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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:19PM
#81
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Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2010
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Do you acknowledge that perfect balance is impossible, and affirm that you should always strive for the best balance possible? Or do you use the truism to CYA, and dismiss any balance problems?
What you quoted, is both actually:
"On the other hand, perfect balance is a complete myth. If people want to build broken characters, they are going to find ways to bend the system and options to completely outdo everyone else.... Building everything in perfect balance would lead to a boring game." The CYA is the first two sentences. But that last sentence, about it leading to a boring game, is indeed about striving for the best balance possible. With "best" meaning something other than "perfect." This is a crucial point, and I don't care how cynical you think you are, it's worth attempting to understand. Whether it's bad or boring is most certainly not irrelevant, because the goal is to design a game that isn't bad or boring. In fact, I'd argue that whether it's boring is way more relevant than just about any other criteria you could use.
D&D Next = D&D: Quantum Edition
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:25PM
#82
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I don't buy into that Lokiare. Some money is better than no money and 3.5 was printed up to the end more or less, same thing with 2nd ed and 1st ed prinitng overlapped with 2nd ed.
4th ed is the first ediiton to go oop 2 years befroe the next ediiton hits the shelves. I don't think that is a good sign no matter how you cut it. DDI is still up so I would assume thats still making money. I'm not disputing 4th ed sold well to start with but it seems clear it did not retain the people who tried it.
I more or less expected PF to be a bit more successful than the other D&D clones but when they are supporting minis, a PC game is in the works and alot of 3pp has joined them thats not a great sign either.
Put simply the "yay 4th ed failed part" is vastly outweighed by "doh I'm not getting a fixed 3.5 anytime soon" and the "doh D&DN in its current form is boring" followed by "doh I would prefer d20 2nd ed or maybe 4.5 over D&DN".
Pathfinder won I suppose but its a own goal and a pyric victory IMHO.
Whether you buy into that doesn't matter. Its simply how businesses work. If they think they can make more money by doing something else, even if it is only a 5% increase they are required by corporate bylaws to pursue that new method. They are required to increase profit every quarter or lose their jobs. That is how corporations work. So when they saw pathfinder take the lead, they knew there was a way to make more money, so they scrapped 4E and chased after it...
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:29PM
#83
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Balance does not seem to be a meaningful consideration, WotC commentary dismisses balance as impossible, and promises 'guidelines' for those who want to take a stab at it.
Well that's just flatly wrong, in all regards.
Balance is impossible (and undesirable):
"On the other hand, perfect balance is a complete myth. If people want to build broken characters, they are going to find ways to bend the system and options to completely outdo everyone else....
Building everything in perfect balance would lead to a boring game."
Legends & Lore RPG Design Philosophy
DM's who want balance can have some guidelines:
" DMs will have a crystal clear guideline on how many rounds of combat a group should tackle before resting. If the group spends less time in fights, casters grow stronger. If the characters spend more rounds fighting, the fighter and rogue grow stronger. The solution to the problem rests in the DM's hands, who can use the tools and guidelines that we provide, plus keep track of how long fights take and adjust adventures accordingly." Legends & Lore The five-minute Workday
Well if that's really how they feel, I might as well just give up on play testing this garbage. I only have two main deal breakers. An option to play a non-vancian Wizard, and a balanced game. If they can't do that, I'm gone...
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:34PM
#84
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Thing is, for many 4e fans, Essentials was not 4e.
I just don't get this attitude at all. I can understand people not liking essentials. Theres alot of 3.5 splats I don't like but I do not claim that the minatures handbook, or the Complete Psion or the legacy weapon book is not 3.5.
I think the hardcore 4th ed players got an ideal in their head about the perfect version of 4th ed (whatever that is) and anyhting that deviated from this ideal was bad and not 4th ed. Even if essentials was a blatant grab at the old school crowd (which I don't see as essentials is still 4th ed to me). Maybe it was the everything is core mentality that was pushed in 4th ed IDK. In 2nd ed and 3rd ed if you didn't like something you basically ignored it. Players Option books in 2nd ed I don't think were that popular or at least on the grognard sites they are not but you don't really see people claiming they are not second ad and they do not get blamed for TSR tanking and 2nd ed trundled on for another 4-5 years after them.
Thats probably why I am sceptical of the blame essentials mentality and to me they ither indicate 4th ed bloated to fast as there is really only so much you can do with XYZ damage and 20 odd status effects form a design point of view or 4th ed was in trouble in 2009 and essentials was a rush job to appeal to the 3.5 crowd which I doubt as the 3.5 crowd doesn't really like them either because its still 4th ed at the end of the day. I liked parts of essentials but I only dealt with it via DDI and I have never seen a dead tree format essentials book.
Maybe it was the essentials length as a rubbish 3rd ed book was a stand alone product. THe next one might be better just wait and see.
Essentials was 4e, in the sense that it had 4e printed on the cover, so to speak. In many ways, it diverted from "traditional" 4e design principles in such a way as to not appeal to many (but not all) 4e fans.
If what you liked about 4e wasn't evident in Essentials, then you probably didn't like Essentials, even though it "belonged" to your favorite edition.
Essentials zigged, when I wanted to continue zagging.
Roll dice, not cars.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:35PM
#85
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How exactly are you defining balance? Because "balanced" has a pretty concrete definition.
No it doesn't. Just look at any one of the multi-hundred post threads on the subject.
Perfect balance means no deviation from the balanced state. This is enforced balance, and it is bad. It makes the game boring, and the devs have it exactly right in this regard.
Perfect balance is, indeed, impossible. Thus, the idea that it might theoretically be 'bad' or 'boring' is irrelevant - no matter how hard you try for balance, it won't be /perfectly/ balanced. At the imperfect levels of balance we have to work with, complex, better-balanced games give more viable/meaningful options than equally complex but poorly balanced ones, because they have fewer 'trap' options and no (or few & swiftly errata'd) overwhelmingly superior ones.
While the impossibility of perfect balance is fine, as far as it goes, what really matters is what you take from that truism. Do you acknowledge that perfect balance is impossible, and affirm that you should always strive for the best balance possible? Or do you use the truism to CYA, and dismiss any balance problems? The L&L articles that so much as acknowledge that balance might be a design consideration seem to come down on the side of dismissing it. The game can't be perfectly balanced, so don't complain when it's not balanced, at all.
If that sounds cynical, BTW, that's because I'm self-admittedly very cynical. ;(
Please stop repeating the fallacy that 'perfect balance is impossible'. Perfect balance IS possible, its simply not worth the trouble of pursuing. It can be accomplished, but it probably shouldn't as it would take 10 years and some very powerful software and hardware to run all possible combinations and then permute them into usable data, modify, and then repeat until they had a final product. Instead perfect balance is not worth pursuing...
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:35PM
#86
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Date Joined:
Apr 15, 2001
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Balance does not seem to be a meaningful consideration, WotC commentary dismisses balance as impossible, and promises 'guidelines' for those who want to take a stab at it.
Well that's just flatly wrong, in all regards.
Balance is impossible (and undesirable):
"On the other hand, perfect balance is a complete myth. If people want to build broken characters, they are going to find ways to bend the system and options to completely outdo everyone else....
Building everything in perfect balance would lead to a boring game."
Legends & Lore RPG Design Philosophy
DM's who want balance can have some guidelines:
" DMs will have a crystal clear guideline on how many rounds of combat a group should tackle before resting. If the group spends less time in fights, casters grow stronger. If the characters spend more rounds fighting, the fighter and rogue grow stronger. The solution to the problem rests in the DM's hands, who can use the tools and guidelines that we provide, plus keep track of how long fights take and adjust adventures accordingly." Legends & Lore The five-minute Workday
Well if that's really how they feel, I might as well just give up on play testing this garbage. I only have two main deal breakers. An option to play a non-vancian Wizard, and a balanced game. If they can't do that, I'm gone...
Would you settle for a non vancian spellcaster?
Reducing a character to a list of dice rolls and modifiers is not role playing*
*pg 30, AD&D 2nd Ed DMG, 1989.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:39PM
#87
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Balance does not seem to be a meaningful consideration, WotC commentary dismisses balance as impossible, and promises 'guidelines' for those who want to take a stab at it.
Well that's just flatly wrong, in all regards.
Balance is impossible (and undesirable):
"On the other hand, perfect balance is a complete myth. If people want to build broken characters, they are going to find ways to bend the system and options to completely outdo everyone else....
Building everything in perfect balance would lead to a boring game."
Legends & Lore RPG Design Philosophy
DM's who want balance can have some guidelines:
" DMs will have a crystal clear guideline on how many rounds of combat a group should tackle before resting. If the group spends less time in fights, casters grow stronger. If the characters spend more rounds fighting, the fighter and rogue grow stronger. The solution to the problem rests in the DM's hands, who can use the tools and guidelines that we provide, plus keep track of how long fights take and adjust adventures accordingly." Legends & Lore The five-minute Workday
Well if that's really how they feel, I might as well just give up on play testing this garbage. I only have two main deal breakers. An option to play a non-vancian Wizard, and a balanced game. If they can't do that, I'm gone...
Would you settle for a non vancian spellcaster?
Not if its cursed or has dragon skin and claws. I have to be able to play it as a Wizard with all the traditional fluff that goes with it and not be tied into things like innate abilities and limited spell lists that are missing iconic Wizard spells. If they create a second arcane class called a "Mage" and it is a carbon copy of 4E's Wizard, I would be fine with that...
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:46PM
#88
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I think thats what I don't understand. not sure if they stated wht 4th eds design goals were or if people kind of projected there own thoughts onto it. Essnetials seems balanced if a little boring and from what I have heard essentials characters won't create massive problems balance wise in a 4th ed game. Balance being a key goal of 4th ed I suppose.
Were Essentials characters fundamentally over or underpowered? In most cases, no (coughcoughVampirecough). What they did lack was equitable resources and freedom of choice compared to "old" 4e, all in the name of simplicity.
Was simplicity a wrong thing to pursue? I won't say that unequivocally. I personally didn't care for it, nor desired it, for a number of reasons, but I won't deny the appeal.
Part of the appeal of 4e to people like me was the near balance in effectiveness, yes, but it was also the equitable resources and general uniform structure to the design that made encounter and adventure planning easier, as well as made "sharing the spotlight" a little easier, since every character had a means to shine in their own way in each pillar.
Essentials lacked that in some respects.
Essentials zigged, when I wanted to continue zagging.
Roll dice, not cars.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:47PM
#89
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Date Joined:
May 25, 2012
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Thing is, for many 4e fans, Essentials was not 4e.
I just don't get this attitude at all. I can understand people not liking essentials. Theres alot of 3.5 splats I don't like but I do not claim that the minatures handbook, or the Complete Psion or the legacy weapon book is not 3.5.
I think the hardcore 4th ed players got an ideal in their head about the perfect version of 4th ed (whatever that is) and anyhting that deviated from this ideal was bad and not 4th ed. Even if essentials was a blatant grab at the old school crowd (which I don't see as essentials is still 4th ed to me). Maybe it was the everything is core mentality that was pushed in 4th ed IDK. In 2nd ed and 3rd ed if you didn't like something you basically ignored it. Players Option books in 2nd ed I don't think were that popular or at least on the grognard sites they are not but you don't really see people claiming they are not second ad and they do not get blamed for TSR tanking and 2nd ed trundled on for another 4-5 years after them.
Thats probably why I am sceptical of the blame essentials mentality and to me they ither indicate 4th ed bloated to fast as there is really only so much you can do with XYZ damage and 20 odd status effects form a design point of view or 4th ed was in trouble in 2009 and essentials was a rush job to appeal to the 3.5 crowd which I doubt as the 3.5 crowd doesn't really like them either because its still 4th ed at the end of the day. I liked parts of essentials but I only dealt with it via DDI and I have never seen a dead tree format essentials book.
Maybe it was the essentials length as a rubbish 3rd ed book was a stand alone product. THe next one might be better just wait and see.
Zardnaar, I am fine with folks differing on opinions of their favorite edition of the D&D game , however I would request as a Matter of respect that you refrain from using such edition warring names such as 4 venger, and grognard. These terms imply a judgement of others prefered playstyles and will only invoke flame and grate on peoples emotions. If you want to use either derogatory term to describe oneself then that is a self definition. I.E. I Brightmantle an old school Pre WOTC D&D fan am a grognard. Not "I visit the Grognard sites and see _ ". You are inviting a flame war. I appriciate your opinions and insight but will report you if you continue this behavior. It is Baiting for an edition war.
Nothing personal.
Brightmantle, 1st Knight of the Brave order of WTF. Representing the entire D&D fanbase and welcoming Multi Edition Input to make Next the Best D&D ever,
"Edition wars kill players and that kills D&D"
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 4:49PM
#90
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Date Joined:
Apr 15, 2001
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Lokiare do you expect the mage on release though? Class varients have usually been in splats.
Foxface I understand people not liking essentials, I don't understand claims that its not 4th ed- see comments about 2nd ed 3rd ed having rubbish splats as well.
Brightmantle I'll try to change some of the wording. I am hard to offend on a personal level and it doesn't bother me if people call me a grognard or various other labels or 4 letter words.
I can understand why people don't like XYZ edition of the game but a 2nd ed sourcebook is still a second ed sourcebook even if its rubbish sound better?
Reducing a character to a list of dice rolls and modifiers is not role playing*
*pg 30, AD&D 2nd Ed DMG, 1989.
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