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Tydanosaurus
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Post by Tydanosaurus »

In MMO's, which is where 4E gets its terms, Control powers affect a mobs abilities to move. Those are going to be Mezzes - Holds, Stuns, Immobs, and Sleeps. Because 4E is turn based instead of RTS, some of the terms don't translaste directly, but robbing of attacks is a debuff b/c it limits, but doesn't stop, mob movement. B/c 4E is turn-based, you could say it's a control power b/s it's more like a RTS Immob, but then you're not talking about the same thing as 90% of the gaming community (the ones playing with pixels) mean when they say it.

Whether a power is a mez or a debuff is something you can waste a lot of time worrying about, but doesn't really matter in the end. I think 4E is trying to use MMO terms, and doesn't think of robbing standard actions as control powers, b/c it's something Warlocks and others do a lot of (as non-Controllers), and Wizards don't do much (as Controllers). YMMV.
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Post by Voss »

I'm old enough to recognize that MMO terms (like these roles: defender=tank=fighter= fighting man) come from D&D originally, so it really doesn't matter.

Control isn't some stupid jargon term, its simply control- you dictate what something else does. And when you get down to, the 'controller' class doesn't do that any more than anyone else does. Sure a wizard can stun or daze or whatever, but so can everyone else. What makes the 4e wizzard distinct is that it has more ranged area damage. And that sucks so bad it isn't even funny. Piddly little damage doesn't even matter, and isn't even vaguely a measure of control.
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Post by Tydanosaurus »

Defender isn't an MMO term, although confusingly it's the CoH name for healers. The MMO terms come largely from coding. Debuffs affect mobs differently than mezzes. Depending on the game, and the code, scaling has to be different.

-edit-and it is jargon. If you say "I debuffed the crap out of the mob with my mez," no one will know what you're talking about. If you say, "I mezzed those mobs with my slow," you'll get a lot of WTF?1!??!!? If you say, "I like to control w/ my debuffs," you'll get a lot of "Kick the noob."
Last edited by Tydanosaurus on Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Angry_Pessimist
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Post by Angry_Pessimist »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Psychic Robot wrote:Heh. More than a few posters there have an anti-P_R fetish. I think they achieve sexual gratification by bitching about my alleged trolling.
Welcome to my world.

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No, it's supposed to read "Welcome to the Internet."
Last edited by Angry_Pessimist on Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Voss »

Tydanosaurus wrote:Defender isn't an MMO term, although confusingly it's the CoH name for healers. The MMO terms come largely from coding. Debuffs affect mobs differently than mezzes. Depending on the game, and the code, scaling has to be different.
No, its the 4e term. For fighters. People like to babble that they're based off MMO tanks, but those are based off fighters. Its a continuous loop where the game is supposedly being influenced by things that were influenced by the game in the first place.

-edit-and it is jargon. If you say "I debuffed the crap out of the mob with my mez," no one will know what you're talking about. If you say, "I mezzed those mobs with my slow," you'll get a lot of WTF?1!??!!? If you say, "I like to control w/ my debuffs," you'll get a lot of "Kick the noob."
It is jargon, but its meaningless jargon. If you just use the actual word, it makes just as much, if not more sense.


But eh, I doubt anyone really cares. Just chalk it up to more 4e stupidity.
Last edited by Voss on Mon Jul 14, 2008 10:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Tydanosaurus
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Post by Tydanosaurus »

Voss wrote:
Tydanosaurus wrote:Defender isn't an MMO term, although confusingly it's the CoH name for healers. The MMO terms come largely from coding. Debuffs affect mobs differently than mezzes. Depending on the game, and the code, scaling has to be different.
No, its the 4e term. For fighters. People like to babble that they're based off MMO tanks, but those are based off fighters. Its a continuous loop where the game is supposedly being influenced by things that were influenced by the game in the first place.

-edit-and it is jargon. If you say "I debuffed the crap out of the mob with my mez," no one will know what you're talking about. If you say, "I mezzed those mobs with my slow," you'll get a lot of WTF?1!??!!? If you say, "I like to control w/ my debuffs," you'll get a lot of "Kick the noob."
It is jargon, but its meaningless jargon. If you just use the actual word, it makes just as much, if not more sense.


But eh, I doubt anyone really cares. Just chalk it up to more 4e stupidity.
You say much truth, Jedi. I'll post something about this in a new thread, b/c IMO it's kind of interesting and shows where 4E has gone badly wrong even in what it tried to do.
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Post by Harlune »

Voss wrote: No, its the 4e term. For fighters. People like to babble that they're based off MMO tanks, but those are based off fighters. Its a continuous loop where the game is supposedly being influenced by things that were influenced by the game in the first place.
To be fair, it is MMOs in particular that spawned the concept of the 'Tank Class' as being a non-damage dealing slab of meat in a tin can with a tower shield and a nerf sword who gets a monster's attention by calling it mean names and jumping up and down saying 'hey look at me!' rather than stabbing it in the face really hard.

The MMO tank concept really goes against what the D&D fighter was suppose to be.
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Post by Tydanosaurus »

Which begs the question, why no Taunt for defenders? It's the signature Tank ability, and it's gone. Why? It's almost like WotC said, "Hmmm. An ability that lets Fighters perfectly perfrom that protect-the-party role. nah, let's just give them a minor to-hit debuff instead."
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Post by Surgo »

Which begs the question, why no Taunt for defenders? It's the signature Tank ability, and it's gone. Why?
Probably because 4e wasn't actually based on MMOs, and that's just some meme.
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Post by Voss »

Harlune wrote:
Voss wrote: No, its the 4e term. For fighters. People like to babble that they're based off MMO tanks, but those are based off fighters. Its a continuous loop where the game is supposedly being influenced by things that were influenced by the game in the first place.
To be fair, it is MMOs in particular that spawned the concept of the 'Tank Class' as being a non-damage dealing slab of meat in a tin can with a tower shield and a nerf sword who gets a monster's attention by calling it mean names and jumping up and down saying 'hey look at me!' rather than stabbing it in the face really hard.

The MMO tank concept really goes against what the D&D fighter was suppose to be.
Nope. That was the Fighting Man in the original versions of D&D. You either played several of those, or you rolled well enough to play a real character and you stupid behind the line of meat, and they protected you from the big scary monsters while you did real things with spells.

This continued through the first several variations of D&D. 1st edition fighters got jack and shit for class abilities. They had all of two things- they could make multiple attacks against creatures with less than one hit die, and they eventually got multiple attacks per round. Weapon specialization came later (in Unearthed Aracana), and was simply a minor bonus and extra attacks earlier. 2nd edition continued this trend. Nothing exception weapon specialization for the poor fighter. BXCMI was even worse. Weapon mastery rules didn't hit until the Master set. Companion rules allowed them to stop being fighters (and become knights and paladins instead), but being a fighter was still the lowest of the low.

So the slab of meat that didn't do damage? Yeah. D&D all the way. Weapon damage didn't scale for shit. The best you could do was hope that the DM would take pity on you and just give you the combination of items and artifacts (gauntlets, girdle and hammer) that would really let you pretend to be Thor.

3rd edition actually improved fighters quite a bit. But didn't go far enough. 4e is actually a step back for fighters (and cripples everybody else with a severe kneecapping).
Last edited by Voss on Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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What's broken in 3.5

Post by Midnight_v »

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1056341

So fucking mindless, some of these guys should be cock slapped.

People bitch incessantly but most of them don't know whats wrong.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Voss wrote:So the slab of meat that didn't do damage? Yeah. D&D all the way. Weapon damage didn't scale for shit. The best you could do was hope that the DM would take pity on you and just give you the combination of items and artifacts (gauntlets, girdle and hammer) that would really let you pretend to be Thor.

3rd edition actually improved fighters quite a bit. But didn't go far enough. 4e is actually a step back for fighters (and cripples everybody else with a severe kneecapping).
Bullshit. In D&D, damage didn't scale much, but neither did HP. A 2e great wyrm red dragon had 27 HD, or about 120 HP. A 3e GWRD has 40 HP, for 660 hp.

A 2e balor had 13 HD, about 60 HP (vs. 290). The tarrasque had only 300 HP.
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Re: What's broken in 3.5

Post by Psychic Robot »

Midnight_v wrote:http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1056341

So fucking mindless, some of these guys should be cock slapped.

People bitch incessantly but most of them don't know whats wrong.
My contribution:
Lololololololol.

"Nothing's broken because your DM can fix it!" vs. "Magic is broken!"

It's like abortion politics run amok: "Let's kill newborns!" vs. "That blob of cells is a sentient human being!"
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Post by Absentminded_Wizard »

Tydanosaurus wrote:Which begs the question, why no Taunt for defenders? It's the signature Tank ability, and it's gone. Why? It's almost like WotC said, "Hmmm. An ability that lets Fighters perfectly perfrom that protect-the-party role. nah, let's just give them a minor to-hit debuff instead."
There are actually a couple of Fighter powers that do that: Come And Get It (7th-Level Encounter) and Warrior's Urging (Level 23 Encounter). It is kind of interesting that there are so few (and nothing in the paragon tier).
Voss wrote:Nope. That was the Fighting Man in the original versions of D&D. You either played several of those, or you rolled well enough to play a real character and you stupid behind the line of meat, and they protected you from the big scary monsters while you did real things with spells.
I've heard this one so often, I have to respond. This actually isn't true, at least for fighters vs. spellcasters. In OD&D and BD&D, Fighters and Wizards both only needed one score of 9. For fighters, it was strength; for wizards, it was intelligence. "Rolling really well" consisted of rolling a high score in the right stat back in those days, when you rolled your abilities in order.

Now, in AD&D, rolling higher did let you get into a better martial class (paladin, ranger, or, if using UA, barbarian or cavalier). Then, in 2e, every class group basically got one base class and one or more classes you could get into by rolling high enough. Warriors had the ranger and paladin; rogues had the bard (and yes, for the younguns, that was a pretty good deal in 2e); priests had druids and, if you were playing in FR, specialty priests; and wizards had the specialists which would require a 16 in one of your abilities.

So, yes, this idea of rolling well to get into superior classes has a long history in D&D, but not the way people have been talking about.
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Re: What's broken in 3.5

Post by Angry_Pessimist »

Midnight_v wrote:http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1056341

So fucking mindless, some of these guys should be cock slapped.

People bitch incessantly but most of them don't know whats wrong.
Internet message boards aren't known for witty comments and sublime intellectual arguments.
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Post by Voss »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:
Voss wrote:So the slab of meat that didn't do damage? Yeah. D&D all the way. Weapon damage didn't scale for shit. The best you could do was hope that the DM would take pity on you and just give you the combination of items and artifacts (gauntlets, girdle and hammer) that would really let you pretend to be Thor.

3rd edition actually improved fighters quite a bit. But didn't go far enough. 4e is actually a step back for fighters (and cripples everybody else with a severe kneecapping).
Bullshit. In D&D, damage didn't scale much, but neither did HP. A 2e great wyrm red dragon had 27 HD, or about 120 HP. A 3e GWRD has 40 HP, for 660 hp.

A 2e balor had 13 HD, about 60 HP (vs. 290). The tarrasque had only 300 HP.
HP didn't scale much, but they scaled more than damage did. And I'm more than willing to say that dropping the HP cap was one of 3rd edition major and serious flaws. It broke a hell of a lot.

A 1st level fighter (with con and str maxed, which is absurd, but whatever) had about 14 hit points, and a 20th level fighter had about 118. That same fighter (at 1st level) did roughly 13.5 damage if he had max strength and weapons specialization, and did about 28.5 damage assuming a belt of storm giant strength and a +5 weapon (so about 57 per round with two attacks). Damage is up by a factor of 4.2, and HP are up by a factor of 8.

But more importantly, there was nothing for the fighter to do but move in and make his two attacks. By contrast, a 12th level wizard was seriously forcing Save or Dies with a first level spell- chromatic orb. And thats the simple shit a wizard could do.
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Post by Psychic Robot »

Get ready, folks: here comes the good stuff.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread ... ost4381386

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.ph ... st16349839

I'm making popcorn as we speak.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Well apparently just being on the gaming den warrants banning from enworld now.

I blame Frank.

Well.

You know what I mean.

... and it's a pretty damning indictment of enworld bias and stupidity that this is the case.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:46 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Psychic Robot »

Well, fuck me three ways to the weekend. Permabanned for that? Shucks.

I mean, really, it wouldn't be flamebait if they weren't such a bunch of jackoffs. I guess that posting an interview that has some negative aspects (read: unbiased statements) in it is trying to start a flamewar.

I guarantee people have been watching this forum since I joined, waiting to tattle to the mods so that they could ban me.

Really, though, the worst part is that the ENWorld mods are Nazis in comparison to the WotC mods. But what really makes my day is in the WotC thread:
It's pretty funny. You cross-posted this across every board you could find, got banned at least from one for trolling, and yet to failed to realize that this info is week(s) old, and not seen by anyone but you as "we couldn't figure out how to make it work".

How is it going so far?
Last edited by Psychic Robot on Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Angry_Pessimist »

Psychic Robot wrote:Well, fuck me three ways to the weekend. Permabanned for that? Shucks.

I mean, really, it wouldn't be flamebait if they weren't such a bunch of jackoffs. I guess that posting an interview that has some negative aspects (read: unbiased statements) in it is trying to start a flamewar.

I guarantee people have been watching this forum since I joined, waiting to tattle to the mods so that they could ban me.

Really, though, the worst part is that the ENWorld mods are Nazis in comparison to the WotC mods. But what really makes my day is in the WotC thread:
It's pretty funny. You cross-posted this across every board you could find, got banned at least from one for trolling, and yet to failed to realize that this info is week(s) old, and not seen by anyone but you as "we couldn't figure out how to make it work".

How is it going so far?
Edited, first question didn't make sense: Do you have anything better to do than post on Internet Message Boards full of people that hate your guts?
Last edited by Angry_Pessimist on Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by SphereOfFeetMan »

Psychic Robot wrote:Well, fuck me three ways to the weekend. Permabanned for that? Shucks.
Plane Sailing is such a douchebag.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread ... ost4381386
Plane Sailing wrote:So, you think it is a good idea to post trolling threads on ENworld in order to cause arguments for your own amusement?

(http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48649&start=540)

You're gone.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread ... 363&page=4
Umbran wrote:Okay, folks, listen up!

I don't want to see any of you, ever again, bring things from other message boards here to support an argument against one of our users. For one thing, doing so constitutes an ad hominem argument - you are addressing the character of the poster, rather than the content of the posts. We generally discourage that.

For another, as a matter of policy, we judge people by what they do and say while they are here.


If you find evidence that someone is using another board to organize people to make trouble here, you should make the mods aware of it. But otherwise, what happens on other boards stays on other boards.

If you feel someone is a troll, report their posts. Don't feed the troll. Don't accuse the troll. Trolls feed on attention, and the more time you spend trying to stir up trouble against a troll, the more enjoyment they get. The most effective thing you can do to discourage trolling is to not rise to the occasion - ignore them. Trolls die if they get lonely.

I hope I've made that clear. If you don't understand, please take it up with one of the mods in e-mail. Our addresses are in a post stickied on the top of the Meta Forum.
So. Plane Sailing is acting against Enworld policy in order to ban someone for posting unflattering factual statements about WotC. This is not the first time he has done this. He is also acting against Enworld policy in order to make an ad hominem argument. Nice.

Seeing as how Enworld is now paid directly by WotC, and given the above statements, they can only be viewed as a biased corporate shill.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

I though you all hated ENworld? Why the tears?
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Post by Neeeek »

SphereOfFeetMan wrote:
Umbran wrote: If you find evidence that someone is using another board to organize people to make trouble here, you should make the mods aware of it. But otherwise, what happens on other boards stays on other boards.
I wonder if that's what they think is going on here.

If they are reading this: It's not. Most of us don't bother having an account there. We just think your stupidity is hilarious.
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Post by Angry_Pessimist »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:I though you all hated ENworld? Why the tears?
I can safely say that most people here are not crying, but laughing.
Last edited by Angry_Pessimist on Tue Jul 15, 2008 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by SphereOfFeetMan »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:I though you all hated ENworld? Why the tears?
No tears. Just pointing out hypocrisy and blatant favoritism.
Neeeek wrote:
SphereOfFeetMan wrote:
Umbran wrote: If you find evidence that someone is using another board to organize people to make trouble here, you should make the mods aware of it. But otherwise, what happens on other boards stays on other boards.
I wonder if that's what they think is going on here.
Apparently, one person linking to Enworld constitutes "evidence that someone is using another board to organize people to make trouble here" when the poster posts unflattering facts about WotC. At least by PS's standards.
Neeeek wrote:If they are reading this: It's not. Most of us don't bother having an account there. We just think your stupidity is hilarious.
+1.
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