The End of 4e D&D.

[RobbyPants]

Funny how they wait until 4.Fail is dead to make a game for it though.

But it makes perfect sense. 4E is essentially a video game, so if they made a 4E game at the same time, they'd be competing against themselves. All the "fun" of 4E with graphics and an engine to track all of those damn modifiers! Ohboyohboy!

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's not exactly fair. It took about 2 years after the release of 3rd Edition for NWN to come out and this is about 3 years. It's just that no one expected 4.0E to tank so quickly.

[Kaelik]

Personally, my D&D CRPG game opinion is:

"Fuck you! It's turn based, stop making me target Glitterdusts and stinking clouds with a 3 second cast time on moving enemies in real time you asshats!"

Temple of Elemental Evil to the rescue...

Yes, ToEE is the best D&D CRPG aside from Planescape and BG (which are not because of gameplay, but whatever).

unfortunately, I don't own it, it's not worth buying, and the only cracks available online are filled with viruses, so I will never play that game again.

[malak]

Yes, ToEE is the best D&D CRPG aside from Planescape and BG (which are not because of gameplay, but whatever).

unfortunately, I don't own it, it's not worth buying, and the only cracks available online are filled with viruses, so I will never play that game again.

I recently played it again and didn't have any problems with viruses or so. I still own the original from back in 2003 when it came out, so I installed it, installed the fixes and updates from Circle of Eight, the Widescreen Mod and a crack to remove the cd check. Works fine...

Yeah it's a bit of a pain, but it's the only true 3.5 experience on a computer. Also, since it's 2d backgrounds and all, it still looks good...

[Kaelik]

a crack to remove the cd check.

I've done this three times. The first time, it worked. The second time, it gave me a virus. The third time, Virus.

I'm never doing it again.

[malak]

a crack to remove the cd check.

I've done this three times. The first time, it worked. The second time, it gave me a virus. The third time, Virus.

I'm never doing it again.

Apart from virus scanners, you could simply use VMs. Even if you get a virus it doesn't matter and you can always just overwrite the image with a clean one.

But yeah - your loss

[Kaelik]

Apart from virus scanners, you could simply use VMs. Even if you get a virus it doesn't matter and you can always just overwrite the image with a clean one.

But yeah - your loss

Aparat from Virus Scanners prevent me from using the Crack, because the Crack is a goddam Virus, and what the fuck is a VM?

[RobbyPants]

Virtual Machine. It will get the virus, not your computer.

[Kaelik]

Virtual Machine. It will get the virus, not your computer.

Which would matter if I had a magic Virtual Machine that could run download cracks off the internet and run ToEE that was provided for free and didn't take eleven billion years of research to figure out how the fuck it works and that it meets these criteria. But since no such thing exists, you might as well just say "Dude find a crack without a virus." Which is also really easy to say and really hard to do.

[Crissa]

Since I run them on my mac, it's usually always using a virtual machine...

-Crissa

[malak]

Which would matter if I had a magic Virtual Machine that could run download cracks off the internet and run ToEE that was provided for free and didn't take eleven billion years of research to figure out how the fuck it works and that it meets these criteria.

Yeah, maybe this 'technology' thing is not for you. Just a fad anyway, right?

But since no such thing exists, you might as well just say "Dude find a crack without a virus." Which is also really easy to say and really hard to do.

gamecopyworld.com

[Kaelik]

Yeah, maybe this 'technology' thing is not for you. Just a fad anyway, right?

Or, there are hundred of VMs, most of which don't do what I want to do, and It's not worth my time to investigate in order to play a game that is still worse than Starcraft II.

[TheFlatline]

Or they are just taking advantage of the fact that Neverwinter has a pretty good brand recognition even with computer gamers who don't know what D&D is.

Which is not creative at all, which accentuates my point.

The whole idea of fantasy is to be... well... fantastic. Being derivative of previous fantasy offerings by aping previous success you have nothing to do with is failure before the ink on the design document is even dry.

After all, Neverwinter Nights was once an untested brand name. So was Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, etc etc... Maybe Cryptic will pull off something nice here, but they're certainly starting on the wrong foot. It's the video game equivalent of "It was a dark and stormy night".

[malak]

Maybe Cryptic will pull off something nice here

Don't be naive - it's Atari. The company who is so full of creativity they even had to steal (..ok, buy) the name of another game company

[Ferret]

Interesting to read Gabe (of Penny Arcade)'s reaction to his preview of the Red Box / Essentials game.

Chargen is done using a "choose your own adventure" series of questions about your character which will be cool long enough for you to make like two characters. Boring after that, but skippable.

His reaction to the overall experience was telling. I'll quote:

My players all come from video games and almost all of them have played World of Warcraft for years. My wife felt very comfortable stepping into 4e because it felt like building a character in WOW. Even if she is a warrior she expects to see a ton of different powers down there in her action bar. The idea of only being able to do basic attacks from a couple different stances just doesn’t cut it for most of the players I know. They certainly had fun with Essentials but I don’t think any of them would build an essentials character to play in a regular game vs. a 4e character.

As a DM there was really no difference in adjudicating the Essentials game. I can see how someone could play an Essentials character at a table of 4e players with no difficulty. The Red Box is a great product and it really does give you everything you need to play Dungeons and Dragons. They have succeeded in stripping away everything that is not “essential” to playing D&D. The end result just happens to be something I’m not interested in.

I never played the older versions and so I don’t long for some return to the “good old days”. I don’t have a group of friends torn apart by edition wars. Essentials isn’t a new edition or even a dramatic departure from the current game. It’s really just a slightly different way to play 4e.

[Psychic Robot]

Fix your quotes.

[Ferret]

Man, I figured this early I'd be able to fuck up a trailing quote tag and ninja-fix it before anyone noticed.

You're like a hawk PR.

[Psychic Robot]

To respond in full:

My players all come from video games and almost all of them have played World of Warcraft for years. My wife felt very comfortable stepping into 4e because it felt like building a character in WOW. Even if she is a warrior she expects to see a ton of different powers down there in her action bar. The idea of only being able to do basic attacks from a couple different stances just doesn’t cut it for most of the players I know. They certainly had fun with Essentials but I don’t think any of them would build an essentials character to play in a regular game vs. a 4e character.

Fuck, I hate these people. They bought into the "omg speshul power names" bullshit wholesale. They are the cancer killing RPGs.

[sake]

Ehhh... I can see the logic there. Back during the days I still played WoW, I had both a warrior, who got actual on demand abilities, (like the 4E fighter) and a paladin, who got some shitty Seal shit that modified his autoattacks (like the Essentials Fighter) The warrior was a hell of a lot more fun and engaging to play.

[Crissa]

Dude, at least go more than a minute before upping your post count with a pointless ping. A PM would be better.

-Crissa

[Username17]

Interesting really is the opposite of boring. As long as nothing happens that makes things boring, the game is interesting by default.

4th edition combats take too long. Four rounds of spamming a single at-will ability is boring. Furthermore, since the battles last so much longer than the number of special actions you have at your disposal, battles are repetitive. Repetition is boring too.

Essentials made a concerted effort to reduce combat times. Monsters are more fragile and do more damage. It takes less combat rounds to finish a battle, which makes things less boring. But they did this while mysteriously reducing the number of meaningful choices that fighters have - making them even more repetitive. So it's still boring and I still don't want to play it.

If they had given people a few more encounter powers, and dropped combat times to like 3 rounds, the game would actually be a lot more interesting.

-Username17

[Ice9]

It's kind of ironic that 3E and 4E would probably be better if you switched their encounter lengths. 3E's got plenty of options, but you only use the best two because by then the battle is over. 4E's got plenty of options for a RLT-style battle, but not enough for the extended slugfests it actually has.

Also, I'm really not liking the direction this is going:
3E: Some classes have a ton of options, some have very few.
4E: Now all classes have some options. Yeah, we did have to dull down the ones that had tons of options before, but at least the warriors have something else besides auto-attack, right?
4EE: Ok, the warriors are back to auto-attack.
4EEE?: Actually, fuck options, everyone is doing auto-attack now.

[Wesley Street]

Fuck, I hate these people. They bought into the "omg speshul power names" bullshit wholesale. They are the cancer killing RPGs.

You do realize that D&D is the starter game for most role-players, right? Of course people like Krahulik, people who pretty-much only video game, are going to bite into the hook of "more options" even if those options are an illusion. Get a grip.

[TheFlatline]

Fuck, I hate these people. They bought into the "omg speshul power names" bullshit wholesale. They are the cancer killing RPGs.

You do realize that D&D is the starter game for most role-players, right? Of course people like Krahulik, people who pretty-much only video game, are going to bite into the hook of "more options" even if those options are an illusion. Get a grip.

They're not biting into "more options", they're biting into "more kool powerz!". If I they can grapple effectively, they might use the move occasionally. If grapple is renamed "Tsu-Min's ultimate-skull-crushing-death-lock" but remains mechanically identical (but perhaps gets the fluff that your hands glow blue), then you'll see more usage of it at the table, I promise.

There's already a population of players in my gaming group who refuse to play low powered games. Unless you can shoot sparkles out of your sword or run faster than the human eye can see, they aren't interested at all. If physics applies, they'll pass.

I'm okay with that. RPGs are escapism, and some people *really* want to escape. That's cool. But what WoW does is take your standard attack, add sparkles, say it's "(insert weapon attack here) OF DOOM", and suddenly it's more appealing. That's not more options, that's just advertising. 4th ed is appealing to that population of gamers, to the neglect of the rest of it's audience. Magic Missile may use a familliar name, but now it's just "standard ranged attack" with a special powers name and some glitter.

I think with WoW and 4th edition, you're no longer seeing D&D as a gateway into cRPGs and RPGs in general, but you're seeing WoW as a gateway into RPGs. That's a fundamental paradigm change. It means that "gateway" games are going to play similar to WoW instead of cRPGs playing similar to D&D. That's just the way of things. However, D&D jumped on the bandwagon really, really early, and has managed to piss off 20+ years of customers, not just from the new edition "heresy", but from the basic, underlying paradigm shift. I think Wizards underestimated the potential new market and discounted their established player base too much with 4th ed.

Case in point: One of my gamer friends has played D&D clear back to the original red box. He is, quite possibly, one of the biggest D&D nuts I've ever encountered. His traditional DM was friends with some of the design crew/playtesters on 3rd edition. They adapted to 3rd pretty seamlessly, but when 4th came out, the game lasted 3 sessions and was shelved. That was like 2 years ago. I've heard my friend and his DM say "You know? I'm really burned out on D&D now. 4th edition killed it for me." If you can make the jump from 2nd to 3rd edition, but not from 3rd to 4th, you're not crying heresy from the new editions, you genuinely don't like the direction the game has gone.

In the long run Wizard's paradigm shift will probably pay off, if they hold onto the D&D license. As time goes on D&D won't be the gateway RPG, it'll be the RPG that WoW leads you to. However, the sudden, abrupt shift so early on cost them, and might be a fatal mismanagement of the property.

[malak]

They're not biting into "more options", they're biting into "more kool powerz!". If I they can grapple effectively, they might use the move occasionally. If grapple is renamed "Tsu-Min's ultimate-skull-crushing-death-lock" but remains mechanically identical (but perhaps gets the fluff that your hands glow blue), then you'll see more usage of it at the table, I promise.

So your against fluff?

If the fluff makes various options more interesting for players, and they therefore use more of the different options available to them, thats a net win, even if they don't understand the mechanical reasons behind it.