Titanium Dragon wrote:I don't think that's really accurate anyway. I don't think the target audience has changed significantly between the editions.
Come on, TD. We both know that's not true. To put it bluntly, D&D players have gotten pussified--they can't handle things like "paladins have to be LG or they fall and lose their class abilities." And let's be brutally honest: 4e is designed to play toward the tastes of the 13-year-old WoW crowd. No, I'm not saying that 4e is WoW, but it's targeting WoW's target audience. Seriously, look at tieflings and eladrin and tell me with a straight face that they aren't draenei and blood elves.
I'm not even saying that it's a
bad thing to include exotic races. It's not my cup of tea, but you can't deny WotC's obvious intent.
Well, as I've explained on the WotC forums (though perhaps not to you), this is actually false. And David Sirlin agrees with me, as do the designers of D&D. I'm in good company. And we are right.
Before getting into the meat of your post, I'm going to sigh audibly and address this nuisance. No, it's not your actual argument, and I could simply let it slide, but it's going to get right under my skin if I don't.
First off, don't try and namedrop to add credibility to your statement. Not only do I not know who Dave Sirlin is, I don't particularly care. His existence impacts my ideas in no way whatsoever, and I don't give two whits about what he has to say about game balance. Monte Cook is probably a bigger name than Sirlin, and I think Monte Cook is an incredibly talentless designer who has really bad ideas.
Second of all, you cite the development team of 4e as sharing your ideology for support. Mike Mearls said that rogues in 3e were underpowered, and he did
Iron Heroes. That pretty much counteracts whatever it is that you were trying to do by citing the D&D devs.
Thirdly, the 3e D&D devs clearly thought that SODs were good game design. I could say, "I disagree with you (about SODs being bad game design) and the 3e devs agree with me, so I'm in good company," and what have I done? Done nothing to reinforce my point.
As a finale on this critique, allow me to reword your statement for effect:
Twightanium Dragon wrote:
Well, as I've explained on the Twilight forums (though perhaps not to you), the notion that Edward is a creepy pedophile stalker is false. And all the other Twimoms agree with me, as does Stephenie Meyer. I'm in good company. And we are right.
Now we can move on to your actual argument.
Balance is important in every game. In a game wherein you are competing "against the computer" (as you are in D&D, as the DM is not really your opponent; you are competing against the game system, more or less) balance is when the game is challenging enough to be enjoyable and you have a real chance of failure. Failure comes in many forms, and does not necessarily equate to "game over" (though having the possibility of that is not a bad thing, which is why games have preserved it). An unbalanced game is less fun than a balanced game, all other things being equal, because the challenge inherent in a game is a part of what makes the game enjoyable. A game which is too easy is boring, and a game which is too difficult is frustrating. You can see this in Devil May Cry 2 and 3, both single player games in the same series; DMC 2 was roundly criticized for being far too easy, whereas DMC 3 was criticized for being controller-snappingly difficult. Games are meant to present a challenge to be overcome by the player, and if the game is unbalanced, the game becomes much less enjoyable. And even beyond the difficulty level, if one aspect of the game is masively stronger for beating it than the others, even if the difficulty level with that one aspect is appropriate, it hurts the game. This is why balance is important in a single-player game - it ensures diversity in gameplay and appropriate challenge level. It cannot create these things out of whole cloth - if there isn't any diversity in the first place, it cannot make it out of thin air. But it can make it so that the diversity which is present remains present, and is not just a facade, a bunch of shitty choices and only a couple of real ones.
I will agree that balance is important in a game to some degree. However, I will take your DMC examples and raise your Ninja Gaiden--the defining factor of the series is that it is ridiculously difficult and requires extensive system mastery to beat. And again, we have people who absolutely love the game because of this.
In addition, take FPS games. How is the pistol balanced with the rest of the guns? Well, it's not. It's junk because it's meant to be junk. So the pistol isn't a real option, except when you're out of ammo, and you want something better. It's
purposely designed to be a poor choice. In the 4e mindset, the pistol needs to be balanced with the rocket launcher, uzi, and M-16--and that's just not true.
I will provide another video game example: MUME, or Multi-Users of Middle-Earth. It's a MUD, and it's all about doing things like killing orcs. In fact, the orcs are a playable faction, as are trolls and black Númenóreans. The thing is, all of the dark races have severe disadvantages--they all have weaker stats, orcs are crippled in the sunlight and have junk magic, black Númenóreans are really only good as mages and they suffer from depression (which lowers their mana supply), and trolls permanently die in the sunlight. But there are plenty of people who play the underlings and try to kill the good races.
There is a secondary consideration as well, and this is that D&D, in many ways, is a competitive game. Not in a formal way, but there is an informal competition for "screentime", "time in the spotlight", or "relative contribution". This is another very important reason why the game needs to be balanced - if one player gets too much or too little of this, it makes the game less fun for the people who get too little (and sometimes the player who gets too much as well, because they feel like they are doing all the work and no one else is contributing). This is bad because it makes players unhappy. And in D&D, you may be stuck with a character for a very long period of time - weeks, months, or even years. This can put unhappy players in the uncomfortable situation where they aren't really enjoying themselves but all their friends are, and they don't want to quit playing with them because they are their friends but simultaneously feel like the game is a downer every week.
You've managed to prove my point marvelously--it's not combat balance that matters, it's
screentime. Which is something I pointed out in my original post. Spotlight balance often has little to do with combat prowess or skills--rather, it's the people who love play-acting that steal the spotlight out of combat. It's the DM's job to make sure that everyone is getting about equal spotlight time--and, again, that has little to do with combat balance, except in a hack 'n' slash game.
Here's the thing, though: a lot of people disliked this, and in my experience, the odds of someone quitting or changing characters if they played a non-caster character were about twice the odds of the same happening to someone who played a caster character.
My point still stands. I am in agreement that the fighter needs to be able to do more than he can in 3e, though.
Enchanters are bad because they charm and dominate people, which are insanely powerful abilities. You can in fact dominate people in 4th edition for very short periods of time, but they're high level abilities, and they are very limited in duration and uses. If you violate this, then they end up having multiple characters, effectively, which causes problems.
Yes, it does grant someone the equivalent of multiple characters, and I'm okay with that. Not to the extent with which 3e did it, mind you, but I am okay with enchanters having extra characters. Why? Because it's their schtick--they go around and use their magic to get other people to do what they want.
And if you are talking about subtlely affecting the attitudes of people you're interacting with via magic, that's just a reflavored Diplomacy (or possibly Bluff) check.
No, thank you. Skills are nonmagical. You can say that you're casting a spell, but if you're not using spellcasting mechanics, you're not using a spell. Especially if the wizard has low Charisma.
Summoners are bad when their summons have independent actions. 4th edition summoners solved this problem by having them share actions with their summons. Only some summons are worthwhile, but this is not due to sharing actions but due to some summons being horribly designed.
Necromancers are bad when they have lots of undead, or even one undead with indepedent actions, for the same reasons as summoners. There aren't any yet, but there will be a class based around dealing negative energy damage and temporarily "dominating" dead enemies.
The entire point of being a summoner is to summon things and have them do things for you. That's just how the concept works. Necromancers are the same way. And, again, if I have to choose between class fantasy tropes and balance, then balance is getting kicked to the curb.
It is bad because it obsoletes the Diplomacy skill. As I pointed out, if you simply reflavor your diplomacy check as charming them via magic, its the same thing and the wizard doesn't get an unfair advantage.
Charm person doesn't obsolete the Diplomacy skill at all. How could it? You have to wave your hands around and chant and look like a total goober and then if the target fails his save--then and
only then does it replace the Diplomacy skill. What happens if the save fails? And what are people going to say when they see you trying to cast
charm person on someone else? And what happens when the spell wears off?
These are all important factors to consider when dealing with magic, and it sounds like the people who didn't like
charm person didn't bother to think about the spell from an in-character perspective.
EDIT: I'm going to quote myself for your benefit, TD.
It's not balance that counts. It's the people you play with. If you're playing in an extremely combat-heavy game, balance counts. I'll be the first to admit that never hitting in combat is frustrating. However, once you're out of minis-mode and back to role-playing, balance is put on the back burner. And what happens if you're playing in a game where you spend about half an hour every session doing combat? How much does it matter then if the wizard can end the fight in three rounds?
Face it: it doesn't matter much at all. It's the spotlight that counts. If the spotlight is on everyone fairly equally, then combat balance doesn't mean a damn thing.
And I'd like to see you address this:
Then let's move on to skill challenges. They're broken. Completely. Frank did an accurate analysis of them that highlights their flaws, one of them most crippling being that it encourages dice spam. The reasoning is simple: you have a pool of successes and failures. Every time someone fails, you grow closer to failing the entire skill challenge. That means that only the people who are likely to succeed are encouraged to participate, since anyone who screws up has the chance of screwing it up for the entire party.
