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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 6:52AM
#11
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Game balance is partially an illusion. It will never be truly achieved, and that's because certain aspects of the game simply become either too powerful, or not powerful enough. Sometimes, with system mastery as an example, it is an intentional design. Others, like much of 4e, it is an unfortunate byproduct of limited testing and poorly linking with existing and future options.
Personally, 3.X was fine for me. We pretty much went about our lives in a closed group and never worried about what others were doing. But this doesn't make the truth of its natural flaws any less real. 4e too was a pleasant experience, and I was able to do more in it on an effective scale than in 3.X, but the system dragged on into redundancy, and it eventually came to the point where we were paying for existing options to be stuck on other classes due to how closed the class system was. Both situations were able to breed good games and creativity, but suffered from bad system design aspects that prevented them from really letting their players go nuts without becoming CoDzilla or the like. 5e has a chance to start new, and sweep away all of the poor decisions from older editions and adopt the good ones. Hopefully, the design team will look to all editions equally, and drop this foolish notion that one edition is superior in some way when all editions carry an equal amount of crap around with them.
Out with the bad and in with the good, folks. Only way 5e is going to live up to its design intent.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 7:47AM
#12
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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1) Yes, that is my daughter. But the picture is outdated. She is now 3. I just took her to see the muppets a few days ago. I have never seen a happier kid. Then we sent shopping yesterday. Turns out even 3 year old girls love shopping...
2) I don't mind vancien magic being reintroduced into the game. I don't mind varying systems of resource management. I don't mind capturing some of the spirit of older editions (and am very happy that they are doing so, as I miss much of the spirit of 2e D&D, and do feel that 4e strayed to far from the "soul" of D&D, so to speak).
3) Monte's recent articles, both on balance, and in terms of his L&L articles, have been making me very hopeful. In fact, the only thing I have heard about 5e since I wrote that original post (upon its initial release, before we had any information about the game) that has worried me is a lack of skill mechanics. Meanwhile, it is Monte's article on skills that I found really inspiring. All in all, so far, I have to say I am happy with what we have heard from Monte (recently).
4) It was the article quoted above that originally worried me. But, so long as Monte doesn't plan on intentionally including trap options this time around I am happy. Balance is a big thing to me. I don't mind the devs trying to capture the spirit of 3e mechanics... but if they also capture its imbalance I am going to sit this edition out. Balance, by the way, doesn't necessarily mean forcing each character to be equally effective in combat. I just want each class to have the option to be equally effective in combat. I also hope that the game features spotlight design (in which there are a number of equally mechanically robust areas of the game which characters can specialize in mechanically speaking, and which explicitly includes combat as just another area in which a character can choose to spotlight specialize).
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 7:54AM
#13
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Date Joined:
Dec 10, 2008
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It wasn't intentional, it was just his way of justifying the state of things.
I can't read Mr. Cook's mind. I don't know him from Adam. But with all due respect, I thought the same thing the first time I read that quote. Not saying I would have done any better at the time. I agree with the sentiment of the topic's subject though - I really hope balance is central to Next and that while system mastery isn't a bad thing, there aren't any "trap" options.
OD&D, 1E and 2E challenged the player.
3E challenged the character, not the player.
Now 4E takes it a step further by challenging a GROUP OF PLAYERS to work together as a TEAM.
That's why I love 4E.
"Your ability to summon a horde of celestial superbeings at will is making my ... BMX skills look a bit redundant."
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 8:46AM
#14
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Date Joined:
Aug 30, 2007
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Yeah, I completely agree with Dave on this.
Now yes, anytime balance is mentioned people jump in to point out that perfect balance is impossible. Well no kidding. We don't need perfect balance, but that doesn't mean it should just be chucked out the window and not even attempted. A certain degree of relative balance is all that really matters.
Also on the note of system mastery, the positive aspect of system mastery will never go away, nor do I think it should. What do I mean by this? To me, positive system mastery is players that understand the system finding combinations that aren't game-breaking but work really well together, and they feel rewarded for doing so. That's fine. Negative system mastery is what MC mentions, when trap options are deliberately included to punish players that don't have system mastery, while players that do have it are simultaneously rewarded by finding powerful combinations. Those two aspects together create huge disparities in character ability, and most players aren't ecstatic to discover that they were punished for being new to the game.
Owner and Proprietor of the House of Trolls.
God of ownership and possession.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 9:36AM
#15
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Date Joined:
Aug 15, 2007
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Agreed. Trap options are the devil. 5e especially need to avoid laundry lists of feats. I would love, absolutely love, to see no more than 30 feats in the 5e player's handbook. I want every. single. feat. to be very close in power, very interesting mechanically (no +1 to attack or +3 to one skill check), very flavorful, and absolutely nonessential to any character archetype or mechanical build (no feat taxes. Nothing that even distantly resembles a feat tax). I only want to see the 30 very best feats that Wizards can come up with.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 4:14PM
#16
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Let's all play nice, now, and be sure that we are staying within the Code of Conduct.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 6:06PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Mar 19, 2004
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Emphasis on system mastery is all well and good... in a competitive game. I think that's where some of Monte's design decisions for 3e failed; they were inspired (read: hindered) by PVP mechanics.
side from which, people should note that balance without cost is always a desireable. It's outright nonsense to argue against balance alone just for the sake of it.
also lol @ president luthor avatar
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 6:48PM
#18
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Date Joined:
Sep 26, 2001
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I'm worried that the 3ed/ Pathfinder players won't have much of a voice on this site. We are standing at the door and knocking, wanting to come back to the Grandfather of Role Playing games, you need to let us back in.
4e has been killed less than 4 years into it's run. No edition of D&D has had such a brief shelf life.
Do you honestly think no one was listening?
Love 4e? Concerned about its future? Join the Old Guard of 4e"You want The Tooth? You can't handle The Tooth!" - Dahlver-Nar. "If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly" - E. Gary Gygax
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 7:01PM
#19
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Date Joined:
May 19, 2011
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I cna say right now if 5e doens't even try to balance, I will not give it a second glance.
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1 year ago ::
Feb 04, 2012 - 7:48PM
#20
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Date Joined:
Aug 28, 2009
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I don't mind the devs trying to capture the spirit of 3e mechanics... but if they also capture its imbalance I am going to sit this edition out. Balance, by the way, doesn't necessarily mean forcing each character to be equally effective in combat. I just want each class to have the option to be equally effective in combat. I also hope that the game features spotlight design (in which there are a number of equally mechanically robust areas of the game which characters can specialize in mechanically speaking, and which explicitly includes combat as just another area in which a character can choose to spotlight specialize).
Yes, balance is perhaps the most important factor in my and my group's D&D game as well.
Still, we can influence the new edition's design to some extent: by expressing our opinions and preferences publicly and by going to the "D&D Next" playtests hoping that Wotc will hear us and that we are in the majority of a given group of thought.
In the end, Dave, all it's not lost even if we don't receive what we like.
Like you awesomely said, if the final product isn't to our liking, we won't give a single $ of our money to Wotc products and just leave till the next edition hopefully comes along. We will simply keep playing what sides our tastes.
Heck, it's what I recently did with DnDi: I am not happy with it anymore so I cancelled my subscription renewal.
Simple thinking, really.
Moderated by
ORC_Ragnar
on Feb 05, 2012 - 11:06AM
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