Quote from: Sacrosanct;683161Read this fucking thread for some examples, you jackass.

Be specific.  WHERE in the TWENTY-FOUR PAGE THREAD do "a bunch" of people make the claim you say they make?

QuoteWhen you've got a bunch of 4e fans saying that they feel excluded in Next because Next's fighters don't replicate the spells of mages and clerics like they do in 4e, and explicitly tell you, "This is what 4e style is" when you ask them.

The only bias here is yours, in your steadfast refusal to admit that it possibly can't be the most likely reason, but that I'm somehow being disingenuous.  Christ you moron, it's not even me asking them these questions most of the time.  The 4e crowd is saying this, and I'm at fault for pointing it out?  I don't know if they are right and wrong, and the only solution you and soviet have come up with comes down to "always assume everyone is lying."

How fucking stupid.  I guess I should assume you're a liar when you said you're a lawyer, and that you're full of shit whenever you talk about aspects of the law.

After all, everyone is a liar....



Even though I might think they are crybabbies, when they say, "This is how X works in 4e", I have no reason to disbelieve them.  They are two completely different things.  I've never said I don't trust them when it comes down to what's included in 4e.  Once again, that's your bias making shit up.

I played 4e for many years.  So did both the groups I play with.  So did another person posting to this thread.  All of us are as much "experts" as any of those jackasses.  And I am telling you in 4e, fighters could not replicate spellcaster spells.  So, explain to me why you're trusting those jackasses, and not us?

Quote from: hamstertamer;683168That's weird because I don't know anyone real world that likes 4e that started playing D&D before 2000.  In my experience those that really wanted something like 4e were the younger 30 and under players that complained about 3rd edition and knew very little of the older editions.  In fact the very first person I know that was overjoyed with 4e when it came out, was only like 24, and he was the one always discussing hypothetical situations in order to demonstrate how "broken" D&D was.

Nonono, your experiance is not backed by a peer-reviewed publicly funded and replicated study so it's invalid and you need to shut up.

So saith lord mistwell, protector of the realm and anointed of god.

Quote from: Piestrio;683167Ah the old "I have to shut down this discussion" ploy.

After all none of us can 'prove' anything so nobodies opinion is any more or less valid than anyone else's!

Yay! 4e's virginity is intact for another day!

I didn't shut anything down, dumb dumb.  You said your experience was representative of a massive group of people, and that you had no actual objective date to back up your claim.  So, since that's obviously a spurious claim, I am asking you to back up your claim with something better than essentially, "this one time I heard".  I am not looking for some sort of absolute definitive proof, but I sure as hell am going to hold you to a higher standard than "your experience with the guys you happen to know" for a claim like that.

Quote from: hamstertamer;683168That's weird because I don't know anyone real world that likes 4e that started playing D&D before 2000.

I started playing D&D in the late 70s, first with the blue cover basic book, and then AD&D 1e, and then Basic and Expert.

And I like 4e.

It's no longer my preferred edition, but I played it for many years, and I liked it.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;683169Sorry, the actual "replicate" argument was this thread.  But the original thread I linked has similar arguments

And that's a 17 page thread to go with the 24 page thread and say "it's somewhere in there!".

WTF is wrong with your head that you can't link to the thing you're arguing from? Can you understand why we smell bullshit on your breath when you do shit like this now?

Quote from: Mistwell;683173I didn't shut anything down, dumb dumb.  You said your experience was representative of a massive group of people, and that you had no actual objective date to back up your claim.  So, since that's obviously a spurious claim, I am asking you to back up your claim with something better than essentially, "this one time I heard".  I am not looking for some sort of absolute definitive proof, but I sure as hell am going to hold you to a higher standard than "your experience with the guys you happen to know" for a claim like that.

Is there anything I could possibly say that you wouldn't shoot down?

We all know you're a disingenuous asshole, so I just want to know if there is any point in continuing.

I dunno.  I started with Moldvay around '81, and I don't mind 4e.  I don't know if it's my favoritest edition, and I actively despise both Encounters and LFR.  It's not a perfect system, but it works, and does most of the things that I want it to do.  I wish it was a bit faster to run combat, and I wish they had moved more in the direction of abilities being situational and getting more of a choice of them, rather than "dailies are just more awesome!" in all cases.  The nova emphasis in the game is something I don't care for, at all.

My favorite versions of D&D are probably AD&D1/Basic, and 4e.  I don't really care for 3e, mostly because the things it does well are things that I have other games that I feel do them *better*.  I went from GURPS *back* to D&D to simplify and get away from huge emphasize on build optimization, and was willing to accept lack of flexibility - D&D 3.x doesn't do those things.  

I can totally see people preferring D&D3, especially if they're looking for the flexibility/realism it offers over 4e.  It just happens that those aren't my criteria for D&D.

I'll also totally agree with everybody about the "isn't like D&D" thing - it's a lot of uncanny valley factor, made worse by the fact that they kept a lot of the older terminology, but made them mean *entirely different things*, and in a lot of things what something's used for in a game changes significantly (healing surges are really the thing that gets worn down over the day instead of hp, ferinstance, and the ritual/power split is certainly off-putting to many people).  I just have a high tolerance for "isn't the way I expect it to be" and willingness to relearn/rethink what things mean.  Some of that's probably also because a lot of stuff in 3.x isn't what I "think of" when I think of D&D - I mostly skipped 2e, and thought the kit/etc. stuff was a bunch of munchkin crap, and to me a "Fighter 3/Barbarian 2/Bladedancer 5/Cleric 2" doesn't sound much like D&D to me.

So, from my POV, it's "game that's kinda like D&D" or "game that's kinda like D&D".  I'd probably see 3.x as being "more D&D" if I had played a bunch of 2e.

I totally get why a lot of people *don't* like 4e, though, and wouldn't try to convince them otherwise.

5e has my attention at the moment.  Haven't played it, but the latest packet seems pretty reasonable.  My biggest concern is 3.x style multiclassing, and how that plays out.  Flexibility is good, and the ability to have the character you have in mind is good - but high amounts of charop leave me cold, and 3.x has the most extreme charop I've seen in a functional game (even discounting PunPun).

It seems to hit pretty nicely in what I would've really liked 4e to be - a lot of the tone of 1e or B/X, with additional flexibility for characters and less clunky rules.  That's pretty much my sweet spot for what I'd like to see in D&D.  

The one thing I'm disappointed about is that they seem to be going with a standard progression rate, which makes sense for typical games, but that's one thing I'd actually like to see.  I'm more interested in really old-school campaign types where it's presumed that characters really *are* subject to death, and that players will have multiple characters to choose from.  Variable advancement rates work great in that type of game.  But I get that's not how most people play today.

Quote from: soviet;683120In my experience a lot of the people who have a massive hate of 4e are those who started under 3e.

This is also my experience.  Not that there aren't people that don't fit that, but the vast majority that I've seen started with 3.x.  I've actually seen a *bunch* of people (again, not all) say that their favorite versions of D&D are 1e/B/X and 4e.

OTOH, I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that their favorite versions are 2e and 4e, so that's kind of odd.

Quote from: Piestrio;683171Nonono, your experiance is not backed by a peer-reviewed publicly funded and replicated study so it's invalid and you need to shut up.

So saith lord mistwell, protector of the realm and anointed of god.

His experience is his experience, just as yours is yours and mine is mine.  NONE of which is necessarily representative of anything at all, other than our experiences.  The difference is, only you tried to claim your personal experience revealed some universal truth.

Quote from: Rincewind1;683096I'm finding myself agreeing somewhat with Mistwell...He's correct on that point. 4e was successful by RPG standards, just not successful by Hasbro/WotC standards.

Yeah, I agree with him on this, too, so he's not completely out to lunch. This fact is actually a serious part of the problem, as many people who jumped on the D&D bandwagon during 4E only did so because it was not like what had come before. There's a bunch of other ridiculousness that I've only ever seen in online forums, but that last one? I've had several 4E fans tell me that in person; that 4E "fixed" D&D, finally. I can understand feeling that way about one's favored edition - nothing wrong with that - the problem is that that edition and many of its key design conceits are mutually incompatible with earlier editions. This is the reason that the loudest of those called 4vengers are so stridently opposed to Next, as there's just no way for Next to be a sop to 4E and pre-4E at the same time.

Quote from: Piestrio;683176Is there anything I could possibly say that you wouldn't shoot down?

We all know you're a disingenuous asshole, so I just want to know if there is any point in continuing.

Present something more objective than your own personal experience.  That's not the extreme standard you're mocking it to be.  In fact, it's the same standard you'd use in most arguments.  I've never seen you take someone else's personal experiences as representative of huge swaths of thousands of players before - wtf did you think it was OK to do so now?

Quote from: soviet;683005So you would say then that in 3e a lot of spells are mechanically indistinguishable from traps, yes?

Are you high? Do traps have Verbal, Somatic and Material components? Are they restricted to being used once per day per spell slot? Can they be understood through the use of the Spellcraft Skill? I mean, either you're catastrophically stupid, or so intellectually dishonest that you can't actually discuss the issue.

Quote from: soviet;683005And that skill use is mechanically indistinguishable from combat? You roll a d20 against a DC and some shit happens, what's the difference?

Aside from how the DC is determined, what the results of success or failure are, and all the other rules of combat surrounding the situation (which are completely different from those surrounding Skills), nothing. But then you knew that, didn't you? You realize that this kind of mental gymnastics you're doing are exactly what gets people labeled as 4vengers, right?

Quote from: soviet;683005Also the fighter's abilities are not impossible to explain. Even the more abstract ones like Come and Get It just require a bit of imagination. This is a hobby about imagination, after all.

Would you be so kind as to quote where I said they couldn't be explained? Oh, that's right! You can't, because I never said that. I said they couldn't be explained by mundane means.

Quote from: Mistwell;683174I started playing D&D in the late 70s, first with the blue cover basic book, and then AD&D 1e, and then Basic and Expert.

And I like 4e.

It's no longer my preferred edition, but I played it for many years, and I liked it.

Cool, I'm just basing my experience on what I see in the real world.  I'm sure there's a group of Chinese people playing 4e too, but I wouldn't consider them an honest representation of the 4e fan club.

Quote from: Monster Manuel;681878What I wonder is if the "positive feedback" takes into account the people, who like me, stopped keeping up with the downloads out of disinterest in the direction it was taking.

I'd say it almost certainly doesn't. I filled out the first few surveys and then even gave up on that because the questions weren't even addressing issues that I found relevant or interesting.

The belief WotC's designers apparently have in their ability to "tidy things up and finish fixing the math" without further playtesting is also not a good sign. The last time they did this we ended up with the skill challenge system that was so broken that they had to rip it out and completely replace it just a few weeks after 4E launched.

Ultimately, though, the playtest has been a success for WotC in the only way that I think it actually mattered to them: Winning back some portion of public goodwill. While some people have been turned off by the playtest packets, I think it's a virtual certainty that the vast, vast majority of them were not going to be won over by the game D&D Next is going to be no matter what WotC did. (And I'm quite consciously counting myself in those ranks.)

But what is (hopefully) a significant number of people, the playtest has made them much more likely to give the final game a fair shake.

Quote from: Mistwell;683174I started playing D&D in the late 70s, first with the blue cover basic book, and then AD&D 1e, and then Basic and Expert.

And I like 4e.

It's no longer my preferred edition, but I played it for many years, and I liked it.

Yeah. I find the efforts to turn a preference for 4E into a generational conflict to be wearying.

I don't like it. I don't like the way it does things. I don't like the things it fails to do. And I really don't like that it has the name "Dungeons & Dragons" on the cover while failing to replicate the core game play that defined D&D from 1974 to 2008.

But that's not because I'm 33 and started playing BECMI and 2nd Edition in 1989. It's because 4E and I want very different things out of a roleplaying game.

Quote from: Mistwell;683155That dude is wrong. Fighters couldn't replicate spells.  I strongly suspect you're talking about a specific mechanics argument someone was having, rather than the actual in-game function of some powers.  For example, I suspect it was a specific discussion of mechanics comparisons such as "wizard can cast a melee-ranged attack that does 3d6+[mainstat] damage, vs Fighter who can use a melee-ranged power that makes his attack with his sword do 3d6+[mainstat] damage".  Now, just because the range and number of dice you toss to determine damage are the same DOES NOT MAKE THE FIGHTERS ATTACK THE SAME AS A SPELL.  The resolution mechanics might be similar, but in-game there is a huge role playing difference between casting a spell, and hitting something with your sword.  The mechanics might be the same in any version of D&D, but that never made the sword-hitting actually a spell because the mechanics were the same, before.

Ah, so as long as the roleplay is different, the two are totally not the same! That's why we had all the cool fluff descriptions of abilities in 4E - so we could tell them apart.

Quote from: Mistwell;683174And I like 4e.

It's no longer my preferred edition, but I played it for many years, and I liked it.

I liked 4E, until we reached paragon tier.

Even slightly before level 10, combat was slowing to a grind and keeping track of so many things.  (Throwing in minions to reduce some of the bookkeeping didn't really improve things much).

If I ever do play 4E again, I'll only do low level stuff.  (At this point, I don't think I'll be playing 4E in the foreseeable future).