After reading this thread, I thought to myself, "so it's all about balance and future products, nothing else matters." Now I can't get Metallica out of my head.
IMO this is a good thing. It's much easier to introduce house rules that break a working game than it is to fix a broken one. I'm not sure why you'd want to, but it's not too difficult if you do.
/facepalm
In a word, 'Marketing'.
You promise big, then you try to deliver what you actually can.
*Sighs.*
*Sighs.*
*Sighs.*
Last edited by Psychic Robot on Wed Jul 09, 2008 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I agree with some of your thoughts now about how to deal with a solo monster, however it really distresses me that you, as lead designer, did not think of this before. *sighs*
Bravo.
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
I agree with some of your thoughts now about how to deal with a solo monster, however it really distresses me that you, as lead designer, did not think of this before. *sighs*
Bravo.
Best goddamn thing evar!
He's essentially saying "So, after a tiny amount of playtesting that I could have done with my own modules that I wrote, I found that one of my core mechanics is really boring. It's almost like I don't design games for a living."
Psychic Robot wrote:This is three big things he's failed on so far:
1. The Iron Heroes magic system.
2. Skill challenges.
3. Solo monsters.
How is he qualified to be a designer again?
Well, I've failed in several of my own design goals, so I'm not too unforgiving of a little failure. The thing that gets me is that with an open playtest and the authority the community has granted them they really could have shaken out these problems.
The real question is whether he should ever be a paid lead designer again. He doesn't seem to understand the community or what they want at all from their games.
I too am forgiving of failure. I mean, I look back at some of the initial things I created for D&D, and yech. They didn't follow the standard rules for D&D properly, some abilities were crap while some were awesome, etc. And I don't hold a personal grudge against Mearls--I think a lot of what he did with IH was good. However, his entire attitude--the entire attitude of the design team, perhaps--was that 4e was going to be SO AWESOME and they had spent so much time playtesting it to hit "the sweet spot"...and we're left with crap like skill challenges.
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
I seriously scrapped several ideas for PrCs for characters that I had b/c I know that they were in some manner flawed.
I didn't realize what the flaws were until much later.
Of course, my 'replacement' ideas aren't all that hot or amazing. However, they're passable and I'd feel as if I wasn't giving my players the shaft if they use them.
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.
While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
Remember that thread I posted awhile back about "answering the haters"? It's still going, and it got to be more of an abortion.
But these skills should be part of the core system from day 1.
The yearly PHB is another reason why we are probably going to do savage worlds. I don't want to wait a year to play a barbarian, and I frankly don't want to spend the 35 bucks each year to stay current.
Actualy, NOT. No, NONE of them have a right to be there at first.
I see the problem ion being also 'me, me, me! I want more!'. Peoples should accept things as they are, stay behind, or make stuff.
Also, Barbarian is just a special form of Fighter. Make ragin feats, a path, and you are set. There.
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
I agree with some of your thoughts now about how to deal with a solo monster, however it really distresses me that you, as lead designer, did not think of this before. *sighs*
Bravo.
I swear, I hear Voss dancing and laughing from here.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
I'm definitely laughing (though that isn't me- I would have been much harsher). First the skill challenges, now this.
If I wanted to be nice to Mearls, I'd say everything he's done needs another year of work to make it functional, if not good. Both 4e and Iron Heroes (and some of the minor things, like Iron Might) need a shitload of work to polish them to the point of actually publishing them.
Really, his stuff (and 4e in general) is low-quality fan-crap that someone posts on the forums for the first time. There are some ideas that are potentially pretty good, but the implementation is quite frankly pretty crap, and the math never actually works.
Its too bad, but they've made something that just isn't good. And the options now are use an old system, move to something that isn't D&D, or kludge a homebrew together. Maybe 5th will be decent, in 8 years or so.
Voss wrote:I'm definitely laughing (though that isn't me- I would have been much harsher). First the skill challenges, now this.
Well, you did have that "Mike Mearls: I make fail" signature up for ages.
And now it's pretty much happened.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
It's a shame he sort of said it as "Well, as some kind of crazy discovery we just made, solo encounters need fixing." instead of "I fucked up." But it's probably the closest we'll get to an admission of fail.
Mearls is a good chunk of the reason why 4E is so enjoyable. He really understands the nuts and bolts of game systems (similar to Skip Williams), AND ALSO knows how to make them more fun and cinematic.
Oy. Aside from that, it's remained fairly reasonable.
Last edited by Psychic Robot on Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Psychic Robot wrote: However, his entire attitude--the entire attitude of the design team, perhaps--was that 4e was going to be SO AWESOME and they had spent so much time playtesting it to hit "the sweet spot"...and we're left with crap like skill challenges.
I think this just points up the need for external playtesting. No matter how many hours you put in on internal playtesting, you're going to have two problems:
1. Everybody involved is part of a close-knit community of co-workers who have probably come to share the same assumptions about gaming. Thus, there are things they won't think to try.
2. Everybody involved has presumably seen a bunch of drafts of the ruleset and may have been part of discussions about the problems and how to fix them. Thus, they know the design intent behind a lot of rules and might not catch an ambiguously-worded sentence.
Seriously, I think a lot of WotC's worst mistakes might have been avoided with a little cold playtesting by people outside the corporation. Seriously, all the discussions that are blowing up across message boards now could have been happening behind the scenes months ago.
It's fascinating how people think that Skip knows anything. When that guy makes a ruling, i just have to take out the PHB or DMG and quote why he is wrong. Half of his rulings are house rules or "gut feelings".
Perhaps it's because they don't know anything either - they trust him more because they make mechanics choices based on their "feelings" too, as they don't have any talent for, or understanding of, game design - which in itself isn't a problem.
They feel comforted and "affirmed" by his mediocrity and indeed, his lack of rationality and so feel threatened by actual solutions (even if it's just because they... imprint? bond? to the faulty stuff).
Idiots, basically (that they're essentially willing ones makes it much worse though)
SHEEPLE! also fits nicely.
###
Although looking back at what I wrote, I seem to be implying a level of deliberate irrationality that I would consider a terrible insult were it directed at me and consider faintly malicious... better if they were just overly defensive and trustful of authority, though I fear this is not the case.
Last edited by Antumbra on Thu Jul 10, 2008 12:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Well, remember that they wrote most of 4e before Mearls was hired, so it's not all his fault. The fundamental math was done early in design, and done poorly. He might not have had a chance to change anything about the expected hit points for solo monsters or the average damage of an attack or even what were valid powers.
zeruslord wrote:Well, remember that they wrote most of 4e before Mearls was hired, so it's not all his fault. The fundamental math was done early in design, and done poorly. He might not have had a chance to change anything about the expected hit points for solo monsters or the average damage of an attack or even what were valid powers.
That's bullshit. The [W] notation included your character's Strength and "level" bonus as of November of 2007. The basic math has been through a whirlwind of change every month since Mearls got hired on. It's a hallmark of his design system: write a bunch of crap, write a bunch of incompatible crap, continue until deadline date and then claim you weren't finished when the final system is incompatible with itself and doesn't work for shit.
Psychic Robot wrote: However, his entire attitude--the entire attitude of the design team, perhaps--was that 4e was going to be SO AWESOME and they had spent so much time playtesting it to hit "the sweet spot"...and we're left with crap like skill challenges.
I think this just points up the need for external playtesting. No matter how many hours you put in on internal playtesting, you're going to have two problems:
1. Everybody involved is part of a close-knit community of co-workers who have probably come to share the same assumptions about gaming. Thus, there are things they won't think to try.
2. Everybody involved has presumably seen a bunch of drafts of the ruleset and may have been part of discussions about the problems and how to fix them. Thus, they know the design intent behind a lot of rules and might not catch an ambiguously-worded sentence.
Seriously, I think a lot of WotC's worst mistakes might have been avoided with a little cold playtesting by people outside the corporation. Seriously, all the discussions that are blowing up across message boards now could have been happening behind the scenes months ago.
There have been hints here and there from behind NDAs that what little outside playtesting they did was producing results they didn't want to hear. Well, aside from the fanboy playtesters and the 'playtesters' who were contractors that want to publish 4e stuff and weren't going to offend the cash machine, like Ari Maramell (or whatever, He Who Fucked Up the Shadowcaster).
But yeah, the game was in flux up to (and apparently beyond) the date they sent it for printing. To the point that the first module (which, for the record, is utter shit) is missing a lot of key ideas. Healing on a 20, when you're rolling death saves, half-elf free power, whether drinking a potion is a minor or standard action (its listed as both in various places) and a bunch of other shit.
1) You're doing it wrong
2) The DM is doing it wrong
3) The dice are doing it wrong (I'm not even fucking kidding)
4) The monsters are doing it wrong; you should always be able to hit multiple targets because they're duty-bound to clusterfuck
5) You haven't multiplied the monster hit-points down by the fraction of time you want the encounter to take
6) Too long isn't too long - it's supposed to take that long
7) When the designers said that combat is "faster" they didn't in any way mean that it would "take less time"
8) And anyway, it doesn't take as long as 3.x, so there
