Well, I think the simple answer is that people see what they want to see and don't see contraindications. That much is probably certain. They're looking for something to complain about in many cases (not all, but many).
But I think you speak to a bigger issue. Do you think it's possible that the very thing people wanted (speaking generally about alot of the improvements in 4E, but also specifically about the magic item implimentation) ended up making the game less desirable for them?
Also, not to nitpick and I've certainly never made this complaint, but the 1E Flametongue was significantly cooler than the Flaming Weapon. And very different mechanically.
1. It could burst into flame on a secret command word or phrase and be used as an everburning torch. The 4E Flaming Weapon....not so much. The flavor text mentions something like this but the only corresponding mechanic is for typing the damage. No out of combat utility is mentioned. (As a DM, I would allow it but I've seen this very thing not allowed in a public play scenario) 2. It also had a FOUR stage gradient of bonus to hit and damage, depending on what you were attacking. The 4E version has a single static to hit bonus regardless of whether or not the enemy has the vulnerable fire keyword. So, whereas the flametongue increases your ability to hit the baddies who don't like fire, the Flaming Weapon does not. In this regard, the wielder of a flametongue loves nothing better than to seek out those who don't like fire, because he would be MUCH more likely to hit them. The 4E Flaming Weapon has none of that feel. 3. The Flametongue was a CONSTANT ignite risk, meaning it could always cause ongoing fire damage (assuming the wielder had instructed it to ignite), whenever it came into contact with something that could burn, including enemies. The Flaming Weapon can only set an enemy on fire (cause ongoing fire) damage once per day.
Again, I'd never think to complain about this because, well, who cares, but honestly, the Flame Tongue is way cooler.
Just sayin.
I don't know about looking for things to complain about. I think people just don't very often know how to articulate things. I don't think they very often analyze what it is that's bothering them. I think 4e magic item implementation shows a few things. First of all, while the leveling items were a logical concept, it just added a lot of clutter. In some ways it was good, but there were too many items that weren't really all that different. Clearly enhancement bonus should just go away. I doubt it will, but it really should. There should be less items, like with powers, the more you have the less distinctive each one is. Less can be more. If 4e has a cardinal sin it is just too cluttered with minor variations of things.
There are no really significant differences in mechanics between the 4e flaming weapon and the flametongue though. The '4 gradients' was unworkable because it listed a small list of specific monsters that Gary happened to think of when he wrote it down, and the chances you actually were fighting that monster was pretty slim. Having that many distinctions wasn't all that useful anyway, the "its flammable or it isn't" approach in the 4e version works because splitting hairs just isn't that distinctive. The difference between a +2 and a +3 is to piddly to be worth all the trouble that looking it up every time was worth.
I also don't understand why you discount the flavor text in 4e, yet basically the same flavor text in the 1e version is 'cool'. Of course fire sheds light, there's no way you can have fire that doesn't do that, the OD&D "Monsters & Treasure" description of a flametongue didn't mention light either IIRC and nobody had any problems realizing that fire sheds light or else you couldn't see it at all... I honestly don't recall anyone ever using any of the command word rules. Nothing would suck more than getting a magic item and having the DM tell you that you didn't know the command word, lol. It could be story hook, but here again is a difference that I liked with 4e, it didn't dictate that kind of story thing. You use a minor action to ignite it, well, what are you doing with that minor action? Its up to the players/DM to decide. Again, saying some command phrase should be such an obvious possibility it really doesn't need to be spelled out. Also, the whole thing with doing more damage isn't a 'one time thing' with 4e either, all your attacks are fire attacks, so anything vulnerable to fire always takes fire damage. It is just a more robust way to do the same thing as the 1e version, and the 'damage boost' power is a whole extra bennie, you can do extra damage to ANYTHING once a day/encounter (whichever it is).
Anyway, it illustrates something that I observe a lot these days. People seem to need every little thing spelled out. The most amazingly obvious things, like 'fire makes light' or 'you can upgrade an item and call it a treasure parcel' seem to escape people. I don't know if there was something different in the water back in the day or what, lol.
"There are no really significant differences in mechanics between the 4e flaming weapon and the flametongue though. The '4 gradients' was unworkable because it listed a small list of specific monsters that Gary happened to think of when he wrote it down, and the chances you actually were fighting that monster was pretty slim. "
I would call a weapon with a static +1 vs. EVERYTHING and another weapon with +1, +2, +3, +4 vs. a varied list of creatures pretty significant.
If you want to say it was unworkable (I disagree) that's one thing. BUt to say they're not different, well, that's just not true.
A "flaming" weapon that can cause ongoing fire damage once per day and one that can do it constantly is also a pretty significant mechanical difference IMO.
The whole "everything for everybody" approach is going to be very difficult to achieve and playtesting has the potential to be a giant mess unless it's handled properly.
I disagree. After reading through this forum, I've come to the realization that WotC can NEVER reconcile the hurt feelings after players spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a game system, only to see it scrapped in 3 years. No matter how much Pathfinder codpiece you kiss, you're not getting those players back - they've already made their investment in a new system. The ONLY path for WotC's continued success is to bring new players to the game - which points back to my suggestion earlier today: don't focus on rules, focus on teaching DM's to be better storytellers.
The BEST thing I've gotten from attending DDXP and GenCon is to play many, many games of 4e with different DM's of all stripes and colors. In one game, my DM and I were a party that got TPK'd. The DM for that game apologized, but all 6 players at the table THANKED HIM for running an awesome game that kept us on the seat of our pants. It encouraged my DM to take the kid gloves off and throw trickier challenges at our party. [At higher levels, some DM's stop using minions. This is a mistake. Push your players to their boundaries. Be fair, not mean, and force them to use their heads to think through situations so it's not just a splatterfest]
You can have a fun time playing any edition of D&D. The most important thing to remember is that this is a GAME and you're supposed to have fun. With my group of experienced gamers (half of us are in our 40's) we've spent entire evenings roleplaying with 4e rules, yet never needing to roll dice for a single encounter. Not all new players and DM's could do this, I'm certain, but since we're all working together to create interesting characters and even more interesting stories, I'm not sure how changing something as unimportant as the ruleset would encourage us to play more D&D or buy more books. This has taught me that the thing D&D needs most is not new books and a new system of rules for us to learn. No, we need more DM's who understand how to bring their friends together, or even strangers, and teach them how to ROLE PLAY. Don't forget that the 4e book Players Strategy Guide talks not just about min/maxing your characters, but about using your imagination and creativity.
And feel free to tack on the Wil Wheaton quote: DON'T BE A ****. That's a message that far too many gamers don't take to heart (along with the positive effects of the regular use of soap).
Yeah, I think there's little prospect of a sudden mid-edition edition roll gaining WotC a huge amount of cred with people that aren't happy with them already and ARE happy with another game. This is going to be an expensive proposition for them. I think the worst part on that side is a LOT of people play both games, but all of a sudden there's little motivation for those people to buy more stuff from WotC, so they automatically turned into Paizo customers instead of customers of both companies.
I can't help feeling like a 'retro' D&D at this point is a sort of 'tombstone edition' too. Go back to the old ways and you have a game that AT BEST gets to appeal to the old crowd, which was already a shrinking group that doesn't sustain the game. Make yet another new game and what's the advantage of that over the existing 4e variation of that, which already peeved many grognards? I'd have to say with the die already cast go for as modern a game as you can and at least you have the prospect of the new generation of players. If they really hammer one out that's a 10 in every respect, well maybe at least it will be the game of choice going forward and you can hope a lot of your old customers will drift back. I certainly hope it is a largely forward-looking game. I already have all the old editions, lol.
Training new DMs... Well, yeah, but you have to have the old DMs around to train the new DMs. That's the way it really mostly happens.
" If they really hammer one out that's a 10 in every respect, well maybe at least it will be the game of choice going forward and you can hope a lot of your old customers will drift back."
I think this is the thinking at WotC. I think it was also the thinking with Essentials, but they maybe didn't give it enough time.
I also think they see the retroclone craze and realize that 4E was, first and foremost, not bringing in ENOUGH new blood to offset all those people getting back into the game and NOT choosing modern D&D. If they can make a game that does a better job at bringing in new blood AND doesn't actively reject the retro folks, they'll have a winner. Tough job? Very much so. Worth shooting for? I think so.
I would call a weapon with a static +1 vs. EVERYTHING and another weapon with +1, +2, +3, +4 vs. a varied list of creatures pretty significant.
If you want to say it was unworkable (I disagree) that's one thing. BUt to say they're not different, well, that's just not true.
A "flaming" weapon that can cause ongoing fire damage once per day and one that can do it constantly is also a pretty significant mechanical difference IMO.
The 'varied list' of creatures though was only a small fixed list of creatures, all from the MM since that was all that existed at the time. It isn't that it was "unworkable", it was just damned awkward because you had to look up the list every time (or write it all on your sheet, but why should the PC know which was which). The difference between +1 and +4 is fairly noticable, but the difference between +1 and +2 is trivial and unlikely to be noticed at the table, it should have been just one list that got +4 and if that was too much then the question was why use that mechanic? In practice it just wasn't a big deal.
Except again, the 1e flametongue didn't do ongoing damage, such a thing didn't exist in 1e. The 4e version and the 1e version do the same thing. They do extra damage against any creature that is susceptable to fire, except the 1e 'susceptable' was a hard-coded list that wasn't shared with other almost identical things and the 4e version is a keyed list that works how you would expect (IE just because a creature took extra damage from a flametongue why doesn't it take extra damage from a fireball too, it was an inconsistent mechanic). So the mechanics are actually not different in any way that is really meaningful at the table. In fact the 4e weapon does things that the 1e version doesn't (turns any attack made with it to fire and can do an extra burst of damage plus ongoing damage once a day).
So again, there's a lot of perception that really doesn't match up with the reality. 4e magic items are mostly no more 'bland' than the 1e ones. They are simply presented in a consistent way that actually makes sense, and obvious things are assumed not to need to be restated. Again, the point is that people's perceptions don't particularly match up with the reality of the thing. Really I see the main difference as 1e had maybe 10 distinct magic weapons total, 4e has who knows how many, but it is a lot. I can only assume that more is less. That's my experience anyway. As a DM I find most of these variations of weapons to be just noise I have to filter out. Many of them are fine items, but I just don't need anything like the number that exist and with a short iconic list the players are more likely to be excited by getting an iconic item.
The same thing goes with powers in particular. Again, practically every spell you can find in your 2e PHB spell lists exists in 4e (and we have a lot of unique ones in 4e too). Yet the perception is 'blandness'. The problem IMHO is just when you have 500 wizard spells they tend to just blur together. I think each class should have more like 50 powers. Compress the game down to 18 levels, that gets rid of the need for so many levels of powers, then make most powers scale so you don't need to have 10 of basically the same thing, and you now get to have 50 really distinctive looking things that covers most of what the 500 powers did before. Making sure they all have the old-fashioned names won't hurt either, but I suspect Mike will figure that out for himself. That was one thing I really failed to understand with 4e, why they insisted on ditching classic names for both items and powers. That made no sense.
What's stopping new people from liking the old rules? The answer is nothing so I don't understand the point that was made.
It's like you have to be from the mid 70's to 80's to be able to enjoy the rules. I know for a fact that this isn't true because I've had some young people really dig 2nd edition D&D.
Remember this, what may be old and familiar to you is actually something new and exciting to someone that has never seen it before.
I would call a weapon with a static +1 vs. EVERYTHING and another weapon with +1, +2, +3, +4 vs. a varied list of creatures pretty significant.
If you want to say it was unworkable (I disagree) that's one thing. BUt to say they're not different, well, that's just not true.
A "flaming" weapon that can cause ongoing fire damage once per day and one that can do it constantly is also a pretty significant mechanical difference IMO.
The 'varied list' of creatures though was only a small fixed list of creatures, all from the MM since that was all that existed at the time. It isn't that it was "unworkable", it was just damned awkward because you had to look up the list every time (or write it all on your sheet, but why should the PC know which was which). The difference between +1 and +4 is fairly noticable, but the difference between +1 and +2 is trivial and unlikely to be noticed at the table, it should have been just one list that got +4 and if that was too much then the question was why use that mechanic? In practice it just wasn't a big deal.
Except again, the 1e flametongue didn't do ongoing damage, such a thing didn't exist in 1e. The 4e version and the 1e version do the same thing. They do extra damage against any creature that is susceptable to fire, except the 1e 'susceptable' was a hard-coded list that wasn't shared with other almost identical things and the 4e version is a keyed list that works how you would expect (IE just because a creature took extra damage from a flametongue why doesn't it take extra damage from a fireball too, it was an inconsistent mechanic). So the mechanics are actually not different in any way that is really meaningful at the table. In fact the 4e weapon does things that the 1e version doesn't (turns any attack made with it to fire and can do an extra burst of damage plus ongoing damage once a day).
So again, there's a lot of perception that really doesn't match up with the reality. 4e magic items are mostly no more 'bland' than the 1e ones. They are simply presented in a consistent way that actually makes sense, and obvious things are assumed not to need to be restated. Again, the point is that people's perceptions don't particularly match up with the reality of the thing. Really I see the main difference as 1e had maybe 10 distinct magic weapons total, 4e has who knows how many, but it is a lot. I can only assume that more is less. That's my experience anyway. As a DM I find most of these variations of weapons to be just noise I have to filter out. Many of them are fine items, but I just don't need anything like the number that exist and with a short iconic list the players are more likely to be excited by getting an iconic item.
The same thing goes with powers in particular. Again, practically every spell you can find in your 2e PHB spell lists exists in 4e (and we have a lot of unique ones in 4e too). Yet the perception is 'blandness'. The problem IMHO is just when you have 500 wizard spells they tend to just blur together. I think each class should have more like 50 powers. Compress the game down to 18 levels, that gets rid of the need for so many levels of powers, then make most powers scale so you don't need to have 10 of basically the same thing, and you now get to have 50 really distinctive looking things that covers most of what the 500 powers did before. Making sure they all have the old-fashioned names won't hurt either, but I suspect Mike will figure that out for himself. That was one thing I really failed to understand with 4e, why they insisted on ditching classic names for both items and powers. That made no sense.
Ok, it seems you don't actually know which weapon I'm talking about. It's the 1E flametongue in the DMG. I can't cite the page number as I'm at work, but I'd guess around 150 is where the swords were.
It most definitely wasn't "a small fixed list of creatures, all from the MM since that was all that existed at the time."
Unless you consider Undead a "a small fixed list of creatures". Because that's what it was +4 against. It was +2 against regenerating creatures and +3 against avian or cold using creatures (perhaps swap those because my memory is weak on which was +2 and which was +3). You write that on your sheet and done. Nothing to remember. Very workable.
And I have no idea where the rules would be but you could definitely set things on fire and there was damage they would take until they could put it out. I'm thinking 1d2 or 1d4 per round. I believe it was 1d6 in 3E. Naturally there was no "reflex save" or attack vs. fortitude in 1E. Once they were on fire, they would burn until they would roll on the ground or jump in some water or whatever. But it existed, it just hadn't been "4e-ized" as you say.
There's also definite mechanical difference between being able to set something on fire whenever you want and ongoing fire damage once per day.
I'll not belabor this any more than we have. If you want to ignore the litany of differences, or handwave them as being unworkable, that's fine with me. I can't argue with that kind of response. But again, I think this is all academic, since it doesn't really matter one way or the other unless for some reason you have a rabid love of your 1E flametongue, which apparently somebody did. Personally, I was a Frost Brand kind of guy. +3/+6 vs. Fire Using/Dwelling creatures. Now that I think about it, I really do think the conditional extra +x to hit is pretty evocative. I like it and I can see why some might miss it if they actually gave it some thought (which I hadn't until just now).
What's stopping new people from liking the old rules? The answer is nothing so I don't understand the point that was made.
It's like you have to be from the mid 70's to 80's to be able to enjoy the rules. I know for a fact that this isn't true because I've had some young people really dig 2nd edition D&D.
Remember this, what may be old and familiar to you is actually something new and exciting to someone that has never seen it before.
The thinking is that because so many people have played them for so long and realize how "broken" they are that they couldn't possibly entice anyone new to play the game unless they were as dumb and rudimentary as everyone was in the 70s. At least that's the impression I get. Shrug.
My personal opinion is that the original Red Box is just as enticing to a 10 year old today as it was 30 years ago. I say this simply because I've used it to introduce the game to new 10 year olds and it still works like a charm every single time. The 4E learning curve and heavy mechanical underpinnings make it less friendly to young newbies, but it's certainly not bad. I think any edition going forward absolutely MUST be child friendly. All the hardcore players I know picked up the game in their youth. I think that is a key demo for new players. I think you're less likely to get new 25 year olds playing the game.
My personal opinion is that the original Red Box is just as enticing to a 10 year old today as it was 30 years ago. I say this simply because I've used it to introduce the game to new 10 year olds and it still works like a charm every single time. The 4E learning curve and heavy mechanical underpinnings make it less friendly to young newbies, but it's certainly not bad. I think any edition going forward absolutely MUST be child friendly. All the hardcore players I know picked up the game in their youth. I think that is a key demo for new players. I think you're less likely to get new 25 year olds playing the game.
What's stopping new people from liking the old rules? The answer is nothing so I don't understand the point that was made.
It's like you have to be from the mid 70's to 80's to be able to enjoy the rules. I know for a fact that this isn't true because I've had some young people really dig 2nd edition D&D.
Remember this, what may be old and familiar to you is actually something new and exciting to someone that has never seen it before.
The thinking is that because so many people have played them for so long and realize how "broken" they are that they couldn't possibly entice anyone new to play the game unless they were as dumb and rudimentary as everyone was in the 70s. At least that's the impression I get. Shrug.
My personal opinion is that the original Red Box is just as enticing to a 10 year old today as it was 30 years ago.
A ten year old today may have been playing WoW for 4 years and just got Skyrim for Xmas I think they have utterly different expectations and paradigms.
