This thread can't have a title because of PhoneLobster.

[PhoneLobster]

Loot farming games are designed so that people have to play them a lot to get loot.

And Diablo 3 is not.

It has a conflicting design goal of "People will play this a lot to buy things from the auction house".

Drop rate of items, mob design, actual item design, the lot is influenced by this goal and it is counter to the goal of using the loot itself as a in game reward to motivate game play.

People are finding that the amount of loot that drops during game play (especially as you progress to higher difficulty levels) becomes more and more sparse and feels unrewarding.

And this is deliberate because they WANT you to feel unrewarded so you go to the auction house and BUY your reward instead of farming it.

Unfortunately I think they've really pushed the balance far too far in favor of the auction house motivation to the point that there isn't enough reward for actually playing the damn game. They might fix this, but I doubt it, as they would have to change some very basic goals and intentions to do so. And regardless, at this stage it is probably already too late. Reputations for games like this are make or break pretty quick these days and this looks like a break.

Edit: Mind you there might well be an RPG design lesson here about conflicting goals regarding item drop rates and how punishing and unrewarding excessively rare item drop rates/progressions can be in actual practice. But it's one of those "how not to do it lessons", so I'm not seeing it being particularly in tune with your original "Lets somehow vaguely copy this awesome unoriginal crappy game!" post.

[John Magnum]

They've already announced that they're making crafting much cheaper and buffing the Legendaries because the current ones aren't satisfying. They are indeed aware that the game currently skews very very far in favor of getting everything off the AH, and they're trying to address that instead of cackling gleefully and going "Just wait until the RMAH opens up and we're EVEN MORE RICH!"

[PhoneLobster]

They've already announced that they're making crafting much cheaper and buffing the Legendaries because the current ones aren't satisfying.

I'm somewhat cynical about this.

First of all crafting needs to be less random and more powerful if it's competing with the auction house, or even with drops. The price isn't the problem. There is some weird ass "first game tax" issue in it that I can't for the life of me comprehend and some weirdness with "future games will still force you through crappy tutorial difficulty play throughs, but while they will take ages will be inexplicably easier in several ways, the most seemingly broken of which is the availability of high level gems on low level characters".

But crafting is a bit of a gimmick non issue.

The legendary thing. Well. The whole Blue>Yellow>Legendary thing is a bit crazy regardless. I mean just why?

Well. There is one possible reason why. Real Money Auction House.

If what they do is release Legendaries that people give a crap about later then it's a new wave of items for people to farm, frustratingly fail to farm and most importantly buy and sell on the RMAH.

The fact that they have already announced that for no good reason the legendary buff will NOT retroactively buff already dropped legendary items to their more modern equivalent standards highly suggests this IS the intention and has ALWAYS been the intention.

I fully expect we will see waves of legendary buffs, additional legendary items and the general item content people felt was lacking on release trickled in to feed the auction house. And I strongly suspect all that content was deliberately withheld or released in a useless nerfy state that will not receive retroactive drop buffs for exactly that purpose.

[Alansmithee]

They've already announced that they're making crafting much cheaper and buffing the Legendaries because the current ones aren't satisfying.

I'm somewhat cynical about this.

First of all crafting needs to be less random and more powerful if it's competing with the auction house, or even with drops. The price isn't the problem. There is some weird ass "first game tax" issue in it that I can't for the life of me comprehend and some weirdness with "future games will still force you through crappy tutorial difficulty play throughs, but while they will take ages will be inexplicably easier in several ways, the most seemingly broken of which is the availability of high level gems on low level characters".

But crafting is a bit of a gimmick non issue.

The legendary thing. Well. The whole Blue>Yellow>Legendary thing is a bit crazy regardless. I mean just why?

Well. There is one possible reason why. Real Money Auction House.

If what they do is release Legendaries that people give a crap about later then it's a new wave of items for people to farm, frustratingly fail to farm and most importantly buy and sell on the RMAH.

The fact that they have already announced that for no good reason the legendary buff will NOT retroactively buff already dropped legendary items to their more modern equivalent standards highly suggests this IS the intention and has ALWAYS been the intention.

I fully expect we will see waves of legendary buffs, additional legendary items and the general item content people felt was lacking on release trickled in to feed the auction house. And I strongly suspect all that content was deliberately withheld or released in a useless nerfy state that will not receive retroactive drop buffs for exactly that purpose.

This is some of the more paranoid, irrational stuff I've read about D3 itemization. The reason old legendaries aren't being buffed is because it's not feasible to do so from a programming standpoint. In D2 when they patched and changed items older versions didn't get changed (which is why even now 1.08 uniques can fetch money from people). It's easier to test and implement new code on freshly generated items than it is to go back over all previous legendaries and attempt to modify them.

And D2 had an auction house, it just took the form of 3rd party sites and random general spam for trade games.

[Chamomile]

PhoneLobster's paranoia is so extensive and resistant to reasoning that I would wonder if he wasn't honestly, medically delusional if it weren't directed purely at totally mundane situations. Much like medically delusional people, however, there benefits of trying to reason with him are nowhere near the costs. Just let him rant.

[DSMatticus]

In D2 when they patched and changed items older versions didn't get changed (which is why even now 1.08 uniques can fetch money from people). It's easier to test and implement new code on freshly generated items than it is to go back over all previous legendaries and attempt to modify them.

I find that totally and completely bullshit. I am almost 100% certain that every item in Diablo 2 and 3 contains an identifier field that indicates what information was used to generate it. Bare minimum, the name which is put on an item can be used to reverse engineer what it actually is fairly trivially. That is a non-issue. It totally could have been done in both games, though I don't know why they specifically chose not to.

And D2 had an auction house, it just took the form of 3rd party sites and random general spam for trade games.

And what does that have to do with anything? Blizzard designed D2, and had nothing to do with the auction houses. Blizzard designed D3, Blizzard runs the auction house and takes a cut.

While the specifics of PhoneLobster's rant are kind of stupid-crazy, there's zero doubt that Blizzard is going to roll out continual power creep in Diablo 3 to keep people buying new items. But you don't need to nerf anything to get power creep: you just pick a starting point, and creep upwards. Which is why PL's conspiracy theories are sort of crazy, but the general thesis that Blizzard is going to pull a patch-for-profit scheme... Yeah. I mean, that's what they already did with WoW; power creep kept people playing, and it cost money to play. Now, it costs money to get your share of the power creep. It's the same idea, except the mechanism for profit is different.

[Username17]

People throw an actual shit fit if their items are retconned. Game companies alienate a lot of people if they retcon stuff that people traded for. So they just say "moving forward, new found items will do such and such instead".

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

People throw an actual shit fit if their items are retconned.

That is a lame excuse for not buffing items as requested by the people with those items.

The people complaining about lame legendaries have lame legendaries, which they don't like as they currently stand. You just claimed that people would "throw a shit fit" if the legendary buff they demanded happened to actually apply to the items they have.

And people call ME the crazy one.

And to make something clear I'm not against the basic concept of the RMAH, I think its a solid revenue stream concept which MIGHT be implementable in a way that wasn't so massively bad for the game. I'm also not against power creep. But the starting points and the design decisions they have made surrounding the RMAH and planned power creep are either astoundingly cynical or massively incompetent.

If you don't want to go with "the dumb bastards got too greedy" then you have to explain why the current state of affairs is so bad with some other rationalization. Good luck with that and I look forward to your theories because from a game design stand point why the fuck they made the crazy decisions about say, legendaries or elite mobs, that they did and openly say they intentionally did, is some pretty fucking crazy shit, especially if we are ruling out "well probably because of the RMAH" as if it were a crazy conspiracy theory instead of the publicly announced future of the game.

So. Anyone got an alternative explanation? Should I hold my breath?

[DragonChild]

Likewise, I am also VERY impressed with WoW design, and think that D&D needs to be more like WoW, not less - there's a lot to learn there.

Can you explain what exactly you think WoW does right?

So OK, I'm going to talk about Cata (the current expansion that is just about over), and Mists (the next expansion that is in beta). I have absolutely no desire to get into stuff like raid difficulties and 10v5 man or quest design or any of that shit. I am ONLY talking class design, end of story.

As a bit of background - in WoW, each class has three specs (like Fire, Frost, Arcane mages) and talents to choose from. From the beginning of the game, talents were trees - put five points in tier 1, get to tier 2, etc. They look like this; http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LZZo

Cata clever changes

-When you pick your spec, you immediately get a bunch of cool stuff that makes you who you are. So if you decide to be a Protection Warrior, focusing on tanking, you immediately get a pile of HP, and a powerful shield slam ability. If you instead went with the Arms warrior (guy who uses a two handed weapon), you get extra damage with two handed weapons and a heavy damage strike. In short, the key thing that makes your character interesting is handed out RIGHT AWAY, rather than later on.

-Each spec also has a "Mastery" stat. This really don't transfer over to TTRPGs, but it's clever. Mastery stat is available on gear, but does different things depending on your spec. For example, Holy Priests (heavy healing spec) have their mastery cause their heals to also place a heal over time. Discipline Priests (more set-up healing; better single target, has force fields, can do some damage) has mastery make all of their force field powers stronger.

-Talents that just gave a numerical bonus to everything; that is, "+5% crit to all attacks", were largely, although not ENTIRELY eliminated. These were obvious choices, and thus they were not choices, and so were removed. Instead, this stuff was mostly just handed out for free!

-Healers were encouraged to do damage, and have stuff to do when nobody is hurt. Two examples; Restoration Shamans have Telluric Currents, a power that makes their lightning bolt spell cause them to GAIN mana, instead of spending it. Discipline Priests have Evangelism and Archangel. As they deal damage, they gain stacks of Evangelism, causing their damage spells to deal more damage and cost less mana. At any time they can pop Archangel - it eats the stacks of Evangelism, restoring a bunch of their mana (usually, more then the damage spells cost!), and giving them a bonus to healing spells for a period of time. Healing classes are rewarded for figuring out when they have time to do something other than heal.

Mists clever changes

-Talent trees just flat out do not exist. Things that were choices before you just GET - if you are a restoration shaman, they give you all of the neat choices you could have chosen before. Of COURSE the healer was going to pick "-10% heal mana costs". It's not a choice, get rid of it. Instead, every fifteen levels you are given a choice of three talents to pick between available to all specs. That is, ALL shamans, be they melee, caster, or healer, pick between the same three talents at level 15. These talents are good for any shaman (ideally), and all serve the same purpose.

Here's some examples. At level 30, as a death knight, you choose between these three powers (note that all of these powers have a similar cooldown timer):
Lichborne: Count as undead for 10 seconds. This makes you immune to charm and fear. Death knights also have a very powerful "Heal an undead" spell, so this lets them fully heal themselves.
Anti-Magic Zone: Creates a large bubble for the party to stand in for 10 seconds. Allies in it take 75% less damage damage. Can only absorb so much damage before it "pops".
Purgatory: When you would normally die, you instead go into "negative HPs" for 3 seconds. Damage continues to occur. If you are healed into positive HP before those 3 seconds are up, you won't die.

Ok so, they're all pretty neat. Even as just someone who is focusing on raiding PvE content, it's a tough choice. Lichborne allows you to ignore a lot of "screw you" combat mechanics like fear, and allows you to heal yourself up if something happens like a healer dies (and as a death knight, you can then revive that healer). Anti-Magic Zone is REALLY useful on a lot of bosses with big nasty magic attacks... but isn't really going to prevent terrible mistakes from occurring. If you get hit by something you weren't supposed to, you were screwed anyway. Purgatory is the best at "Ok, there was an error, but because I have this power we're still good, the fight isn't over". All three are defensive powers, all three stand out at being good for different things, but the hardcore min/maxers can't pick one as best based on anything but preference.

And this was just one example - balancing three options together, "Pick one of these three movement abilities", "Pick one of these three damage abilities", etc, is a lot easier to make a balanced, interesting choice, than "Pick one of any of the talents that exist, ever", or "One of these 30 spells".

[Previn]

Likewise, I am also VERY impressed with WoW design, and think that D&D needs to be more like WoW, not less - there's a lot to learn there.

Can you explain what exactly you think WoW does right?

So OK, I'm going to talk about Cata (the current expansion that is just about over), and Mists (the next expansion that is in beta). I have absolutely no desire to get into stuff like raid difficulties and 10v5 man or quest design or any of that shit. I am ONLY talking class design, end of story.

Well, nothing you just listed is actually good design. In fact Cata made them lose nearly a million customers. Their class design is terrible. You don't see an equal number of classes in terms of representation (warlocks and rogues LOL), some classes/specs are worthless for sections of the game (frost mages raiding? KEK).

Tanks, healers and DPS have never been equal, even if Cata is the closest they've ever been.

Mastery, like Resilience is a band-aid fix for bad design and an inability to balance. The Mists talent trees are the same thing, simplified bandaid fixes because they can't do their job. They're not even going to fix cookie cutter builds with how the Mists trees are laid out because of a stark contrast between PvP and PvE talents and how obviously better some talents are.

Shamans aren't doing lightning bolts because they have nothing to do, they're using them to regulate their mana during raids so they have enough mana. In fact is you're not actively healing, or working on regening your mana in a raid, you suck as a healer and should be booted.

Mist talent trees aren't even 3 of the same type of options at each tier, so that argument falls flat on it's face. That they're rolling everything together leads to massive homogenization. How do you tell a good arcane mage from a bad one? Their rotation is basically 2 buttons. Rogues have the same issue since almost half of their DPS is from autoattacks. It's no child left behind.

The fact that the community has collectively said 'hey this doesn't work, here are the numbers' and been right numerous times and the WoW Devs don't listen shows the signs of their incompetence. Heck for the first few MONTHS of WotLK rogue damage was so bad that other classes were asking for rogue damage to be buffed. Taking a rogue to Naxx was charity.

WoW has been and will continue to be a black pit of bad design headed up by people who don't know game design, or math.

[deaddmwalking]

I don't play WoW, but I think DragonChild's actual points may be valid - he doesn't compare the rogue to the Death Knight - he describes how the options a Death Knight has are balanced against their other choices at those levels.

The fact that a class has meaningful choices without the ability to make a 'bad choice' is a feature of good design.

If WoW included that feature but still made some classes objectively better than others, that doesn't invalidate that point - it just shows that they got some things wrong.

[ishy]

I don't play WoW, but I think DragonChild's actual points may be valid - he doesn't compare the rogue to the Death Knight - he describes how the options a Death Knight has are balanced against their other choices at those levels.

The fact that a class has meaningful choices without the ability to make a 'bad choice' is a feature of good design.

If WoW included that feature but still made some classes objectively better than others, that doesn't invalidate that point - it just shows that they got some things wrong.

Yeah but that isn't what he is saying. He is saying that they keep on reducing the choices you can make so they can be better balanced.

Lets for example do this in dnd 3.5. The wizard instead of being able to choose from 10 spells in level 1, now can only choose from 2 spells.
But those 2 spells are better balanced than the 10 were before.

[DragonChild]

Or more specifically, instead of being able to choose between 30 feats at level 1 for a fighter, and have some of those feats be "You get +1 to hit", which is boring and stupid, you give the fighter five different maneuvers to choose from at level 1, which are interesting and neat. Tighter options, and not having players pick actual bonuses - have them pick ABILITIES.

Previn basically completely missed the point and went into a rant about nothing I was talking about at all, so I'm just going to pretend his post didn't exist.

[Voss]

Previn basically completely missed the point and went into a rant about nothing I was talking about at all, so I'm just going to pretend his post didn't exist.

Actually, he has several good points specifically about things you were talking about, so it would be a good idea to address it. The cataclysm talent changes were pretty horrid for a variety of reasons (mostly around customization, player choice and actually having talents that were worth two shits). Yes, the old system had flaws, but from where I sat (from just pre- Burning Crusade to exactly one month of Cata), character builds went way down hill. The Panda changes are even worse, as you get to make 1 of three choices every 15 levels, and some of them are obviously good, others are obviously bad, and a couple like the last warlock preview for level 60 or 75, were all things that I'd never want on a character.

The design philosophy is clearly 'you are all morons, and we are all lazy, so here is plate of shit to masturbate over. Enjoy, suckers.'

Caveat: giving the talent paths signature abilities wasn't a bad thing. It was one of the few things they did right, but that really had very little to do with the talent tree (and it was horribly stupid to chain it to 'you can't make other choices until you finish this tree'), or more of a belated realization that maybe classes should have signature abilities.

[Previn]

Or more specifically, instead of being able to choose between 30 feats at level 1 for a fighter, and have some of those feats be "You get +1 to hit", which is boring and stupid, you give the fighter five different maneuvers to choose from at level 1, which are interesting and neat. Tighter options, and not having players pick actual bonuses - have them pick ABILITIES.

Previn basically completely missed the point and went into a rant about nothing I was talking about at all, so I'm just going to pretend his post didn't exist.

Really?

I am ONLY talking class design, end of story.

Imbalance between classes on the scale in WoW shows poor class design, either due to mathematical balance issues, or mechanical 'fun play' issues, or both. Every class should be roughly equally represented, and they are not. Warlocks are at basically half what one would expect. PvP ladders similarly show issues with what classes and combinations are viable and which are not because some classes/specs cannot compete.

If people choose not to play classes, the reason they choose not to play them stem from bad design.

Cata clever changes

- You get stuff 'now' isn't a cleaver change. If you were that spec, you should have picked up those abilities. It was placed so that you can't miss critical talents. In many cases you're just getting them maybe 15 levels earlier, but the rate of leveling in WoW is absurdly fast so you probably wouldn't even notice.
- Mastery was a band-aid fix literally put in because they couldn't balance dps/healing/tanking outputs. It was specifically cited by Ghostcrawler as a knob they could turn to tweak those things. If they had correctly balanced and run numbers they wouldn't need it. It also failed in that regurd, and is actually one of the worst stats for several specs.
- Talent trees are still like 80% 'talents that provide numerical bonuses.' In fact talents that don't provide numerical bonuses are in the vast MINORITY. They may have disguised the bonus behind 'you get 1 AP for every 600 armor' but that's exactly what it is. Really they did more 'here's more number bonuses for fewer points' than anything else, which is because they reduced the total number of talents points you earned.
- Healers are NOT encouraged to do damage in raids. 1 of the 4 healers has a talent that they use mainly for mana regen, not for damage. Healers are more capable of operating solo due to damage increases, but that's mechanically different.

Mists clever changes

- Talent trees do exist, you just have fewer choices, and fewer points. Hell they call them talent trees. That is seriously the extent of your 'good design' for MoP?


I'm a rogue, I raid. Let's see what MoP has for me to make choice wise for my talent tree.

Tier 1: 2 'choices' which will actually be 1 choice once the math is done.
Tier 2: 1 choice that might sometimes help, the other 2 are PvP talents.
Tier 3: Not going to be a choice, just going to depend on how poisons work as to which you take.
Tier 4: Only 1 talent for raiding.
Tier 5: Doesn't matter, maybe sort of a choice if I'm the one to deal with adds, but these are all PvP talents.
Tier 6: 2 possible choices, but probably depends on the raid.

So maybe 1 actual choice. Rogue will have lots of choices for PvP specs, but in raiding, they're going to be cookie cutter specs again.

Ok… not so hot. How about as a Blood DK?

Tier 1: 1 ability you basically have to choose since you're the tank.
Tier 2: 1 situational ability (maybe 10% of raids), 1 reduces damage on damage ability and a PvP ability. No choice.
Tier 3: 1 ability you won't need as a tank, 2 that you might want depending on the raid. You'll pick which ever you'll use more.
Tier 4: 3 similar abilities, but it will just be a numbers check on which on you pick. Not actually a choice.
Tier 5: 3 similar abilities, but it will just be a numbers check on which on you pick. Not actually a choice, same as tier 5.
Tier 6: 1 ability if your a tank that you will take, maybe 2 depending on the mechanics.

So maybe 2 actual choices, but probably just 1.

Reducing choices so you can better balance them does do anything if you can't balance things anyways. Just like ripping out most of the game and streamlining everything into powers didn't fix balance issues in 4e. I have yet to see an example of good design presented. You do make a very compelling case for scaling back when you can't handle design though.

[Seerow]

- Mastery was a band-aid fix literally put in because they couldn't balance dps/healing/tanking outputs. It was specifically cited by Ghostcrawler as a knob they could turn to tweak those things. If they had correctly balanced and run numbers they wouldn't need it. It also failed in that regurd, and is actually one of the worst stats for several specs.

Here you're confusing Mastery, the abilities that Classes get for speccing, and Mastery, the thing that gets buffed as you get more of a stat. The two are totally different, and the similar naming caused stupid WoW players no end of grief.

The Mastery Stat by its nature can't be a tuning knob. You can't make a single stat your tuning knob, because all that does is screw with itemization. Secondary Stats need to be worth roughly the same amount. Like Crit, Mastery, and Haste should all be worth similar amounts, so people don't get pissed when haste or mastery shows up on their gear. (Now arguing that this isn't true in all cases is a valid point. When I was playing, my biggest complaint was how Haste was absolute shit for Arms warriors, less than half the value of Crit, and still far below mastery.)

When GC was talking about Mastery as a Tuning Knob, he was referring to the large passive bonuses you get for speccing, because in the beginning, that was all referred to as mastery, even though the Mastery stat only scaled one thing. Again referring to Arms warriors, the Mastery Stat increases the chance of a bonus strike when you hit a target, but the tuning Knob isn't the damage or frequency of that strike, the tuning knob is the flat +20% bonus to all damage, that can be adjusted up or down to get the intended DPS without affecting relative stat balance.

Honestly, it wasn't a terrible design, but it got thrown off by not being used enough, secondary stats not being similarly valued, and not being able to tweak damage up to where it should be for fear of PVP burst damage. (Seriously them trying to balance PVP and PVE using the same mechanics is the long standing source of trouble for their balance. Fixing PVE damage is easy, fixing it in a way that keeps the spec feeling different and not making the spec over powered in PVP is harder.)

[deaddmwalking]

I don't know what part of this isn't clear -

DragonChild did not try to claim that everything about the character generation system in World of Warcraft is good, or even that all of their design ideals were applied equally.

He said something akin: the way these things work are good as an example.

He's saying that having abilities to choose (instead of bonuses) is good. Giving people bonuses automatically is also good (because if they're available as a choice, they are the only thing people choose). When a choice of abilities is offered, each of the choices should be meaningful.

Using that as a starting point, rather than focusing on all the things that World of Warcraft got wrong, seems like a good thing.

Is anyone here arguing that choosing bonuses instead of abilities is more fun?

I can see how having 30 options instead of 3 options might seem better - but if all of the options are really equally good, it's probably not an issue. Since you can't possibly get all 30 abilities, the more abilities you CAN'T have, the more likely you are to suffer from buyer's remorse.

But this reminds me of one of my pet peeves about game design. Let's say that you have 30 abilities to choose from, and they're all available from 1st level. That means when you choose your 5th ability, you're choosing an ability that you didn't care enough about to pick the first four times you had a chance. When you get your 10th ability, it's something you either don't care about, or actually DON'T WANT.

It's important to have 'ability tiers'. Because if you're forced to pick up abilities that you skipped at earlier levels, it's a little insulting. Every 'level up' is a point of diminishing returns (but never by deliberate design).

[ishy]

Choosing bonuses can also significantly change your playstyle and be good as a result.
But if your bonus is +1 to hit to all your abilities than that is obviously crap.

[Previn]

Seerow, you're correct. It's the mastery bonus, not the mastery stat they they intended to use as the turning knob. Mastery the bonus still failed and was still terrible idea. I stand by my original statement about resilience (will fix it), and I hold that Mastery as a stat was a cop out as well.


deaddmwalking, nothing he's said is a good design from WoW though. There's also nothing inherently wrong with choosing between an ability and a bonus to a number, when those two are balanced. The problem is that WoW abilities are terribly balanced, often not even remotely close in value to one another, and that MoP doesn't actually work any differently than before, you just have fewer choices all around. There actual choices in WoW that's the difference between 1% more damage to everything, and a counterspell that never works on bosses.

MoP is a fake out, and it's just trying to obfuscate the numbers enough so that you don't know them. Let's go back to tier 1 rogue. I have the choice between 'abilities cost no energy while stealthed' and 'your stealth doesn't break from hostile actions for 3 seconds.' Technically there's also 'increase your speed by 20% while stealthed' but it's a blatant that you do not take that for raiding if you play WoW as 99% of your time in fighting in a raid is unstealthed.

From a raiding rogue, I run the numbers and pick A if I'm combat, B if I'm assassination and run the numbers to determine if I pick A or B for subtlety.

The only time you really have a choice with MoP talent trees is in PvP, which is a pretty small % of the population. It's seriously taken them 9 years to admit that they can't balance things in a relatively simple system, and that they will basically make everyone use the same talent spec (and they will in MoP just like before) in order to balance things. That's not good design.

[Josh_Kablack]

You know another game that has some good points: Tic Tac Toe

Here's what I think it's good points are

• The way that players take turns is useful and could likely be used well in other games.
• The ease of teaching the game is great, and RPGs could probably learn from it.
• The immense portability and the way the game can be played nearly anywhere with very limited materials is great. If RPGs were more like this, then finding space for them would be less of an issue.
• The quick speed of resolution allows for many games to be played despite limited time. As an adult gamer, I think TTRPGs need to be more conscious of the limited time windows for recreation players with families and associated responsibilities have.
• For players who desire more complexity, it can be extended into the third dimension.

okay, now please post your 1000+ word diatribes about how X's are overpowered and the first mover advantage is insurmountable and the game is boring and totally solved anyways while completely ignoring whether my bullet points above are actually good things or applicable to TTRPGs.

[ishy]

and the first mover advantage is insurmountable

It is not. Tic Tac Toe always turns into a draw.

[Doom]

Only when played optimally by both players.

[Sashi]

and the first mover advantage is insurmountable

It is not. Tic Tac Toe always turns into a draw.

In a properly played game of Tic Tac Toe, there is literally only one correct move after the third (block the current 3-in-a-row threat). On turn 3 Player 1 has the choice of "force a draw" or "lose".

[ModelCitizen]

Only when played optimally by both players.

You mean tic tac toe is a good game unless powergamers ruin it?

[PhoneLobster]

Now if you can't figure out how to use a crowd control ... you are a fucking moron

...

I don't know, but the fact that it works on first-form Belial and most champions and elites does seem pretty impressive.

Long story short. Was able to log in and make a quick check in game on this.

Toad of Hugeness (I would prefer to continue to call Giant Frog), DOES NOT WORK ON ELITES OR HIGHER.

I couldn't even get the bastard to swallow a fallen elite, fallen, like one of the smallest weakest things to be an elite of. It just sat there, tongued them once for no damage and no effect, then continued to sit there doing nothing. Good work Giant Frog, excellent role you are filling there.

So anyway. In your face K. Explain how "I would have to be a moron" for considering THAT to be such a deliberately over nerfy piece of filler crap.