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exquisite tea posted:D&D started to become much more popular with 5E starting with Critical Role / Dimension 20 and now BG3. Convincing a crowd of mostly newcomers to learn 4E when all they've seen of D&D comes from fifth edition is kind of a non-starter. They wanna play the version they see on youtube. I ran a lengthy 4e campaign, and it absolutely has its own flaws. Modules were crap, magic items were so de powered as to be annoying to hand out, and the shift between free play and tactical combat was always kind of awkward. The complaint that it didn't feeeeeel like dnd was also accurate, though dnd was always some variety of lame so i didn't care that much about it. But it was a good game, for sure. It really sang when you turned the screws on the players because it was such a tight system.
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Mar 10, 2024 19:15
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My Lovely Horse posted:D&D 5 is not so much designed around the idea of "this is what would make for good gameplay" as it is around "this is the brand you need to buy if you want to make crazy plans and annoy the DM like in the memes and games and the movie and in CR". Except that 5e is a terrible system for improvising, too. The excellent wild shape chase scene in the movie is a sterling example of this and I keep wanting to hold it up as such. You get told your character's special power is turning into animals and you get really excited to shapeshift, and then you actually roll up a druid, get into a game, and proudly declare wild shape, only to find that you only have a couple of charges, you can only be one thing for each one, you're stuck as it if you run out, and if you timed it wrong, you need to negotiate with your party and/or GM for a short rest, which Mearls just randomly decided should be a problem one day so that characters, mainly fighters, would "appreciate their abilities more." Oh, and you have to learn spellcasting and spell preparation, too. This is a tension inherent to every D&D movie and a lot of other D&D-ish material: D&D media, correctly, wants to portray magic as whimsical and spontaneous. D&D, the game, is the opposite. It's built around limitations and restrictions that players are expected to squeeze for efficiency. The intended attitude for wild shape, like everything at all fantastical in the game, isn't the power of nature at your fingertips - it's looking over your list of available options, choosing the most effective one, and getting as much mileage out of it as possible. The thing that actually lets you do what the druid does in the movie is a level 17 spell. You get it once per day, for one hour, and it uses concentration. The game wants you to believe you can do anything you can imagine, but what it actually gives you is all the things you can't do because they're out of scope or a different spell. A GM can make poo poo up, but then they're making up a narrative system on the fly and actively throwing out the $300 list of "and that's why you can't fly as a bird until level 7" caveats they were told was "the brand you need to buy." People will say all kinds of poo poo about 4e's out of combat rules, but 4e was better at getting out of the way, and was actually good when you asked it for what it was meant to do. Caphi has a new favorite as of 19:47 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 19:38
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exquisite tea posted:D&D started to become much more popular with 5E starting with Critical Role / Dimension 20 and now BG3. Convincing a crowd of mostly newcomers to learn 4E when all they've seen of D&D comes from fifth edition is kind of a non-starter. They wanna play the version they see on youtube. I was more asking about the 3 players incensed about 4 back in the day. New players trying to start with old versions would be harder cuz all that stuff would be second-hand only I imagine.
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Mar 10, 2024 19:40
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My Lovely Horse posted:D&D 5 is not so much designed
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Mar 10, 2024 19:49
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The thing about D&D - and I go all the way back to 1st edition - is that the rules are whatever the DM says they are. For me, the real fun with the game was mostly with the storytelling, the characters and the world gradually unfolding. A good DM dangles dramatic threads throughout and offers problems to be solved in ways that don't always require combat in ways that don't make the players feel railroaded. When I had a mid-life crisis around 2006, I tried to get back into the hobby and was kind of taken aback by how much it revolved around miniatures, fighting rules and battlemats. I ran my (then) 9 year old son through a mini campaign and fighting was maybe half of the drama. The rest was getting him to work through the politics of WHY he was fighting and encouraging him to explore ways to outsmart the environment he was dealing with. A CPU version works, at best, as a way to keep track of movement, actions, inventory, encumbrance, xp, gp, along with weapon or spell ranges - so all the poo poo that's really hard to write down, erase and for a DM to monitor - plus adding the graphics of course.
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Mar 10, 2024 20:00
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sebmojo posted:I ran a lengthy 4e campaign, and it absolutely has its own flaws. Modules were crap, magic items were so de powered as to be annoying to hand out, and the shift between free play and tactical combat was always kind of awkward. The complaint that it didn't feeeeeel like dnd was also accurate, though dnd was always some variety of lame so i didn't care that much about it. The big problem with saying whether 4E feels like D&D is what makes D&D feel like D&D is different to for different people. D&D 4E absolutely felt like D&D to me and the people I played it with, including the AL group I ran in an extremely Pathfinder-is-real-D&D games shop, half of whom went from an extremely skeptical "Well the pathfinder group is full" to table-thumping glee at critting a leprechaun into the stratosphere. 5E also feels like D&D to me, just an even more garbage than usual version.
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Mar 10, 2024 20:12
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The real answer is of course play 13th age which is dnd but good.
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Mar 10, 2024 20:22
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Splicer posted:Lol no you didn't. I’m flattered to know you admire me but I seriously was trying to provide a neutral view for this thread that addressed why BG3’s 5e rules felt boring without starting an edition war discussion. You added some important stuff for discussing 5e in general, but that was stuff that I intentionally left out because it’s “pyf things dragging games down” (primarily video games) not “py worst things about rpgs.” You and I know there’s a lot to discuss there but it wasn’t germane to this thread when I made this post (it looks like we’re going that way anyway) and I was trying to respect the people who read this thread but not trad games or similar.
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Mar 10, 2024 20:28
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BiggerBoat posted:The thing about D&D - and I go all the way back to 1st edition - is that the rules are whatever the DM says they are. If I responded "What makes this statement true about D&D over any other RPG?" turn to page 69 If I responded "Why are you playing D&D over any other particular RPG if it's not for the particular ruleset?" turn to page 420 If I responded "It's weird how people don't feel a need to say this about good TTRPGS" roll initiative. BiggerBoat posted:When I had a mid-life crisis around 2006, I tried to get back into the hobby and was kind of taken aback by how much it revolved around miniatures, fighting rules and battlemats.
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Mar 10, 2024 20:32
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BiggerBoat posted:For me, the real fun with the game was mostly with the storytelling, the characters and the world gradually unfolding. A good DM dangles dramatic threads throughout and offers problems to be solved in ways that don't always require combat in ways that don't make the players feel railroaded. When I had a mid-life crisis around 2006, I tried to get back into the hobby and was kind of taken aback by how much it revolved around miniatures, fighting rules and battlemats. The game's called "dungeons and dragons"; if you're surprised that people make elaborate dungeon maps upon which to stage elaborate battles (perhaps against a dragon) then i don't know what to tell you. When I first played D&D circa 1997, in the days of 2nd edition AD&D, we didn't have miniatures or a battlemat and the rules didn't tell us to use them. But we naturally ended up representing the field of battle on the tabletop anyway, using whatever materials we had on hand as miniatures and terrain. "These pencils are the river, this soda can is the ogre, I'm the green d8, you're the blue d6," etc. It's just sort of necessary when the rules include stuff like "Burning Hands does fire damage in a 10 ft cone" or whatever; you gotta know where everyone is.
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Mar 10, 2024 21:50
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4e was absolutely the griddiest and least amenable to theatre of the mind, but it was also absolutely the best tactical battle simulator because of that. I think if they had had decent *world style rules for choosing to manage small fights more narratively when it didn't warrant breaking out the battle mat it would have been great: unfortunately they didn't and the skill challenge rules at launch were rubbish and took a while to be fixed. Treating skill challenges like a *world game (success with consequences, fail forward etc) really made the system open up for me.
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Mar 10, 2024 22:41
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Arivia posted:I’m flattered to know you admire me but I seriously was trying to provide a neutral view for this thread that addressed why BG3’s 5e rules felt boring without starting an edition war discussion. You added some important stuff for discussing 5e in general, but that was stuff that I intentionally left out because it’s “pyf things dragging games down” (primarily video games) not “py worst things about rpgs.” You and I know there’s a lot to discuss there but it wasn’t germane to this thread when I made this post (it looks like we’re going that way anyway) and I was trying to respect the people who read this thread but not trad games or similar. sebmojo posted:The real answer is of course play 13th age which is dnd but good.
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Mar 10, 2024 22:48
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Splicer posted:I genuinely want to take this to PMs because I want to explain the issue without boring everyone else but you don't have them! I respect that
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Mar 10, 2024 22:50
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sebmojo posted:4e was absolutely the griddiest and least amenable to theatre of the mind, but it was also absolutely the best tactical battle simulator because of that. You can come up with many legitimate reasons why 4E was unsuitable for theatre of the mind play, but every one of them applies as much or more to the other two. Splicer has a new favorite as of 22:54 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 22:50
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As someone only vaguely aware of the edition wars, Arivia's original posted sounded like an opinion a reasonable person might have and the "corrected" version made me glad I'm only vaguely aware of the edition wars
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Mar 10, 2024 22:55
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Splicer posted:I genuinely want to take this to PMs because I want to explain the issue without boring everyone else but you don't have them! Yeah I lost PMs when Leperflesh decided to be a vindictive jerk and throw a ban+a week at me for saying I wasn't gonna post in trad games any more. Haven't really felt like buying them back from that.
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Mar 10, 2024 23:05
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Lol that sounds serious. People were correct to freak out about DnD being dangerous in the 80s
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Mar 10, 2024 23:13
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Splicer posted:It made best use of the grid, but other than describing everything in terms of five foot squares instead of increments of five feet it's no less amenable to theatre of the mind play than 3.x or 5e. Let's just pretend we had a grindingly tedious back and forth argument about this from entrenched positions resulting in no-one learning anything or changing their mind in any way and agree to disagree?
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Mar 10, 2024 23:17
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Qwertycoatl posted:As someone only vaguely aware of the edition wars, Arivia's original posted sounded like an opinion a reasonable person might have and the "corrected" version made me glad I'm only vaguely aware of the edition wars The "corrected" post very much had the same energy as one of those cars with an entire sovereign citizen screed written on the back, yeah
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Mar 11, 2024 00:07
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Qwertycoatl posted:As someone only vaguely aware of the edition wars, Arivia's original posted sounded like an opinion a reasonable person might have Same problem except TTRPGs were niche enough at the time that the "reasonable person" opinion is all most people ever hear. Qwertycoatl posted:and the "corrected" version made me glad I'm only vaguely aware of the edition wars Splicer has a new favorite as of 00:31 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 00:27
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Splicer posted:That's the issue. "Gamergate was a grassroots online movement that began due to concerns over ethics in games journalism after a reviewer gave a positive review to a bad game written by someone he slept with" sounds like an opinion a reasonable person might have, but trying to explain why that's wildly inaccurate to anyone completely outside the bubble makes you look like a crazy person rambling about 4chan and fiveguys. The point is that we weren't talking about how crazy the controversy was. I simply made a post about why 5e made BG3 feel pretty limp to play; that doesn't require explaining Zak and Pundit and Mearls it's just enough to go "yeah, the version of D&D BG3 is based on is kinda meh, you're not wrong to be bored with the meh class design that's a result of it." Like you're not wrong in the post you made (although you did misinterpret some of the things I mentioned as being other things), but you are going way too hard for a PYF thread discussion about why a related CRPG is bleh.
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Mar 11, 2024 00:31
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There are just so many different things in forza horizon 4 and it keeps adding more. There's a forzathon and showcase events and then actual story based missions and some online stuff? Then also a few different places to buy cars, plus upgrades and constant notifications, cutscenes all over the place for ??? reasons. I don't think I've ever felt so overwhelmed by a game that's just about going out for a rip through some farmers fields. The cross country races are some of the best I've played since 1nsane and dirt 2
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Mar 11, 2024 00:41
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Arivia posted:The point is that we weren't talking about how crazy the controversy was. I simply made a post about why 5e made BG3 feel pretty limp to play; that doesn't require explaining Zak and Pundit and Mearls it's just enough to go "yeah, the version of D&D BG3 is based on is kinda meh, you're not wrong to be bored with the meh class design that's a result of it." "Many fans" felt "“dead” levels (with no choices) or very small lists of choices" was closer to what they wanted D&D to be in the same way that "Many fans" felt that nothing but white male protagonists and eye candy female models was closer to what they wanted video games to be. You didn't simplify things, you said a bunch of stuff that wasn't true. The short version of gamergate is "a bunch of fashy nerds got mad about girls playing video games" and the short version of the 4e thing is "a bunch of people were going to lose money, so they poisoned the well on 4e to keep their meal tickets going and did such a good job they set D&D's design chops back 30 years". God this is boring poo poo. Splicer has a new favorite as of 01:55 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 01:02
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Splicer posted:God this is boring poo poo. i feel the call of edition war too my friend but yes, yes it is
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Mar 11, 2024 01:07
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sebmojo posted:i feel the call of edition war too my friend but yes, yes it is
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Mar 11, 2024 01:19
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Edition war...edition war never changes...
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Mar 11, 2024 01:21
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Yeah Splicer I’m not engaging with whatever the gently caress that is. My original message was fine and I’m not gonna defend myself to you any more because this is just getting out of hand for a PYF thread.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:41
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Splicer posted:Don't you act all holier than thou sebmotherfucker. You posted your opinions as fact and then got pissy when I told the audience you were wrong. You're making GBS threads in the sink and chiding me for pissing in the shower. I think if you say something is boring it's kind of weird to respond like this to someone agreeing with you.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:44
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Doctor Spaceman posted:I think if you say something is boring it's kind of weird to respond like this to someone agreeing with you.
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Mar 11, 2024 01:54
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Splicer posted:The point is that 5e was "popularly reviled by many long-time fans of D&D for being too much of a change from preceding editions of D&D" in the same way that kotaku was "popularly reviled by many long-time gamers for giving good reviews to things that aren't even real games". But surely WotC would learn from the colossal self-inflicted problem and never again do massive restrictive changes to their license without considering community backlash, they'd have to be really stupid or greedy to think that backstabbing the entire industry around their game would be consequence-free after that.
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Mar 11, 2024 02:02
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Caphi posted:Except that 5e is a terrible system for improvising, too. This is kind of an issue with a lot of tabletop systems in general. Pathfinder 1e, for example, has some really weird rules regarding weapon sizes. The very first character I ever wanted to make was a classic "fighter with a big sword" sort of thing, one of the iconic characters is sort of that, a barbarian who wields a big sword! Except her sword is a bastard sword, which can be wielded with one or two hands natively, and it's only Large, which is just one size class above her. The official rules have entire spread sheets for upscaling weapon damage and increasing penalties for wielding bigger and bigger weapons, it's something like a stacking -2 for each size class above you it is. Except there's a second rule that just kind of drifts independently from those rules that states when you upsize, or downsize, a weapon size the hands needed to hold it change. So a medium one handed sword to a small creature becomes a two handed sword, but a medium two handed sword is a one handed sword to a large creature. However a weapon that requires two hands can not be made to require three so is thus just unusable no matter what. There's also a *third* rule just kind of drifting around in the rules of 1e rules that just flat out states you can not wield a weapon more than one or two sizes outside of your own. The exception is, of course, a singular Barbarian archetype that sacrifices most of its abilities for the ability to wield slightly larger than normal weapons. Nuebot has a new favorite as of 04:41 on Mar 11, 2024 |
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Mar 11, 2024 04:36
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Please take the edition slap fight to tradgames. A thing I don't like about Elden Ring is that it's got too many options for character build, and I get horrible fomo.
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Mar 11, 2024 06:36
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ilmucche posted:There are just so many different things in forza horizon 4 and it keeps adding more. There's a forzathon and showcase events and then actual story based missions and some online stuff? Then also a few different places to buy cars, plus upgrades and constant notifications, cutscenes all over the place for ??? reasons. Forza Motorsport 7 had come out a bit before Horizon 4 and was generally dragged over the coals for being slow on rewards, so they overcorrected a bit. Horizon 5 is even more absurd, I'm pretty sure I had a half dozen cars unlocked after the first tutorial.
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Mar 11, 2024 06:45
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Philippe posted:Please take the edition slap fight to tradgames. There's only like two people fighting, and they aren't even fighting about editions. It's really weird, actually. More importantly though: I'm having that exact same issue with my new Elden Ring character. I kind of want to go flails, but I've never actually done an arcane build and those arcane swords are cool; but then there's always the old standby of colossal weapons being really fun to just smash things with. I hope the DLC gives me a colossal arcane weapon so I can have the best of both worlds on that front. And maybe a giant flail for fun. The result of my crippling indecision has had me running around with way too many runes beating things to death with a club while I try to figure out what to do. I never knew those night rider guys could be dismounted until today, and I've played through the game like five times over.
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Mar 11, 2024 07:22
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CitizenKain posted:Forza Motorsport 7 had come out a bit before Horizon 4 and was generally dragged over the coals for being slow on rewards, so they overcorrected a bit. Forza Motorsport 4 was the last one I played and I remember thinking the progression there felt just right. Of course I don't remember there being a million cars in it. I bought one of the fancy editions because FH4 was on sale and I have probably 30 cars waiting for me to accept, and all the houses are free. I thought it was car packs, but it was just cheating past a bunch of the progression too 
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Mar 11, 2024 08:29
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Breaking early game progression with poo poo like that is always a downer, especially because the early game is often where things feel the most impactful. Getting your first couple of semi-decent cars in a racing game, hitting level 7 in a JRPG and getting your first fireball spell, the first time you pick up a better weapon than a pistol in a shooter, that poo poo is great. It also helps ease new players into the game and its systems, whilst throwing 30 new cars or guns or whatever at someone is going to be overwhelming as hell.
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Mar 12, 2024 14:20
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Ms Adequate posted:Breaking early game progression with poo poo like that is always a downer, especially because the early game is often where things feel the most impactful. Getting your first couple of semi-decent cars in a racing game, hitting level 7 in a JRPG and getting your first fireball spell, the first time you pick up a better weapon than a pistol in a shooter, that poo poo is great. It also helps ease new players into the game and its systems, whilst throwing 30 new cars or guns or whatever at someone is going to be overwhelming as hell. Pre-order bonus means every game starts you with a gun.
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Mar 12, 2024 15:38
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Snowrunner did that with high-quality DLC trucks that just showed up in your garage.
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Mar 12, 2024 15:39
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Perennial mention of the Dead Space 2 PC port which came with all the DLC pre-installed, could not be toggled off, and which showered you with all the guns and advanced armor the first time you found a shop in the game.
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Mar 12, 2024 17:05
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Far Cry 5 presents you with some kind of system wherein you unlock better vehicles and guns but whatever version I bought for 4 dollars comes with free tanks and jetpacks and laser guns and gunships at no cost the first time you access this system.
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Mar 12, 2024 17:14
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