The Gaming Den

Krakatoa wrote:

Lesson: Sometimes there's a dangerous place where people simply do not go. You might be a hero, but some of those places apply to you as well. Run your games with a much wider range of difficulties available to players and let them decide what is level-appropriate and what isn't.

While in broad strokes that's a fair point, not all things are equal. The danger zones in an MMO are pre-built and automated and your character or party is incidental to the broader function of the servers. Death usually results in a not-so-steep penalty as well. In tabletop, an encounter that vastly outclasses your party, wipes them out, or is in some way otherwise ill advised, the game can turn into drudgery for all players involved. It's especially true in 3.X and Pathfinder where the CRs aren't actually that helpful when trying to figure how much a challenge rates.

Yes, that's a good point that is worth keeping in mind. If the fight is something the PCs can't handle, the fight can end in death and the end of fun. That doesn't mean that every encounter needs to be a fight, that every fight needs to be to the death, or that every PC death results in the rest of the party getting killed as well, if possible. There are a lot of ways for an encounter to go, and getting creative with it makes the game more interesting, though harder to run.

For instance, in the first session of a new campaign I played a character who was good at scouting. A behemoth being lead by powerful soldiers was coming up a river so I scouted ahead with the assumption that a level 1 character was in danger, but probably not overwhelming danger. I was wrong. The soldiers were good at spotting spies and eager to feed their beast. It's tongue attack, with a 20' reach, rolled a 39 to hit and my character was swallowed whole and died instantly. In shock, the rest of the party took that to mean they should probably go nowhere near that and the encounter turned into a challenge for them to stay as far away and hidden. It set the tone for the rest of the game in which we only did battle if we controlled the battlefield and were fairly certain of victory. The GM had to get creative with what constituted a "win" when determining XP and creating challenges, but it was a very deep, thought-provoking, and immersive game.

Later on we were jumped by a powerful cleric and lots of his allies. We were outclassed and soon routed. It ended with the reckless new guy getting gutted and the rest of us willing to surrender rather than get killed. The GM knew just killing us would have been boring drudgery as you stated, so instead we did a bunch of social challenge stuff and lost some belongings in order to get away with our lives. Again, we couldn't succeed on the combat level so the circumstance was tense, exciting, and full of dread - but the GM knew that challenging us in non-linear ways made for a more interesting game so he let us decide if violence would be our chosen method of winning the encounter. It was for the reckless new guy; the rest of us knew better.

Ah, here's an obvious one

HOW TO DO MATH

nockermensch wrote:It was my hope that the prevalence of MMOs helped people to realize that there are like three or four completely different game experiences that by a deficiency of language are all called "RPGs".

It was also my hope that TTRPG designers noticed that there are somethings that computers do better than any human and others that they can't do and will remain not doing for the foreseeable future and then focused their games at what humans are best. So far, not only this hasn't happened, but 4e showed that people are willing to degrade themselves to copy even the interface aspects of MMOs, like glowing arrows over the monster's heads (Marking) or hotkey bars.

unlike video game makers like Bioware that have only one duty like making video games and everyone in the business knows the field and understand it, TTRPGs for the most part are made by entertainment companies. Paizo makes more thabn PF right? dont they have a miniature game or was that just monster stats for their minis?

well either way, HASBRO doesnt understand a thing about CCGs or RPGs. all they understand in black and red. they set a goal for black, and when it goes in the red changes must be made. they seek to find something to take from some other valuable entertainment property and import it without understanding they are different.

copying each others work is why there are so many similar movies during the same season each year. a pirate movie is made by someone, so someone else makes one too. vampire related series becomes popular, so there is a new HBO vampire series, and several more vampire related movie series made by other people.

designers either dont know how to create in this day and age or have their balls snapped shut in the corporate purse.

video games became so popular because you didnt need other people to play them, they are stagnant and have many types to choose from, lazy people dont even have to imagine with them....so MMOs and TTRPGs have so little in common but TTRPG designers and most companies that own them do not understand this.

OgreBattle wrote:Ah, here's an obvious one

HOW TO DO MATH

Because computers will not fudge your math for you.

OgreBattle wrote:Ah, here's an obvious one

HOW TO DO MATH

Oh yes, because MMOs have totally figured out game balance and math and shit.

Oh wait, every single one re-balances the game every fucking patch. Sometimes to huge extents.

This seems familiar. Oh yeah this is what 4e totally did. And we see how well that worked out.

OgreBattle wrote: This seems familiar. Oh yeah this is what 4e totally did. And we see how well that worked out.

Actually quite well for the most part!

Yeah, it took them until MM3 to get the monsters right but overall class and monster balance is at an acceptable place at the moment, which is far more than you can say about vanilla 3.X and Pathfinder.

TheFlatline wrote: Oh yes, because MMOs have totally figured out game balance and math and shit.

Oh wait, every single one re-balances the game every fucking patch. Sometimes to huge extents.

This seems familiar. Oh yeah this is what 4e totally did. And we see how well that worked out.

In all fairness, I don't feel it was the constant patching that sunk 4E, so much as the fact that the base game was built on bad design premises. The overabundance of healing effects wasn't something that could be easily fixed, and that meant you'd always have very long combats.

And it doesn't matter how well the math/balance worked if the combats were dull and drawn out. At the end of the day, it just wasn't fun to play and you felt that it took forever to get anything done.

Krakatoa wrote:

OgreBattle wrote: This seems familiar. Oh yeah this is what 4e totally did. And we see how well that worked out.

Actually quite well for the most part!

Yeah, it took them until MM3 to get the monsters right but overall class and monster balance is at an acceptable place at the moment, which is far more than you can say about vanilla 3.X and Pathfinder.

Abandoned after a couple years? That is what you call an acceptable place?

Krakatoa wrote:

OgreBattle wrote: This seems familiar. Oh yeah this is what 4e totally did. And we see how well that worked out.

Actually quite well for the most part!

Yeah, it took them until MM3 to get the monsters right but overall class and monster balance is at an acceptable place at the moment, which is far more than you can say about vanilla 3.X and Pathfinder.

Having to re-edit the game a bunch of times so that the balance isn't outright horrifying from the start is not much of a promotion considering how bad every part of 4e is. Maybe for a videogame where the patches come automatically and is given out to everyone at once maybe. I still don't really like it but video games are wonky like that. For an RPG that's completely unacceptable.

Krakatoa wrote:

OgreBattle wrote: This seems familiar. Oh yeah this is what 4e totally did. And we see how well that worked out.

Actually quite well for the most part!

Except for the massive clusterfuck they called Skill Challenges.

Krakatoa (paraphrased) wrote: overall class balance is at an acceptable place at the moment,

Is that really the case? Last I heard of 4e there were awesome classes and terrible classes you should never pick.

The seeker being a terrible one for example.

TheFlatline wrote: Then Guild Wars 2 said "Why the fuck bother with the scenery tours nobody ever looks at after the first time?" and created the fast travel system that is cheap and easy to use.

Actually Ragnarok Online had "fast travel" between its cities from the start. Which I'll have to assume predates GW2's system by some amount of time; and probably is based on some other game.

As well as Player Teleportation from map to map available to low level characters; "random" same-map teleportation; and finally "go to home" teleportation.

Available in consumable items (same map, and back home); character skills (Go to pre-flagged map/location; same map; back home); and available via items.


Things to learn from MMOs are:

Creating a world economy

If players can trade around the items, be they rare , usable, or are resources for consumption/crafting available in game, that will form an economy between players. This can range from currency like gold/zeny/whatever; or could also be a barter system such as Diablo 2's player driven economy; or Path of Exiles "currency items" model where junk Dialoesque items can be cashed in to NPCs for more compact items with a wide range of values.

Structure group play

The "Looking For Group" system that came out in late Wrath of the Lich King WoW where a player could sign up as a Tank, Heal or DPS and play across battlgroups, instead of only on your specific server was inspired, as it really helped players get into groups easier. The previous model of joining channels locally, or globally, was painful, tedious, and often fell through due to it's massive amount of time taken for a pick-up group to get together.

D&D Online's model was slightly better than WoW was with no system; but WoW's model was more effective once implemented.

Ragnarok Online's model is vastly different. Ideas such as "class role" sort of go away, and players of the same type could group up to share/boost their xp gains. While having a Healer helps, I've seriously also seen groups of only swordsmen, thieves, archers and mages successfully dungeon grind.

Setting/World Layouts

-It's one thing to invent a world ad hoc as you need it. It's an other to have to make a whole world before the product ships. Being able to learn how games design their worlds is useful for even the most staunch anti-MMO tabletop game player.

Communication across Distances

-At the heart and core, an MMO is Internet Relay Chat, with a fancy distraction application built into it. Being able to communicate with people in a channel, across a guild, in a zone, or in any other sort of chat channel is an important part of the experience.

Introducing more ways for characters to communicate with each other will help to create the sort of Science Fantasy feel that many games try to emulate.

Watching, for example, Adventure Time; one notices that there are many forms of nearly instant communication that exist within the setting. There are cellular telephones, message-sending crystals, and 'magical' communication pendants.

In real life, we have the examples of pidgeons vs raptors in terms of communication delivery in iron age times (which can be as old as 3,000 BCE in some parts of the world). While mainstream fiction stand-bys like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones use Owls and Crows respectively.

Being able to incorporate some sort of long distance communication won't hurt.


How to structure Game Play

Is the game play supposed to involve grinding in an area where random monsters spawn?

Is the game play supposed to have linear dungeons?

Some games have a mix of both types of areas (EQ, WoW); and the environment is generally static. The remainder have some sort of balance between one or the other

Ragnarok Online: Set environments outdoors, going 'into' a dungeon is the same every time, same amount of monsters always on the map, Boss/special monsters on specific maps with spawn timers of ~1-2 hours (special monsters are on different spawn timers), instant 'normal' respawns.

Rogue/Diablo: Linear quest goal, procedurally generated dungeon and monsters.

D&D Online: Few Environments, Mostly Dungeons, monsters/traps based on Dungeon difficulty setting.

EQ Next however is going to break this mold by having set environments; that are voxel-based and fully destructable (but regenerate over time); as well as player created environments/locations/structures.

ishy wrote:

Krakatoa (paraphrased) wrote: overall class balance is at an acceptable place at the moment,

Is that really the case? Last I heard of 4e there were awesome classes and terrible classes you should never pick.

The seeker being a terrible one for example.

Yeah, its not perfectly balanced by any stretch. The Ranger is far and above the best striker, for instance, and Fighters are generally better defenders than Paladins and Wardens. I literally meant 'acceptable': most of the classes are capable of doing their job and doing it well. Aside from the terrible classes you should never pick (of which there are two, maybe three), class power disparity is more akin to 3.5 Wizard vs 3.5 Sorcerer than to Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit.

Krakatoa wrote:Aside from the terrible classes you should never pick (of which there are two, maybe three), class power disparity is more akin to 3.5 Wizard vs 3.5 Sorcerer than to Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit.

Not at all. The gap between the 'good' classes and the 'bad' classes is gigantic at this point. The Ranger isn't the only super-damaging character these days, either; a warlock, certain battlemind builds, wizard/mages, and warlords are way up there in damage. To the tune of doing 3x more damage than, say, an 'average' class like a seeker or artificer.

The thing is, 4E D&D is an easy enough game that unless your class absolutely sucks all that is anus (like a monk or an O-Assassin) you can still pass most encounters without having to think about it too hard or the DM having to obviously intrude. If the difficulty was cranked up a bit, then we'd be having class segregation as bad as -- if not worse than -- 3E D&D.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If the difficulty was cranked up a bit, then we'd be having class segregation as bad as -- if not worse than -- 3E D&D.

I don't see how I can buy this. 4e doesn't have linear fighter vs. quadratic wizard problems. It has linear fighter vs. linear fighter problems.

Now, 4e sacrificed any hope of verisimilitude, knot-cutting, and all other entertaining class features in the name of that anemic balance; it is about as thrilling an achievement as having balance between the monopoly icons.


Hat is still OP.

Erik wrote:I don't see how I can buy this. 4e doesn't have linear fighter vs. quadratic wizard problems. It has linear fighter vs. linear fighter problems.

These are in many ways worse. 4e is a very deterministic game in a lot of ways. You roll a lot of dice, damage accumulates at overall fairly stable rates, and the amount of healing is known and reasonably fixed. If your numbers simply aren't big enough to play at the level you are being asked to play at, you can't do anything. Not just that you'll lose all your fights, but the way skill bullshit is handled, you also won't be able to open doors, climb walls, or jump over pits.

3e has a lot of "you must be this high to continue" checks hidden all over it. You have to make "magic attacks" to fight a shadow, you have to make ranged attacks to fight a Marrash, and so on. But 4e is just one giant "you must be this high to continue" check, and it's all raw numbers. If your raw numbers aren't big enough, you are definitely going to lose.

Now right now, the number requirements are so low that you could really fuck around quite a bit and still complete the pre-defined level appropriate encounters. The game is very very easy. But if they were higher, some of the shittier characters simply wouldn't make the grade. And then they wouldn't make the grade at anything. It would be seriously worse than Fighters and Wizards in 3e. Because at least in 3e, the Fighter can continue to contribute as much as the Druid's animal companion. That sounds like I'm not being serious, but I totally am.

-Username17

Krakatoa wrote:

OgreBattle wrote: This seems familiar. Oh yeah this is what 4e totally did. And we see how well that worked out.

Actually quite well for the most part!

Yeah, it took them until MM3 to get the monsters right but overall class and monster balance is at an acceptable place at the moment, which is far more than you can say about vanilla 3.X and Pathfinder.

Dude they literally had errata where you had to recalculate every monster released in 2 books. Hundreds of monsters.

And let's not forget the evolution of Magic Missile from stupid spamming at-will to entire builds focused around MM and then nerfed back to... whatever the fuck it is now (I can't be bothered to subscribe to a service that generates hundreds of pages of errata as time goes on.). That alone proves what I was talking about. MMOs make that kind of massive change every few months to whatever character class is proving dominant. D&D just... fucks with game design and balance.

There's so much that was changed via errata in 4E that even within 4th edition you have product fragmentation. Are you playing RAW? Are you playing the latest errata? Or did you find some point where you gave up on the errata and only incorporated parts of it to a certain extent?

Who fucking knows? And that's my point. MMOs force you to patch up if you want to play, so everyone is on the same rule set. D&D doesn't force everyone to patch up (unless you want to use the character generator) so every major errata iteration fragments your community further.

4e was so successful they abandoned it. Defending it at this point is fucking hilarious.

[quote="FrankTrollman]
3e has a lot of "you must be this high to continue" checks hidden all over it. You have to make "magic attacks" to fight a shadow, you have to make ranged attacks to fight a Marrash, and so on. But 4e is just one giant "you must be this high to continue" check, and it's all raw numbers. If your raw numbers aren't big enough, you are definitely going to lose.[/quote]

Okay I grant that it is possible that 4e could be less balanced despite being linear. Being pushed off the range of the RNG when the RNG is the only thing that matters is worse. But I don't think that 4e ever got so bad that any classes entirely dropped off the range of the RNG as compared to each other, maybe I'm wrong.

In that case, random 4e classes probably are more equal with respect to combat challenges than random 3e classes.

The downside is that to achieve this they made 4e classes barely distinguishable. Some have bigger numbers than others, a few have signature attacks or buffs, but mostly they are a pile of unmemorable attacks where you push, slide or daze a square or some shit. 4e team would have been better off making a superior Descent game.

erik wrote:But I don't think that 4e ever got so bad that any classes entirely dropped off the range of the RNG as compared to each other, maybe I'm wrong.

Again, 4E D&D is a pretty easy game. After you get to level 7 or so, with halfway intelligent class/power/magical item selection, the DM following the encounter-building guidelines, and having a ratio of at least one 'leader' for every five people it is very hard to lose fights.

Try running a campaign, especially a high-level campaign, against an 'average' party versus a well-tuned and well-optimized party.