Author Topic: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?  (Read 11467 times)

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Sunic_Flames

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #60 on: January 08, 2009, 12:22:06 PM »
First of all, Kaelik = win.

With that said the biggest thing is the blandification and the grind.

First, blandification. I play illusionists. I play shapeshifters. I play gishes. I play summoners. I play multithreats. I play necromancers.

4.0 does not fucking support any of this!

Instead, it tries to force four box design, except with smaller boxes. With fucking shit covered spikes on the inside.

Given that I've realized four box design is an utter fucking joke the entire time, why would I support something that tries to make me even more narrow and completely useless outside of my tiny little niche? I could play a mother fucking 3.5 Monk and get a better deal than that. And Monks have it worse than even Fighters.

Now the 4.0 fanboys will inevitably try to counter with 'just make it up'. Except there are several problems with this.

A: As Kaelik and others have already made clear, any character who has real fucking abilities automatically wins the entire game. Level 1 3.5 Wizard > Level 30 4.0 anything for actually doing shit that matters. Even the mother fucking 3.5 Fighter and Monk easily trump anything 4.0 has to offer.

B: The alternative is just more blandification and empty hand waving bullshit. Also, it quickly drains your wallet.

C: If I felt like designing my own entire system mechanics for entire concepts, I'd just make my own goddamn system and fuck spending my money on something that's useless to me because it can't stop blowing horses for pocket change to fucking do what I need it to do. As an added bonus, I could sell that system and actually make money instead of wasting it.

Next, the grind. A brief comparison between a Fighter and the high end of enemies across editions.

In 1st edition you did 1d8+6 or so, several times a round, at full THAC0. Meanwhile gods/dragons/elder demons had double digit HP, so this was seriously actually pretty fucking good. Of course those same enemies could 1-2 round you, but eh.

In 2nd edition, not so different. I forget the details, but now you were fighting stuff with around 140 HP on the outside instead of 88, and you had the same or better damage. You're still alright.

In 3rd edition, now 500-1,000 HP are the norm. Your damage is better than 1d8+6, but you now take attack penalties and can barely move while still being remotely relevant. Even so, with enough optimization you can plow through the big HP bag before it destroys you.

In 4th edition, now we're up to... what the fuck was it? 1,400 HP? Except the Fighter's damage is back where it was in 1st or 2nd edition... so he gets to have fun scratching the mob to death. Meanwhile it does the same to him, because a level 29 mob seriously cannot OHKO a level 1 character, much less do meaningful damage to a level 29 character. Then there's a fuckload of trivial minor bullshit like +1 for one round you're honestly expected to care about, and more to the point lots of shit that makes encounters even slower.

Seriously. 4.0 would have been better off as a computer game. Then it does the math for you, it tracks all the irrelevant bullshit for you, and because getting through a round means flipping through a few menus the fact it's taking some arbitrarily high number of rounds doesn't matter as much. Just like a FF game. Imagine how bad those would suck if you had to roll for 'Firaga' a bunch of times and you see why 4.0 Fails. As a pen and paper game is just grossly magnifies the preexisting Grind. Also, computer games do hack and slash better both because of the doing math for you, and because of the pretty graphics and such which further distracts you from the Grind. Meanwhile computer games do anything except hack and slash poorly, so the whole inflexibility, inability to affect the world, very crude social mechanics that only get implemented because of hardware limitations that prevent actual roleplaying? Perfectly at home in a computer game. A blatant insult to every pen and paper DM everywhere as it is directly stating that the DM's brain is incapable of handling making a real world that characters can actually influence, characters that aren't super narrow one trick ponies, and some social mechanics are worth a shit (even the Fail that is the 3.5 skill system is still far better than the Epic Fucking Fail Abortion that is 4.0 'Skill Challenges'). This is a 'Chrysler: Thank you America! America: Fuck you Chrysler!' moment. Except WotC instead of the car company.

This is just the beginning of 4.0 Fail. The tip of the iceberg, as it were. I could go on for several pages, but I'll just summarize by saying later versions are supposed to fucking improve upon their fucking predecessors, not pull a fucking Microsoft Vista.

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[spoiler]
Sunic may be more abrasive than sandpaper coated in chainsaws (not that its a bad thing, he really does know what he's talking about), but just posting in this thread without warning and telling him he's an asshole which, if you knew his past experiences on WotC and Paizo is flat-out uncalled for. Never mind the insults (which are clearly 4Chan-level childish). You say people like Sunic are the bane of the internet? Try looking at your own post and telling me you are better than him.

Here's a fun fact: You aren't. By a few leagues.
[/spoiler]

Soda

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #61 on: January 08, 2009, 01:02:20 PM »
Seriously. 4.0 would have been better off as a computer game.
Hah, I'd play that game.

My answer: 3.5 feels real to me, 4.0 doesn't.

Tshern

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #62 on: January 08, 2009, 01:18:21 PM »
I am not too familiar with 4e, but this block of text really summarizes my thoughts the same way Ubernoob's did. Too much categorizing and option reducing as well as useless padded sumowrestling. Let's see what we get when the 5e comes in 2011.

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Anklebite

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #63 on: January 08, 2009, 01:30:39 PM »
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Sunic_Flames

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #64 on: January 08, 2009, 03:06:23 PM »

Your entire argument is false. Time to be educated.

First of all, AC 53 at level 20 is not high. It's not even that good. In fact, just about anything that cares about melee will hit you on a '2'. The fact your DM needed True Strike to get through this instead of picking a CR 20 creature at random out of the MM that isn't the Balor or Pit Fiend (casters, who don't care about AC at all instead of just 95% of the time) is a testament to his extreme incompetence, not in any way representative of you being remotely durable or useful.

Second, death attack is blocked by the same things sneak attack is. The fact you were not simply immune outright is a testament to your failure as a player. Note this is also a failing of the Monk, as they have a much harder time getting immunity than anyone else. They still can though, which is why it is also your fault.

Third, in addition to your AC in fact being trivial which is already covered, there are additional failings in your statement. They do not have 'uber saves'. They don't even have very good saves. See, to have uber saves you need to have a good save progression, your primary stat boosting those saves, and be a caster so you can further them boost them. Instead you just have the good progression, but tied to a secondary stat and are not a caster - so your saves are half decent at best. Maybe, if you're lucky your so called good saves will be better than a caster's bad save by one point or something. Otherwise you completely and utterly fail at getting good saves. SR? Are you actually serious? SR = level + 10 is a total joke. If it ever blocks any spell, ever you should consider yourself extremely fortunate you're fighting an incompetent caster - you might actually survive the entirety of round 1.

Immunities? To what? Disease and poison, and that's it. Both things that are only level appropriate at low levels due to trivial save DCs and easily dealt with via means also level appropriate at those levels... except you get immunity to disease at level 5, when it's no longer relevant and immunity to poison at level 11, when any real character auto passes nearly every poison save they will ever encounter.

Lastly, their self healing is fucking 2 points per fucking Monk level a day, and they don't even get it until level 7.

Monk: Look at me, I might actually negate a single attack from a single foe if I burn a round on it once a day! I'm so awesome!

Real character: Why do we bring this clown along again?

Other real character: The lulz. And he's a cheaper pack mule while we save up for a Bag of Holding. Shame about him leeching the XP though.
Smiting Imbeciles since 1985.

If you hear this music, run.

And don't forget:


There is no greater contribution than Hi Welcome.

Huge amounts of people are fuckwits. That doesn't mean that fuckwit is a valid lifestyle.

IP proofing and avoiding being CAPed OR - how to make characters relevant in the long term.

Friends don't let friends be Short Bus Hobos.

[spoiler]
Sunic may be more abrasive than sandpaper coated in chainsaws (not that its a bad thing, he really does know what he's talking about), but just posting in this thread without warning and telling him he's an asshole which, if you knew his past experiences on WotC and Paizo is flat-out uncalled for. Never mind the insults (which are clearly 4Chan-level childish). You say people like Sunic are the bane of the internet? Try looking at your own post and telling me you are better than him.

Here's a fun fact: You aren't. By a few leagues.
[/spoiler]

Midnight_v

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #65 on: January 08, 2009, 03:27:49 PM »
the problem with that is that allowing it would end up with 4e having the same problems that 3.5e had... ya know, the ones that promted them to make 4e...
Ahh but therein lies the bullshit.

The brokeness of 3.5 didn't "prompt" anything  :eh . . . thats a Goddamn lie.
The realization that "we need to generate more profits than we have been is the "Prompting" for 4th
edition.
Further multiclassing options equal problems which is what people are telling you. Thats does not equal by the way.

You could eaisly put out rules compendiums 2-X to fix the problems, but that wouldn't fix the problems...

It's just a money thing. Lets not kid ourselves.
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Anklebite

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #66 on: January 08, 2009, 03:44:02 PM »
well, about that monk.... you see, that was my first ever dnd char. period.  i didn't even KNOW what optimizing was back then...
the monk was, if fact, very poorly built.

it was also my DM's first real campain, but he sent us up against things for our party's CR, which the monk absolutely raped without issue, and without really ever getting hurt.

-  -   -   -  -

as for 4e being "only for making money", if thats all they wanted they could have just made a few more splatbooks.  that would be far easier than trying to remake an entire system...  but, then again, now they can remake all the old splatbooks, so i guess that is a possibility.
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Negative Zero

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #67 on: January 08, 2009, 03:46:41 PM »
If they made three new splatbooks, people might buy some of them if they were good. If they make a whole new system, all the DMs will have to buy all three, the players will all have to buy at least one, and then there are splatbooks on top of that. It would be a foolproof plan if people wanted to buy it.

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Re: People that dislike 4e, is this the reason?
« Reply #68 on: January 08, 2009, 05:11:41 PM »
This has gone beyond just a friendly debate and is in the heated territory.

anomalousman- it's your thread, is this ok?

I'm locking until I get an answer.  If you are fine with name calling and yelling, then I'll unlock and you need to edit the first post (Put a warning in the end of the post that this is not friendly territory and use the exclamation point for the message icon) and it can continue.

If you want to keep it an open, friendly debate, then we can see about salvaging but 1/2 of the posts from the last 2 pages will be deleted.

Your thread, your choice.
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