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Peas and Rice posted:And appeals to them on an emotional, and is fun for them. Big enough for everything but a game that's honest about itself, I guess.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:09
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Is that the problem, that it's claiming to be something it isn't? Why does that matter if it's fun to play?
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Jul 31, 2014 22:12
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I must admit, I'm kinda saddened by a lot of these responses. 4E mainly made me understand that I like balanced classes with abilities with abilities that actually supported their intended role and tactical combat on a grid that actually used the grid as part of encounters, not that playing D&D was futile. I mean, getting your storygame on is awesome but I would like some 4E-inspired games to be made. The game currently known as Sacred BBQ seems like the only one.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:12
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The problem is that in many ways it isn't fun to play, or is at least much less fun to play than it could be if it was willing to take a page out of the good parts of 13th age, 4th edition, etc. that would in no way interfere with the actual core principles of its design. Like, I'm sure a cleric/druid/warlock/wizard party would work out fine, although quibbling constantly about how many feet things are from each other would be sure to get annoying.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:14
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Illvillainy posted:I mean, getting your storygame on is awesome but I would like some 4E-inspired games to be made. The game currently known as Sacred BBQ seems like the only one. So, uh, basically what 5e tries (and fails) to do? I guess everyone who likes 5e should try SBBQ instead. 
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Jul 31, 2014 22:17
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treeboy posted:cross posting from the Art thread. I found the original piece of art that was used for the new PHB first page while helping one of my players find an avatar for our game. They trimmed it down significantly, I liked it to begin with, but the whole piece is even better. 5e's art is legitimately it's best feature. Maybe it's one good one. LFK posted:By TTRPG standards 4e was a great success, but it wasn't the success that Hasbro wanted or paid for, so Hasbro basically said "whatever, just don't kill the brand, we're not giving you MLP, Transformers, or MTG money until you can deliver MLP, Transformers, or MTG sales." FWIW there's been hints that 4e also fell victim to some very heavy office politicking that oh so coincidentally seems to follow Mearls in his ascension from minor dev to gaining complete control of D&D both as a brand and it's development. 4e sold gangbusters right until Heinsoo was let go and Mearls was put in charge, only for Mearls to make the weird muddled mess that was Essentials. And yet that ended with him getting even more control over D&D.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:18
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One thing I didn't like about 4e was actually the relative simplicity of building a character in terms of selecting powers. There weren't power chains. 3e wizards had the same problem for me, you could just pick whatever spells you wanted without being obligated to build up certain paths over time. You could just take fireball or fly or teleport or whatever, without ever having taken a similar spell beforehand. It seemed really stupid then, and now with 4e it seemed like that was extended to all the classes. My problem with it is that it feels like you're just playing a game of "what's the best spell," and now "what's the best power," and that's the only question, what power out of these choices is the best, without having to worry about whether that power will qualify you for later powers or whether you've taken the qualifying powers already. When there's a tree of powers, it becomes more about finding a thematically cohesive tree that fits your character. It's easier to balance a large-scale power tree overall as opposed to balancing each individual level of powers; maybe the power for one tree is weaker than that for the other at an individual level, but you can make up for it by evening out the tree as a whole. If you're just taking whichever powers you want, then it's much more difficult to ensure every single power is equal at every tier. I know that people will say feat chains were poo poo in 3e and they were, but I don't think it's an inherent flaw in power chains in general. You simply need to ensure there are lots of different chains to choose from, that the opening powers at the start are all roughly equal, and that the chains are about even in power over the course of, say, each tier, without any outstanding capstones or obligatory gems that show up in the middle. Maybe someone will laugh at "simply," and I'm sure it would be a challenging thing to design, but I think that's going to be a lot easier than insuring that every power is equal at every level, and I feel like the way that having good and bad powers stifles creativity is much worse than having set chains.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:21
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Peas and Rice posted:Is that the problem, that it's claiming to be something it isn't? I'm sure I'm inviting something terrible onto myself and this thread by borrowing an argument from the GW Death Pool thread, but "what does it matter, it's fun" is an inane and pointless way of basically shutting down criticism. Slot machines, diaper-fur erotic fanfiction, and sticking your dick in a vacuum cleaner are also "fun" depending on who you talk to. People can find anything fun, claiming a thing is "fun" isn't really an accomplishment. You could probably design an RPG by banging out random words on a keyboard and stuffing it with art that tickles peoples' old-school receptors and you'd have people claiming it was fun.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:22
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Littlefinger posted:Weren't its two main innovations ditching the grid-based tactical combat and introducing storygamey elements, though? Uh, are you sure you aren't thinking of, like, every other modern tabletop game in existence? SBBQ is entirely about abstraction and balanced grid-based combat.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:25
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zachol posted:One thing I didn't like about 4e was actually the relative simplicity of building a character in terms of selecting powers. There weren't power chains. The thing is, there were. They were just built into synergies rather then explicitly enforced. Look at some of the power combos people put together; I've seen monks use powers that are normally not good at all but have such amazing combo potential with something else that they become a thousand times better.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:25
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Illvillainy posted:I must admit, I'm kinda saddened by a lot of these responses. 4E mainly made me understand that I like balanced classes with abilities with abilities that actually supported their intended role and tactical combat on a grid that actually used the grid as part of encounters, not that playing D&D was futile. Yeah to be clear I don't think the concept of D&D is a doomed enterprise. I just think it's something I wouldn't want to play as often as I play other roleplaying games, and I credit 4th edition's clarity of purpose (as contrasted with 3e's pretensions at being The Only System You'll Ever Need) with helping me articulate that. I think future editions of D&D that resembled Sacred BBQ (or took 5e's sometimes-dedication to fast play) would be a lot of fun, sometimes. It's just a style of play I get burnt out on really easily.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:27
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Kai Tave posted:People can find anything fun, claiming a thing is "fun" isn't really an accomplishment.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:28
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Countblanc posted:Uh, are you sure you aren't thinking of, like, every other modern tabletop game in existence? SBBQ is entirely about abstraction and balanced grid-based combat. 
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Jul 31, 2014 22:29
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ProfessorCirno posted:FWIW there's been hints that 4e also fell victim to some very heavy office politicking that oh so coincidentally seems to follow Mearls in his ascension from minor dev to gaining complete control of D&D both as a brand and it's development. 4e sold gangbusters right until Heinsoo was let go and Mearls was put in charge, only for Mearls to make the weird muddled mess that was Essentials. And yet that ended with him getting even more control over D&D. I have never ever heard a single thing that didn't make Wizards of the Coast office politics and bureaucracy sound like a loving nightmare.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:31
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Peas and Rice posted:Yeah, alright, that's fair. There's nothing about 4E's character design that in any way inhibits experiences around the table, and it's not part of the mechanics. Double standards. Especially because I timed myself to create a new character in a class I'd never particularly looked at and have it playable enough I'd be happy to use it in a game. (The Seeker). Time taken: 4 minutes 53 seconds, including booting up the character builder. I've also written pregens for other people on the bus to the game in about 10 minutes (yes, by pen and paper) and had them be happy with them. Paolomania posted:It means that the vast majority of your character's identity and statistics are about their role in group combat, and the vast majority of game time is spent in group combat, not unlike an MMO where the vast majority of your time is spent in group combat. That is not to excuse 3E from falling into the same trap, but with balance and system mastery issues, but why can people not understand that alot of players want more out of a system than a way to exquisitely express a balanced combat role? Welcome to D&D. 4e had the best non-combat experience of any edition (to be honest that's not much of an achievement). Edit: I think part of the problem D&D has is it's where they send the screwups WotC doesn't want to just fire. Mark Rosewater and co. are very good at what they do.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:35
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Attorney at Funk posted:I have never ever heard a single thing that didn't make Wizards of the Coast office politics and bureaucracy sound like a loving nightmare. This is the tale of a forgotten age before the seas were bent, when the world was flat and floated atop a sea of chaos. This is the tale of a decadent empire raised up on the bones of the fallen Golden Age, whose splendor it faintly echoed but could not match. This is a tale of primal frontiers, of the restless dead, of jeweled cities ruled openly by spirits in defiance of Heaven’s law. This is a tale of glorious heroes blessed by the gods, and of their passions and the wars they waged in the final era of legends. This is your tale. This is-
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Jul 31, 2014 22:36
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The problem is immersion. It's a powerful force for RPG players that makes no sense, and can't be designed for in any real sense. It's something that disappears in a puff of futility if you try to analyze or study it. Yet it motivates a lot of players as being the primary reason to play RPGs. That doesn't mean RPGs are futile or empty. Good gameplay is real, in the way that math is real. Games are fundamentally mathematical optimization problems that people enjoy trying to solve. Good stories are similarly real. A good story created collaboratively at an RPG table is just as real as the stories in movies or books. Analysis or study does not diminish either of those things. The problem seems to be that RPGs that focus on those realities, and have mechanics that specifically promote good gameplay, and good storytelling, are new, and it's hard to be as immersed when playing a new system, as it is when playing one you've internalized as second nature. Not to mention it's harder to be immersed when you're not 12 anymore, but acknowledging that is to acknowledge the illusion of immersion, so rules and presentation differences from what you played when you were 12 get blamed instead.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:36
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ProfessorCirno posted:The thing is, there were. They were just built into synergies rather then explicitly enforced. Look at some of the power combos people put together; I've seen monks use powers that are normally not good at all but have such amazing combo potential with something else that they become a thousand times better. Honestly scouring books for feat/power/item combos that click just perfectly is my least favorite part of the game, largely because I have a perverse compulsion to keep doing it. I would much prefer a game having a handful of relatively clear options that you pick, like, two or three of and a promise that any one combination won't be particularly horrible or awesome. I feel like stuff like frostcheese was unintentional, and even something like that monk combo might have been as well. It makes me really uncomfortable that this is a power that's "not good at all" that suddenly becomes awesome when used right, because I get the feeling that either the "not good at all" option was meant to be the actual option to use and the good combo is unintended and abusive, or that the game is designed with bad options in the first place. Neither of those seems like a good thing.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:36
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zachol posted:Honestly scouring books for feat/power/item combos that click just perfectly is my least favorite part of the game, largely because I have a perverse compulsion to keep doing it. I would much prefer a game having a handful of relatively clear options that you pick, like, two or three of and a promise that any one combination won't be particularly horrible or awesome. The thing is that good game designers can and should strive to minimize "bad choices" (of which there definitely exist an amount in 4E, though again, the difference between "bad" and "good" is a lot, lot different in 4E than it is in 3E or other games) but locking people into trees or chains means that when bad choices crop up you can't do anything about it but suffer through them. If I think the start of the Facesmasher tree looks rad but five levels down the only choices it gives me are ones I don't like for various reasons (doesn't fit my playstyle, doesn't suit my chosen fiction, aren't very well designed, whatever) then I'm stuck barring the GM giving me a pass. A more freeform "take what you want" system doesn't have that issue.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:43
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Frostcheese was blatantly intentional. a: it was all in the PHB, and b: (IIRC) it was even called out by the designers as being an intentional combo. FWIW, scouring for good combos is one of the funnest things about 4e for me. It's a way to play the game whilst not AT the game. I really enjoy the character building, it's crunchy, and there's a lot of things to fiddle with, with some defined hard limits to effectiveness and clear roles, and it's not as simple as 'just pick *spell* cast it and win. I just wish to gently caress that they had cleaned up some of the cruft. 4e is bloated to gently caress with stuff that is just outright useless, in particular the likes of Barelling Charge, which with the errata to Charge does NOTHING AT ALL. Something like 4e was just begging to be an online living ruleset with a properly curated central database and good APIs, but... you know, I've said that SO many times in Next threads... I think one of the things that doesn't grab me about next is that there really doesn't seem to be much designing to do on the choppy-choppy classes. You pick your class, you get your scores, you pick some level 1 features and a subclass and... that's about it? Feats come in, but they're relatively few and far between, and the game's relatively short so there aren;t many AND you have to pick between them and score boosts, and mechanically score boosts are almost certainly going to win until you've maxed at least your attack stat. Character building just doesn't feel like it has any meat to it. It's all gristle and salad. E: I think feat chains are pretty much fine, as long as each individual element works. They can;t just be 'take a nothing feat in order to qualify for the good feat later, the first one has to DO something. 4e suffered this problem for the longest time when... gently caress I can't even remember the name, that PP that gave you a free MBA when you proned something... was the epitome of optimisation, but required you to take a dead style feat to get it. Still does to some extent; a lot of the style feat PPs are actually pretty good, but most of the style feats themselves are rubbish. thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 22:44
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The thing about chained abilities is that if you've gone to the trouble of actually making sure that all options are equally good (miraculously) then tying them together with chains suddenly becomes completely superfluous because what's the point? If no option is broken or needs gating (which is the entire point of chained ability trees) then why not just let people pick what they want?
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Jul 31, 2014 22:55
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You can still have something relatively weak that leads to something stronger. Just don't have something outright lovely that leads to something brokenly powerful. But yeah, in theory it's all good but in practice I'm now less convinced it actually works in a team game.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:56
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thespaceinvader posted:You can still have something relatively weak that leads to something stronger. Well that's exactly how 4E works, though. You don't need talent trees to do that.
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Jul 31, 2014 22:59
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How do you mean? 4e has elements that synergise, but (except for the aforementioned style feats) very few elements where one specific element blocks access to another specific element until you take the first. Also, possibly slightly derailing. E: more preview feats: http://community.wizards.com/forum/product-and-general-dd-discussions/threads/4119501 they do seem to be desperately set on making combat and noncombat take up the same resources. It's like they've learned nothing from prior editions. thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 23:03
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Putting this train back on the tracks   Feat preview ahoy
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Jul 31, 2014 23:06
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... I thought they claimed Feats in next would be good.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:09
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I am dazzled by the Pillars of Play and Niche Protection on display.
Littlefinger fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 23:10
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thespaceinvader posted:How do you mean? 4e has elements that synergise, but (except for the aforementioned style feats) very few elements where one specific element blocks access to another specific element until you take the first. What I mean is 4E is built around characters gaining abilities that start out relatively weak and lead to stronger choices as they level up. A level 1 Fighter gets to take, say, Hack and Hew. He can attack two targets with one action! That's pretty rad, for a variety of reasons. A level 7 Fighter can take Come and Get It, which lets him attack a whole bunch of dudes and pull them close so he can lock them down. You don't need to put things on a set of trees to accomplish this, nor do you need to put things on trees to foster synergy. If all options are relatively well-designed and well-balanced and not obfuscated by a bunch of smoke-and-mirrors bullshit then people who want synergy will be able to easily find it and people who are just interested in taking what's cool to them can do so without falling into a hole and people who have some wacky idea that needs a bunch of choices nobody would normally think to try can do that too without the game telling them "no sorry, you're on rails here."
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Jul 31, 2014 23:11
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Lord of Bore posted:Putting this train back on the tracks Elemental adept bothers me, I'm just not sure why. Maybe I just don't like elemental R/P/S.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:15
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Kai Tave posted:What I mean is 4E is built around characters gaining abilities that start out relatively weak and lead to stronger choices as they level up. A level 1 Fighter gets to take, say, Hack and Hew. He can attack two targets with one action! That's pretty rad, for a variety of reasons. A level 7 Fighter can take Come and Get It, which lets him attack a whole bunch of dudes and pull them close so he can lock them down. But... that's just characters improving. It's nothing to do with feat trees? When I said thespaceinvader posted:You can still have something relatively weak that leads to something stronger. I specifically meant a relatively weak option that gatekeeps a relatively strong option, i.e. you can;t take the strong one without having the weak one. And yeah, the 5e feats really are reading as pretty dry and uninteresting so far. They couldn't really have picked a much less interesting page to preview. If that's indicative of the feats in general...
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Jul 31, 2014 23:17
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thespaceinvader posted:I specifically meant a relatively weak option that gatekeeps a relatively strong option, i.e. you can;t take the strong one without having the weak one. Okay, so what's the benefit to this exactly? Like, how does this make for a better game?
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Jul 31, 2014 23:21
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thespaceinvader posted:But... that's just characters improving. It's nothing to do with feat trees? When I said I think it's meant to be. They have a Sneaky-man feat, a Fighty-man feat, and a Casty-man feat. All they're missing is a heal feat.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:23
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It allows a bit more specialisation and niche development. but as I said upthread a bit, I've basically over the course of this discussion decided I was being a dumbass and wasn't really right about tree structures working in this context.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:24
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With a chain you can have somewhat lackluster and somewhat more powerful options along a chain and not run into a problem as long as the chain as a whole is balanced. Say you have powers at levels 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 10, and at each one of those a choice between A, B, and C. Say that, no matter what, the team takes the time to ensure that all three are very balanced at 1, 2, 5, and 10, those being the early level powers and then the midpoint and capstone powers that are a little more important. Then, you still have 3, 7, and 9 to deal with. The team doesn't have the time to make sure each set is balanced, there're two more tiers and six more classes to work on, so there are some variations, and at each level one of A, B, and C is a winner. In terms of charop, you've got four points where there's mildly a better option but its mostly up to combat style and the needs of the group, and three were after a year of testing they figure out which is the best option at each level, say A at 3, B at 7, and C at 9. If you had power chains, then all you have to worry about is picking A, B, or C. Instead of the design team having to make sure A, B, and C are good at seven different points, now it's more like five, and they can take a step back and judge the chains holistically, not worrying whether A at 3 interacts with C at 7 and B at 10 to break the game somehow. There's much less work; maybe they've even saved enough time to construct D and E, when before they would've never had the time to do that on an individual level basis. Although there's strictly speaking less choice, with 5 choices instead of 3^7, there were still thematic lines inherent to the powers before that basically broke down into three archetypes and the ability to make fairly minor variations within those, whereas now there are two more entirely new ones with totally different types of behavior, at the cost of that ability to make minor variations.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:26
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These look more like a Take-Over-the-Sneaky-Man's-Job feat and an Ahahah-Pillars-of-Play-Buy-Combat-Effectiveness-and-Noncombat-Boons-with-the-Same-Currency feat to me.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:27
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thespaceinvader posted:It allows a bit more specialisation and niche development. Yeah sorry, I wasn't trying to debate you into the ground or anything, zachol's comment about how 4E gives you too much freedom when making your character and how things would be better if they locked you into paths just made negative sense to me because that's how 3E did it for anything but spellcasters and it sucked incredibly. Even videogames these days seem to be moving away from Diablo 2-style ability trees where you have to take Ability A to go on to Ability You Really Want B, which have historically encouraged A). planning your build umpty levels in advance and B). simply traded out "what's the best power at X level?" for "what's the best build for a character at X level?" zachol posted:With a chain you can have somewhat lackluster and somewhat more powerful options along a chain and not run into a problem as long as the chain as a whole is balanced. Why would you want lackluster abilities period? This is the approach old-school D&D takes to "balancing" spellcasters, by saying "yeah at early levels you suck but man, just wait until you level up some!" I mean, we're already in hypothetical fantasyland here where somehow a group of game designers doesn't magically gently caress up chained abilities the way they have in virtually every other RPG that's incorporated them, why not just ask for all abilities to be equally good at that point? It's not like either option is somehow more likely to come true than the other.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:35
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Paolomania posted:Anything to get the players to buy into the fiction, right? 3e and 5e may be fun for some, but they're not fun for everyone, or even most of the people they could, and should be fun for. Jack the Lad posted:Holy poo poo. I feel like these last few posts have actually been kinda revelatory for me, too. Early 4e modules were made roughly the same way 3e modules were. Similar density of combat, ect. The same Game. In 3e fights would often be fast, or handwaved. Everyone who plays 3e learns to get through the fights fast, knows the rules, ignores the rules, lets the Wizard do it, ect, ect. Even if they don't realize it. But when you actually do all those fights? With very little else of substance going ok? Holy poo poo what a grind. Who would ever want to do that? I'm all for 4e style design. But it's a game that needed a .5 and a sequel, and instead it got essentials and 5e. A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 23:36
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Lord of Bore posted:Putting this train back on the tracks Since February: Durable has changed from Con to 2x Con. Dungeon Delver is unchanged. Elemental Adept is unchanged. A Catastrophe posted:I'm all for 4e style design. But it's a game that needed a .5 and a sequel, and instead it got essentials and 5e. This is very true, too. I remember being ridiculously hype when 5e was announced - assuming that they would take 4e and build on it - and then just getting progressively less interested as more was revealed.
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Jul 31, 2014 23:41
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Kai Tave posted:Why would you want lackluster abilities period? This is the approach old-school D&D takes to "balancing" spellcasters, by saying "yeah at early levels you suck but man, just wait until you level up some!" I obviously don't "want" lackluster powers, I think they're inevitable and that chains are a better way to soften their impact and the impact inevitably unbalanced individual powers will have. Balancing five different chains of powers once from a holistic point of view seems like an easier task than repeatedly balancing five powers fifteen or twenty (or whatever) times over and ensuring no combination is particularly overpowered or lackluster. I think you could realistically produce a game where you could confidently say "any one of these five choices will turn out to be equally competitive," but not one where you'd claim "any combination of five choices each spread over the fifteen points you have a choice will be equal to another."
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Jul 31, 2014 23:50
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Jack the Lad posted:This is very true, too. I remember being ridiculously hype when 5e was announced - assuming that they would take 4e and build on it - and then just getting progressively less interested as more was revealed. For instance, I remember an RPG net thread where people were speculating about what the new fighter might look like, wether they'd be some kind of toolkit, for instance. I remember sketching out a system where by all martial classes had dice pools which were similar but distinct (so the rogue could save more between turns to backstab, ect).
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Jul 31, 2014 23:53
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