Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;384719I'm finding your post interesting, but somewhat impenetrable. I think you're trying to say that the 'player screen time' approach isn't balanced since it requires GM intervention to pull off? -since adventures will vary in how much piloting or combat or whatever is required??

In which case I'll disagree. Individual encounters may not be 'balanced' in a game where you need a rigger for one, a decker for another, and a street samurai for the rest, but I think the game overall can still be thought of as somewhat balanced.  Even if it needs GM input to keep running.

The dissonance arises from the fact that you have a pretty defined preconception of the "problem" while I am not.
The "problem" can be anything of interest. It does not have to be an encounter. But it should exist and it should be interesting. This means that players should have the possibility of a number of distinctly different but desirable game outcomes -which will be based on their individual choices and thus "personalized".
So, what I am saying is that the game's design goal should be about guiding GMs to be creating interesting problems. This can happen by design by creating clear limits and rewards to player characters for the GM to handle. Why for the GM? Simply because players are not meant to handle their own limits or rewards while both limits and rewards have to work in tandem with each other if they are to work at all for the game to take place.

This on contrast to Wotc which seems to think that it is not about GMs but about players. It tries to offer the "problem" directly to players by focusing its design goals on player character building. Why? IMO because this way it is easier to commercially succeed towards selling product as a tabletop rpg. So after a certain point 3.x's design came at odds with extensive GMing in a smooth way. In 4e they created a game where they simplified the scope of the game to a board tactical game so that the GM does only have to play out the strictly similar encounter monster pawns and free-form what happens in between. They sort of made a game that does neither help nor creates difficulties for a GM due to the game's own design. While it wants to sell to roleplayers, I am not sure 4e, at its design level, wants to be a roleplaying game. It just wants to be an "encounter" game and offer inspiring fluff for GMs to want to GMer by their freeform capabilities.

Quote from: Age of Fable;384707The article really sounds like someone who found 2nd edition more fun than 3rd/4th edition.

Not really surprising when you consider the guy got his professional start writing for Vampire: the Masquerade. It's in line with the "story/narrative" bullshit of 2nd ed's run.

Actually, 4e and 2nd ed are close to each other in my mind, weirdly enough. It's like 4e is to 3rd ed what 2e was to AD&D 1e: the game apparently didn't change fundamentally, but was "refined", pushed in one particular direction excluding other elements from the previous edition. The game appears to be Ze Same, but the end result is vastly different from what preceded it.

Quote from: LordVreeg;384733Frank,
I appreciate the time you put into some of these posts.  
I think one of the problems with the perceived emphasis with balance is the reduction in the multi-dimesnional nature of the game.  You hit the nail on the head when you said, "You fight monsters. You defeat them by inflicting damage until they drop."  
By reducing the game to being primarily encounter-centric, the rules as written have exactly one way to achieve balance.

Whereas if Ari could make the Warlock better in creating his own spells, or building more followers, or having better social skills...if the rules were being written for a game with more dimension...there would be other ways to contribute, other ways to shine...and in your parlance, other ways to give players 'screen time'.

Believe it or not, that was one of the advertised goals of 4th edition. The "Skill Challenge System" was going to be elevated up to the status of a combat encounter, and people were going to do a lot of them. Characters were supposed to have powers that affected skill challenges and players were going to be able to get extra screen time by excelling in certain kinds of skill challenges.

Not a bad plan actually. Had they pulled off a Skill Challenge system, they would have been able to divide up balancing the table along those lines. That was clearly the intent behind the Ranger and Rogue. The Rogue does less damage than the Drrzt Ranger, but he has more skills. That would make a plausible point you could give the two of them screen time - if the skill challenge system wasn't so awful that they ended up basically sweeping it under the rug.

Because yeah, it's really hard to balance players while retaining differences when everyone is doing the same thing.

-Frank

What would be amusing is if they entirely drop the skill challenge mechanic in 5E D&D.

What I find really annoying in 4E is keeping track of all the fiddly things like marks, conditions, ongoing damage, etc ...  In previous editions, failing a saving throw and dealing with the consequences was a lot easier to do and keep track of.

Quote from: ggroy;384795What I find really annoying in 4E is keeping track of all the fiddly things like marks, conditions, ongoing damage, etc ...  In previous editions, failing a saving throw and dealing with the consequences was a lot easier to do and keep track of.

I agree. I understood that 4E was supposed to have fewer little modifiers to keep track of, something that really plagued 3E. But although they did eliminate what you might call "cascading buffs" (ie, increase Str, which increase attacks and damage and skill checks, all of which had to be recalculated when the dispel magic went off), there are still all kinds of little tiny things that must be tracked from round-to-round.

It's probably my biggest issue with the game.

Quote from: xech;384734The dissonance arises from the fact that you have a pretty defined preconception of the "problem" while I am not.
The "problem" can be anything of interest. It does not have to be an encounter. But it should exist and it should be interesting. This means that players should have the possibility of a number of distinctly different but desirable game outcomes -which will be based on their individual choices and thus "personalized".
So, what I am saying is that the game's design goal should be about guiding GMs to be creating interesting problems. This can happen by design by creating clear limits and rewards to player characters for the GM to handle. Why for the GM? Simply because players are not meant to handle their own limits or rewards while both limits and rewards have to work in tandem with each other if they are to work at all for the game to take place.

This on contrast to Wotc which seems to think that it is not about GMs but about players. It tries to offer the "problem" directly to players by focusing its design goals on player character building. Why? IMO because this way it is easier to commercially succeed towards selling product as a tabletop rpg. So after a certain point 3.x's design came at odds with extensive GMing in a smooth way. In 4e they created a game where they simplified the scope of the game to a board tactical game so that the GM does only have to play out the strictly similar encounter monster pawns and free-form what happens in between. They sort of made a game that does neither help nor creates difficulties for a GM due to the game's own design. While it wants to sell to roleplayers, I am not sure 4e, at its design level, wants to be a roleplaying game. It just wants to be an "encounter" game and offer inspiring fluff for GMs to want to GMer by their freeform capabilities.

Not preconceived notions on my part - just different definitions. IMHO its entirely valid to claim that 'equal screen time' balance and 'perfect tactical balance in combat encounters' are both balanced, if in different ways.
If you're defining a balanced game as one where characters have equal abilities to solve interesting problems that the GM tosses at them, and its assumed he's picking problems specifically to make all player options equal then its more-or-less impossible to create a game that's actually unbalanced - just one that's impossible to GM because it takes too much effort to level the playing field. Using that definition, I think that 'balance' as a term becomes almost meaningless.

Quote from: Windjammer;384717What do you mean by "current"?!? It's always been like that. I got friends in Seattle, some of whom played in my own D&D group when they had a year's worth of academic leave in Europe, who basically said it's always been like that in Seattle as regards WotC.

For another source, consider this:

"If you were a Seattle gamer in 1994-95, you had to be willfully incompetent to not get a job at Wizards."

I love that qualification sitting there: willfully. Still true today.

The parallel universe where Raven McCracken got a job at WOTC would be an interesting if scary one.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;384818If you're defining a balanced game as one where characters have equal abilities to solve interesting problems that the GM tosses at them, and its assumed he's picking problems specifically to make all player options equal then its more-or-less impossible to create a game that's actually unbalanced - just one that's impossible to GM because it takes too much effort to level the playing field. Using that definition, I think that 'balance' as a term becomes almost meaningless.

It depends what you mean by "equal". Anyway, I want to direct you at my first take on this in the thread

"
In general, balance means that everyone has to contribute aka no one can solve the problem alone. This can be for something as boring as simply asking for more damage output than each player alone can handle so that more players need to be present so that the problem can be solved. This, by itself is not a good design method or goal.
Rigorously, it fails to address any other quality beyond the one fact that it is addressing first place. Because, to address qualities as player screen time or player amount of effort you need to also address elasticity and versatility of those qualities which is something impossible to do without extra guidelines. If you can understand this, you can see that by extension it means design-wise that to make an interesting game you have to see to fit that ship pilot idea. And you need to have a game master to handle this. So you need to build a game that prepares a GM for this sort of thing."

Bolded emphasis for answering you here

Quote from: FrankTrollman;384698The point is: Ari is admitting that he isn't able to do any of those things, even for the incredibly simple cases like "these two characters are focused on inflicting damage, but this character inflicts a lot more." I don't see anything wrong with Ari's assessment of the importance of mechanical balance in 4th edition D&D. I see something deeply wrong with a writer for 4th edition D&D admitting that he can't figure out how to tweak the game in order to improve it.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not Ari's an idiot for being concerned about balance, Frank is wrong again. Ari said the exact opposite of what Frank is claiming: he said he's so concerned with balance that he can't turn off the balance chunk of his brain. Here is a specific quote:

"I can't run with every idea that comes to mind, no matter how cool—without first examining it carefully to see if it's broken, or looking for unanticipated consequences."

The closest Ari came to saying he couldn't write balanced material was saying that he's more comfortable when he has someone else to examine his work. This is healthy and smart. If you're concerned with a certain outcome, you want someone to double-check. If he was a computer programmer, we'd call this "code review" and we'd applaud it.

However, Frank really badly wants to criticize 4e authors, to the point where he's unable to read accurately. It's kind of tragic, really.

P.S.: Ari is being a bit of a goober, there. It's the old "oh, woe is me, now that I'm a professional I just can't enjoy things the way you plebeians do" schtick. The real complaint I have with that blog post is that it doesn't tell me anything interesting -- there's no insight there, just a bit of an ego stroke camouflaged as a lament.

Quote from: Thanlis;384825P.S.: Ari is being a bit of a goober, there. It's the old "oh, woe is me, now that I'm a professional I just can't enjoy things the way you plebeians do" schtick. The real complaint I have with that blog post is that it doesn't tell me anything interesting -- there's no insight there, just a bit of an ego stroke camouflaged as a lament.

Heh.  Sounds similar to Eddie Vedder complaining about fame, back when Pearl Jam were at their peak popularity in 1993.

"what happens when a lot of these people start thinking you can change their lives or save their lives or whatever and create these impossible fuckin' expectations that in the end just start tearing you apart."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Vedder

Quote from: xech;384819It depends what you mean by "equal". Anyway, I want to direct you at my first take on this in the thread

"
In general, balance means that everyone has to contribute aka no one can solve the problem alone. This can be for something as boring as simply asking for more damage output than each player alone can handle so that more players need to be present so that the problem can be solved. This, by itself is not a good design method or goal.
Rigorously, it fails to address any other quality beyond the one fact that it is addressing first place. Because, to address qualities as player screen time or player amount of effort you need to also address elasticity and versatility of those qualities which is something impossible to do without extra guidelines. If you can understand this, you can see that by extension it means design-wise that to make an interesting game you have to see to fit that ship pilot idea. And you need to have a game master to handle this. So you need to build a game that prepares a GM for this sort of thing."

Bolded emphasis for answering you here

Well, I may be misunderstanding but I'd assumed that in your statement  taking 'screen time' as a quality,  'elasticity and versatility of those qualities' would suggest the GMs ability to customize the adventure to up 'screen time' by using challenges that fit a given characters abilities. If this is way off course...you may need to elaborate on what 'elasticity' and 'versatility' meant in context.

Quote from: Thanlis;384824However, Frank really badly wants to criticize 4e authors, to the point where he's unable to read accurately. It's kind of tragic, really.

I doubt Frank is that obsessive about it.

A truly hardcore obsessive would be doing really extreme stuff to WotC, such as going up to individual D&D designers/developers in person and physically punching them in the face and/or shooting them dead with a gun.  :rant:

http://mouseferatu.livejournal.com/681802.html#cutid1

Ah interesting. The existence of this thread has been noted by Mr Marmell.

QuoteAri ([info]mouseferatu) wrote,
@ 2010-05-30 14:24:00
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Current mood:   irritated, yet amused

Oh, yeah. 'cuz it's the Internet, that's why
Really fighting with myself here. There's a thread on the RPG Site about my latest ENWorld column. I don't much care about the personal attacks; I'm used to those. I'd really like to correct the basic factual errors, though. But I just don't think it's worth the aggravation of joining another forum just to engage people who won't likely listen to what I have to say, anyway. :-/

I must admit to not being particularly interested in getting "factual corrections" from Ari Marmell, because he's a liar. When 4e was coming out, he released a "review" as "one of the playtesters" about how impressed he was with the writing he saw in the 4e game. Leaving aside the fact that numerous pieces he chortled about (like skill challenge attacks from the challenge) were not in the rules and never had been, he neglected to mention the conflict of interest of being a paid writer on 4th edition. So yeah, Ari Marmell can take his "facts" and shove them up his ass sideways.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid JohnsonNot preconceived notions on my part - just different definitions. IMHO its entirely valid to claim that 'equal screen time' balance and 'perfect tactical balance in combat encounters' are both balanced, if in different ways.
If you're defining a balanced game as one where characters have equal abilities to solve interesting problems that the GM tosses at them, and its assumed he's picking problems specifically to make all player options equal then its more-or-less impossible to create a game that's actually unbalanced - just one that's impossible to GM because it takes too much effort to level the playing field. Using that definition, I think that 'balance' as a term becomes almost meaningless.

I don't think that makes balance meaningless in the slightest. For a game to be possible to be balanced in such a way it is required that different characters have profoundly different abilities available to them. There is no way to balance different characters in old Tunnels and Trolls where they have the depth of a Stratego piece. A 5 and a 3 are simply different numbers, and one will always be better than the other.

But for a game to be practical to be balanced in such a manner, it requires that the different abilities be worth something in regards to challenges that are easy for the GM to identify and work into the assumed story of the game.

For example: let's talk about swordsmanship and pie making. If we are playing D&D or a close analog, it is very difficult to balance a character with a swordsmanship focus and a character with a pie making focus. Because fighting is expected to happen several times a session, and it strains believability to work pastry even once into every adventure. On the flip side, if we're playing Pretty Pretty Princess the game, providing things for tea parties happens every single session, and it strains believability to have combats at all. If we're playing Star Trek, then both abilities are obscure, and ancient weapons duels or pastry bakeoffs can be provided infrequently to give a bit of face time to a character whose main schtick hasn't been coming up as much. A game where swordsmanship and pie making are both used frequently to overcome challenges could be made, but I am not aware of any currently being played.

Making a game that balances screen time by having characters be good at different stuff and then providing them different stuff to do is very possible. But not all games can be balanced that way (Tunnels and Trolls cannot), and not all games are practical to be balanced in that way (4e D&D is not practical).

Quote from: ThanlisThe closest Ari came to saying he couldn't write balanced material was saying that he's more comfortable when he has someone else to examine his work. This is healthy and smart. If you're concerned with a certain outcome, you want someone to double-check. If he was a computer programmer, we'd call this "code review" and we'd applaud it.

No. The closest he comes is to say that his reaction to not putting materials that aren't balanced into his games is to not write any fucking material for his games. If he demanded that house ruled material would be balanced, and he was capable of writing balanced material, then he'd be adding material. However, he is saying that he doesn't add material, which means that the material he writes isn't balanced.

It's a step forward, I guess, to realize that your writing is crap. But it's still an admission of defeat.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid JohnsonThe parallel universe where Raven McCracken got a job at WOTC would be an interesting if scary one.

I think you mean "an awesome one."

-Frank