The End of 4e D&D.

[Crissa]

Resale: vendors paying a very small percentage of item price (like, Atiesh used to cost 25 gold - I think it can no longer be sold now, I may be mistaken). In WoW, it encourages trade. In 4e, it is utter shit.

Since when do WoW mages need some sort of Orb/Rod/Dildo to cast spells?

Since the beginning. Phat lewt gives stat increases.

In WoW used magic equipment is only worth its raw material. You couldn't trade artifact gear from one character to another. And yes, they took out the ability to resell rare items. But it isn't 'worth a fraction of its price': If you sell a car to another person you get more than you sell to the scrap yard or the smelter.

And WoW mages don't need the item, and they're not ties to a single item. If they have a sword and see a better rod, rod it is. 4e characters are sunk when the wrong thing drops - which is even more often than in WoW.

-Crissa

[Lago PARANOIA]

Nitpick: I have played almost every gold box game in existence.

Any chance we'll ever get a thread highlighting your experiences?

[magnuskn]

What Crissa said. I thought the point Frank was making was that 4E and WoW both force you to clutch a special item to cast spells. Which in case of WoW is not so.

[Username17]

What Crissa said. I thought the point Frank was making was that 4E and WoW both force you to clutch a special item to cast spells. Which in case of WoW is not so.

A 4e character can cast spells without their special stick or whatever, they just won't because they get large numeric bonuses for holding shit in their hands. It would even be possible in 4e to switch from holding a staff to holding a tome in order to "spec" yourself for something else - if hypothetically that didn't require way more equipment than the treasure guidelines suggest you will own.

The point is merely that Mearls and Slavicsek both went on rants about how they were bringing in number boosting equipment that happened to be exactly the number boosting equipment people carry in WoW, and that they had been playing a bunch of WoW. It really is that simple.

-Username17

[Crissa]

But Frank, in WoW it doesn't matter if you have an orb or a tome or twinkly wand in your hand - only its stats. As long as it's level-appropriate.

4e cares not only that you have the best item, but that it's a specific shaped item as well.

-Crissa

[Username17]

But Frank, in WoW it doesn't matter if you have an orb or a tome or twinkly wand in your hand - only its stats. As long as it's level-appropriate.

4e cares not only that you have the best item, but that it's a specific shaped item as well.

-Crissa

Crissa, you're being fucking retarded. In 4e, you can cast your Cloudkill with a to-hit bonus from a wand or a to-hit bonus from an orb. It doesn't matter.

There are specific abilities that get bonuses from or require specific equipment. But with the exception of Orb of Imposition, those abilities aren't even good. And that one doesn't even require that your character be using an Orb as his primary, it just requires you to have one on your person to get the bonus.

This is a move towards, but still not even as item fetishistic as WoW's thing where holding a specific Libram might boost a Paladin's Flash of Light spell specifically and not other things.

-Username17

[Crissa]

There are specific abilities that get bonuses from or require specific equipment.

Yes. Like I said, this only happens in a minority of classes, let alone specs, in WoW.

So this isn't from WoW.

Paladin Librams are Relics. Only three classes in WoW even use Relics. They aren't your weapon and you don't use them to whack people with. They don't ever give anything but a bonus to specific abilities. It's like you you might have an Ioun stone.

And you can swap them in and out as nearly a minor move action. Just like grabbing something out of your Handy Haversack.

In this case, 4e's implementation is not like WoW - WoW is more like 3e.

-Crissa

[TheFlatline]

Individual D&D trash fights take as long to resolve as entire WoW instances. If I'm a hypothetical gamer coming over from WoW to 4e, what am I supposed to be getting in return for giving up on anything resembling a real-time, exciting combat?

You've made a massive assumption that WoW's combat is exciting, or even real time.

You can macro the shit out of your actions because they're pseudo-real time, or rather it's essentially round based with a time limit on each round.

How exciting WoW's combat is I'll leave open to debate. I maintain that if WoW's combat was exciting each and every time, they wouldn't refer to it as "grinding".

But all that aside, my "4th is like WoW" argument doesn't even come from individual systems that were ripped bleeding and twitching from WoW and stitched Frankenstein-like into 4th. No, what I mean is that the designers of the game intentionally tried to recreate the whole experience of playing an MMO, and specifically WoW, on the tabletop.

This is a plain shit idea. You're sacrificing the computer, the speed of rules arbitration, the graphical flair, the "massively multiplayer" part of the game, and a tailored, scripted experience. So you literally get the grind, the uninspiring cool-down timer combat, the level treadmill, and many, many of the negatives of the genre, without any of the benefits.

That's my complaint about 4th ed ripping off WoW. It managed to recreate the experience of playing the game. And then take away all the benefits of the genre, so you're left with shit. Instead of designing a game that plays to the strengths of tabletop, they designed a game that would benefit from the inclusion of a computer doing all the accounting for you. Why? Because the designers thought that WoW was cool and therefore, any element of WoW must be cool in whatever iteration it's components were forced into.

This is a shit decision.

[Crissa]

That's a much less lazy argument.

-Crissa

[TheFlatline]

That's a much less lazy argument.

-Crissa

And splitting hairs to defend WoW because 4th ed isn't *precisely* like the game isn't lazy and distracting from the point?

[Crissa]

If you're going to make an argument, don't take the lazy route. Like Frank has never played WoW, he's making assumptions based upon third hand generalizations. The result is that he's mistaking weapon focus feats in 4e for being similar to WoW, when in fact, they're not.

-Crissa

[mean_liar]

Stuff.

Everything you have said here regarding 4e's relationship to WoW is a clarifying beam of coherent light, and I will lean on it in the near term and in the long term will recall it fondly like a warm summer day on a cold night.

[Zinegata]

Yeah, I'd have to agree Flatline elaborated my "They just hate someone trying to apply WoW to a format it doesn't work well with." argument far better.

[souran]

If you're going to make an argument, don't take the lazy route. Like Frank has never played WoW, he's making assumptions based upon third hand generalizations. The result is that he's mistaking weapon focus feats in 4e for being similar to WoW, when in fact, they're not.

-Crissa

Crissa;

Why do you even try. Every thread I have seen here that involves the term WOW is so filled with wrong its funny.

Not only that, but Frank, Lago, PR and others act EXACTLY like all the people they hate on the D&D and Piazzo boards when talking about wow.

They talk out there ass, they generalize and generally they say stuff that is just WRONG and act like that makes there argument about why 4e sucks awesome. Its actually kind of funny.

You could explain the decisions for wow: vendors are designed to remove excess money from the system. Or that the game has strict rules on the trading of magical goods or whatever. It never seems to matter they don't care why wow is the way it is becuase they don't like wow.

Similarly: pointing out that ideas that claim to be "wowish" are actually not that wowish at all because wow does it differently/for a different reason/with a different effect doesn't matter.

On this site WOW is a "bad word" and your repeated attempts to discuss wow or wows effect on table top role playing have always seemed to result in a "wow sucks and it makes d&D suck!" answer.

[Psychic Robot]

Not only that, but Frank, Lago, PR and others act EXACTLY like all the people they hate on the D&D and Piazzo boards when talking about wow.

Suck my cock, you turd of a human being. Cite one instance where I claimed something about 4e that wasn't true.

[Lago PARANOIA]

On this site WOW is a "bad word" and your repeated attempts to discuss wow or wows effect on table top role playing have always seemed to result in a "wow sucks and it makes d&D suck!" answer.

Thanks for not seeing the forest for the trees, souran.

Hell, I said in the previous page that the '4E is WoW' slur has traction for three reasons.

The first one is that people hate WoW to begin with and slur 4E
The second one is that while people don't hate WoW, they use it as a proxy scapegoat for why 4E sucks. If 4E took a lot of mechanics from Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy, then we'd say that '4E is Final Fantasy'.
The third one isn't a value statement against WoW at all. It's a statement about shoehorning things into places that they don't belong.


Going back to your previous statement, I honestly don't give a crap as to if or why WoW's NPC setup, while not making any internal sense, works for the game that it does. I fucking know why you can't attack vendors in that game--it's because it would break the game. 4E decided to port that 'vendors are implied to be invincible' bullshit and 'can't target allies with effects that only affect enemies' crap for no good reason. That problem didn't exist in 3E because that game didn't fall apart if you killed the magic item vendor for goodies; the WBL system sucks butt, but at least it didn't insult us THAT much.

If I up and say 'Gyromancer is a clone of Puzzle Quest because it did X X and X stupid things', it makes no sense whatever that PQ would cry because their game is compared to something shitty.

If you don't like the fact that 4E's fucking-out-of-nowhere new problems have to do with the fact that they came from aping another game, then I don't know what to tell you. It doesn't matter whether WoW is good or if WoW is shitty; the fact remains is that they ported over several mechanics and whether they were good for WoW or not is irrelevant because they were shittily implemented in 4E.

Deal with it, fanboy.

[Crissa]

That hardly makes sense, Lago. On one hand you're saying they have a valid argument because A can be like B; and on the other, you say they don't because they're fanboys and hate one or the other of the games.

I said it was lazy, because it was too open to interpretation. Frank thinks Librams are like weapons. But they're not - they're an item you pull out of your back pocket and say 'suck it, I have Joe Bob's Idol which channels the blue power!' It doesn't stop you from whacking some guy with your stick, and it doesn't replace a stat bonus. They're more like boots of jumping and striding, or an ioun stone focused on an important skill you use in most every battle. That's more 3e than 4e.

Flatline's final argument is better - it doesn't impugn any enjoyment of the game being used to describe it. But you have to reiterate that so that someone coming in halfway doesn't see you just being an ass.

-Crissa

[K]

Personally, I think 4e is exactly like an expanded version of the web game Monster's Den 2 in terms in ruleset.

It's also not as as interesting as an MMO from a play standpoint. More like a web game you play obsessively for a day and then never play again, because in an MMO you at least get to make choices about the loot you get.

[Starmaker]

The result is that he's mistaking weapon focus feats in 4e for being similar to WoW, when in fact, they're not.

Yes they are. A lot of talents are of the "your instant-cast shadow spells deal 0.000002‰ more damage" type AND have like five levels, each adding yet another 0.000002‰.

[TheFlatline]

Yeah, I'd have to agree Flatline elaborated my "They just hate someone trying to apply WoW to a format it doesn't work well with." argument far better.

I don't hate WoW, and I don't think WoW sucks. Shit, I played it for years. It's probably the most polished, and will for some time remain the most polished and playable game of it's genre. It blows every table top RPG out of the water (and probably most of them combined) in both player base and profitability. I applaud Blizzard for it.

But immediately deciding if WoW or MMOs in general have something in them that Tabletop can only benefit by their mutual inclusion, that's a bad decision. And that's literally what we have in statements from the designers. Aping an environment where the "referee" can do millions of calculations each second, and aping it with dice, paper, pencils, and humans, is like shooting puppies in a barrel. It's just a massacre.

Also to nitpick, invincible vendors are an MMO staple, bordering on cliche. It's not unique to WoW.

My original point was that we've passed the place where computer RPGs ripped off tabletop's concepts and design philosophies, and now the tabletop RPGs are ripping off the computer games. That's a significant paradigm change. One for the worse for traditional RPGs simply because it means they aren't trying to innovate as much. They're just trying to retrofit games that are run by computers into a tabletop format.

[magnuskn]

What Crissa said. I thought the point Frank was making was that 4E and WoW both force you to clutch a special item to cast spells. Which in case of WoW is not so.

A 4e character can cast spells without their special stick or whatever, they just won't because they get large numeric bonuses for holding shit in their hands. It would even be possible in 4e to switch from holding a staff to holding a tome in order to "spec" yourself for something else - if hypothetically that didn't require way more equipment than the treasure guidelines suggest you will own.

The point is merely that Mearls and Slavicsek both went on rants about how they were bringing in number boosting equipment that happened to be exactly the number boosting equipment people carry in WoW, and that they had been playing a bunch of WoW. It really is that simple.

-Username17

I stand corrected.

[DragonChild]

Yes they are. A lot of talents are of the "your instant-cast shadow spells deal 0.000002‰ more damage" type AND have like five levels, each adding yet another 0.000002‰.

Interestingly enough, WoW designers have outright said they realize that these talents are boring,and are phasing them out - if you put points into Protection as a warrior, you'll just get defensive stats for free, no matter what talents you get.

Are you listening, Mearls?

I really do believe there's a lot to learn from WoW and other video games, past, present, and future. I may start a thread on that later.

[Zinegata]

I don't hate WoW, and I don't think WoW sucks. Shit, I played it for years.

Nah, I wasn't saying that you who hated WoW.

I'm referring to the people who don't like WoW and 4E mixing. And they don't like this because they realize that not all mechanics from a computer game work well with a tabletop RPG.

I believe that - like you - most gamers have tried and enjoyed WoW, and thus appreciate it. And they know WoW well enough to know that superficial implementations of key concepts to a tabletop game won't make the latter better.

[Draco_Argentum]

The problem with 4e is pulling the wrong shit from WoW. Invincible NPCs makes sense in an MMO as an anti trolling measure. Its retarded in a tabletop game.

WoW fights usually have enough going on to be interesting for the several minutes they go for. Its real time and you need to pay attention. Tabletop can't rely on that, if it takes you a minute to decide to use your encounter power its no loss.

One thing D&D should of learned from WoW is that anything that can be solved with a spreadsheet isn't a choice, its a research tax. WoW is poor at it and so is 4e.

Mechanically a realtime computer run game can't teach anything positive to a pnp game, only pitfalls. Bitching about fluff elements is personal taste. If 4e was good it'd get dismissed as grognardism.

[Neeeek]

Invincible NPCs makes sense in an MMO as an anti trolling measure.

And, despite all the bitching about it, isn't actually true of WoW. You can kill the vendors. Really. Killing your own faction's vendors is tough, but not impossible (it usually takes a major event, like the zombie plague). Killing another faction's vendors isn't even a thing.

It is annoying as hell when they are dead, mind, and making them invincible (better yet, unattackable, so they can ignore random bs) makes sense.