How much of the anti-4E sentiment is actually justified?

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LR
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Post by LR »

Plebian wrote:oh, no, not liking 4e is perfectly okay; it's certainly not the best system ever but I enjoy it more than the other editions I've played

it's when you start saying really stupid things like it lacks player agency and it stops RP and nothing happens outside of combat that I feel the need to point out that you're being stupid
4e's lack of non-combat effects compared to 3e is very upsetting, but it's understandable that there are people who are okay with it.

Most of the criticism of 4e has to do with the broken promises. They failed to fix the Christmas Tree Effect, they failed to make a coherent skill challenges system, they failed to make the math "Just Work", and they failed to keep the classes balanced or the roles protected. 4e promised a lot and didn't deliver.
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shadzar
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Post by shadzar »

Swordslinger wrote:In cases of chicken stats and similar cases, I resort to a handy principle.

I call it: Who gives a fuck, lets just play the fucking game.

This is a game of heroes who kill monsters, I don't give a fuck if a noncombat creature has 1 or 2 hit points or if it's AC is 11 or 12. If the PCs wanna kill a chicken, then just say it dies and move on. You dudes realize you don't have to roll for everything right?
Which really boils down to the old saying "who the fuck are you to decide what other people want or can have?"

As was said, you dont want chicken stats, you don't have to use them. The ability to have them or anything else for those who want them as a logical extension of the game, doesn't hurt you at all.

The game models living creatures to have something called HP, then all should be ABLE to have them. Nobody is forcing you to use stats for chickens. You can play with James Wyatt and just play the combat all you want and "skip all the boring parts"...so be it.

It is quite funny in a game claiming to work towards balance, that 4th edition uses completely different mechanics for PCs as it does their opponents, so that the rules cannot even be balanced for the opposing sides.

The balance is amongst the things that aren't supposed to be competing with each other, the players characters.

Having the ability to have stats for a chicken proves the balance in the game as things must be built using the same system for BOTH sides of the conflicts. The way 4th edition makes the game, it isnt intended to be played as an adventure, but balanced for the sake of a PvP server, with the adventure thrown in on top of it.

It shows the game has a strong foundation to prove itself functional, and having the stats or ability to give stats to chickens, in now way shape or form removes your ability to just say you killed one for dinner.
Play the game, not the rules.
Swordslinger wrote:Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.
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good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)
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Post by Plebian »

I think he was referring to me, but I never said it was a problem; only that it's incredibly silly to be able to stat up chickens because the system treats all monsters as possible-PC-templates
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Post by Bobikus »

Plebian wrote:I think he was referring to me, but I never said it was a problem; only that it's incredibly silly to be able to stat up chickens because the system treats all monsters as possible-PC-templates
I think he was referring to:
Shazbot79 wrote:
So I can spend my free time assigning skill ranks and feats to a chicken.

Huzzah.

This just became my primary argument against 3rd edition.
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Post by Doctor Kenny Loggins »

LR wrote: 4e's lack of non-combat effects compared to 3e is very upsetting, but it's understandable that there are people who are okay with it.
It tightens the focus. D&D has never excelled at being a farming game, the rules for being a farmer are clunky and kind of shit, so they excised them.
Most of the criticism of 4e has to do with the broken promises. They failed to fix the Christmas Tree Effect, they failed to make a coherent skill challenges system, they failed to make the math "Just Work", and they failed to keep the classes balanced or the roles protected. 4e promised a lot and didn't deliver.
From the first page of this thread alone:
4E D&D's mechanics actually worked
A huge amount of the hate comes from simple bad design choices. Time and time again they used the fallback of "let's make it look like WoW"
Most of the people who hate 4e don't hate it because the high level math doesn't work, or the skill challenge system is a complete catastrofuck, or even because the game is boring and repetitive. They hate 4e because WotC released the "Meet the Tiefling" video that told them they were stupid and backwards for having played and enjoyed previous editions.
My main hatred for 4e is the sheer arrogance of the developers. They started changing things about the game and told us that we would like it because they knew we would.
Magic missile isn't magical, sleep isn't sleep, saving throws aren't saving throws, dominate doesn't dominate, disintegrate doesn't disintegrate, fireball isn't a fireball
Most of the criticism of 4E is bullshit whining about how things are different, outright lies/misunderstandings of mechanics and "WoW."
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Post by Doom »

Perhaps, but your examples certainly show that there are other complaints besides whining and misunderstandings. Do the valid issues you quoted become invalid because of some whiners, somewhere?

Similarly, most of the praise we could quote in this thread is just mindless fandboyism...it doesn't invalidate that there are some things about 4e that aren't completely retarded.
Last edited by Doom on Thu Mar 17, 2011 3:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
Doctor Kenny Loggins
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Post by Doctor Kenny Loggins »

Whining, WoW, whining, whining, outright lies, respectively.
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Post by Doom »

Fair enough, the praise is mostly whining, WoW, whining, whining and outright lies, I'm not about to argue that proportion or occurence pattern.

It still doesn't invalidate that some things about 4e aren't so bad.
Last edited by Doom on Thu Mar 17, 2011 3:42 am, edited 2 times in total.
Doctor Kenny Loggins
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Post by Doctor Kenny Loggins »

What.
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Post by Plebian »

shadzar wrote: As was said, you dont want chicken stats, you don't have to use them. The ability to have them or anything else for those who want them as a logical extension of the game, doesn't hurt you at all.
it adds completely unneeded pages to give stats for something that doesn't need stats
shadzar wrote: The game models living creatures to have something called HP, then all should be ABLE to have them. Nobody is forcing you to use stats for chickens. You can play with James Wyatt and just play the combat all you want and "skip all the boring parts"...so be it.
this statement is extremely funny because the only time a chicken would need HP is if it were in combat, so I guess you like skipping all the boring parts?
shadzar wrote: It is quite funny in a game claiming to work towards balance, that 4th edition uses completely different mechanics for PCs as it does their opponents, so that the rules cannot even be balanced for the opposing sides.
this is a horribly incorrect statement; the mechanics for PCs and monsters are identical, but PCs and monsters do not share the same powers because it's a lot better to just realize that tabletop PvP isn't the goal
shadzar wrote: The balance is amongst the things that aren't supposed to be competing with each other, the players characters.
something 4e approaches more than any other edition, also balance is an important goal at every step and not just for comparing PCs
shadzar wrote: Having the ability to have stats for a chicken proves the balance in the game as things must be built using the same system for BOTH sides of the conflicts. The way 4th edition makes the game, it isnt intended to be played as an adventure, but balanced for the sake of a PvP server, with the adventure thrown in on top of it.
it proves nothing but that you can put numbers into a template. no edition of D&D has ever had good PvP; 4e recognizes this and makes it so that there isn't PvP for the sake of overall balance. 3e and AD&D did not recognize this and turned higher-level adventuring into shitty PvP that required DMs not use abilities and spells that would fuck over their party.
shadzar wrote: It shows the game has a strong foundation to prove itself functional, and having the stats or ability to give stats to chickens, in now way shape or form removes your ability to just say you killed one for dinner.
admit it, you just want to play a videogame about D&D. guess what you can, go play DDO. it's even free!
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Post by Swordslinger »

shadzar wrote: The game models living creatures to have something called HP, then all should be ABLE to have them. Nobody is forcing you to use stats for chickens. You can play with James Wyatt and just play the combat all you want and "skip all the boring parts"...so be it.
The game models fantasy heroes against monsters, it doesn't model cock fights or battles between mice and rats.

A peasant with a dagger deals 1d4 damage. A kobold with a small dagger deals 1d3-1. That's about the weak end of the spectrum there and we're deal with sharp pointy stuff that can kill you. A chicken is way below that and not even on the scale. It's like asking how much damage an individual bee sting does.

Worrying about how much damage a chicken can do or what it's hit points are is a pointless exercise. Chickens aren't creatures in a D&D sense, they're setting decoration. Stating one is a waste of your time. I was specifically replying to any one person about this topic, all I have to say is it's totally meaningless to anything.

Do you go about stating the goldfish in the corporate exec's fishtank in Shadowrun too?
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Post by Shiritai »

Doctor Kenny Loggins wrote:What.
Your cherrypicking and quotemining is at least at Lord Monckton level, maybe even approaching Michael Behe. Congrats.
Last edited by Shiritai on Thu Mar 17, 2011 3:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
Doctor Kenny Loggins
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Post by Doctor Kenny Loggins »

Show how those quotes are out of context in a way that changes their meaning so that my representation of them isn't accurate.
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Post by MGuy »

Bobikus wrote:
Plebian wrote:I think he was referring to me, but I never said it was a problem; only that it's incredibly silly to be able to stat up chickens because the system treats all monsters as possible-PC-templates
I think he was referring to:
Shazbot79 wrote:
So I can spend my free time assigning skill ranks and feats to a chicken.

Huzzah.

This just became my primary argument against 3rd edition.
Indeed I was but the fact that Soldier and Doctor are still parading that fact around (the fact I had already covered) was also worth responding to.
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Post by LR »

Don't misquote people.
4E D&D's mechanics actually worked
Actual Quote wrote:So I'm just wondering... if 4E D&D's mechanics actually worked how they wanted to but they just kept the broad style changes (universal powers, magical item showers, elimination of LW/QW, non-monster/player transparency, etc.), how much of the playerbase do you think that they would have lost anyway?
A huge amount of the hate comes from simple bad design choices. Time and time again they used the fallback of "let's make it look like WoW"
Actual Quote wrote:A huge amount of the hate comes from simple bad design choices. Time and time again they used the fallback of "let's make it look like WoW", and that sends grognards into paroxysms of rage. There was no reason for that.
Doctor Kenny Loggins wrote:It tightens the focus. D&D has never excelled at being a farming game, the rules for being a farmer are clunky and kind of shit, so they excised them.
3e doesn't have rules for farming. It has rules for making a living as a farmer. You could run Harvest Moon Adventures, but the farming would just be flavor text for the Profession/Business checks and a lot of time would be spent chasing manticores out of the wheat fields.
Doctor Kenny Loggins wrote:Most of the criticism of 4E is bullshit whining about how things are different, outright lies/misunderstandings of mechanics and "WoW."
This is a thread about why people are personally upset about 4e and how much of that anger has to do with 4e's actual failures and how much of it has to do with 4e's image. A lot more time has been given to Anatomy of Failed Design threads and other mechanical criticisms.

Seriously, how do you miss this?
Lago wrote:But when you poll the average '3E good, 4E bad' fan about why 4E isn't any good, you tend to get a bunch of bullshit complaints mixed in with the legit ones.
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Post by Doctor Kenny Loggins »

I was not talking about it, but this is a silly thing to argue about.
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Post by Novembermike »

shadzar wrote: Having the ability to have stats for a chicken proves the balance in the game as things must be built using the same system for BOTH sides of the conflicts. The way 4th edition makes the game, it isnt intended to be played as an adventure, but balanced for the sake of a PvP server, with the adventure thrown in on top of it.

It shows the game has a strong foundation to prove itself functional, and having the stats or ability to give stats to chickens, in now way shape or form removes your ability to just say you killed one for dinner.
Except it doesn't. Nobody here has come up with stats for a chicken that accurately model chickens. The fact is that DnD breaks at the extreme ends of its power level and stops modeling anything particularly well. You end up with weird logical situations where a mouse has 1 hp, mouse traps kill mice so they have to do at least 1 damage and commoners have 2 hp so if they step on two mouse traps in the same day he's suddenly in critical condition.

Sure you can bandaid this stuff by making mouse traps only work on tiny creatures or something similar, but you end up with essentially the same problem. DnD has extremely low granularity and suffers for it in real roleplaying situations.
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Post by Doctor Kenny Loggins »

LR wrote:Don't misquote people.
4E D&D's mechanics actually worked
Actual Quote wrote:So I'm just wondering... if 4E D&D's mechanics actually worked how they wanted to but they just kept the broad style changes (universal powers, magical item showers, elimination of LW/QW, non-monster/player transparency, etc.), how much of the playerbase do you think that they would have lost anyway?
Got me there, I meant to get the word "if," though on re-reading it I might have misinterpreted what he meant by that portion.
A huge amount of the hate comes from simple bad design choices. Time and time again they used the fallback of "let's make it look like WoW"
Actual Quote wrote:A huge amount of the hate comes from simple bad design choices. Time and time again they used the fallback of "let's make it look like WoW", and that sends grognards into paroxysms of rage. There was no reason for that.
You get how that doesn't change what I was referring to yeah?
Doctor Kenny Loggins wrote:It tightens the focus. D&D has never excelled at being a farming game, the rules for being a farmer are clunky and kind of shit, so they excised them.
3e doesn't have rules for farming. It has rules for making a living as a farmer. You could run Harvest Moon Adventures, but the farming would just be flavor text for the Profession/Business checks and a lot of time would be spent chasing manticores out of the wheat fields.
Missing the forest for the trees.
This is a thread about why people are personally upset about 4e and how much of that anger has to do with 4e's actual failures and how much of it has to do with 4e's image. A lot more time has been given to Anatomy of Failed Design threads and other mechanical criticisms.

Seriously, how do you miss this?
Lago wrote:But when you poll the average '3E good, 4E bad' fan about why 4E isn't any good, you tend to get a bunch of bullshit complaints mixed in with the legit ones.
So jump on the guy who says that most of the complaints are valid ones, not me.
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Post by LR »

Novembermike wrote:Except it doesn't. Nobody here has come up with stats for a chicken that accurately model chickens. The fact is that DnD breaks at the extreme ends of its power level and stops modeling anything particularly well. You end up with weird logical situations where a mouse has 1 hp, mouse traps kill mice so they have to do at least 1 damage and commoners have 2 hp so if they step on two mouse traps in the same day he's suddenly in critical condition.

Sure you can bandaid this stuff by making mouse traps only work on tiny creatures or something similar, but you end up with essentially the same problem. DnD has extremely low granularity and suffers for it in real roleplaying situations.
Yes, 3e desperately needs a minimum capacity level for humanoids so that it can have creatures who go below that.
Doctor Kenny Loggins wrote:You get how that doesn't change what I was referring to yeah?
He's saying that giving Eladrin solid colored eyes and Tieflings curvy horns and Eastern European accents makes grognards hate 4e. That is not a false or controversial statement.
Missing the forest for the trees.
Do you have a problem with a business being used for the backdrop of a game or with rules existing for determining how much that business makes?
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Post by Plebian »

no, I think he's saying it's really pointless to include rules that enable farming in a game about heroic exploits
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Post by shadzar »

Novembermike wrote:
shadzar wrote: Having the ability to have stats for a chicken proves the balance in the game as things must be built using the same system for BOTH sides of the conflicts. The way 4th edition makes the game, it isnt intended to be played as an adventure, but balanced for the sake of a PvP server, with the adventure thrown in on top of it.

It shows the game has a strong foundation to prove itself functional, and having the stats or ability to give stats to chickens, in now way shape or form removes your ability to just say you killed one for dinner.
Except it doesn't. Nobody here has come up with stats for a chicken that accurately model chickens. The fact is that DnD breaks at the extreme ends of its power level and stops modeling anything particularly well. You end up with weird logical situations where a mouse has 1 hp, mouse traps kill mice so they have to do at least 1 damage and commoners have 2 hp so if they step on two mouse traps in the same day he's suddenly in critical condition.

Sure you can bandaid this stuff by making mouse traps only work on tiny creatures or something similar, but you end up with essentially the same problem. DnD has extremely low granularity and suffers for it in real roleplaying situations.
I would disagree.

Now you could say a mousetrap does 1 damage, and it will work, or the tiny what4ever, but what about the AC?

We aren't modeling broken limbs, cause many people here dont like it, so i wont get into that or loss of limbs in regards to HP...but the AC of the mouse could easily be taken into question.

Also a mousetrap could be considered to function as a called shot, since not all mousetrap that go off kill their target mouse. The mouse gets a save or die effect from the trap, rather than actual HP lose.

But people don't like those ave or die things either.

Lets take the mouse a step further to prove how effective a chiken or mouse having stats could be, as well as important.

Rats are a D&D monster, and classified in several ways, but let up take the Giant Rat only. The thing making this monster a "threat" is its size. Likewise a cat is a threat to a single rat.

Now let us take into account magic. Enlarge/Reduce. Here we have a spell that alters the state of the size category of a thing. If a PC is reduced to sufficient size, then that simple rat or cat or chicken becomes a threat.

So how is having stats for it now into the trivial or damage area?

It just requires making the system, something 4th failed to do, so that the create must be a threat for the stats to really matter.

3rd edition had its sacks of rats for rapid level gaining. This proves that the threat indicator isnt properly present even in its CR/ECL/whatthefuckever system.

Nobody here has really tried to come up with the stats for a chicken, cause the point isnt what is the EXACT stats for a chicken, but the fact that is should be able to have them, and that chickens having stats in no way impedes people from ignoring those stats jsut jsut kicking one to death.

So your mousetrap is not a damage source, but a TRAP which had the intent of killing, not doing damage slowly over time that CAN allow for killing if the excess force is wished for. But I see what you imply with it.

Also not sure where you get commoners have 2HP. Must be that whole 3rd edition thing with its 0-level commoners or something that is another reason i think it is stupid, as opposed to earlier editions, specifically 2nd has those human "commoners" possible of having more HP than a 1st level wizard.

Are we really going to go the route of wizard v. housecat? cause that is simply answered as well as a threat indicator is not really present. Alos real world people have been killed by a housecat. Though domesticated mostly, housecats are still predators.
Play the game, not the rules.
Swordslinger wrote:Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.
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good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)
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Post by Novembermike »

LR wrote: Yes, 3e desperately needs a minimum capacity level for humanoids so that it can have creatures who go below that.
Isn't that essentially what 4e did? Set up the adventurers on a fairly high base note (similar to 3e 4th level or so) so that you can model all of the little stuff? Admittedly it still gets a bit wonky, but it's in teh direction that the players can kill pretty much infinite chickens or rats or whatever rather than having the rats be a serious threat to that first level mage.
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Post by Bobikus »

Swordslinger wrote: The game models fantasy heroes against monsters, it doesn't model cock fights or battles between mice and rats.
I've seen low level parties that have set up cockfighting rings in cities. Having chicken stats meant the chickens could actually fight instead of coinflipping the winner.
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Post by Plebian »

Bobikus wrote:
Swordslinger wrote: The game models fantasy heroes against monsters, it doesn't model cock fights or battles between mice and rats.
I've seen low level parties that have set up cockfighting rings in cities. Having chicken stats meant the chickens could actually fight instead of coinflipping the winner.
and it still added absolutely nothing to the game

edit: amusingly the chicken stats given just mean that it's barely more than coinflipping. the first chicken to land a hit is the winner.

what verisimilitude!
Last edited by Plebian on Thu Mar 17, 2011 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Bobikus
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Post by Bobikus »

Having the chickens actually fight instead of randomly choosing the winner added to the enjoyment of the players/dm during the session, so you're wrong there.
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