its not D&D. Please no flames I'm just wanting to know legit reasons why people hate it.

Well, I was pretty stoked about it when it came out, solely because it was new, and I liked D&D. Im kind of a sucker for trying every new shiny that hits the market.

So, my usual group started a campaign. I missed the first couple of sessions, but figured, no worries, that just means they'll know the system better. Popped in, and asked how to convert my 3.5 char over. They told me I couldn't. Well, no worries, they still have wizards, right? I'll just roll up a new wizard that's kind of similar.

Well, the alignment choices have kind of gone away. I was never a fan of lawful good or chaotic evil...so that gives me good or evil? Seems a bit odd, but hey, unaligned is an option. I'll just use that, and not care.

Aright, picking out spells. Wait, I can't just learn new spells like wizards sort of always do? Oookay. Well, let's pick some out. It looks like there's a couple very obvious archtypes for each class...meh. None of them really grab me. I'll just ignore that. Wow...lots of spells gone, but at least we still have magic missile...doesn't auto-hit any more, that's odd. Fireball looks similar though, I'll grab that and a coupla more.

Aright, on to combat. Strange, my fireball now looks like a cube. Time to make jokes about non-elucidian geometry. HOLY GOD! Why are there so many status effects to track? Normally, half my group plays classes of the "I hit it for x damage" type. Now, everyone is trying to track all manner of statuses. Also, combat takes longer.

Ok, combat is done, we try out a skill challenge. There's a lot of dice rolling, we all agree we hate the skill challenge section, and agree to never use it again, figuring we can do skills just like in 3.5.

There's another combat. It takes even longer. We realize that chars of the same archtype are basically interchangeable. Many comparisons to WoW are made. One guy has literally started playing WoW out of boredom. The guy who bought the books offers to sell them all for $5. He has no takers. We turn to fire to solve this, and never play 4e again.

LibraryOgre
2012-05-02, 01:14 PM
The Mod Wonder: I have combined two identical threads. For now, assume any double postings prior to this post are the result of that.

On my end, I like some what was done with 4e, but I felt that combat went too far into the tactical; creativity was certainly possible, and I had great fun playing, but it was very easy for combat to turn into a tactical slog, with people pondering actions and remembering modifiers.

Absol197
2012-05-02, 01:23 PM
Take everything I like about 3.5 as a system.

Subtract everything I like.

You get Pathfinder.

Subtract the remainder that gave the system depth. Add Healing Surges and Powers.

You get 4e.

Slightly off-topic, but what did Pathfiner subtract that you liked about 3.5? With the exception of having 30+ books for the system giving a wide berth of options (which is changing, and they also added in a wide variety of additional options in core), I haven't found anything in Pathfinder that was actually removed, only added or slightly changed.

As for 4th edition, the list that Craft (Cheese) gave is a fairly good representation of my group's feelings. Some of the additional things we have discussed for our reasoning are as follows:

1) Our games tend to have very little combat. As someone else above me mentioned, the vast majority of abilities and powers that a 4e character has are combat powers. This makes it feel to us that the game is very centered around combat, which we usually have take a back seat.

2) Slightly tied into 1), the non-combat abilities aren't vary extensive, providing fewer interesting options for outside of combat. spells and abilities such as charm person, illusions (my favorite school of magic), and other similar types of abilities aren't very well supported. My favorite casting character ever, an illusionist who never did any direct damage, could not work in 4e, that I've seen.

3) There's a lack of consistency on 4e between PCs and NPCs and monsters. In 3.5, NPCs and monsters are built using the same rules as the PCs: they have classes or Hit Dice, they get a set BAB and save bonuses, as well as skills and feats, based on the levels in those classes, et cetera. In 4e, PCs are built one way, and monsters are built another. I know it was to streamline the monster-builsing process, but my group really finds a lack of consistency annoying.

4) Lots of big, flashy effects. The first character I played was a level 1 cleric, and whenever we got into combat, he was streaming holy light from every orifice, and doing lots of other things that were big, flashy, and obviously magical. The wizard in our party, too, had extra-extravagent powers. This is obviously a personal issue, but I feel like low-level characters shouldn't be able to put on such a light show, even with magic, and that clerics in particular shouldn't be very flashy. Clerics are supposed to have the subtle-yet-powerful magic, that of their faith causing just the right thing to happen at the right time, so that onlookers can't tell whether it was really divine intervention, or just a coincidence.

Now, I haven't payed 4e in a long time, so some of these complaints may be a thing of the past, but that was how it felt to us when we first tried it out.

Tyndmyr
2012-05-02, 01:25 PM
Slightly off-topic, but what did Pathfiner subtract that you liked about 3.5? With the exception of having 30+ books for the system giving a wide berth of options (which is changing, and they also added in a wide variety of additional options in core), I haven't found anything in Pathfinder that was actually removed, only added or slightly changed.

Pathfinder is something I consider to be very close to 3.5, but basically with some house rules. Some I like, some I don't.

For instance, I hate fly as a skill, but I like the rest of what they did with consolidating the skill system.

I view it more as an interesting resource to pick bits and pieces from than as something I'll shift to wholesale, but I, for one, don't see it as actually bad. That said, there is probably still some remaining hard feelings from how they treated their beta testers, and they did overlook some blindingly well known exploits.

Snowbluff
2012-05-02, 01:26 PM
Slightly off-topic, but what did Pathfiner subtract that you liked about 3.5? With the exception of having 30+ books for the system giving a wide berth of options (which is changing, and they also added in a wide variety of additional options in core), I haven't found anything in Pathfinder that was actually removed, only added or slightly changed.

Yeah, exactly. As is, without the thousands of options, PF is a grossly inferior system when compared. Change little, remove a lot seems to be the prevailing method of generating RPGs nowadays. Fortunately, Pathfinder is still pretty good and backwards compatible. :smallsmile:

JadedDM
2012-05-02, 01:27 PM
People have different tastes.

But the way you worded the question, OP, it gives me the impression what you are really asking is why some people so passionately hate 4E?

From what I remember, most people here were actually pretty excited about 4E when it was announced. But...they were largely expecting 4E to be just like 3E, but more cleaned up and streamlined.

Then when 4E was released, not only did it turn out that those people were wrong, WotC went out of their way to divide the fanbase (or it sure seemed that way). I remember most of the first ads they devised for 4E consisted of making fun of 3E and the people who played it (also, AD&D, too). Their whole early marketing plan for 4E seemed to be "Only morons play 3E, play 4E instead!"

Naturally, this left a large group of people feeling betrayed and angry. People who Pathfinder were quick to appeal to.

That is why, something you see a lot in regard to 5E, is Wizards talking about reuniting the fanbase. But I don't think 5E (or anything else) will do that, on account that Wizards were the ones who splintered them so badly in the first place!

Absol197
2012-05-02, 01:44 PM
Yeah, exactly. As is, without the thousands of options, PF is a grossly inferior system when compared. Change little, remove a lot seems to be the prevailing method of generating RPGs nowadays. Fortunately, Pathfinder is still pretty good and backwards compatible. :smallsmile:

But what did they actually remove? Excluding splat-book options, because they're in the process of adding that stuff in. All I see is stuff they added in, and they added a whole slew of options for every class in the Core Rulebook.

For the record, I'm not trying to defend Pathfinder from you, I'm just confused, because I'm looking at (I assume) the same systems, and seeing something completely different from what you are.

Tyndmyr
2012-05-02, 01:57 PM
That's not a failure of the system if you do it that way, it's a failure of the DM.

Nah, systems have failures. Rock, Paper Scissors has some notable shortcomings as an RPG. The fact that your DM COULD invent all manner of things to overcome them does not change the fact that they exist.

All systems have shortcomings, 3.5 and 4 included. The question is not how good your DM is, the question is which shortcomings you care about as a group.


So, to that end, my answer to your question is this:

People hate 4e because it's fashionable to do so.

*dons flannel*

I was hating 4e before it was cool.


If you take away the internet, I bet there's only a small fraction of 3.5 players left. It would be too hard for them to find games and fellow players. Back in the past, you had to move to the new system if you wanted to keep playing. The internet made it to where that was no longer necessary.

My local shop in MD has a 3.5 game run by me, some pathfinder players, and some 4e players. All three groups manage to get a full table. That said, I have a waiting list of about seven people, and six players active. The PF group, last I checked, had nine active players and two waitlisted. The 4e group had about five, no waitlist.

The Dover shop I occasionally visit does not have a 4e group at all. It's just 3.5 and pathfinder.

The other maryland shop I haven't been to for a while seems to have a variety, but I don't have the numbers. The only night I played there, there was one 3.5 group and one 4e group, but who knows who visits on the other nights.

All the non-shop games I know of, including those I wouldn't ever touch for various reasons, are 3.5 or PF exclusively.

Also, Pathfinder sales are competitive with 4e sales. If you're going to claim that 3.5 is only a small fraction, I say....[citation needed].

navar100
2012-05-02, 02:06 PM
Take everything I like about 3.5 as a system.

Subtract everything I like.

You get Pathfinder.

Subtract the remainder that gave the system depth. Add Healing Surges and Powers.

You get 4e.

hahahahahahahahahahaha

Othniel Edden
2012-05-02, 02:34 PM
Yeah, exactly. As is, without the thousands of options, PF is a grossly inferior system when compared. Change little, remove a lot seems to be the prevailing method of generating RPGs nowadays. Fortunately, Pathfinder is still pretty good and backwards compatible. :smallsmile:

Paizo has produced 8 books so far for the main mechanics rule books. Which 8 3.5 books would you choose for the same amount of content but a better expirence?

Boci
2012-05-02, 02:41 PM
Paizo has produced 8 books so far for the main mechanics rule books. Which 8 3.5 books would you choose for the same amount of content but a better expirence?

Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, Magic of Incarnum, Player's Handbook 2, Dungeonscape, Spell Compendium, Magic Item Compendium and Expanded Psionic Handbook.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-02, 02:45 PM
Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, Magic of Incarnum, Player's Handbook 2, Dungeonscape, Spell Compendium, Magic Item Compendium and Expanded Psionic Handbook.

I'd replace the PHB2, Magic of Incarnum, Dungeonscape and the EPH for Complete Arcane, Complete Mage, Complete Warrior and Complete Divine, but potayto-potahto.

Othniel Edden
2012-05-02, 03:02 PM
So no monster manuels, or core rule books? Intresting.

Socratov
2012-05-02, 03:05 PM
Well, personally, I like like 3.5 for all it's faults. It generates a lot of character depth, it adds (maybe too many) customization options. yeah , different classes ahve different powerleels and uses, but in 4e everything is pretty much the same. To use a metaphore: 3.5 is like gastronomic cooking, with all it's taste, good or bad, 4e is a lump of tofu, without the spicerack. Sure it's much healthier, and you can do with it what you want, but to quote Psyren: "... You can shape it like a steak, even add steak flavoring, but it will never be a steak" (this was to pretend to be a fiend, in a discussion about sould, incarnum and strongheart vest for hellfire blasts, the comparison stands however).

Boci
2012-05-02, 03:07 PM
So no monster manuels, or core rule books? Intresting.

We have the SDR for them. (Also unlike in PF, the monster manual is core for 3.5).

Shadowknight12
2012-05-02, 03:11 PM
So no monster manuels, or core rule books? Intresting.

I am a huge fan of Prestige Classes, and I like them far more than I like base classes. PF had the exact opposite design goal than I'd have wanted: they discouraged multiclassing and PrCing, which is what I like to do best.

Also, I was given 8 books. I had to prioritise. Magic Item Compendium and Spell Compendium were no-brainers, as was ToB. The rest were a matter of prioritising the things in the game I liked best and used most often. I suspect Boci is a fan of base classes, judging from the books they picked.

The one thing I liked about PF was how they solved the LA issue. And the condensed skill list.

NecroRebel
2012-05-02, 03:17 PM
People have different tastes.

But the way you worded the question, OP, it gives me the impression what you are really asking is why some people so passionately hate 4E?

This is something I was wondering about as well. The people here have made posts about reasons why they dislike 4e, or like 3.x and/or Pathfinder more, but I don't get the feeling anybody actually hate the system. The way I see it, there's a difference between having legitimate grievances against 4e and thus avoiding it and actually hating it in a sort of I-want-to-destroy-this-and-if-you-like-it-you-suck sense.

There were people who treated it in that way early on, and I think the reasons JadedDM mentioned are why: 4e is very emphatically not 3.5, and WotC did seem to attempt to tear down 3.5 after 4e came out, so people who loved 3.5 felt that 4e was attacking them. Their response was fairly predictable; they were attacked, so they attacked back. WotC was rather heavy-handed about pushing 4e at first, but now that its stance has softened to basically not mentioning 3.x in its advertising much at all the rancor has faded.

Issabella
2012-05-02, 03:49 PM
Oddly all my dislike for 4.e is fluff and non mechanical. As a short caimpaign /dungeon crawl one off game system I find it superior to 3.5. But what turned me off was all the fluff changes, especially to Forgotten realms. I was also very much a Planescape, great wheel fan, and did not care for the lore changes.
I wish I could find them, but some of the comments from WoC on the change over I found very insulting and rude to those who like the old system.

Silus
2012-05-02, 03:51 PM
I can best summarize my dislike of 4e by saying it feels....wrong.

Like....3.5 feels like it's made of chrome. Not the best quality of chrome (more than a few blemishes here and there, but still looks nice and handles just fine if you look past the aforementioned blemishes). Pathfinder feels more like a higher quality of chrome with a good deal of the blemishes buffed out (there are still some, but it's more neat and presentable). Maybe with a hint of gold thrown in.

4E seems like it's made of the 3.5 chrome, but at the same time smothered in grease.

Averis Vol
2012-05-02, 05:26 PM
{Scrubbed}

it took away my favorite part of the game, building a character who was more then a fighter, or more then a rogue. i can no longer multi class to give my character depth or meaning, he has to forever be a single class to have any relevance to the game. on second thought i could take a level in every class in the game and contribute just as much to the combat, the aforementioned 99% of the game. plus theres no reason for me to build a back story for my character anymore. who cares if i'm the righteous defender of the people? it's not like theres a point to my roleplaying it, i'll inevitably offend someone with my justice speech and it will devolve into a 30 minute slap-fest to prove who's point is more right when i could have talked it out but the game leaves little mechanical room for it.

well that fealt great to get out of my system. but seriously, i'm hurt that 4e even gets lumped into the dnd family and as severely as i hope 5e is better i can easily see myself being let down yet again. point being yea, 4e is a bad system that makes even PF look favorable.

(as a precaution i'm going to state that it is not my intention to offend, though i know i inevitably have, this is merely my opinion on the matter.)

Kane0
2012-05-02, 05:58 PM
From what I saw they tried to make D&D like a 'mainstream' MMORPG in pen and paper form, not the other way around.

That and the Forgotten Realms setting got screwed over.

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-02, 06:20 PM
{Scrubbed}


Nah mate, that's Essentials. Essentials dumbed down 4e even more and some didn't even think it was possible.

My main problems are thus:

1. Scaling skill DCs, doors get progressively harder to open as you go through the dungeon. A door at level one is just as hard to open at level twenty.

2. The tiny little pieces that make the system very, very finicky. The best example I can think of is what constitutes a failed saving throw.

Other than that, look at 4e like any other system really. It has it's problems and it has its good parts, but there are systems I prefer (like Star wars Saga Edition, which is 4e but better).

navar100
2012-05-02, 06:52 PM
I am a huge fan of Prestige Classes, and I like them far more than I like base classes. PF had the exact opposite design goal than I'd have wanted: they discouraged multiclassing and PrCing, which is what I like to do best.


Point, but the archetype system is an interesting alternative. You can recognize many 3E prestige class concepts among them. Swapping class features isn't that much different than a Prestige Class where you stop advancing your main class abilities to get new ones. It's more difficult, but it is possible to use two archetypes for the same class where they swap separate class features. By house rule you can work with the DM if two archetypes you want have a common class feature change.

While perhaps discouraging regular multiclassing, playing a base class worthy to stay in to level 20 is not a bad thing. It's a feature of Pathfinder to say I'm playing a level 20 Fighter or level 20 Sorcerer and be quite thrilled with the concept.

Kaun
2012-05-02, 06:54 PM
personal taste

/thread

Averis Vol
2012-05-02, 07:10 PM
i can accept that 4e tried to fix the balance issues, i really can, my problem is the way they went about it. if nothings different whats the point of having a class? if when i make a character he's going to be the exact same as the other three in my party. if you want a fun game you need 1) options 2) imbalance (there always has to be a best, but the margin should be slim enough to not completely negate the rest of the classes. everyone should have a roll to play) 3) even more important then balanced classes, a balanced group who can work together and have fun. and lastly you need a flexible system that can account for things not directly in the rules, a system that still works if the players/dm do something out of the ordinary.

thats what i really think on the topic, and even though 3.5 has its flaws its a hell of a lot better then whatever 4e could hope to be.

WildPyre
2012-05-02, 07:24 PM
Just out of morbid curiosity, did they ever give a way to craft mundane items in 4th ed? The skill system always rubbed me the wrong way.

Talakeal
2012-05-02, 07:30 PM
I will be brief and give my two cents, hoping not to get drawn into a flame war.

1: The resource system makes it very hard to play "realistic" characters. I just can't wrap my head around fighters who forget how to do their maneuvers after one use and can heal to full health from the brink of death after a fifteen minute power nap.

2: Races / Classes are very tied into a preset "role". This makes it very hard to match a character concept's fluff and crunch.

3: Lack on non combat skills and powers, and lack on in combat powers that don't deal direct damage.

4: Minions. It is an OK concept, but the mechanics are a bit weak, and the fact that most DMs won't tell you what is and what isn't a minion make tactical combats involving a mix on minions and non minions very frustrating.

5: Rules lawyer DM's who won't let my barbarian use my crit activated powers and my charge activated powers in the same turn.

6: Too many HP, combat just takes so damn long.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-02, 08:09 PM
Point, but the archetype system is an interesting alternative. You can recognize many 3E prestige class concepts among them. Swapping class features isn't that much different than a Prestige Class where you stop advancing your main class abilities to get new ones. It's more difficult, but it is possible to use two archetypes for the same class where they swap separate class features. By house rule you can work with the DM if two archetypes you want have a common class feature change.

While perhaps discouraging regular multiclassing, playing a base class worthy to stay in to level 20 is not a bad thing. It's a feature of Pathfinder to say I'm playing a level 20 Fighter or level 20 Sorcerer and be quite thrilled with the concept.

The problem with archetypes is that they're basic feature substitution. Glorified ACFs, if you will. What's most important, you will never have an archetype for a martial class that gives that class spells. At best, you need to play a class such as Magus, with the spell selection you are given, and hope for the best. The good thing about PrCs is that, for one, they are great sources of fluff and character customisation. Being an Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil says something about your character, and being a Nightmare Spinner says something else. 3e's cavalcade of PrCs was not a bug, it was a feature. Yeah, some of them were overpowered and yeah, some of them were downright awful, but you had choice and freedom. I will take an endless array of broken tools over two or three tools in good condition.

And also, the very thought of playing a 20th level anything chills me to the utter core. It's like being told I will have to eat the same food, live in the same place, work in the same place, follow the same routines and interact with the same people for 20 years. They are the things my nightmares are made of.

Coincidentally, that is pretty much my beef with 4e. It's not a bad game, it's just so dreadfully boring to me.

Swordguy
2012-05-02, 08:56 PM
In my local metagame*, the people who hate 4e almost universally hate it because it removed complexity from the system. To quote one of my Warmachine group: "I can't put together a character using 3 splats, spells from 8 different sources, and two different issues of Dragon magazine and be more powerful than everybody else at the table anymore." Or to quote a local store assistant manager, "4e sucks because my wizards can't be better than fighters or paladins anymore."

While I can't speak for other metagames other than mine (although I can certainly think it very loudly), I suspect this was a huge issue for a lot of people. Hanging around a discussion between game designers at GenCon a few years ago (I was tagging along with Randall Bills of Catalyst Game Labs, and we ran into Mike Mearls and *something* Crawford - Jim, maybe?), I got to hear a really interesting point on game balance as a side discussion about the BattleTech RPG (which deliberately doesn't care about "balance"). A really big point in D&D 4e's design was balance uber alles. That is, the biggest complaints WoTC received in regards to D&D 3.x was that the game wasn't balanced between the various options and classes. What WoTC realized during 4e's development was that you cannot combine large amounts of freely-choosable options and still have game balance.

It's a common-sense concept: as you allow people to take more options, the chances of those people coming up with a combination that you didn't plan for or that is overpowered approaches 100%. The ONLY solution to this is to either not care about game balance, or to not allow much in the way of options. Since balance was important to their player base, WoTC naturally removed extra options...they did it to ensure game balance, the very thing that fans were crying about for four years prior to 4e's release. Well, D&D 4e is what balance (or as close to balance as human beings can reasonably get under production, time, and budget restrictions) looks like. People got what they wished for. Gratz.

The upshot of this is that, in my local metagame at least, the people who actively dislike 4e (or "hate", to use the OP's term), are almost entirely people who are mad they can't have their unbalanced/overpowered options anymore. There's a LOT of people in my local meta who are very "eh, whatever" in regards to 4e - they tend to focus on issues like the inanity of healing surges, scaling door-opening DCs, and so forth - but they don't actively "hate" the game. The haters are almost exclusively former CoDzilla, Batman Wizard, or Dragonwrought Kobold players; I can't think of one local "hater" offhand who didn't play Tier 1 classes almost exclusively. Their enjoyment of complexity came almost exclusively from their ability to manipulate that complexity to achieve overpowered results, and they hate D&D 4e for removing that tool from them.

Meanwhile, I can think of a half-dozen people who played Fighters who are absolutely in love with what 4e did. It's a reasonably well-put-together tactical miniatures wargame with a roleplaying veneer. It's not really my cup of tea, but I'm fine with it for what it is.


*I'm talking about MY local metagame. Not you personally. I can't speak to you, since I probably don't know you. I DO know my local metagame, and thus feel comfortable speaking on their behalf given the opinions expressed to me over the last several years. So before you flame me for "attacking you", this ain't about you - it's about the anecdotal evidence to which I can authoritatively speak. Relax.

Pokonic
2012-05-02, 09:12 PM
I actualy have little issue with 4e as long as you ignore the fact that it is a installment of D&D. Otherwise, it's a rather balanced system class-wised and with more than it's fair share of support. On the other hand, you could say that it's so radicly different that the things that made 3.5 appealing ( different class tiers, ect) where lost.


Ehh, I will just take Pathfinder and enjoy the show.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-02, 09:12 PM
The haters are almost exclusively former CoDzilla, Batman Wizard, or Dragonwrought Kobold players; I can't think of one local "hater" offhand who didn't play Tier 1 classes almost exclusively. Their enjoyment of complexity came almost exclusively from their ability to manipulate that complexity to achieve overpowered results, and they hate D&D 4e for removing that tool from them.

Actually, they probably would like 4E a lot more if you pointed out that you can do plenty of crazy stuff in 4E, you just can't do it by yourself. Get 'em in a group together and show them all the devastation a party can bring with a well-run Taclord.

Boci
2012-05-02, 09:19 PM
What WoTC realized during 4e's development was that you cannot combine large amounts of freely-choosable options and still have game balance.

You can't realize something that isn't true. 3.5 can be balanced, you just need to understand the system. JaronK's tiers can help new players with that. ToB, advanced casters, the factotum and binders for example are quite balanced compaired to eachother.



*I'm talking about MY local metagame. Not you personally. I can't speak to you, since I probably don't know you. I DO know my local metagame, and thus feel comfortable speaking on their behalf given the opinions expressed to me over the last several years. So before you flame me for "attacking you", this ain't about you - it's about the anecdotal evidence to which I can authoritatively speak. Relax.

Sorry, this doesn't work. You can't make a whole post dedicated to how evil optimizers are and then say "but that's just my opinion" and expect everything to be alright.

navar100
2012-05-02, 09:27 PM
The problem with archetypes is that they're basic feature substitution. Glorified ACFs, if you will. What's most important, you will never have an archetype for a martial class that gives that class spells. At best, you need to play a class such as Magus, with the spell selection you are given, and hope for the best. The good thing about PrCs is that, for one, they are great sources of fluff and character customisation. Being an Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil says something about your character, and being a Nightmare Spinner says something else. 3e's cavalcade of PrCs was not a bug, it was a feature. Yeah, some of them were overpowered and yeah, some of them were downright awful, but you had choice and freedom. I will take an endless array of broken tools over two or three tools in good condition.

And also, the very thought of playing a 20th level anything chills me to the utter core. It's like being told I will have to eat the same food, live in the same place, work in the same place, follow the same routines and interact with the same people for 20 years. They are the things my nightmares are made of.

Coincidentally, that is pretty much my beef with 4e. It's not a bad game, it's just so dreadfully boring to me.

Ok. It's just a matter of personal taste. No fault. Just is.

Mnemnosyne
2012-05-02, 09:32 PM
Note: Haven't read most of the thread, responding directly to the question in the OP here.

Disclaimer: I checked out the 4E core rules when they first came out. I even tried one game in 4E. If things have changed since then, too bad, I never gave it a second chance because it made a horrible first impression.

First off, the whole daily and encounter powers thing. For non-magical classes, it's clearly retarded that you can only do a non-magical thing once a day, with no explanation of why you can't do it again. Encounter powers are a smidgeon more reasonable, but still make a questionable amount of sense. Compare with ToB mechanics (especially for the Warblade, for instance) where you have to recover maneuvers - it makes more sense, since it's like exerting yourself less before doing it again. Just as bad was the caster side, to me. A daily power? So, I can't memorize it more than once? What if I want to use it more than once today? Can't? No way to use less of other spells to use more of that one? Feh. In a magic system the 'makes sense' part is lessened because the rules governing magic can be more arbitrary without being nonsensical, but it's a mechanic I disliked.

Healing is another big one. The idea that most healing requires the use of this daily resource and there are very few ways to exceed that was ludicrous. Worse was the fact that when someone cast a healing spell/ability on someone it usually didn't heal them, it 'allowed them to use a healing surge'. This, again, feels stupid and is a mechanic I dislike.

It gets worse when it comes to magical items. The rules concerning magical items confused (and continue to confuse) the crap out of me, and the part I do understand, if I'm understanding correctly, is stupid. So, no matter how many different, wholly separate magical items I possess, I can only use a limited amount of magical item powers per day? Beyond stupid! If specific magical items have some sort of exclusionary clause (like some items in 2nd and 3.X that need to be attuned for 24 hours or more before use) that's one thing, but the idea that using one item should have any effect on being able to use a wholly different item that goes in another slot (or is slotless) is stupid beyond belief. Beyond that is the fact that the variety of magical items was again further reduced in 4th edition as well as the reduced abilities of many items was yet another strike against the system.

And then we come to the final and biggest nail in the coffin for me. Spells. No, not the 'powers' that classes get in daily/encounter use, the 'rituals' that replaced a number of spells. It's not that everyone can do them, if they have the right feat or whatever - that actually makes sense to a degree. In 3.X we clearly learned that magic is better at everything, therefore if everyone's going to compete, everyone has to be able to do magic, at least the utility type stuff, otherwise spells pretty much make skills obsolete. It's the fact that a lot of useful spells are entirely gone, (I can't name which ones, it's been too long since I looked into 4E) the fact that the lowest casting time I recall seeing was 10 minutes (thus making them utterly useless in many situations) but also that all of them require varying amounts of expensive material components.

Tying all these things together seems to be a common thread: that of limiting how you interact with the world to as discrete and codified a method as possible to minimize chances of unwanted interactions between rules creating imbalance. It seems clear that common thread was a major motivator in the 4th Edition design philosophy, and that is precisely what I hate about it - rather than giving us as many tools as possible to let us build whatever we can imagine, 4th Edition preferred to constrain us to only precisely those things which were predetermined. This, I think, is the source for all the 'video game' comparisons: in a video game, you can ONLY do precisely those things which have been programmed into it, and nothing more. Most of the features of 4th Edition that I dislike seem to be set up in the same manner, trying to force us into a very specific mold of only those things which have been accounted for in the rules.

Swordguy
2012-05-02, 09:34 PM
Sorry, this doesn't work. You can't make a whole post dedicated to how evil optimizers are and then say "but that's just my opinion" and expect everything to be alright.

It's not my opinion, it's my experience. There's a difference. Unless you're saying my experience is objectively wrong.

People in my local area dislike 4e because they can't optimize to the degree they want (a degree that they use to break game and lord over people who don't have the same time/money/inclination). OP asked a question, and there's the answer that those people gave me, which I then gave to the OP. Where's the opinion in that?

Shadowknight12
2012-05-02, 09:34 PM
Ok. It's just a matter of personal taste. No fault. Just is.

Yes, pretty much. What can I say? There is yet to be a post-3e system that does what I want it to do. PF, 4e and even Legend went in the exact same direction, even if the results were very different.

NecroRebel
2012-05-02, 09:40 PM
You can't realize something that isn't true. 3.5 can be balanced, you just need to understand the system. JaronK's tiers can help new players with that. ToB, advanced casters, the factotum and binders for example are quite balanced compaired to eachother.

I think the point was that for 3.5, you need everyone involved to understand the system for it to be balanced, whereas for 4e, you get balance, or at least something much closer to balance, even if some players are completely ignorant and some true masters.

In addition, your claim isn't true unless everyone cooperates; if you get a group of people who know how to optimize and tell them to all make tier 4 characters for a game, and one makes a tier 1 character anyway, you don't have balance. That tier 1 character might be a thousand times as strong as his comrades. In 4e, a perfectly-optimized character is maybe ten times as strong as an intentionally-crappy one, and in most cases a master's optimized character will be only 3-4 times as strong as a newby's or otherwise less-optimized character.

The point is that people complained about balance in 3.5, so WotC took steps to make 4e more balanced. Radically-divergent power levels become ever more likely as more options are opened up, so Swordguy's claim, that limiting options helps prevent said radically-divergent power levels, is absolutely true.


Sorry, this doesn't work. You can't make a whole post dedicated to how evil optimizers are and then say "but that's just my opinion" and expect everything to be alright.

I'm also unsure why you think Swordguy's post involved claims that optimizers are evil.

Boci
2012-05-02, 09:41 PM
It's not my opinion, it's my experience. There's a difference. Unless you're saying my experience is objectively wrong.

It really doesn't make that much of a difference in this case. You chose to mention your experience, that optimizers suck, on a board where a large portion of the posters identify themselves as such, but do not display the negative traits the ones you encounter always seem to posses. Can you not see how that is provocative?


In addition, your claim isn't true unless everyone cooperates; if you get a group of people who know how to optimize and tell them to all make tier 4 characters for a game, and one makes a tier 1 character anyway, you don't have balance.

A jerk will make all system less fun to play. Hoarding your optimizing knowledge shows an immature attitude and such a player should be told off and booted from the game if they don't change their ways.

Swordguy
2012-05-02, 09:50 PM
It really doesn't make that much of a difference in this case. You chose to mention your experience, that optimizers suck, on a board where a large portion of the posters identify themselves as such, but do not display the negative traits the ones you encounter always seem to posses. Can you not see how that is provocative?


No, and I'm sorry you chose to read it that way...but I can't control how you read my post. All I can do is honestly share my experiences; if they make you uncomfortable, or you think they make certain play styles look bad, then report the post and let the mods figure it out.

I would point out, however, that some would read the stories I share about my local metagame, and then apply that information to figure out exactly why I have a low opinion of optimization in general. And why I don't post a lot here anymore on "a board where a large portion of the posters identify themselves as [optimizers]".

WalkingTarget
2012-05-02, 09:52 PM
It really doesn't make that much of a difference in this case. You chose to mention your experience, that optimizers suck, on a board where a large portion of the posters identify themselves as such, but do not display the negative traits the ones you encounter always seem to posses. Can you not see how that is provocative?

Where does he say that optimizers suck? He says that they are unable to do their preferred level of optimization in 4E and that, based on his knowledge of the design philosophy behind 4E, this was an intentional result. If he thought that optimizers suck, he probably would have stopped playing with them a long time ago.

Boci
2012-05-02, 09:55 PM
Where does he say that optimizers suck? He says that they are unable to do their preferred level of optimization in 4E and that, based on his knowledge of the design philosophy behind 4E, this was an intentional result. If he thought that optimizers suck, he probably would have stopped playing with them a long time ago.

Here, right before your post:

"I would point out, however, that some would read the stories I share about my local metagame, and then apply that information to figure out exactly why I have a low opinion of optimization in general. And why I don't post a lot here anymore on "a board where a large portion of the posters identify themselves as [optimizers]"."

NecroRebel
2012-05-02, 09:57 PM
A jerk will make all system less fun to play. Hoarding your optimizing knowledge shows an immature attitude and such a player should be told off and booted from the game if they don't change their ways.

Irrelevant. Your claim was that it wasn't true that lots of options make for lack of balance because widespread system mastery could allow for avoiding lack of balance by selecting options that pushed power levels outside of the party's accepted band. This is not enough, however. In addition, a claim that something isn't a problem because it can be fixed is fallacious, codified as the Oberoni fallacy; if it needs fixing, it must by definition be a problem.

Also, I didn't notice it before, but I also take issue with your original claim that you cannot realize something that isn't true. Politics and religion provide large numbers of examples of this phenomena (I'll leave specifics to the reader).

WalkingTarget
2012-05-02, 09:58 PM
Here, right before your post:

"I would point out, however, that some would read the stories I share about my local metagame, and then apply that information to figure out exactly why I have a low opinion of optimization in general. And why I don't post a lot here anymore on "a board where a large portion of the posters identify themselves as [optimizers]"."

Yeah, ninja post that went up while I was typing mine up.

He says he has a low opinion of "optimization". This is not equivalent to saying that it is "evil". I don't play in high optimization games either because I don't particularly care for it, but that's not an absolute value judgement.

Boci
2012-05-02, 10:01 PM
No, and I'm sorry you chose to read it that way...but I can't control how you read my post.

No, but you can control the tone in them. For example:

"Some people liked the fact that you could make a character capable of altering reality without too much difficulty and have 5 different buffs on them 24/7. Or the sheet challenge coming through 7 different source books plus dragon magazine to make the character with just the right abilities"

There. Same massage, just less offensive to the play style of people you disagree with.


Irrelevant. Your claim was that it wasn't true that lots of options make for lack of balance because widespread system mastery could allow for avoiding lack of balance by selecting options that pushed power levels outside of the party's accepted band. This is not enough, however. In addition, a claim that something isn't a problem because it can be fixed is fallacious, codified as the Oberoni fallacy; if it needs fixing, it must by definition be a problem.


No. I'm saying a jerk is a problem in any system, not just 3.5. I never said they weren't problems.

WalkingTarget
2012-05-02, 10:05 PM
No, but you can control the tone in them. For example:

"Some people liked the fact that you could make a character capable of altering reality without too much difficulty and have 5 different buffs on them 24/7. Or the sheet challenge coming through 7 different source books plus dragon magazine to make the character with just the right abilities"

There. Same massage, just less offensive to the play style of people you disagree with.

:smallconfused:

I'm assuming you're suggesting a replacement to his first paragraph there. You know, the part where he's purportedly providing direct quotes from people he knows that shows why they dislike 4E rather than his own thoughts on the matter.

Edit @V - agreed. Later all.

Swordguy
2012-05-02, 10:05 PM
Here, right before your post:

"I would point out, however, that some would read the stories I share about my local metagame, and then apply that information to figure out exactly why I have a low opinion of optimization in general. And why I don't post a lot here anymore on "a board where a large portion of the posters identify themselves as [optimizers]"."


Given that you were complaining about my FIRST post, this seems to be a textbook case of moving the goalposts of an argument.

Order of Posts
1) <Swordguy's original post>
2) <Your complaint that I'm calling all optimizers bad in my original post>
3) <Swordguy's rebuttal, wherein he points out that his experience with optimization has been entirely negative, and thus has a low opinion of the practice - not the people>
4) <Your last post (quoted above) where you claim that your complaint about post #1 which raised in #2 is TOTALLY VALID because of a misreading of what I said in post #3.


Thank you for the reminder of why I lurk. I'm out. OP, I hoped my answer helped.

Boci
2012-05-02, 10:07 PM
:smallconfused:

I'm assuming you're suggesting a replacement to his first paragraph there. You know, the part where he's purportedly providing direct quotes from people he knows rather than his own thoughts on the matter.

Yes, I am talking about the paragraph where he chose the quotes that portay people who dislike 4E as power hungry minchkins. Do you think doing that was vital to his point?


Given that you were complaining about my FIRST post, this seems to be a textbook case of moving the goalposts of an argument.

Order of Posts
1) <Swordguy's original post>
2) <Your complaint that I'm calling all optimizers bad in my original post>
3) <Swordguy's rebuttal, wherein he points out that his experience with optimization has been entirely negative, and thus has a low opinion of the practice - not the people>
4) <Your last post (quoted above) where you claim that your complaint about post #1 which raised in #2 is TOTALLY VALID because of a misreading of what I said in post #3.


Thank you for the reminder of why I lurk. I'm out. OP, I hoped my answer helped.

I'm sorry if you feel I diliberatly misinterpreted what you were saying. I didn't. If I made a mistake, that's all it was, a mistake. I just felt that saying "in my expirience, people who don't like 4E are munchkins" seemed unneccissary in a thread where others had given perfectly valid reasons for not liking the system.

Reverent-One
2012-05-02, 10:13 PM
Yes, I am talking about the paragraph where he chose the quotes that portay people who dislike 4E as power hungry minchkins. Do you think doing that was vital to his point?

Well, if his point was to accurately portray the metagame in his area, and those quotes accurately portray the metagame in his area, then the quotes are kinda vital to his point.

WitchSlayer
2012-05-02, 10:13 PM
No, why, please don't do this. You fools. YOU FOOLS.

Boci
2012-05-02, 10:27 PM
Well, if his point was to accurately portray the metagame in his area, and those quotes accurately portray the metagame in his area, then the quotes are kinda vital to his point.

Maybe its just me, but I believe that quoting a munchkin (How else would you refer to someone whose upst they can't be the most powerful at the table anymore?) should be avoided as being vital to your point, unless your point is munchkins say the darnest things.

Reverent-One
2012-05-02, 10:31 PM
Maybe its just me, but I believe that quoting a munchkin (How else would you refer to someone whose upst they can't be the most powerful at the table anymore?) should be avoided as being vital to your point, unless your point is munchkins say the darnest things.

The topic is why do some people hate 4e, if that's the reason people in his area hate it, than it's relevant to this this thread. Munchkins are people too.

Boci
2012-05-02, 10:34 PM
The topic is why do some people hate 4e, if that's the reason people in his area hate it, than it's relevant to this this thread. Munchkins are people too.

Yes, I just feel the point could have been made less offensivly than "Everyone I know who hates 4th ed is a munchkin. Here's some quotes to prove it". Maybe its just me, in which case I apologize for making such a big deal out of nothing.

Knaight
2012-05-02, 10:38 PM
Yes, I just feel the point could have been made less offensivly than "Everyone I know who hates 4th ed is a munchkin. Here's some quotes to prove it". Maybe its just me, in which case I apologize for making such a big deal out of nothing.

That wasn't said. What was said was "within the local metagame, there is a drive to power, and a desire to spend a lot of time making powerful characters. 4e doesn't satisfy that urge", which is entirely valid. I'd actually consider it a criticism of 4e, if not one I'd consider important due to having no desire towards power maximization.

Talakeal
2012-05-02, 10:57 PM
Lot's of Stuff.[/SIZE]

That's really weird, almost the complete opposite of what I have seen. In my group the people who played fighters or monks hate 4E while the Tier 1 players all became rabid 4E fans. I assumed it was because the optimizers were also the hack and slashers in my circle of gamers, but maybe that was incorrect.

I know they treated 4E like it was some blessed return to tactical war gaming and acted like it was a much needed break from all that boring talking and plot.

Cleavon
2012-05-02, 11:15 PM
While I definitely wouldn't agree that the internet is the only thing keeping 4E alive, I think there's a tangible effect.


Imagine you're a newbie player just getting into this big scary Tabletop thing. You're curious about this "D&D 4E" thingy so you decide to go on the internet and see what other people have to say about it.

Instantly, you encounter a tidal wave, a chorus of "4E is WoW with the servers down" and "Pathfinder r0xx0rz." After reading all of this, are you going to be as enthusiastic as you were before about getting into 4E, or are you going to be swayed by all the seething hate toward it you see around?


The question is, how many of these new players go to 3.5/Pathfinder instead of 4E, because of the hatebase against 4E? I'm willing to bet it's not insignificant.

You make an excellent point, but there is something to be said for a person giving things a chance.

Playing 4E at your local gaming store, if you are lucky enough to have one, could be essentially free. I imagine that if you came to a forum like this you could try anything you liked for free, using SRDs.

In doing so you could get a decent feel for each system and decide for yourself, which is what people really should do.

I do admit that a sizable amount of people are easily swayed though. I just hope they do what I did and even after hating the rules play in a few full campaigns. It's not the worst thing I've ever played(Savage Worlds, I'm looking at you) but it is certainly not my favorite edition of DND.

Knaight
2012-05-02, 11:26 PM
I do admit that a sizable amount of people are easily swayed though. I just hope they do what I did and even after hating the rules play in a few full campaigns. It's not the worst thing I've ever played(Savage Worlds, I'm looking at you) but it is certainly not my favorite edition of DND.
I was seriously considering throwing in a dig at Savage Worlds in my analysis. After all, when it comes to being a sloppy, poorly designed system with next to no mechanical elegance it's hard to be better than Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds is some sort of platonic ideal for sloppy, poorly designed systems.

Bowerbird
2012-05-03, 12:16 AM
Granted I only read the first page, and a little bit of the second so for all I know I could be posting this into the middle of a flame war. Before I start, I haven't had the chance to play much 4E, because I don't actually know anyone in my area who doesn't hate it, for various reasons, some more valid than others.

I agree with a lot of the more cogent points already made in the thread, though I think where the system really suffers is the sameness of classes. What I do play a fair amount of is Star Wars Saga Edition, and it was essentially the beta-test for the 4E system. Most of the mechanics are the same. The chief difference that I've found is that Star Wars was all about versatility. You could have 4 players play the same class and have completely different characters. It's this kind of versatility that I like. In core 4E this is next to impossible, in my experience.

The other thing that I've noticed is that Wizards has been trying really hard to squeeze money out of people. For example, in 3.5 you had Complete Arcane, one book, fairly expensive, lots of content. In 4E the same book would be split over 3 or 4 smaller books with less content, each the same price as Complete Arcane.

At any rate, I'm going to stop now before the rambling really starts. I never really truly condemned the system, as I never got the chance to play it enough to pass judgement, but conceptually I think Star Wars took roughly the same mechanics and made a much better game.

Hawkfrost000
2012-05-03, 01:37 AM
My only real complaint with it is that it is so much less customize-able than 3.5, i feel that multi classing now really has no point. You just pick one class and stick to it, which is really not how my group played (and continues to play) 3.5.

For example the pinnacle of my powergaming phase was the creation of my great Pala'Bard'Lock that looked something like this: Warlock 4/ Bard 1/ Eldritch Chord 2/ Paladin 2/ Hellfire Warlock 3/ Legacy Champion 8.

Yes, thats a grand total of 43d6 of damage per eldritch blast (or claws), and absurd charisma to saves, and to hit thanks to snowflake wardance. Not to mention warlock at will powers.

my 4th e warlock is this: Warlock 30. My eldritch blast does 3d10 damage.

lame

DM

Scots Dragon
2012-05-03, 01:41 AM
What I do play a fair amount of is Star Wars Saga Edition, and it was essentially the beta-test for the 4E system. Most of the mechanics are the same. The chief difference that I've found is that Star Wars was all about versatility. You could have 4 players play the same class and have completely different characters. It's this kind of versatility that I like. In core 4E this is next to impossible, in my experience.

That always threw me. While I would have severely retooled the force powers of Saga Edition to get a system much closer to the setting of Star Wars out of it, the sheer versatility and complexity in character creation for a system that lasted for a couple of years and vanished was pretty amazing. The game was a fantastic roleplaying system and had many ideas that could have greatly benefitted the development of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition, allowing for many of the existing problems to be sorted out without losing the central idea.

The simple fact of the matter is that Saga Edition is what 4th edition should have been like, more or less.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2012-05-03, 02:05 AM
First of all, it's easy to hate something on the internet. If someone actually hates 4e IRL, perhaps that person should consider that he hates a particular game of make believe and scale it back. Also, a good group cures almost any system ails. I've had good times playing many systems I dislike because I had good groups. Not to say I wouldn't have had better times playing better systems, but then some people in the group have different tastes.

Aaanyway, since this is basically a "critique and/or defend 4e" thread, I'll put in my 2cp. Most of the points have already been said (rituals, sameness, etc), so I'll repeat a couple that irk me especially and then get onto the slightly more unique points:

1. The "Come and Get Me" Fighter Power is probably the most egregious case of dissociated mechanics I've ever seen. I get that you're supposed to fill in the blanks on some of these powers... but how do you goad a gelatinous cube into moving towards you?

2. How it was possible to create a "steamlined" system with more fiddly situational bonuses than 3.5 is beyond me. I'm actually pretty good at getting complex systems, but I'm not sitting down at the gaming table to practice my rote memorization. This complaint would have gone away if the mechanics were ever fully computerized, but it's hard to do in a system with immediate actions.

3. There's a fine line between encouraging teamwork/party roles and requiring them. In a group with less than 4 players (and in my case, even fewer people who cared about contributing in combat), you're missing vital roles and get steamrolled by things that a well-oiled taclord-led party would yawn through, and there's nothing one person can do about it. 3.5 roles generally covered different capabilities. Sure, you have high tier characters who are imbalanced because they can do so many things, but that actually helped when you needed to cover several roles. Yes, I'm aware that something like Barbarian/Bard can try to cover everything in 4e, but again, you need willing companions. I shoulda played the Bard instead of the Barbarian...

4. That leads into optimization. It's not that I miss the Incantatrix (although I did have a fun/weird time playing one once; that game was like Exalted-level power in a d20 system and campaign setting). But optimized characters aren't by necessity spotlight-mongering boopholes who make everyone else QQ in shame. They're often "weird concept" characters who are made viable with cleverness and rules knowledge, or support characters who, every once in a while, pull out the big guns when the party needs them. This kind of play isn't viable in 4e.

To put it briefly, power in 4e means getting more and more plusses, while true power in 3e means getting more and better qualitative abilities.

The Glyphstone
2012-05-03, 05:30 AM
1. The "Come and Get Me" Fighter Power is probably the most egregious case of dissociated mechanics I've ever seen. I get that you're supposed to fill in the blanks on some of these powers... but how do you goad a gelatinous cube into moving towards you?


Material Component: Canned pineapple chunks.:smallbiggrin:

huttj509
2012-05-03, 06:08 AM
Material Component: Canned pineapple chunks.:smallbiggrin:

I was gonna say BBQ sauce.

JadePhoenix
2012-05-03, 06:22 AM
People in my local area dislike 4e because they can't optimize to the degree they want

People in your area just don't know 4e, then. 4e has (or had, after tons of errata buried everything) lots of broken stuff. Blade Cascade, Student of Caiphon, Demigod and Feycharger spring to mind.

Nero24200
2012-05-03, 06:58 AM
Because it's not 3.5. Every edition has "Edition Wars" but none of them had a vocal online community first. When 5th Edition comes out I predict just as much hate being thrown around by the 4th Edition fans.

WitchSlayer
2012-05-03, 07:29 AM
Please can we not do this? The 5e thread has already more or less devolved into an edition war AND on the other tabletop related post-based website I go to there's a 2500 post edition war going on.

It has been argued to death ever since 4e was announced. Cant' we just admit differences and move on?

The Glyphstone
2012-05-03, 09:42 AM
Please can we not do this? The 5e thread has already more or less devolved into an edition war AND on the other tabletop related post-based website I go to there's a 2500 post edition war going on.

It has been argued to death ever since 4e was announced. Cant' we just admit differences and move on?

Strawberry!

Empedocles
2012-05-03, 10:00 AM
While I definitely wouldn't agree that the internet is the only thing keeping 4E alive, I think there's a tangible effect.


Imagine you're a newbie player just getting into this big scary Tabletop thing. You're curious about this "D&D 4E" thingy so you decide to go on the internet and see what other people have to say about it.

Instantly, you encounter a tidal wave, a chorus of "4E is WoW with the servers down" and "Pathfinder r0xx0rz." After reading all of this, are you going to be as enthusiastic as you were before about getting into 4E, or are you going to be swayed by all the seething hate toward it you see around?


The question is, how many of these new players go to 3.5/Pathfinder instead of 4E, because of the hatebase against 4E? I'm willing to bet it's not insignificant.

I was tentative to enter this thread since threads like these tend to cause nuclear internet wars, even though a lot of things I've read so far make me want to have my 3.5 gestalt incarnate//binder (examples I chose because 4e has yet to even try and duplicate them) march over and slaughter the 4e warlock, I've decided to start my little part of the conversation on a much less aggressive note and point out that most people don't start with the internet when they get into RPGs, as far as I know, and instead only turn to it much later. I don't think the internet has significantly impacted the real world popularity of 4e (especially since those players that do read online will probably read on WotC's forums...which are obviously pro 4e).

Now, I'd also just like to point out an itsy bitsy word:


LEGEND

Fatebreaker
2012-05-03, 10:17 AM
Strawberry!

Vanilla or death!

Noedig
2012-05-03, 11:30 AM
Vanilla or death!

Hello! Church of England, cake or death?

Kurald Galain
2012-05-03, 11:37 AM
Strawberry!

INDYSTAR188
2012-05-03, 11:56 AM
I started playing DnD 9 years ago and had a lot of fun playing 3.5, it's my first experience with table top games after all! We recently switched to 4E and some of the reasons I'm happy about it are thus:

- There's always at least one guy in my old 3.5 group who wants to play the tier 1 or 2 characters. It just isn't as much fun for everyone else who doesn't have the books/time to super optimize a wizard. It gets even less fun when he can kill something w/a spell, or solve any out of combat scenario w/a spell.... every time.

- It feels like we always had to have someone play a Cleric so we could have some group healing. I know that's not necessarily the case but it felt that way.

- If a spell caster used his/her spell slots for the day we had to rest, HAD to (I always liked 3.5 Druids since there was plenty of other stuff to contribute with than just spells).

- The amount of rules and all the materials seemed a bit overwhelming. Especially when we'd have a 30 minute argument about bull-rush or tripping or this spell does THIS not THAT as per this book which supersedes that one.

I've read in several posts that a lot of people feel that all the classes in 4E feel the same. That kinda confuses me because all the classes have different roles and their own unique class features. It makes sense to me (maybe I'm the only one) that a melee person could have a Daily power... maybe there's a sword fighting technique that takes such precise timing and such a personal risk it's just not an option except during the exact right situation. And also, I really like that you need to work together in 4E.

Boci
2012-05-03, 12:11 PM
I've read in several posts that a lot of people feel that all the classes in 4E feel the same. That kinda confuses me because all the classes have different roles and their own unique class features.

But all the classes are built off the same template. Compare that to a warblade, factotum, beguiler and binder in 3.5. Completly different system, which a lot of people feel you need to represent such huge differences in ability (magic vs. martial, harnessing the innate vs. learning to manipulate what is around you). Sure I roll my eyes when people say that in 4th ed fighter = wizard, but at the same time you cannot claim they are just as distinct as they were in 3.5.


It makes sense to me (maybe I'm the only one) that a melee person could have a Daily power... maybe there's a sword fighting technique that takes such precise timing and such a personal risk it's just not an option except during the exact right situation.

But you can use the daily whenever you want to. Its possible to explain daily martial powers, but rarely convincingly. Not a major problem...but enough to be a background annoyance for some.

hamishspence
2012-05-03, 12:12 PM
a lot of things I've read so far make me want to have my 3.5 gestalt incarnate//binder (examples I chose because 4e has yet to even try and duplicate them) march over and slaughter the 4e warlock,

Hybrids are like gestalt, but reduced in power so much that they're typically slightly weaker than the main classes.

A Vestige Pact warlock (Arcane Power) might qualify as binder-ish.

Sadly there isn't much that resembles the Incarnate. Maybe a psionic character, given that in 4E psionic characters tend to get halos, a bit like one of the soul melds- and that most of their powers are at-will?
The way power points can be used to augment at-will psionic powers- could be thought of as like investing essentia- but with it as a daily resource rather than an always-present resource.

Blackfang108
2012-05-03, 02:39 PM
Minor nitpick, 4e power points are an encounter resource, not a daily one.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-03, 03:03 PM
LEGEND

Another word: Overhyped.:smalltongue:

Its alright. You win some, you loose some but its not the magnificent end all be all perfect great solution that some people hype it up to be.

Fatebreaker
2012-05-03, 03:24 PM
Overhyped.

As someone who had never heard of Legend until someone mentioned it here a few weeks ago, I can't speak to this. But in the brief time I've known of it, I've seen an almost comical degree of "love it or hate it" attitudes from folks. I would certainly like to know, from a legitimate desire to learn, why you believe it is "overhyped."

Felorn
2012-05-03, 03:40 PM
Just out of morbid curiosity, did they ever give a way to craft mundane items in 4th ed? The skill system always rubbed me the wrong way.

Yes, Martial Power 2. Gave characters out of combat stuff to do.

Tyndmyr
2012-05-03, 03:47 PM
Another word: Overhyped.:smalltongue:

Its alright. You win some, you loose some but its not the magnificent end all be all perfect great solution that some people hype it up to be.

I agree. It looks like a perfectly good game system, and if that's the sort of game you like, you'll be very happy with it. But it's not the kind of system that's right for everyone. I can't imagine my group caring enough to switch over to it, but we'll probably give 5e a go when it comes out...some notable enthusiasm for it in the group.

Dienekes
2012-05-03, 04:01 PM
As someone who had never heard of Legend until someone mentioned it here a few weeks ago, I can't speak to this. But in the brief time I've known of it, I've seen an almost comical degree of "love it or hate it" attitudes from folks. I would certainly like to know, from a legitimate desire to learn, why you believe it is "overhyped."

Basically the creators of the game are hombrewers from these very boards, so it might be thrown around a bit more here than elsewhere. But it does seem to crop up where it only tangentially is related to the topic being discussed which can be a bit annoying.

The game itself is another d20 based game, much like 3.5 with some interesting ideas that not everyone agrees with. That's really all there is to the system.

Knaight
2012-05-03, 04:09 PM
Basically the creators of the game are hombrewers from these very boards, so it might be thrown around a bit more here than elsewhere. But it does seem to crop up where it only tangentially is related to the topic being discussed which can be a bit annoying.

The game itself is another d20 based game, much like 3.5 with some interesting ideas that not everyone agrees with. That's really all there is to the system.

I wouldn't call it much like 3.5, given how drastically divergent the leveling system is compared to most other d20 games.

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-03, 04:27 PM
So, basically, people never forgave 4e for not being 3.5? It's not an orange's fault it's not an apple.

I admit there are things I don't like about 4e, but if you have that much of an issue with it play something else.

Knaight
2012-05-03, 04:34 PM
So, basically, people never forgave 4e for not being 3.5? It's not an orange's fault it's not an apple.

I admit there are things I don't like about 4e, but if you have that much of an issue with it play something else.

I haven't seen any of this. There's criticism based on screwing up what they already had, there's criticism based on holding onto parts of 3.5 that should be gone, and there's some criticism that it isn't more like SAGA, but this thread doesn't have any criticism that comes down to "it isn't 3.5".

hamishspence
2012-05-03, 04:37 PM
Minor nitpick, 4e power points are an encounter resource, not a daily one.

oops- I spotted the "after taking an extended rest" but not the "or short rest" bit when reading.

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-03, 04:50 PM
I haven't seen any of this. There's criticism based on screwing up what they already had, there's criticism based on holding onto parts of 3.5 that should be gone, and there's some criticism that it isn't more like SAGA, but this thread doesn't have any criticism that comes down to "it isn't 3.5".

Well, this is what I am seeing. I also think there's a fair point in saying power gamers dislike 4e because it is so balanced. People wanted balance and not being dependant on clerics? Here ya go!

Knaight
2012-05-03, 04:54 PM
Well, this is what I am seeing. I also think there's a fair point in saying power gamers dislike 4e because it is so balanced. People wanted balance and not being dependant on clerics? Here ya go!

The bit about certain power gamers is entirely valid, as the majority of the participants in that particular discussion stated.

RPTools Bard
2012-05-03, 05:03 PM
My dislike of 4e started with 3e. As my hobby time shank, it was harder to justify the time needed to create characters and develop campaigns. When 4e came out, I decided to get off the bus and switch systems. Although it's been maligned on this thread, I switched to Savage Worlds and never looked back.

With Savage Worlds it's simple to switch gaming worlds without the need to learn a lot of new stuff. It's also easy to develop campaigns and adventures. You need almost no time to do so. The play truly is Fast, Furious, and Fun and there's enough variation to give each genre a new feel without a major disruption to the underlying understanding of an elegant rule set. The GURPS folks feel the same about that system.

With 3e d20, however, the character portion of the game seemed to change a great deal between genres. The time to create an adventure took longer than to play it and I found myself always referring to the rules. Breaking free of d20 was, how shall I say it, liberating.

All that said, play what you love. I know folks that love rules-lite Risus and that's all the really want to play. I think that's great. I also know folks that love 4e and I don't knock them for it. As for me, I want to spend more time gaming and learning a setting than reading through rule books to figure out how to advance my character or derive stats for critters.

So now we have 5e on the horizon. I probably won't buy that one either unless my 4e friends tell me it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. But the true benefit to 5e is the boost it will give to our dying hobby. As DnD goes, so goes the industry. For that, I'm truly grateful to WotC for doing another edition.

Kaun
2012-05-03, 06:16 PM
Are we up to the ice cream flavor arguments yet because i want to get a vote in for boysenberry, that s*&t is delicious!

Talakeal
2012-05-03, 06:49 PM
So, basically, people never forgave 4e for not being 3.5? It's not an orange's fault it's not an apple.

I admit there are things I don't like about 4e, but if you have that much of an issue with it play something else.

But oranges aren't marketed as "Apples. But new apples that are so good that you will think your old apples taste like broccoli!"

50Copper
2012-05-03, 07:07 PM
Grognards hate anything that isn't THEIR D&D.

They wanna keep buying the same damn product, over and over, ad infinitum.

Knaight
2012-05-03, 07:09 PM
Are we up to the ice cream flavor arguments yet because i want to get a vote in for boysenberry, that s*&t is delicious!

Speaking of ice cream, high density saffron and rose ice cream with pistachios is apparently available at stores. It is delicious.

Kurald Galain
2012-05-03, 07:50 PM
I admit there are things I don't like about 4e, but if you have that much of an issue with it play something else.
I think that most people who hate 4E do in fact play something else. That doesn't stop them from posting their opinion on forums though :)


I also think there's a fair point in saying power gamers dislike 4e because it is so balanced.
Just check the WOTC charop forums - there's a fair amount of power gaming in 4E, noticeably so in paragon/epic tier and in LFR.


As someone who had never heard of Legend until someone mentioned it here a few weeks ago, I can't speak to this. But in the brief time I've known of it, I've seen an almost comical degree of "love it or hate it" attitudes from folks. I would certainly like to know, from a legitimate desire to learn, why you believe it is "overhyped."
It inherits a number of design features from both 3E and 4E; people who dislike those particular features will most likely dislike Legend too. Some call it "4E done right", others dislike it for the same reason they dislike 4E.

Kaun
2012-05-03, 08:02 PM
Speaking of ice cream, high density saffron and rose ice cream with pistachios is apparently available at stores. It is delicious.

For some reason i read Sephiroth rather then saffron on my first read.

Was half way to the car before i decided to double check.

Most awesome flavor ever!

Partysan
2012-05-03, 08:24 PM
Speaking of ice cream, high density saffron and rose ice cream with pistachios is apparently available at stores. It is delicious.

Sounds like a remake of traditional Persian ice cream.

...do you know if it's also available in Germany?

Knaight
2012-05-03, 08:38 PM
Sounds like a remake of traditional Persian ice cream.

...do you know if it's also available in Germany?

It's made in Iran and shipped internationally, so I'd imagine that there may well be a market in Germany given that there's one in the U.S.

NecroRebel
2012-05-03, 10:34 PM
Just check the WOTC charop forums - there's a fair amount of power gaming in 4E, noticeably so in paragon/epic tier and in LFR.

Then again, said power gaming's greatest extremes are still far less than in 3.5. For instance, the keeper of the 4e kills-per-round high scores list notes that a striker should average 2 kills in 5 rounds all on their own, with 3 per 5 being high-op, and pre-epic even the best builds for that purpose manage less than 1 kill per round. A top-tier TO striker is dealing less than 3 times the damage of a "decent" striker, in other words. Compare to 3.5, where the standard damage-dealer does a couple hundred damage per round AFAIK, while TO damage-dealers get into the quintillions and more. So if you like optimizing because you like getting the most ginormously incredible numbers possible, 4e may be disappointing, because the numbers just aren't as big.

navar100
2012-05-03, 10:37 PM
Well, this is what I am seeing. I also think there's a fair point in saying power gamers dislike 4e because it is so balanced. People wanted balance and not being dependant on clerics? Here ya go!

You got me. I only hate 4E because there's a number 4 on the book. It's not 3E.

:smallannoyed:

Averis Vol
2012-05-03, 11:03 PM
So, basically, people never forgave 4e for not being 3.5? It's not an orange's fault it's not an apple.

I admit there are things I don't like about 4e, but if you have that much of an issue with it play something else.

thats exactly the reason i play 3.5, i tried 4e and it was terrible, on the same tangent i played PF, it was bad (yet to play legend, but just from the names of everything it sounds bad). that's what the OP asked for, reasons we hate it.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-04, 02:54 AM
Well, this is what I am seeing. I also think there's a fair point in saying power gamers dislike 4e because it is so balanced. People wanted balance and not being dependant on clerics? Here ya go!

I'm not a power gamer, myself. I've dabbled in optimisation once or twice, but ultimately glancing across the ideas for practical optimisation personally just winds up irritating me. Theoretical optimisation is interesting enough for seeing what you can figure out with a good deal of mathematics, and has the same interest for me as a series of hypotheticals.

What I am is a roleplayer. I don't care for building some sort of insanely high-optimisation concept that dominates the entire game because that's not actually what the game's about to me. Creating characters and telling a story is my primary interest here.

And 4e, upon its introduction, was indeed balanced. It was balanced by taking away most of the wizard's magic, by turning the fighter's combat skills into a bunch of sometimes-repeatable powers, by turning many of the interesting fluff spells into rituals or getting rid of them entirely, and by completely and irreversibly changing much of the setting and monsters to fit their idea of what players were actually interested in. All of this had been a standard of the game since 1974, and then suddenly we saw the sudden end of thirty-four years of what Dungeons & Dragons was to several generations of gamers.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition got rid of everything that I found interesting about the game. It changed the monsters, the cosmology, the characters, the settings, the classes, the magic, the deities, the races, the alignment system, and the level of detail in which the game modelled the world that it was in. So what, I ask you, did it really have left that was, in fact, really all that unique to Dungeons & Dragons?

Anarion
2012-05-04, 03:10 AM
I think the mistake was actually putting the name "Dungeons and Dragons" on the game system. Think about something really common, like if you buy a Reese's peanut butter cup. You know you're getting chocolate and peanut butter. Even if they made the best tasting chocolate with almonds in the entire world, if they called that "New Reese's" a bunch of people would be upset they weren't getting peanut butter anymore.

Edit:
Speaking of ice cream, high density saffron and rose ice cream with pistachios is apparently available at stores. It is delicious.

That sounds completely delicious. Does that exist outside of Los Angeles? That's all I'm getting on Google.

Knaight
2012-05-04, 03:34 AM
That sounds completely delicious. Does that exist outside of Los Angeles? That's all I'm getting on Google.

I can personally confirm Denver, CO. Moreover, as I stated above, it's produced in Iran and shipped internationally, so there is absolutely no reason for it to be regional. I'd copy the name, but it's in Arabic, and my Arabic skills are completely nonexistent.

I can also confirm the bit about it being completely delicious. It's the best ice cream I've ever had, by a comfortable margin.

Cerlis
2012-05-04, 03:51 AM
This pretty much explains it. Well, it explained the reasons that I would have typed up.

Personally, I like Pathfinder. To each their own though.

*EDIT* I didn't see this gem. Gotta comment on this.



People hate 4e because it is fashionable to do so, and the internet is the only thing keeping 3.5E and other editions alive.

I LOVE when someone speaks out their posterior.

Do I think some people hate on 4E for that reason? Of course!

On the other hand, say that the entire "4E is garbage" movement boils down to just a "fashionable hatred" is ludicrous.

I don't hate it exactly, but it is certainly not the edition for me, as described in the post I quoted first.

I guess some people really like to keep the ball rolling though. Then leave the thread...

I think instead of just saying "you're blowing it out your fanny" you might give a reason why its ludicrous.

For instance the fact that a post like that came directly after about 4 or 5 people listing legitimate reasons why they disliked or hated the system.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-04, 04:31 AM
I think the mistake was actually putting the name "Dungeons and Dragons" on the game system. Think about something really common, like if you buy a Reese's peanut butter cup. You know you're getting chocolate and peanut butter. Even if they made the best tasting chocolate with almonds in the entire world, if they called that "New Reese's" a bunch of people would be upset they weren't getting peanut butter anymore.

Indeed, which is the major problem with 4th edition. It's perfectly reasonable to expect plenty of changes and differences from system-to-system, with a lot of major and minor evolution between each edition. The problem is that 4th edition went way too far with its changes, and had many of the same names, but they no longer meant the same things. In all of the previous editions, any 'changes' were either expansions or minor tweaks. Wands are a good example of that, going from containing multiple spells to one spell; but still retaining the same theme as an item which stored spells which it could utilise at the cost of expending a number of charges.

I have a really good example of this; in early 2008, prior to the release of the 4th edition core rulebooks, the D&D archon was a celestial paragon of virtue and was a literal incarnation of lawful good. You actually see many of these lawful good archons in their appearances in the Order of the Stick. After the release of 4th edition, the D&D archons were now apparently a series of chaotic evil elemental creatures serving the primordials and were mortal enemies of angels. The angels themselves went from good-aligned forces of virtue, the opposite to devils and demons, to neutral-aligned deific servants who could be found on either side of the divide.

And examples like this show up all over the place. Elves were split into two species, the tieflings are apparently the descendants of transformed humans rather than human-demon hybrids, the dragonborn were changed from their origins as transformed humans and demi-humans to a species of draconic humanoids, the genasi were changed to include a different set of elements and names, the metallic dragons are no longer good-aligned, the Underdark was now apparently the creation of someone called Torog, and half of the deities were retconned into aspects of other deities. Most egregiously were examples like Sehanine Moonbow and Hanali Celanil, both popular Forgotten Realms deities and both now apparently human dieties in an elven form.


It's little surprise that many people hold the opinion that 4th edition is not Dungeons & Dragons.

Tyndmyr
2012-05-04, 10:15 AM
Speaking of ice cream, high density saffron and rose ice cream with pistachios is apparently available at stores. It is delicious.

I know a guy who makes similar stuff by hand here in the DC area. It's....fantastic. I've not seen any in stores, tho.

Also, yes, labeling 4e something other than D&D would have been good. People come to a game labeled D&D with certain expectations about what it'll be like. A fairly new system that's quite different will likely cause disappointment for many regardless of quality. Starting an entirely distinct RPG line with what was called 4e would have been much better.

navar100
2012-05-04, 03:17 PM
I'm not a power gamer, myself. I've dabbled in optimisation once or twice, but ultimately glancing across the ideas for practical optimisation personally just winds up irritating me. Theoretical optimisation is interesting enough for seeing what you can figure out with a good deal of mathematics, and has the same interest for me as a series of hypotheticals.

What I am is a roleplayer. I don't care for building some sort of insanely high-optimisation concept that dominates the entire game because that's not actually what the game's about to me. Creating characters and telling a story is my primary interest here.



I'm with you, but do keep in mind these are not mutually exclusive. It's fine you're not an optimizer. That's your play style. Great. However, the desire and ability to optimize does not take away from the desire and ability to roleplay.


Separate but related topic:

Disliking 4E because it no longer provides for the POWR people liked in 3E is a legitimate reason. Some people like that power and are not playing badwrongfun because of it. Such POWR games can be "balanced" as well. Balance does not mean low power, low optimization. It does not mean no teleporting, no Gating, no flying. Balance just means each player gets to contribute equivalently. That is perfectly possible in a 3E game with all the POWR possible. A complaint is that this can't be done when one player is a wizard and another is a fighter, but that's not the point here. The point is "balance" is unrelated to the level of POWR of a campaign. If players like to play Incantatrix Wizards, Natural Spell Druids, and Divine Metamagic Clerics, they are more than welcome to do so and dislike 4E because they couldn't in such a system. If that bothers colloquial you as a reason for disliking 4E, "learn to live with disappointment".

Tyndmyr
2012-05-04, 03:44 PM
So, basically, people never forgave 4e for not being 3.5? It's not an orange's fault it's not an apple.

I admit there are things I don't like about 4e, but if you have that much of an issue with it play something else.

If you sell me a sack of apples, and inside is nothing but oranges, I'm gonna be unhappy.

In fact, when I next see the purveyor of "apples", I may point out to prospective customers that they are not, in fact, apples at all.

This seems perfectly normal.


Grognards hate anything that isn't THEIR D&D.

They wanna keep buying the same damn product, over and over, ad infinitum.

I would not blame the dislike of any given edition on someone hating all versions but theirs.

For instance, my shelves are stocked with everything from AD&D to 3.5, and I eagerly intend to buy 5th. I also have a giant pile of non D&D games and actively encourage people to try them.

If a person happens to dislike one game, it's rude to imply that they simply hate basically everything and lack valid reasons for their opinion.

theNater
2012-05-04, 03:54 PM
I haven't seen any of this. There's criticism based on screwing up what they already had, there's criticism based on holding onto parts of 3.5 that should be gone, and there's some criticism that it isn't more like SAGA, but this thread doesn't have any criticism that comes down to "it isn't 3.5".
While I haven't seen any of that in this thread, it does bring to mind an argument I had waaaay back when 4e was just coming out. The other poster was complaining that he couldn't have a two-weapon fighter in 4e. I misunderstood exactly what he was after and wrangled with him for a dozen posts or so before I realized that he had precisely two requirements:

The character had to attack with both weapons every round.

The contents of the "class" line on the character sheet labelled "class" had to be the word "fighter".

I was forced to concede that what he wanted was not possible at the time. (It has since become possible).

Kurald Galain
2012-05-04, 04:06 PM
The contents of the "class" line on the character sheet labelled "class" had to be the word "fighter".

The bottom line is that some people dislike the approach that fluff is mutable: they want crunch to support fluff, not to be unrelated to fluff. This is just a simple example; 4E has numerous powers that (e.g.) are described as cripplingly devastating, but in crunch do as much damage as a standard attack.

Some people don't care. Other people, well, hate that, which makes it one answer to the OP's question.

Kurald Galain
2012-05-04, 04:08 PM
The contents of the "class" line on the character sheet labelled "class" had to be the word "fighter".

The bottom line is that some people dislike the approach that fluff is mutable: they want crunch to support fluff, not to be unrelated to fluff. This is just a simple example; 4E has numerous powers that (e.g.) are described as cripplingly devastating, but in crunch do as much damage as a standard attack.

Some people don't care. Other people, well, hate that, which makes it one answer to the OP's question.

Figgin of Chaos
2012-05-04, 08:24 PM
One of my favorite things to do in D&D is be Chaotic Good. My characters are usually freedom fighters, rebels, vigilantes, and/or redistributors of wealth through force. Just like me, they love people but hate governments.

So imagine my dismay when I took a look through the 4e Player's Handbook, only to find the alignment system warped! Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, Chaotic Evil. Law is a part of good, chaos is a part of evil.

Yeah, I know; I can still rob the rich and give to the poor, start revolutions, and cut down greedy rulers. But if those stuck-up paladins get their own sweet little alignment club, why can't I have one in which to chill out with Robin Hood, George Carlin, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Inu-Yasha, Conan the Barbarian, and the Dai-Gurren Brigade?

Boci
2012-05-04, 08:31 PM
Yeah, I know; I can still rob the rich and give to the poor, start revolutions, and cut down greedy rulers. But if those stuck-up paladins get their own sweet little alignment club, why can't I have one in which to chill out with Robin Hood, George Carlin, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Inu-Yasha, Conan the Barbarian, and the Dai-Gurren Brigade?

Ture, but on the plus side they did divorce aligmnet from almost (if not all ) mechanical effects.

Talakeal
2012-05-04, 08:53 PM
One of my favorite things to do in D&D is be Chaotic Good. My characters are usually freedom fighters, rebels, vigilantes, and/or redistributors of wealth through force. Just like me, they love people but hate governments.

So imagine my dismay when I took a look through the 4e Player's Handbook, only to find the alignment system warped! Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, Chaotic Evil. Law is a part of good, chaos is a part of evil.

Yeah, I know; I can still rob the rich and give to the poor, start revolutions, and cut down greedy rulers. But if those stuck-up paladins get their own sweet little alignment club, why can't I have one in which to chill out with Robin Hood, George Carlin, Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Inu-Yasha, Conan the Barbarian, and the Dai-Gurren Brigade?


Well, think about it this way: You can still play chaotic good, but now you can consider it to be the best and purest form of good, uncompomised by the tain of law.

Although, on the other hand, I would hesitate to give several people on your list a good alignment, and even neutral might be pushing it for some of them.

Morithias
2012-05-04, 08:57 PM
One of my favorite things to do in D&D is be Chaotic Good.

On the flip one of MY favorite things to do in my games is to be Lawful Evil. The idea of a ruler who acts good, is a kind person, and overall is the ideal Princess is one of my favorite characters.

And it gets all the better when it's revealed that she's only being kind and good NOT because she gives a crap about the average commoner, but because she wants to become a goddess.

Having ethics, but no morals. Obeying the law, while at the same time twisting and bending it to the point where you walked out of your murder trial with the plaintiff's house cause he hit you in the eye.

It probably doesn't help that I'm the only player in my D&D group that perfers the devils to the demons.

The Troubadour
2012-05-04, 09:18 PM
In 4e, I literally CAN'T make a Ranger-type character (as in the fantasy archetype, not necessarily the class) that dual-wields scimitars and runs off Dexterity, and I can't even get him to dual-wield scimitars if I want him to have his panther.

There are several Melee Weapon powers in "Martial Power 2" that work off Dexterity, actually. You could presumably build Drizz't as a Beastmaster Ranger that only takes those powers.


For a more extreme example, let's look at his rival, the assassin Artemis Entreri. Entreri is a Dexterity-based character who wields a dagger in his main hand and a sword in his off-hand, and is also an extremely skilled assassin and rogue. In 4e, I can't get a Dex-based dual wielder for sword-and-dagger with Entreri's skillset EVEN A LITTLE BIT. It just doesn't work.

Rogue with Two-Weapon Fighting and Two-Weapon Defense.
Hybrid Ranger (Scout)/Rogue.

Empedocles
2012-05-04, 09:30 PM
Hybrids are like gestalt, but reduced in power so much that they're typically slightly weaker than the main classes.

A Vestige Pact warlock (Arcane Power) might qualify as binder-ish.

Sadly there isn't much that resembles the Incarnate. Maybe a psionic character, given that in 4E psionic characters tend to get halos, a bit like one of the soul melds- and that most of their powers are at-will?
The way power points can be used to augment at-will psionic powers- could be thought of as like investing essentia- but with it as a daily resource rather than an always-present resource.

There is nothing that even remotely resembles a binder or an incarnate in 4e. Why? Because the cloned mechanics don't allow room for it.


Another word: Overhyped.:smalltongue:

Its alright. You win some, you loose some but its not the magnificent end all be all perfect great solution that some people hype it up to be.

It was inappropriate for me to bring up Legend, and I apologize, althoughI fervently disagree with you :smallmad: As someone who has not only followed them avidly I've also run many, many Legend games and found it to be an incredibly slick system.

But now is neither the time nor the place.

As to 4e, I dislike it because there isn't nearly as much room for creativity in character creation, and the fluff is absolutely, incredibly, unforgivably awful.

Ironvyper
2012-05-04, 11:09 PM
{{scrubbed}}

theNater
2012-05-05, 12:41 AM
The bottom line is that some people dislike the approach that fluff is mutable: they want crunch to support fluff, not to be unrelated to fluff.
It was a long time ago, so I could be misremembering, but as I recall he wasn't trying to avoid 4e Ranger fluff, or acquire 4e Fighter fluff. The impression I got was that he wanted 4e's Fighter crunch to support 3.5's Fighter fluff. That's why I say his complaint seemed to be that it wasn't 3.5.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-05, 04:33 AM
I'm with you, but do keep in mind these are not mutually exclusive. It's fine you're not an optimizer. That's your play style. Great. However, the desire and ability to optimize does not take away from the desire and ability to roleplay.

I was more making the point that much of the hatred for 4th edition doesn't necessarily come from the desire for UNLIMITED POWER!!! but instead a problem with the game's role-playing aspect. Though personally I would not mind being able to roleplay an UNLIMITED POWER character once in a while, since Dungeons & Dragons has always offered that choice. It's always had high level play as something that you can indulge in as an aspect different from ordinary play.

Unless it's 4th edition, in which case all it offers is a fluff description that does not in any way match the crunch. And ultimately it boils down to the same playstyle.

Which is kind of my problem. In 3rd edition, regardless of optimisation, you can generally get the rules to match the story you're telling. It helps a lot with immersion. In 4th edition, the rules are so divorced from storytelling that it actively discourages a sense of immersion. And the problems with 3rd edition are overridden by that to the point that, of the two, it is my preferred edition. Even though I admittedly much prefer the older AD&D materials in many places.

Emperor Tippy
2012-05-05, 08:40 AM
I "hate" 4e because I can't think of anything it did that I liked.

The method used to achieve "balance" was, admittedly, about the only way it can actually be done but it's a method I strongly dislike; and I never really cared about 3.5's balance issues in the first place (if I didn't want Tier 1 classes in a game I just flat out banned them and told the players to refluff any of the dozens of other classes to be a "wizard" or "cleric" or "druid", if I wanted to up the power of lower tier classes I would do things like have them gestalt a few tier 3 or lower classes together).

The decision to divorce the rule set from the world is something that I despise; everything in the game world should be operating under the same exact rules. The very concept of minions as they are done is something I find utterly anathema. WotC would have been better served by simply publishing a set of books filled with hundreds of pre generated characters of various CR's and power levels (along with backgrounds and potential plot hooks).

The decision to make the game pretty much a pure tactical wargame simulator with roleplaying essentially tacked on is another thing I dislike. Large swaths of 3.5 were devoted to combat but it was rarely actually the focus of the game, and most challenges outside of pure hack'n'slash games could actually be overcome without even having a fight if you were so inclined.

Skill Challenges, enough said. If they wanted to speed up average skill usage then they should have just let everyone auto pass any skill check with a DC lower than their level (perhaps half their level if it's a cross class skill).

Basically, to recap, I just can't think of anything about 4e that I personally think was an improvement over 3.5. And considering that they could have relatively easily solved alot of 3.5's problems without really altering the base system whole cloth (you can balance most casters by simply tweaking their spells and powers), I never saw the point in making 4e as drastically different from 3.5 as WotC decided to make it.

Reg06
2012-05-05, 09:27 AM
I don't like strawberry milk shakes.

In essence, that is why people don't like 4th edition.

zlefin
2012-05-05, 10:27 AM
as for me; too mcuh sameness. And it somehow lacks, heart; i guess lacking heart would be the best word for it.
I like reading gamebooks; I read my old 1st ed books many times; i've read most of the 3.5 srd; I've read alot of the pathfinder srd. i've read my old gurps books several times over. I well enjoyed reading the Vampire manual when someone brought one.
I borrowed a 4th ed players handbook and i haven't even read the whole thing; it just feels so bland and boring; especially the powers, far too repetitive.

It kinda reminds me of one of the nice things about starcraft: reasonably balanced, but fundamentally different races, with different gameplay. 4th ed doesn't feel like it has that; the classes are all too samey; whereas alot of other games and systems, including 3.5, had, to varying degrees of balance, fundamentally different classes. 4th ed doesnt' seem to have ANY noncombat classes; sure anyone can fight, but can't a character emphasize non-fighting skills? 4th doesn't seem to support that at all

Solaris
2012-05-05, 10:44 AM
I agree with a lot of the more cogent points already made in the thread, though I think where the system really suffers is the sameness of classes. What I do play a fair amount of is Star Wars Saga Edition, and it was essentially the beta-test for the 4E system. Most of the mechanics are the same. The chief difference that I've found is that Star Wars was all about versatility. You could have 4 players play the same class and have completely different characters. It's this kind of versatility that I like. In core 4E this is next to impossible, in my experience.

If they woulda made 4E D&D Saga Edition instead of D&D MMO Edition, I would've snatched it up and never looked back at 3.5E. They didn't, and I was deeply, deeply disappointed.

slaydemons
2012-05-05, 11:52 AM
i'll repeat what I said on page 2 or so, my favorite icecream is chocolate its obviously the best icecream flavor around.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 11:56 AM
i'll repeat what I said on page 2 or so, my favorite icecream is chocolate its obviously the best icecream flavor around.

Preposterous! French vanilla is the one true flavour! Chocolate is for heretics and villains!

Fatebreaker
2012-05-05, 12:48 PM
Preposterous! French vanilla is the one true flavour! Chocolate is for heretics and villains!

I used to think so, and then I saw the light!

Cold Stone Creamery makes -- are you ready for this? -- a vanilla cake batter ice cream flavored milkshake.

Bam! That just happened! Your mind? Blown. Boom.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 12:53 PM
I used to think so, and then I saw the light!

Cold Stone Creamery makes -- are you ready for this? -- a vanilla cake batter ice cream flavored milkshake.

Bam! That just happened! Your mind? Blown. Boom.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! My beliefs have been shaken to the core! I am a wretch! A shadow of what I used to be!

Fatebreaker
2012-05-05, 12:57 PM
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! My beliefs have been shaken to the core! I am a wretch! A shadow of what I used to be!

We must break you, that we may rebuild you all the stronger.

And then give you milkshakes. Awesome milkshakes.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 01:23 PM
We must break you, that we may rebuild you all the stronger.

And then give you milkshakes. Awesome milkshakes.

If we fight the chocolate heretics, I am more than willing to be rebuilt. Faster! Stronger! Better!

For the Vanilliance!

Need_A_Life
2012-05-05, 02:57 PM
Please no flames I'm just wanting to know legit reasons why people hate it.
Well, basically, my main complaint is that the books promised me Dungeons and Dragons and what I got simply didn't have the feel I've gotten used to D&D feeling. So I gave it a few tries, but ended up sorely disappointed.

I was annoyed by how Skill Challenges became something that GMs felt they had to use, even when logic or flow dictated otherwise.

I was annoyed that no class ever looked at unsuspecting enemies, smiled and told the others "Leave this fight to me," because it was just up their alley.

I didn't like the cover art either, but that's a small complaint.

I don't hate 4th edition and if it'd been published as "Hasbro Fantasy RPG" I would've probably been more or less satisfied, but I don't think it has the feel of any of the earlier editions. Naturally, I hope that 5th edition rectifies that.

slaydemons
2012-05-05, 03:36 PM
If we fight the chocolate heretics, I am more than willing to be rebuilt. Faster! Stronger! Better!

For the Vanilliance!

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE ICECREAM for ever

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-05, 05:40 PM
D&D is a brand, and just because it doesn't fit your 'standards' of what D&D is doesn't make it less so. What does it say on the front of the books? Stick your head in the sand all you like, the fact is still there.

There were just as much changes, if not more, between 2nd and 3rd. At the time, 3.0 was seen as the end of D&D by purists. And there are people who continue to play 2nd (or even ODAD) for this very reason.

Newsflash: there are people who play and, god forbid, like 4e. They play every week in shops/libraries/mouldy basements/utility closets/corporate boardrooms/dive bars/stretch hummers. And while they admit there are problems with the problems of the system, they're there primarily to do one thing: to have fun.

Somehow, this seems to be forgotten when people complain about what 4e 'should' be. Well, it is what it is, like it or don't play. Just leave the rest of us to have our fun without spreading misinformation about it.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 06:30 PM
D&D is a brand, and just because it doesn't fit your 'standards' of what D&D is doesn't make it less so. What does it say on the front of the books? Stick your head in the sand all you like, the fact is still there.

There were just as much changes, if not more, between 2nd and 3rd. At the time, 3.0 was seen as the end of D&D by purists. And there are people who continue to play 2nd (or even ODAD) for this very reason.

Newsflash: there are people who play and, god forbid, like 4e. They play every week in shops/libraries/mouldy basements/utility closets/corporate boardrooms/dive bars/stretch hummers. And while they admit there are problems with the problems of the system, they're there primarily to do one thing: to have fun.

Somehow, this seems to be forgotten when people complain about what 4e 'should' be. Well, it is what it is, like it or don't play. Just leave the rest of us to have our fun without spreading misinformation about it.

It's all well until the last bit. People can talk all they like. What you term "misinformation" is merely a difference of opinions. Some things are problems to some and not to others. Let people speak what they will and let those who listen make their own decisions. As I've always said, if anyone is swayed by another person's words and not by their own experience, that's entirely their loss.

Crow
2012-05-05, 06:49 PM
It's all well until the last bit. People can talk all they like. What you term "misinformation" is merely a difference of opinions. Some things are problems to some and not to others. Let people speak what they will and let those who listen make their own decisions. As I've always said, if anyone is swayed by another person's words and not by their own experience, that's entirely their loss.

I agree. But what I think she has a problem with is when people take an opinion, exaggerate it, and then present it as fact during discussions about the system. Interestingly, people do this with certain aspects of 3.5 as well.

Personally, I prefer 3.5 over 4e. I really started at D/D with 3.0, but had played like 2 games of 2e. However, I recently started playing OSRIC, and find that it really captures for me how D/D should ''feel''. I definitely plan on picking up the 1st edition reprints when they come out, not just to have, but to play.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 07:03 PM
I agree. But what I think she has a problem with is when people take an opinion, exaggerate it, and then present it as fact during discussions about the system. Interestingly, people do this with certain aspects of 3.5 as well.

Personally, I prefer 3.5 over 4e. I really started at D/D with 3.0, but had played like 2 games of 2e. However, I recently started playing OSRIC, and find that it really captures for me how D/D should ''feel''. I definitely plan on picking up the 1st edition reprints when they come out, not just to have, but to play.

And? Again, if you take the "facts" of some stranger on the internet as truth, rather than seeing for yourself, you either had no true desire to try the system for yourself and were looking for an excuse to avoid it, or you're a rather naive person.

randomhero00
2012-05-05, 07:08 PM
Personally, I liked 4e. Hard call whether its better than 3.5e.

Crow
2012-05-05, 07:26 PM
And? Again, if you take the "facts" of some stranger on the internet as truth, rather than seeing for yourself, you either had no true desire to try the system for yourself and were looking for an excuse to avoid it, or you're a rather naive person.

WTF dude? When somebody comes to a forum and asks ''What is X system like?'', I'd say that they are making an effort to learn something about the system. Not everybody can dump money on books for a game they may end up hating.

What I think most people around here take issue with is that people will come on here and ask what system X is like, and they are bombarded with theory and hyperbole. Whether the person asking the question is sincere in their interest or not has little to do with the answers they are likely to receive around here some days.

jseah
2012-05-05, 07:27 PM
I have played one 4E campaign from start to end across the period of 1 academic year. This campaign spanned from level 3 to 10, so my experience draws in large part from those levels. I have heard (and seen theoretically) that higher levels play in a fundamentally same way. So I expect my main conclusions to apply to most or all of the game.
My objections of 4E have evolved through much forging in the Edition Warz and I believe I can say much more clearly how and where it fails better than I could before. And yes, this has helped me stop playing 3.5 games that I inevitably ruin.

The root of my dislike for 4E stems from the fact that I come to, and look for, a game with very different goals from other people. D&D players are stereotyped as geeks or nerds but I feel I go to a certain special extent.
I love design. Picking and tweaking a set of choices, anticipating shortcomings and preempting them, all these are what makes a set of choices interesting. Choices that don't present a tradeoff or design difference are not interesting choices. I could care less if the fighter wields an axe or a longsword. Both deal damage (and roughly the same too!) and the fighter can still do his main thing with them.

The main thing I look for in a game is the scope of it's design and the availability of unexpected and complicated solutions. A game system does not have to be complex to allow this to occur, and indeed 3.5's tangled web of individually complicated and impossible to resolve subsystems is a major drawback for me.
A game that lets the player influence and react to a larger portion of the game universe has more game. Ideally, the player can look at the minute detail of the placement of each AoE effect, and zoom all the way to the design of systems on the scale of moons and stars, while the system supports and gives tools that handle each step of the scale while remaining consistent with each other. Where the player can meaningfully explain each larger system in the words of smaller systems plus a few extra rules for scale.
And it has to do all this objectively and on "auto", without necessitating judgement calls except in edge cases, and even then used sparingly. A rule system is HALF the world (the other half being the setting and scenario). You build your world and your players plan their actions on the bedrock of your rules. Unclear or 'negotiable' rules restrict intelligent use of anything at all.

No game system does this perfectly.


The second thing I look for in games is tactical complexity. For each subsystem to be interesting (of which combat is only one), it must have depth and hard decisions. The players must have methods that can adapt to situations (available options at any point), and have resources that are fixed in the timespan of that subsystem (usually character skills). More ability to tweak each is good, up until your players cannot keep track of them.
Information, or ability to anticipate the future, is THE aspect that generates tactical complexity. It informs the choice of one of the available options, and very often the ability to gain information will restrict available options (again, usually by using fixed resources). This tradeoff between getting more or better options versus being able to decide which is the best is very interesting.
In 4E, all this fails to exist.
Tactical combat contains three or four main doctrines and about two retreat options, often the party itself can only execute one or two of them. There are just not enough different options, both in character creation and in a combat at the table. The ability to obtain or obscure information in combat is virtually non-existent, apart from the Hide rules, and even so makes virtually zero impact. You do your thing and hope for the best.
On the bigger scale, 4E is completely story driven. There are very little rules that govern how the world works and often the combat system rules make zero sense outside of the combat. One COULD make meta-rules that are the consistent result from the combat rules but this generates a world too far removed from RL that we cannot function at all in it. Or have unintended consequences that are stopped... for story reasons. (one does not make a map according to a modified Manhattan distance for obvious reasons)

4E did not have the depth I looked for (then unconsciously) and in that campaign, my continuous suggestions and demand for more information/adhoc rulings resulted in absolutely no effect on the game I played.
I found myself constantly frustated at the lack of influence players had on the strategic scale of problems, at least without taking an active hand in the plot, in which case I may as well write my own book. In 4E, the players worry about their local environment and wield little influence further away outside of storytelling. There is one subsystem, that is combat. Everything else is 'negotiable' and doesn't qualify.

I tried to plan a 4E game and it rapidly turned into a mess. Less than two days in, I caught myself rewriting the cleric powers one by one and gave up.

tl;dr
I love designing solutions and solving problems. 4E makes designing solutions impossible or one-step long (talk to your DM).

Just to give an example, the best part of 3E I experienced was the thread where Dr. Rocktopus and I devised ways to de-orbit the moon using loopholes and overcomplicated solutions. Many trade-offs in character abilites, as well as extension to a ridiculous scale.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-05, 07:32 PM
D&D is a brand, and just because it doesn't fit your 'standards' of what D&D is doesn't make it less so. What does it say on the front of the books? Stick your head in the sand all you like, the fact is still there.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

That which we call crap by the noblest name of Dungeons & Dragons would still carry a most foul odour indeed. Lest thee forget that a name is not all that creates the game, but the rules by which the players play, and the world upon which it can be staged.


There were just as much changes, if not more, between 2nd and 3rd. At the time, 3.0 was seen as the end of D&D by purists. And there are people who continue to play 2nd (or even ODAD) for this very reason.

Let us look onto this with rational objectivity. While there lies indeed a gulf betwixt editions second and third, the changes to the lore and the worlds in which one might explore were much less prominent, and many things retained a familiar face. The roll of dice for hit points, the preparation across levels one to nine for wielders of charms and spells, the development of spells, the clearly-viewable statsitics for characters who were not of players, and the ability to progress across more than a single class remained. If it is in fact a truth that the gulf lies greater, then I ask thee to prove such nonsense.


Newsflash: there are people who play and, god forbid, like 4e. They play every week in shops/libraries/mouldy basements/utility closets/corporate boardrooms/dive bars/stretch hummers. And while they admit there are problems with the problems of the system, they're there primarily to do one thing: to have fun.

It is not their like that we take issue with. It is their dismissal of our claims to dislike it as being little more than indulging our natures as grognards. Certainly it is to each man and woman a right to find joy with games of their choice, but equally it is to each man and woman a right to abhor those same games, and often for reasons that you might disagree with. But 'tis a right nonetheless.


Somehow, this seems to be forgotten when people complain about what 4e 'should' be. Well, it is what it is, like it or don't play. Just leave the rest of us to have our fun without spreading misinformation about it.

Tell to me exactly this; what misinformation do we spread? What lies have we told of the fourth edition? Is it a lie that all classes follow a far too similar structure? Is it a lie that the game provides rules not for out-of-combat encounters with creatures both frightening and virtuous? Is it indeed a lie that the developers forced vast changes to many things that had been truths of all iterations of the game that had come before?

Is it not true that angels and archons, once of virtue, are now mere slaves to the gods or the murderous sycophants who oppose them? Is it not true that demihuman deities like the noble Sehanine Moonbow were changed, revealed to be little more than different faces of human deities like Selune?

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 07:43 PM
WTF dude? When somebody comes to a forum and asks ''What is X system like?'', I'd say that they are making an effort to learn something about the system. Not everybody can dump money on books for a game they may end up hating.

What? Are you honestly defending someone who sticks with the opinion he found in a single place and doesn't bother to even take a peek for himself? I looked at FATAL's rules myself without giving those bastards a single cent. I scarred my mind with those words. I burnt the mysogyny right into my skull so I would never forget that heinous game, so I would never stop cursing the names of its creators.

I stand by what I said. If you aren't naive or looking for an excuse not to try a system, you'll seek as many opinions from as many varied sources as you can, and try to catch at least a glimpse of the thing on your own.


What I think most people around here take issue with is that people will come on here and ask what system X is like, and they are bombarded with theory and hyperbole. Whether the person asking the question is sincere in their interest or not has little to do with the answers they are likely to receive around here some days.

That's censoring free speech. I should have the right to voice my opinion without being censored. If you don't like it, jump in to extol the game's virtues yourself. Offer a counterpoint, another opinion. Don't silence a voice because you don't like what it's saying.

Crow
2012-05-05, 07:52 PM
What? Are you honestly defending someone who sticks with the opinion he found in a single place and doesn't bother to even take a peek for himself? I looked at FATAL's rules myself without giving those bastards a single cent. I scarred my mind with those words. I burnt the mysogyny right into my skull so I would never forget that heinous game, so I would never stop cursing the names of its creators.

I stand by what I said. If you aren't naive or looking for an excuse not to try a system, you'll seek as many opinions from as many varied sources as you can, and try to catch at least a glimpse of the thing on your own.



That's censoring free speech. I should have the right to voice my opinion without being censored. If you don't like it, jump in to extol the game's virtues yourself. Offer a counterpoint, another opinion. Don't silence a voice because you don't like what it's saying.

Holy **** dude, relax.

Who are you to say that somebody who has come to this board hasn't gone to any of the dozens of other D/D boards out there looking for information there as well? Some folks don't live in an area where it is easy to go sit in on a game to try it out, and last I checked, 4e wasn't free, so doing what you did with FATAL isn't as much an option. (Now in my mind, that is more damning to the people who bitch about 3.5 since it is actually free.)

You are entitled to your opinion. But don't kid yourself, there are plenty of people around here who consider their opinion to be fact. In my opinion, 4e is garbage, I feel that all 4e classes play the same. That is my opinion, which I do not try to pass off as fact. For some, the classes are different enough.

Nobody is trying to censor you, or even cares enough that they would try. You are welcome to say whatever you want. If you happen to be trying to be pass off opinion as fact, someone else is welcome to call bull**** on it. (or should we censor them?)

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 08:02 PM
Who are you to say that somebody who has come to this board hasn't gone to any of the dozens of other D/D boards out there looking for information there as well? Some folks don't live in an area where it is easy to go sit in on a game to try it out, and last I checked, 4e wasn't free, so doing what you did with FATAL isn't as much an option. (Now in my mind, that is more damning to the people who bitch about 3.5 since it is actually free.)

So? WotC has published MANY free samples of 4e's products, if you know where to look (they're admittedly scattered and buried in their website, but they exist). And most people can go to their local gamestore, pick up one of the books without buying it and see for themselves if what they've been told is true. Or at least see for themselves if they are favourably impressed by the presentation at any rate. Not to mention that the Character Builder used to be free (is it still free?) and you could build yourself a character or at least take a look at the character sheet, items, powers, feats and all the other things therein.

Just because you can't have the entire product in your hands doesn't mean you can't see something for yourself.


You are entitled to your opinion. But don't kid yourself, there are plenty of people around here who consider their opinion to be fact. In my opinion, 4e is garbage, I feel that all 4e classes play the same. That is my opinion, which I do not try to pass off as fact. For some, the classes are different enough.

Yes, and we are on the internet. Anyone who is on the internet should know to take "facts" presented therein with several bags of salt. And if they don't know that, they will learn soon enough.


Nobody is trying to censor you, or even cares enough that they would try. You are welcome to say whatever you want. If you happen to be trying to be pass off opinion as fact, someone else is welcome to call bull**** on it. (or should we censor them?)

That's exactly what I'm saying. If I try to pass off opinion and fact, the right thing to do is to call bull on me, not tell me that I'm supposed to keep quiet. Telling me "do not pass off opinion as fact" is censorship. Calling me out when I do that is not.

Crow
2012-05-05, 08:15 PM
So? WotC has published MANY free samples of 4e's products, if you know where to look (they're admittedly scattered and buried in their website, but they exist). And most people can go to their local gamestore, pick up one of the books without buying it and see for themselves if what they've been told is true. Or at least see for themselves if they are favourably impressed by the presentation at any rate. Not to mention that the Character Builder used to be free (is it still free?) and you could build yourself a character or at least take a look at the character sheet, items, powers, feats and all the other things therein.

Just because you can't have the entire product in your hands doesn't mean you can't see something for yourself.



Yes, and we are on the internet. Anyone who is on the internet should know to take "facts" presented therein with several bags of salt. And if they don't know that, they will learn soon enough.



That's exactly what I'm saying. If I try to pass off opinion and fact, the right thing to do is to call bull on me, not tell me that I'm supposed to keep quiet. Telling me "do not pass off opinion as fact" is censorship. Calling me out when I do that is not.

Well please send me my free books then or send me the links. Give me something that will allow me to play through a few levels and really give me a feel for the system. If you do, I'll be sad because I had to throw away actual money on 4e's horrible core books.

Nobody is telling you to keep your mouth shut. Only to recognize that your opinions are just that, and equal to the opinions of others on this board. I like 3.x. But when somebody comes in here and drones on about what they perceive to be 'shortcomings' in 3.x, I don't rail on about censorship like I just learned about the 1st Amendment in Social Studies class when they disagree with me.

Grim Reader
2012-05-05, 08:20 PM
There have been a lot of reasons for rejecting 4th preseneted that I find myself in agreement with. There is one thing that bugged me that I haven't seen mentioned:

4th ed was frustrating.

You try to deliver your sweet daily ubermove, and its got a 50% chance of missing. So you get frustrated 50 % of the time.

I played a non-ranged character, and was frequently frustrated by terrain, be it ice, water, roots, skeletal arms whatever. Reaching my target or following him was frequently a chore.

Status conditions abounded. I was frequently stunned, dazed, immobilized, weakened, what have you. We tried 4th for about a year, going from level 1-23, and the most fun we had was a short campaign against Trolls. Tough, low AC, no weird stuff. We actually got to do things. It was the only part of the experience where we weren't trying to work around some frustrating impediment most of the time.

Now, it is quite possible to get frustrated in 3.5 too, but I feel the options for dealing with the problems there are much better.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 08:22 PM
Well please send me my free books then or send me the links. Give me something that will allow me to play through a few levels and really give me a feel for the system. If you do, I'll be sad because I had to throw away actual money on 4e's horrible core books.

Nobody is telling you to keep your mouth shut. Only to recognize that your opinions are just that, and equal to the opinions of others on this board. I like 3.x. But when somebody comes in here and drones on about what they perceive to be 'shortcomings' in 3.x, I don't rail on about censorship like I just learned about the 1st Amendment in Social Studies class when they disagree with me.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/04/take-dd-4th-edition-for-a-free-test-drive/

In there you will find the links.

Also yeah, they really are telling naysayers to shut up. It's very common in a lot of boards to be like "Well if you don't like it, don't play it! You shouldn't voice out your opinions if they're negative!" It's actually somewhat prevalent, as the originator this particular side discussion proved.

Kurald Galain
2012-05-05, 08:26 PM
Well please send me my free books then or send me the links. Give me something that will allow me to play through a few levels and really give me a feel for the system.

Obviously, there isn't even remotely that much free information available on 4E. Heck, even its preview books cost money. It is very much intentional on the part of WOTC that 4E cannot be played for free (even though 3E and PF can).

TARDIS
2012-05-05, 08:35 PM
While quite a number of people dislike 4e because of mechanical reasons and what they see as unnecessary changes to their favourite game, I posit that a lot of the hate - the pure loathing of 4e and WotC that has developed in a segment of the old D&D population that may now account for about half of all 3.5 fans, if not more, based on sales figures - is the marketing strategy.

Essentially the marketing strategy for 4e was 'you're doing it wrong' - aimed at all the fans of 1e to 3.5e. Now, to be fair, 3.5 was far from perfect, and was dealing with 5-8 years of rule bloat and 35 years of lore bloat by the time it was replaced by 4e. It was a big, old system that was getting a bit long in the tooth.

However, WotC's response was to set up some Quebecois fellow to rant about how "the game remains the same!" while mocking 1e-3.5 rules; saying that people who play gnomes and half-orcs were not playing interesting or compelling races; explicitly saying they were more interested in attracting a new generation of players through total overhaul instead of retaining as much of their current base; and basically going around and saying that people who enjoyed 3.5 were having 'bad wrong fun.' This was very sloppily done... if my mini-rant there is to judge, five years after the unveiling and I only remember the negatives. I'm certain there were positives, but looking back at that era, most of my D&D-related posts were rants against WotC for the tone of marketing and changing core concepts of the game. I had decided I already didn't like the game before it was even released. And judging by a lot of other forum comments back then, I was not the only one. Old grognards were feeling that they were being dropped cold while WotC went chasing after newer, younger, 'videogamier'-crowds (fair or not, that was one of the key demographics they were aiming for: video gamers).

WotC made a gamble that the percentage of the fanbase they irked would be smaller than the number of new fans they brought in - it had worked before, with 2e to 3e, right? But 4e's dramatic change in tone, WotC's flubbed marketing that turned a portion of their customers against them, plus the all-important d20 system basically made the hatred of the change more widespread and, in part, legitimized.

Paizo actually had a big part to play in this, because they stood up and said 'hey, we're going to be making our own gaming system, and it will be like 3.5 and we're going to play directly to that audience WotC is irking off.' While before D&D had been a largely unified group under TSR and WotC, now Pathfinder came out with a number of ex-WotC designers, being run by the people who handled Dungeon and Dragon, with quality material and books that appeared on shelves beside D&D 4e, and support from people like Ed Greenwood and Monte Cook.

Heck, you even take a look at their approach to other companies - WotC's Gaming System License versus Paizo's Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatibility License. The GSL locked companies into providing only materials that supported 4e - and it could not supplement the core rules in any way. WotC would be able to retract the contract at any time, and publishers could not support older systems alongside 4e. Paizo, on the other hand, went the d20 route, through all their rules up online, allowed other publishers to copy and rip off their rules in part or in whole, and generally created an open system free for myriad publishers to mess around in. This has created an ecosystem for Paizo that resembles the d20-era D&D ecosystem... fan publishers producing material for resale at an impressive rate. 4e's GSL has kinda dried up; Paizo's is still going strong.

I don't believe that D&D had ever before faced this kind of uprising from within its own ranks. WotC was not prepared - and, to be fair, neither was Paizo. But Pathfinder basically legitimized the anti-WotC sentiment by providing a mass-market rival to D&D that people could argue was 'true D&D' - heck, that's what I argue at times when I'm in debates over 4e vs. others. Pathfinder created a valid alternative for the grognardian masses to rally around, something 2e fans or OD&D fans never really had. Castles and Crusades and OSR games are largely niche, failing to make a major impact on the hobby - Pathfinder is now outselling Dungeons and Dragons. If legitimacy comes from mass appeal, then it looks like Pathfinder, 3.5, and the fans who protested won the argument via their pocketbooks. That is the kind of epic flub WotC managed to pull off.

You'll notice I barely touched on rules, and that's because I believe that rules are mostly used to validate one's choices flavour-wise. 4e and d20 are flexible enough that you can run an RP-heavy 4e or a skirmish-filled d20 game no problem. It comes down to how the game makes one feel... heck, after I was able to get over my initial disgust at 4e, going back to look at it, it's a pretty nice system - steamlined, quick, intuitive. Maybe a bit too combat-focused, but the system seems elegant in its simplicity. I would much prefer to run a 4e PbP game than a Pathfinder or 3.5 PbP because it just seems so much easier.

And yet I'm subscribed to Pathfinder and haven't spent a dime on 4e since they came out with Essentials. Why? Because Pathfinder gives me the 'right' vibe when I read it. This is what the game I started playing at 12-years old should feel like. This is my D&D. 4e is like Exalted, or Fireborn, or Paranoia - its a great game in its own right, but it's a diversion from what my true gaming passion is, Dungeons and Dragons. And if Dungeons and Dragons happens to come with a label that says Pathfinder on it, so be it.

In the end, the hate comes down to a battle between Old and New for the heart of what Dungeons and Dragons means. New wanted a fun game, screw nostalgia or the way things 'should be' - those are subjective. Old was for the feel - the classic Gygaxian ideals that separated D&D from the rest of the RPG melange. New had support of Wizards of the Coast, the legitimate heirs to TSR, and the Dungeons and Dragons name. Old had a number of beloved designers and names from D&D past lined up under the banner of the company that brought Dungeon and Dragon, the twin loves of many an old-school gamer, to new heights. This battle was fought in the sphere of public opinion, on message boards and on blogs and in gaming shops and retailers. And in the end, Old's battle seems to have paid off, as WotC has stepped back and abandoned 4e's radical new approach to take a more measured hand towards D&D with D&D Next. One that will include gnomes and half-orcs, druids and bards, vancian spellcasting and myriad skills in its core. Pathfinder won the battle of public opinion... 4e is dead, long live Dungeons and Dragons.

Crow
2012-05-05, 08:37 PM
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/04/take-dd-4th-edition-for-a-free-test-drive/

In there you will find the links.

Also yeah, they really are telling naysayers to shut up. It's very common in a lot of boards to be like "Well if you don't like it, don't play it! You shouldn't voice out your opinions if they're negative!" It's actually somewhat prevalent, as the originator this particular side discussion proved.

The free test drive is not enough to get any more than a superficial grasp of the system in my opinion.

''Don't like it? Don't play it.'' is not censorship, man. I haven't seen anybody saying that you shouldn't voice your opinion if it's negative, at least not for a long time. What I mostly see is people voicing their opinion, and then getting upset when somebody disagrees with them. Both sides are guilty of this, of course.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 08:43 PM
The free test drive is not enough to get any more than a superficial grasp of the system in my opinion.

''Don't like it? Don't play it.'' is not censorship, man. I haven't seen anybody saying that you shouldn't voice your opinion if it's negative, at least not for a long time. What I mostly see is people voicing their opinion, and then getting upset when somebody disagrees with them. Both sides are guilty of this, of course.

You're shifting the goalposts. I guarantee that back when the character builder was free, between those three links, you had a very good grasp of what the system was at its basics, at its core. Was it enough to know the system in its totality? Of course not. You are not gonna know a system in its totality without purchasing every last book. But those links were enough to get a feel for the system.

Also, it's not "don't like, don't play." It's "don't like? don't play and be quiet about it." Example:


Just leave the rest of us to have our fun without spreading misinformation about it.

People have every right to spread misinformation about anything they want. Attempting to stop that (or to discourage it) is, like it or not, censorship.

Boci
2012-05-05, 08:46 PM
People have every right to spread misinformation about anything they want. Attempting to stop that (or to discourage it) is, like it or not, censorship.

Couldn't that logic be extended to say "People have every right to tell others not to spread misinformation. Attempting to stop that (or to discourage it) is, like it or not, censorship."?

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 08:51 PM
Couldn't that logic be extended to say "People have every right to tell others not to spread misinformation. Attempting to stop that (or to discourage it) is, like it or not, censorship."?

Please point out when I "attempted to stop or discourage" such a stance. I never did any such thing. My only intention here is for such an attitude to be recognised for what it is. The fact that censorship is (rightly) frowned upon is unrelated to my intentions to call things for what they are.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-05, 08:51 PM
People also have the right to point out that what they're saying about 4th edition isn't exactly misinformation. It's a strongly-held opinion, and not something that can objectively be proven wrong.

navar100
2012-05-05, 09:24 PM
D&D is a brand, and just because it doesn't fit your 'standards' of what D&D is doesn't make it less so. What does it say on the front of the books? Stick your head in the sand all you like, the fact is still there.

There were just as much changes, if not more, between 2nd and 3rd. At the time, 3.0 was seen as the end of D&D by purists. And there are people who continue to play 2nd (or even ODAD) for this very reason.

Newsflash: there are people who play and, god forbid, like 4e. They play every week in shops/libraries/mouldy basements/utility closets/corporate boardrooms/dive bars/stretch hummers. And while they admit there are problems with the problems of the system, they're there primarily to do one thing: to have fun.

Somehow, this seems to be forgotten when people complain about what 4e 'should' be. Well, it is what it is, like it or don't play. Just leave the rest of us to have our fun without spreading misinformation about it.

Tell that to the 4E fans who continue to bash 3E. People actually like 3E and have no problems whatsoever with Gate, Natural Spell, Fighters needing magic items, Monk, Glitterdust, Divine Metamagic, or even Fighter and Wizard being in the same party and the Wizard has Evocation as an opposition school.

Talakeal
2012-05-05, 11:06 PM
D&D is a brand, and just because it doesn't fit your 'standards' of what D&D is doesn't make it less so. What does it say on the front of the books? Stick your head in the sand all you like, the fact is still there.


I think you are putting a little too much stock in the label of the box. Something's title does not necessarily describe its nature. Hasbro could stamp the D&D label on a box of refrigerator parts if they wanted, that doesn't mean the refrigerator parts have anything in common with the RPG people have been playing for forty years.

Did you know in China they publish the Hobbit with the Harry Potter label on the cover to boost sales? Does that mean that the Hobbit is now Harry Potter and Harry Potter is now the Hobbit? Of course not.

Besides, why does Hasbro have the right to change D&D? They do own the license, but not for any meaningful reason or choice on the part of the authors. From what I know of RPG history Gygax manipulated the sole rights to D&D from Arneson, then had to sell them to TSR as part of a divorce settlement. TSR went bankrupt and was bought out by WoTC. WoTC then created third ed, fired the people who created it, created 3.5, and then was bought out by Hasbro, who fired most of the 3.5 team and created 4.0.

Does this long chain of legal and corporate events which involved little if any voluntary choices on the part of the game designers really have the sole right to dictate what is or isn't D&D? And if your answer is yes, what about in the future when D&D enters the public domain? At that point literally anyone can put the D&D name on literally anything, are they all equally D&D?

Oracle_Hunter
2012-05-05, 11:51 PM
Oh hey, I just remembered an old thread. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73469)

Here's the short list, distilled from the days of the Warz:

1) 4e is not D&D; it's a different d20 game
2) 4e doesn't have X race or class
3) 4e is unrealistic
4) 4e is too narrowly focused
5) 4e Epic isn't Epic
6) 4e Heroic isn't Gritty
7) 4e is oversimplified

Shadowknight12
2012-05-05, 11:55 PM
Oh hey, I just remembered an old thread. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73469)

Here's the short list, distilled from the days of the Warz:

1) 4e is not D&D; it's a different d20 game
2) 4e doesn't have X race or class
3) 4e is unrealistic
4) 4e is too narrowly focused
5) 4e Epic isn't Epic
6) 4e Heroic isn't Gritty
7) 4e is oversimplified


Would you like a drink to go with the can of worms you've just opened? :smallsmile:

Solaris
2012-05-06, 01:16 AM
People have every right to spread misinformation about anything they want. Attempting to stop that (or to discourage it) is, like it or not, censorship.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"You're stupid, shut up." =/= censorship.
{Scrubbed} = censorship.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-06, 01:20 AM
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"You're stupid, shut up." =/= censorship.
{Scrubbed} = censorship.

I would refer you to a dictionary (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/censor).

Solaris
2012-05-06, 01:55 AM
And yet I, knowing full well the definition, said what I said and stand by it. Key to the definition is some power the censor has over the censored. Nobody here has power over anyone else, as I don't recall seeing a moderator posting and certainly don't recall seeing one telling anyone to stop saying their opinion.

Shadowknight12
2012-05-06, 02:21 AM
And yet I, knowing full well the definition, said what I said and stand by it. Key to the definition is some power the censor has over the censored. Nobody here has power over anyone else, as I don't recall seeing a moderator posting and certainly don't recall seeing one telling anyone to stop saying their opinion.

There is a difference between formal and informal power. You speak of formal power and are completely correct. Informal power exists within human groups. Look it up, it's an interesting read.

Ashtagon
2012-05-06, 02:33 AM
{Scrubbed} = censorship.

I cannot tell if our beloved moderators are being deliberately ironic or not :smallbiggrin:

(nb. quoted after the moderator action)

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-06, 02:41 AM
Actualy anybody can do it:

{Scrub-Scrub Scrabadubed dubed in the tub}

TuggyNE
2012-05-06, 04:48 AM
I cannot tell if our beloved moderators are being deliberately ironic or not :smallbiggrin:

Solaris' post was not edited at all, by anyone. Therefore the red text was not put there by a mod.


Actualy anybody can do it:

{Scrub-Scrub Scrabadubed dubed in the tub}

True, but it's frowned upon for the most part.

WitchSlayer
2012-05-06, 05:11 AM
Man, when they gave the free center space to "It just doesn't FEEL like D&D!" in the Edition War bingo, they knew what they were doing.

One Step Two
2012-05-06, 06:10 AM
Man, when they gave the free center space to "It just doesn't FEEL like D&D!" in the Edition War bingo, they knew what they were doing.

In some essence it's true. I've been playing D&D for about 5 years now, and played the Storyteller systems before that, the D&D group I joined are older players who played since the days of the Original D&D, and the overall beginnings of Single Character focused War Gaming. And through them I have tried many different RPG's, ranging from OD&D to Pathfinder, Rolemaster, Cyberpunk and others.

I myself took only a little time to skim the 4th edition ruleset, and yes, it's actually very good. They've toned down some powers, given everyone an even playing field, and created a good skirmish-based combat game. None of this is a bad thing, but it didn't feel like a game I could get into.
The reason why it didn't feel right was the same thing I offered up when a friend of mine asked me to play DDO: "I understand it's called Dungeons and Dragons, and it has all the setting stuff I like, but can I make a rogue, disguise myself as a Bartender, and assassinate someone by slipping poison into their drink?"
Now, I could be entirely wrong, I only skimmed the rules, but under other systems, a little lateral thinking, or clever wit to throw-off the DM was as valuable as any Once per day ability could be. D&D 4e doesn't facilitate these sorts of things easily, not from what I could see, and due to the nature of the game provided, that being a tactical skirmish simulatior, it either ignores your attempt at being off-the-wall, or causes a halt while the Dm decides what that means outside the context of your various abilities.

That's my feeling on why the argument "It doesn't feel like D&D" is valid, though it certainly can be overused, and a little context helps a point.


As for the original question: Why did people hate 4e?

I think TARDIS answered that best in the opening of his post, because that's fact. WotC made a marketing blunder, and due to the power of the internet, a slight against someone or many someones, however minor, builds resentment, and that's more or less what brings it to such a boiling point.
It's not that it's a bad system, or that the previous one was any better, the arguments become a singular great haze, and all you remember, regardless of any actual logical arguments made, is that seething dislike of what the discussion can bring, and many people's first reaction is to act passionately for their cause, or attempt to derail it completely in an attempt to quell it.


In whichcase, I agree, Vanilla Cake Batter Milkshakes sound awesome.

Acanous
2012-05-06, 06:23 AM
That's exactly what I'm saying. If I try to pass off opinion and fact, the right thing to do is to call bull on me, not tell me that I'm supposed to keep quiet. Telling me "do not pass off opinion as fact" is censorship. Calling me out when I do that is not.

I've seen your face in the shadows.
I've seen your face in the places I wasn't meant to be.
I've heard them whisper about you,
I've heard the men in the bars,
I've seen the women lock their doors at night.

They say your eyes are on fire!
They say you'd kill a man for walking the wrong side of the line!
But men they say a lot of foolish things,
and in the end the only words I can find to believe in are mine

They Say! This City
This city She's been dead
She's been dead for years now For years now
for years now... For years now
So death is So death is
Not something Not something
Not something that scares me! That scares me
There's worse things There's worse things
Than Death here Than Death Here
They Told Me! Keep Quiet!

I will not be told where to stand
I will not be told what to say,
Not by Man or machine not by You not by anyone tonight!
Gonna have to do Better than fear,
gonna have to step outta the shadows and fight!
And when they see your face again,
they will know what it means to have fear dragged out into the light.
Drag it out!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So anyhow, 4E had a lot of bad things going for it. WoTC deliberately split the fanbase, cut the heart out of 3rd party support, dropped the ball on their internet sales, then screwed all the internet retailers and their customers out of product (That was a big one). The game came out buggy when they promised no bugs, and a rather easilly exploitable ranger/cleric infinate damage loop springs to mind.
Then they erratta'd it. But don't worry! The erratta is free! Free forever!
...but then they killed the free web support and made it paid only. But don't worry, you are part of a gaming group, yes? You can ALL shell out, and it'll lower the price!

And then they released Essentials. Which, by the very name, sounds like it's...Essential. So more stuff you have to buy and isn't covered by the stuff you're already paying for.
Did we mention you need to buy some minis? Oh, and battle maps, too!

That's just on the corporate end. WotC botched things so hard you have to wonder if Hanlon's Razor can still apply, or if the company got taken over by a moustache-tworling villain.

Then there's how it plays.

Here's the thing,
For me? Combat is only part of the game. It's not even a big part. D&D is, at heart, a thinking man's game. Oldschool puzzles and traps were meant to challenge how you applied your creativity and thought to this group-imagination project, with some well-defined framework to make sure everyone's on the same page.
Combat is not meant to be Fought, at least not at any level beyond 10th. It is meant to be Solved.
THAT is why Wizards are more mechanically powerful than fighters. Because it's supposed to be a group THOUGHT activity, the entire point of Vancian casting is for the wizard player to plan ahead and be able to execute that plan, often with suggestions from the other players. It's not just rolling dice and binary damage trading between player and monster.

When the game devolves to that point, it is to PUNISH the player for following through on a poor idea, or execuiting it badly. The Fighter's role was to be the safety net, the last ditch that pulls the team's collective fat out of the fire when things go horribly wrong. That gives the fighter HIS heroic moment, HIS defining traits.

But sadly, the design crew didn't see this, what they saw was a war game, and they BUILT 4E out of the punishment that creative players get when they screw up.

The most fun part of any game of 3.5 to me is the part where I can solve a combat in a single round, two if I made a mistake, and three if I'm incapacitated by surprise at the beginning of the encounter.
That allows me to focus on the more important aspects of the game, such as constructing a city, travelling the world, making connections and *Roleplaying* with the other PCs.
My character is not just some faceless avatar for me to ride around in hee-hawing over how much damage my fireball can do now, it's a living being in a story told not just by me, but also by my closest friends.

3.5 has rules for things like trade routes, political climate, the reactions of NPCs to you and your party, and things you can do proactively to make a lasting impact upon the world you play in, such as creating powerful artefacts that could resurface again in a later adventure, or founding a knightly order based on your principles.
You can even build a whole freaking city, from the ground up, with a few ranks in a couple Knowledges and Use Magic Device, given a little downtime and a sizeable chunk of your WBL.

4E *Removed* any way of influencing the world around you except by point of the sword, and the only way your future characters are going to remember your old ones are by "Who had the highest body count".

Now, your DM COULD arbetrate some house rules to fill in the giant white void here, but that is NOT a Feature, that is Homebrew.

Now, none of this is Objective, it's all subjective, but if someone asked me what the heart and soul of D&D was? I'd tell them it was Creativity, Planning, and Options.

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-06, 07:29 AM
I see no reason not to allow that, given a few skill checks and very good roleplaying I see no reason why not as a DM I would not allow that.

Give me a few minutes to trawl DMG about poison/disease tracks, possibly cooking up something similar along the lines of what is there. (Probably ongoing damage based on a succession of failed saving throws). And there you are.

Just because there are not rules for it, does not mean it cannot be done. I have very little experience with 3.5, but 4e isn't stated up to the eyeballs. There's a lot of room for DM discretion.

Wings of Peace
2012-05-06, 07:35 AM
For me 4e was just too simple. I liked that in 3e a lot of the classes had different mechanics that made them feel unique and interesting (especially when combined). This may be a large part of what led to 3e's issues with balance (Tier System theory) but 4e's solution of an At-Will/Encounter/Daily system made everything feel the same to me coming from 3e.

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-06, 07:46 AM
Even when you get the same or similar amount of powers (some classes and builds do get more!) they don't play the same all the time. A wizard plays differently to a sorcerer, to a bard, to a swordmage and all are casters. A rogue plays differently to a ranger, to a warlock, a sorcerer, a barbarian, a monk or an avenger. And all are strikers which focus on heavy damage. And there's even differences with the choices you make in each individual class. Like a bard with a bow as opposed to a sword.

A 4e party needs to think about themselves as a team rorkibg together, not necessarily covering all four roles but knowing each others flaws and strengths and who can do what when the flak starts flying. A well-coordinated party in 4e is unstoppable.

Wings of Peace
2012-05-06, 07:51 AM
Even when you get the same or similar amount of powers (some classes and builds do get more!) they don't play the same all the time. A wizard plays differently to a sorcerer, to a bard, to a swordmage and all are casters. A rogue plays differently to a ranger, to a warlock, a sorcerer, a barbarian, a monk or an avenger. And all are strikers which focus on heavy damage. And there's even differences with the choices you make in each individual class. Like a bard with a bow as opposed to a sword.

A 4e party needs to think about themselves as a team rorkibg together, not necessarily covering all four roles but knowing each others flaws and strengths and who can do what when the flak starts flying. A well-coordinated party in 4e is unstoppable.

I recognize that each class still plays differently in 4e. I more so meant that having a generally (I know there's some variance like with Psionics) unified mechanic that addressed every class made the system boring to work with for me.

I imagine for others that's why they liked 4e though, because it's a simpler system to learn than 3e.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-06, 07:59 AM
A 4e party needs to think about themselves as a team rorkibg together, not necessarily covering all four roles but knowing each others flaws and strengths and who can do what when the flak starts flying. A well-coordinated party in 4e is unstoppable.

So, like every single mechanically sound roleplaying game ever made, then?

Wings of Peace
2012-05-06, 08:05 AM
So, like every single mechanically sound roleplaying game ever made, then?

Except for Paranoia, Nobilis, Vampire: The Masquerade, and any other rpg whose central game-play isn't focused around the idea of co-operative victory right?

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-06, 08:11 AM
Maybe, but 4e does have distinct advantages when you have the combined efforts of specialised roles. I have seen it in SW Saga, not so much in 3.5 and PF, but I've played those very little.

Take, say, a Lazylord teamed up with a high-damage marker striker like a monk and you have a deadly combination. Add to that a heavy-duty pally to keep the boss busy and a wizard on crowd control and you have a series of headaches for a DM to make it a challenging fight.

I admit that I often have to deliberately target the most effective player to even the odds and get the others thinking and planning. And they know I font hold back, I TPKed them in session two with a bunch of minions because they were making bad choices. They've learned since.

Acanous
2012-05-06, 08:35 AM
Just because there are not rules for it, does not mean it cannot be done. I have very little experience with 3.5, but 4e isn't stated up to the eyeballs. There's a lot of room for DM discretion.

No, but if you have rules for some things and not for others, it lends legitimacy to anything that is done by those rules, and discourages anything those rules do not cover.

For instance, say you are players of a space combat RPG, designed dominantly around long-range combat. Your players decide they want to warp in right under the enemy ship, board it, and take it over from the inside.

Now, there are no rules in the system for what they are about to do. You have no unit of measure for if this is something they could succeed at, and have to make up the entire encounter on the fly.

Did you arbitrate it successfully? If your players enjoyed it, no matter the outcome, then yes. Did you do it within the system? No, you were neck-deep in homebrew territory.
Many DMs, however, *Especially* New ones, would simply say "The rules for this do not exist, therefore you cannot do this".

4E is like this, but with pretty much any situation that does not involve combat.

It is a design flaw, not a feature. It's akin to if you went to work, did half a job, and expected someone else to pick up the slack for you, without complaint, and be paid full wage for your time.

You may enjoy homebrew. That's cool. I'd like to put on the record that I encourage your creativity and non-linear thinking. This makes you a good DM and an interesting person, like MacGuyver, you can use the sparsest of tools to accomplish something great... but what happens when you give the same sparse tools to someone less creative or flexable than you?

Solaris
2012-05-06, 08:44 AM
Just because there are not rules for it, does not mean it cannot be done. I have very little experience with 3.5, but 4e isn't stated up to the eyeballs. There's a lot of room for DM discretion.

This, actually, was one of the things I disliked most about 3.5E players' general prevailing attitudes. I came into the hobby with AD&D, where the only things we had rules for was killin' stuff and ability checks. You don't need rules for every single thing.

But I still dislike 4E.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-06, 08:49 AM
Maybe, but 4e does have distinct advantages when you have the combined efforts of specialised roles. I have seen it in SW Saga, not so much in 3.5 and PF, but I've played those very little.

Take, say, a Lazylord teamed up with a high-damage marker striker like a monk and you have a deadly combination. Add to that a heavy-duty pally to keep the boss busy and a wizard on crowd control and you have a series of headaches for a DM to make it a challenging fight.

A serious caveat with role-based teamplay, however, is that you can't just show up with whatever character concept you want to play, made in a vacuum, and expect it to work well with the rest of the party 90% of the time. If you want a well-oiled party that can consistently handle level-appropriate encounters, everyone has to work on their characters together. This isn't necessarily a problem; The players having to work together even in their build choices might be exactly what you want! Still though, there's something to be said about just playing the character you want to play without worrying about how your skills synergize with the other players.


Did you arbitrate it successfully? If your players enjoyed it, no matter the outcome, then yes. Did you do it within the system? No, you were neck-deep in homebrew territory.
Many DMs, however, *Especially* New ones, would simply say "The rules for this do not exist, therefore you cannot do this".

4E is like this, but with pretty much any situation that does not involve combat.

It is a design flaw, not a feature. It's akin to if you went to work, did half a job, and expected someone else to pick up the slack for you, without complaint, and be paid full wage for your time.

Actually, 4E does have a universal non-combat mechanic: Use the level-appropriate DC table and pick a skill/ability score, then roll for it.

A very very boring and unsatisfying mechanic, mind you. But hey, better than nothing...

Fatebreaker
2012-05-06, 08:55 AM
No, but if you have rules for some things and not for others, it lends legitimacy to anything that is done by those rules, and discourages anything those rules do not cover.

For instance, say you are players of a space combat RPG, designed dominantly around long-range combat. Your players decide they want to warp in right under the enemy ship, board it, and take it over from the inside.

Now, there are no rules in the system for what they are about to do. You have no unit of measure for if this is something they could succeed at, and have to make up the entire encounter on the fly.

[British accent]

Naval combat without boarding actions, you say? Pre-posterous!

[/British accent]

Seriously, though, I get your point. However, the counter I would offer is that D&D has always been, primarily, a stab it and loot it game, with noncombat subsystems sparse at best. The 3.5 DMG section on noncombat encounters even specifically mentions that DM's looking to award noncombat experience will need to create their own system for doing so. It's not, strictly speaking, in the rules. They offer some ideas, but nothing hard and clear, and it's embarrassingly dwarfed by the mountains of rules pertaining to combat and combat rewards.

I applaud 4e for taking a step back and saying, "Y'know what? This just isn't something D&D has ever handled well. We're going to focus on the core of what D&D is -- adventurers who adventure."

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-06, 09:06 AM
I applaud 4e for taking a step back and saying, "Y'know what? This just isn't something D&D has ever handled well. We're going to focus on the core of what D&D is -- adventurers who adventure."

OBJECTION! (http://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=5737456)

I personally believe that P&P Roleplaying games can no longer compete with mindless combat as videogames do it faster, and more efficiently.

By removing the strengths that the P&P RPG, I think its a step in the wrong direction.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-05-06, 09:24 AM
We're going to focus on the core of what D&D is

I think I'm getting Deja-vu...

Fatebreaker
2012-05-06, 09:34 AM
OBJECTION! (http://objection.mrdictionary.net/go.php?n=5737456)

I personally believe that P&P Roleplaying games can no longer compete with mindless combat as videogames do it faster, and more efficiently.

By removing the strengths that the P&P RPG, I think its a step in the wrong direction.


Objection overruled, sir!


Combat is not inherently mindless, nor does it preclude roleplaying. There is an entire tabletop wargaming industry which thrives on the this sort of thing, and D&D traces its roots to that style of play. I play roleplaying games, wargames, and videogames. Each has a different appeal with regards to combat.

Which goes back to one of my most basic tenets of gaming: use the system which meets your needs. There are games out there which have far greater integration of roleplaying and mechanics than D&D. So I applaud the honesty and clarity of the Wizards team for recognizing what their system was good at and what it was not, and streamlining the system to play to their strengths.

I mean, think about it -- were hardcore roleplayers really getting their money's worth out of the 3.x diplomacy subsystem?

--

Edit:


I think I'm getting Deja-vu...

Eh, I'm not talking so much about what "the core of what D&D is" as "what D&D's mechanics do well or don't do well."

I don't deny that there are folks who loved their Vancian spellcasting or their nonweapon proficiencies or what have you. And power to them -- I've no interest in trying to take away your game or claim that those things "aren't D&D." Dungeons & Dragons, both as a brand and as a concept, has room in it for a lot of different ideas. But there's a lot of different ways we can mechanically arrive at those ideas. Some of them are going to be better than others for meeting certain needs. It's all about identifying and meeting wants and needs.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-06, 09:38 AM
Except for Paranoia, Nobilis, Vampire: The Masquerade, and any other rpg whose central game-play isn't focused around the idea of co-operative victory right?

I meant to add 'tactical' in there somewhere, I apologise. I will note, however, that all of those are somewhat better than 4th edition, though I do personally have a strong and overwhelming dislike for the World of Darkness.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-06, 09:47 AM
Combat is not inherently mindless, nor does it preclude roleplaying. There is an entire tabletop wargaming industry which thrives on the this sort of thing, and D&D traces its roots to that style of play. I play roleplaying games, wargames, and videogames. Each has a different appeal with regards to combat.

True. But I call mindless combat, combat thats removed from the game-world. Like regenerating swords (From rust monster attacks). I don't play wargames because thier way too expensive and unbalanced (Which for a competative game is much more inportant)


There are games out there which have far greater integration of roleplaying and mechanics than D&D.

But I never receive as much fun playing them as I do D&D.


So I applaud the honesty and clarity of the Wizards team for recognizing what their system was good at and what it was not, and streamlining the system to play to their strengths.

Again, I would say that they played to their weaknesses but whatever.


I mean, think about it -- were hardcore roleplayers really getting their money's worth out of the 3.x diplomacy subsystem?

I did. It takes a bit of thought, but yes. Sometimes even the most well created arguments can be presented poorly. Thus die rolls simulate your success in conveying information. I auto fail poor arguments though.


Eh, I'm not talking so much about what "the core of what D&D is" as "what D&D's mechanics do well or don't do well."

Warning: Life story ahead:

I am in a sense, a doublecrosser. My first RPG was 4e, and I thought it was great. I still have my books and play every once in a while.

I didn't know that warz even existed when I bought them. But later I became a mindless spammer idiot screamer that called 3e stupid even though I only played it once.

Then I got severely frustrated with the system, and set out for other grounds and started playing 3e.

The Glyphstone
2012-05-06, 09:49 AM
I meant to add 'tactical' in there somewhere, I apologise. I will note, however, that all of those are somewhat better than 4th edition, though I do personally have a strong and overwhelming dislike for the World of Darkness.

The setting or the Storyteller system? I find NWoD Core to be an excellent setting-neutral ruleset for moderately gritty modern-setting games, once you strip out the ANGST!!!111

Shadowknight12
2012-05-06, 10:16 AM
The setting or the Storyteller system? I find NWoD Core to be an excellent setting-neutral ruleset for moderately gritty modern-setting games, once you strip out the ANGST!!!111

Removing grimdarkness or angst from the WoD (in any rulebook) is like stripping flesh from bones. It clings.

Scots Dragon
2012-05-06, 12:10 PM
The setting or the Storyteller system? I find NWoD Core to be an excellent setting-neutral ruleset for moderately gritty modern-setting games, once you strip out the ANGST!!!111

Generally the setting, though the system iteslf isn't fantastic and it doesn't really help that I generally don't have much interest in moderately gritty modern-setting games. If I'm going modern-day, I tend to prefer using Mutants & Masterminds and going with over-the-top superheroic stuff.

Reverent-One
2012-05-06, 12:26 PM
I did. It takes a bit of thought, but yes. Sometimes even the most well created arguments can be presented poorly. Thus die rolls simulate your success in conveying information. I auto fail poor arguments though.


I believe what he's referring to isn't that it's possible to fail the diplomacy check, but the easily breakable DCs for it, which make it possible for a diplomacer to turn anyone hostile to helpful, if not fantastically loyal, in one skill check.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-06, 12:28 PM
I believe what he's referring to isn't that it's possible to fail the diplomacy check, but the easily breakable DCs for it, which make it possible for a diplomacer to turn anyone hostile to helpful, if not fantastically loyal, in one skill check.

Again: I auto fail poor arguments. Munchkining exists in any game, so the best I can do is just ask nicely for my players not to abuse it.

Diplomacy is only rolled for gray areas.

Reverent-One
2012-05-06, 12:30 PM
Again: I auto fail poor arguments. Munchkining exists in any game, so the best I can do is just ask nicely for my players not to abuse it.

Diplomacy is only rolled for gray areas.

So then you're not ok with the Diplomacy rules, since you have to houserule them in your games.

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-06, 01:14 PM
I guess. But, I still enjoy the core rules behind it.

The Glyphstone
2012-05-06, 03:06 PM
Removing grimdarkness or angst from the WoD (in any rulebook) is like stripping flesh from bones. It clings.

Because you're doing it wrong - you should be soaking the bones in chemicals to dissolve the flesh, not stripping them off. The flesh is what you're trying to remove so you can get to the skeleton, it's not the fault of the bones you're utilizing poor technique to do it.

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-06, 04:16 PM
A serious caveat with role-based teamplay, however, is that you can't just show up with whatever character concept you want to play, made in a vacuum, and expect it to work well with the rest of the party 90% of the time. If you want a well-oiled party that can consistently handle level-appropriate encounters, everyone has to work on their characters together. This isn't necessarily a problem; The players having to work together even in their build choices might be exactly what you want! Still though, there's something to be said about just playing the character you want to play without worrying about how your skills synergize with the other players.


Not necessarily, the DMG covers this and makes suggestions on how to handle various party compositions. The only real big thing is a lack of a leader, but then it's not so hard to hand out healing potions and have Mr Healbot the ClerIc as an extra, silent, character.

And don't tell me this doesn't happen in PF or 3.5 when there isn't a healer. I find my bard is appreciated as she can use the Wand of Cure Light Wounds that someone has on their possession but can't.

But I never stop any player playing any character that they want unless I have very good balance or story reasons. Or, you're a brand new player and font know how to build one.

Talakeal
2012-05-06, 04:24 PM
Combat is not inherently mindless, nor does it preclude roleplaying. There is an entire tabletop wargaming industry which thrives on the this sort of thing, and D&D traces its roots to that style of play. I play roleplaying games, wargames, and videogames. Each has a different appeal with regards to combat.


Maybe for you. When 4E came out my D&D group fractured into separate groups, those who liked 4E and those who liked PF.

When I played with the 4E group I was explicitly told that their group had a zero tolerance policy on RP in combat. If you did anything but try and kill the monsters the most efficient way possible without any PC casualties you were out of the group.

It doesn't matter that the monster on the grid is a LG paladin who was tricked into attacking the party, he does DOWN. It doesn't matter if you are too proud to accept help or retreat from a superior foe, you get yourself behind the tank until the cleric patches you up!

Scowling Dragon
2012-05-06, 04:28 PM
Not that I diagree with the second part but thats likely the effect of your group. Not the system.

Katana_Geldar
2012-05-06, 04:34 PM
Maybe for you. When 4E came out my D&D group fractured into separate groups, those who liked 4E and those who liked PF.

When I played with the 4E group I was explicitly told that their group had a zero tolerance policy on RP in combat. If you did anything but try and kill the monsters the most efficient way possible without any PC casualties you were out of the group.

It doesn't matter that the monster on the grid is a LG paladin who was tricked into attacking the party, he does DOWN. It doesn't matter if you are too proud to accept help or retreat from a superior foe, you get yourself behind the tank until the cleric patches you up!

Your group sounds rather boring, then. Unless I'm running a big encounter with a big group (like ten people) then roleplaying always has time.

Even Wednesday night Encounters, which is based around showing up once a week to kill monsters, has roleplaying. Particularly the last two season which would make fantastic level 1-4 campaigns.

Crow
2012-05-06, 05:06 PM
Maybe for you. When 4E came out my D&D group fractured into separate groups, those who liked 4E and those who liked PF.

When I played with the 4E group I was explicitly told that their group had a zero tolerance policy on RP in combat. If you did anything but try and kill the monsters the most efficient way possible without any PC casualties you were out of the group.

It doesn't matter that the monster on the grid is a LG paladin who was tricked into attacking the party, he does DOWN. It doesn't matter if you are too proud to accept help or retreat from a superior foe, you get yourself behind the tank until the cleric patches you up!

Man, that sounds like a horrible group to play D&D with. Tactical Wargames though, prolly not too bad.

Kaun
2012-05-06, 06:24 PM
I think all the different editions of DnD need to be made into religions!

That way it would be against forum policy to argue about which one is the best.http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f79/tenchibmw/Beat_Dead_Horse.jpg

The Glyphstone
2012-05-06, 07:34 PM
Great Modthulhu: Closed for review.