The D&D 4th edition Rennaissaince: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

[Joshua Randall]

4e is a game first and foremost, yes.

But the answer the objection that Encounter/Daily/Recharge-in-general game elements don't reflect reality, I offer the following analogy.

I was an above-average soccer player in my youth. I practiced a lot, I played hard, etc. etc. etc. Every game at all times I was trying my best to help the team win (sports cliché alert). So why is it that only a few times per season was I able to make a truly spectacular play? (One might say I had a "Monthly" power recharge.) Sure, I was only "above average" not "great", so to be expected... but...

The time-based power recharge mechanic in a game would perfectly model Joshua's soccer playing exploits.

So the objection that Encounter/Daily/whatever cannot possibly make sense... au contraire. It's a very clever game mechanic that also helps us tell great stories, stories that mirror reality!

 

[Voadam]

4e is a game first and foremost, yes.

But the answer the objection that Encounter/Daily/Recharge-in-general game elements don't reflect reality, I offer the following analogy.

I was an above-average soccer player in my youth. I practiced a lot, I played hard, etc. etc. etc. Every game at all times I was trying my best to help the team win (sports cliché alert). So why is it that only a few times per season was I able to make a truly spectacular play? (One might say I had a "Monthly" power recharge.) Sure, I was only "above average" not "great", so to be expected... but...

The time-based power recharge mechanic in a game would perfectly model Joshua's soccer playing exploits.

So the objection that Encounter/Daily/whatever cannot possibly make sense... au contraire. It's a very clever game mechanic that also helps us tell great stories, stories that mirror reality!

The counterargument being you did not choose the timing of when to do your once a month spectacular play. You were presumably trying hard a lot but spectacular play is more than just choosing to do so and expending effort to do so, it depends on circumstances being right, etc. So choosing when to do your daily power does not perfectly model your every once in a while spectacular play.

Critical hits on a 20 might be a better model for soccer you where you try hard a bunch but sometimes things are spectacular.

A better analogy for daily powers might be characters in a story sometimes do spectacular things at dramatically appropriate moments such as a climax fight. Bruce Willis in Die Hard with his single last bullet for the end boss being an example. Van Dam pulling it together with a knock out blow after being outclassed and beat up for a while in a martial arts movie.

 

[Tigris]

I don't really play MMOs, but this is an interesting comparison and opens up the discussion of 'what limits on using the most powerful powers every attack, or every encounter add to the fun of the game?'

Clearly in both MMOs and combat-heavy tabletop games, a significant part of the tactical 'fun' is making choices about what abilities to use and deciding when to use particular resources across a session or period of in-game or real-world time.

Actually no, at least not in WoW during its prime. This is not what the fun of (these kind of) MMOs is about. And thats also why I dont think MMOs and 4E are anywhere close.

In MMOs it is about having a good strategy and executing it, while reacting to dangers (evade attacks). There is no tactics involved. You know beforehand exactly when you want to do what. At least for the boss fights.

For the not boss fights (which are called trash fights), there its more similar to what was previously said, but overall it does not really matter. You will NOT use any cooldowns which matter during trash, because during boss fights you want to have everything ready, because thats the challenge, the other parts is just filler.


MMOs are about perfect execution of your strategy during stress over 100s of turns. RPGs are about improvising and tactical play. Making the best of your 5 turns you normally have using your abilities at the best possible time.
Just som examples:

• The difference between a good Arcane Mage and an average arcane mage was mostly just how good they are at their rythm.
  • An arcane mage had to press 1, 1, 1, 2 repeat. Almost the whole fight. After pressing 1 you had to wait for lets say 1 second to be able to press it again. A good arcane mage managed to press 1 after 1.01 seconds. A bad one in average had 1.16 seconds or so.
• As a cooldown reliant class (death knight which only came later is the clearest example so I use that). You would press exactly every 1 second a button. As above you had to make sure to do it exactly every 1 second. Now which button depends on the cooldown, but every players (should) know exactly the priority order of their attacks. You know attack 1 is the most important, followed by attack 2, by attack 3 etc. The cooldowns of attacks was normally exactly X seconds. So a good DK would need to press exactly 1 second after the last press the highest priority attack, which cooldown was up now. No thinking just executing and muscle memory kinda.
• As explained by someone before, there were some abilities with long cooldowns. They had 30 seconds, 2 minute 3 minute or 5 minute. In general you would always use ALL cooldowns you have together, EXACTLY as they are ready again. So you would not think about "is it a good time to use this now?" but you would think "I must use this as soon as the fight starts (some seconds delay to give the tank aggro), and then whenever they come up, this way I might be able to use them 1 more time during the fight).
• Healers are a bit different, but they would often not even really see the fight and mostly just look at life bars, and just tried to heal them as fast as possible after they got damaged: This is how a typical healer screen would look like https://cesspit.net/drupalbackup/storeroom/wow-repository/priestui.jpg
• What made these things "hard" was that you had to move (depending on boss fight) at certain points. As a melee you would need to always stay behind the enemy and move as they move. As a caster you would need to only move when you knew that an attack would be comming to where you are, and then you would try to move the least amount of time possible. (And if you have use a movement ability like a teleport), such that you lose as little time as possible and be able to again press your rotation 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, etc.
• Another big aspect was coordination and having a strategy as a team. You would play with up to 40 people. And you would need to select teammembers accordingly before. And each healer would know exactly who they would need to heal (and were not allowed to do anything else like damage normally). Each tank which enemie(s) to aggro. And damagedealer which target to focus etc. Also the mechanics of the boss would for 99.99% of the people be known beforehand and they would need to watch guides and know when to move. There would be messages (voice text and markes) telling when to move out of an attack.
• Also remember the huge number of buttons you saw in the above image? In actual play you will in 99% of the time only use 5 maybe 7 of your 30-40 buttons. You are optimized to need as phew buttons as possible. 1 button with all cooldowns on them. 3-5 buttons with your best optimized attacks. Sometimes 1-2 "I don't want to die" buttons which are also clear when to use.

WoW is a great example of teamplay, but it is not tactical. You dont improvise, else people will scream at you. You follow order with utmost precision and as efficient as possible.


I agree though, that it is interesting to look for how to do variety, which is a goal in D&D 4E and similar games, but was NOT a goal of WoW and similar MMORPGs. (There the goal was perfect repetition).

 

[Staffan]

4e is a game first and foremost, yes.

But the answer the objection that Encounter/Daily/Recharge-in-general game elements don't reflect reality, I offer the following analogy.

I was an above-average soccer player in my youth. I practiced a lot, I played hard, etc. etc. etc. Every game at all times I was trying my best to help the team win (sports cliché alert). So why is it that only a few times per season was I able to make a truly spectacular play? (One might say I had a "Monthly" power recharge.) Sure, I was only "above average" not "great", so to be expected... but...

The time-based power recharge mechanic in a game would perfectly model Joshua's soccer playing exploits.

So the objection that Encounter/Daily/whatever cannot possibly make sense... au contraire. It's a very clever game mechanic that also helps us tell great stories, stories that mirror reality!

Putting on my 4e skeptic hat for a moment... I think a lot of the criticism against limited-use powers, particularly for martials, is that they are under your own control. Sure, sometimes you do better than other times... but to many, that's called "rolling a crit". Your peak performance is rarely something controlled by yourself, but in 4e it is. Some find that very verisimilitude-breking.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Your peak performance is rarely something controlled by yourself

In real-world reality. (arguably)

but in 4e it is.

Yes. Because 4e is a game, not reality.

Some find that very verisimilitude-breking.

Fair enough. 4e couldn't care less about verisimilitude, though. It was having too much fun as a game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As someone who was a fan of 4E's artstyle (and by extension, all of Pathfinder's), I took a look through his portfolio, and he seems to draw feet just fine? I've definitely seen worse in official art, anyway.

Now, if you were talking about, say, Rob Liefeld... THAT I could understand.

Edit: Hmm, now that I'm really scrolling through... he does hide his feet a LOT.

I...would not besmirch 4e's art style by saying that it was 100% Wayne Reynolds. I love plenty of art from it. Very little of what I love is his. Ben Wootten, William O'Connor, Anne Stokes, and Steve Argyle all did plenty of work as well, and I like their stuff at far higher rates than Mr. Reynolds'.

One of the oddest things is seeing a lot of folks asking why 5E aint more like BG3. So, D&D being compared to a video game isnt what it used to be. Something to consider.

Particularly because, prior to 4e being constantly (and almost always negatively) compared to WoW/"an MMO on paper", 3e was repeatedly (and almost always negatively) compared to Diablo/point-and-click looter-shooter type games, though I fear I forget the specific phrase folks loved to hammer on.

Prior to the 5e/BG3 comparison, more or less, critics would use this because video games were seen as soulless. That specific, exact term was almost certainly rarely if ever actually used, but that was the Awful Thing that invoking the specter of video games was meant to communicate. Diablo couldn't provide the deep, rich, meaningful experiences "D&D" provides, because it's just a soulless video game, something crapped out by an unfeeling corporate monolith with glitz and glamour to entice with shallow get-loot-quick gameplay, not lovingly hand-crafted by an auteur DM with vision and purpose. WoW couldn't provide the deep, rich, meaningful experiences "D&D" provides, because it's just a soulless MMO, something crapped out by an unfeeling corporate juggernaut with glitz and glamour to entice the unwashed masses with shallow push-buttons-and-win gameplay, not lovingly hand-crafted by an auteur DM with vision and purpose.

But BG3? You can't claim BG3 wasn't lovingly crafted. It very, very clearly was. Not that either Diablo nor Warcraft weren't lovingly crafted in their own ways, of course--but the sword broke against BG3. Woundhealer has defeated Shieldbreaker.

Of course, this won't stop people from still making disparaging comparisons to MMOs and such. But merely comparing to a video game is no longer "enough", emotionally, and for that I am grateful.

 

[Alzrius]

Mike Mearls recently posted some comments in another thread that might be of interest to people here (who aren't also reading that one). To quote his post in full:

I think in terms of predictions, my main worry would be something like the chain that led to 4e. Here's what went down with that:

1. 3e launches in 2000 and sells incredibly well. Star Wars d20, also released that year, is also a huge sales hit.
2. By the end of 2001, sales have trailed off. Work on 3.5 starts in early 2002 or so.
3. 3.5 releases in 2003. The changes to the game are kind of random and rushed, and are designed to make the D&D collectible miniatures line an integral part of the game.
4. The minis sell well, but D&D book sales slump back down after a brief spike. Initial concepts for 4e begin in 2004, driven by a pitch to shift D&D to a digital platform similar to World of Warcraft. The game enters full design in 2005, with a target release of 2008. The game's design is driven by MMO-style play and a reliance on miniatures.
5. Meanwhile, D&D miniatures costs start to go up and sales start to go down. During the same period, many companies launch MMOs to compete with WoW, but none come close to matching its success.
6. D&D 4e launches in 2008, sells great for a 3 to 6 month window, then craters.

Fundamentally, 4e failed because all of the plans around it were based on two things that proved wrong:

• The core game play of WoW was portable to other games. It wasn't.
• D&D miniatures were a sustainable, growing business. They weren't.

When a business becomes shaky or is shrinking, there is pressure to deliver a perfect, long-term plan immediately. That pushes you to overly rely on current trends and extrapolate them forward, rather than engaging in deep R&D to figure out a durable solution.

Part of 5e's success came from rebuilding the team's R&D capabilities. It's easy to forget, but in the years before 5e launched the D&D team won the Origins Award for best board game three years in a row. That patience paid off with 5e.

All of this is to say that what happens next depends on whether 5.5 is hitting its sales mark, and what that prompts Hasbro to do. My biggest worry is that there's a knee jerk reaction toward moving ahead with a radically different game design. If they perceive 5e as a dead end, they'll be under huge pressure to do something completely different.

All we can do is read the tea leaves, but seeing them go back to a product each month starting in July is not a good sign. It feels like something a team is told to do to make up for a budget shortfall. Do you have faith, given the rules issues in the 5.5 rulebooks, that giving the team less time to make mechanics is going to lead to higher quality products?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Mike Mearls recently posted some comments in another thread that might be of interest to people here (who aren't also reading that one). To quote his post in full:

There's...more than a little wrong with that, then, since World of Warcraft launched in November 2004.

Kinda hard to actively ape a game that didn't even come out until after you got started...

 

[Tigris]

Mike Mearls recently posted some comments in another thread that might be of interest to people here (who aren't also reading that one). To quote his post in full:

1. Mike mearls was one of the biggest reason 4E failed and he tries to blame others for it.
2. He was NOT part of the original core design team. He tries to sound more important than he is, but several things he said over the years conflict directly whith what the original designers said. Like "WoW gameplay" is his interpretation. And just shows lack of knowledge.
3. He just wants to oversell the 5E success and make it sounds like it was more than just good timing because he was responsible for 5E

 

[Mannahnin]

Yeah, based on Tigris' explanation (which matches what I've seen from other friends who play MMOs), the comparison of encounter/daily powers to MMOs cooldowns seems pretty off-base.

As Pedr wrote, with 4E encounters and dailies you pick your spots to optimize value.

Sometimes that DOES mean using them early, particularly because strikers want to be cutting down the number of enemies ASAP. Reducing the number of enemy actions and attacks is always a good thing. And that is the most similar to MMO cooldown powers.

But most other powers which provide situational benefits or can be multiplied in effect based on positioning (getting enemies or friends bunched in the AoE, for example) are more powerful when you set them up. And synergistic play in 4E often meant characters coordinating- for example one character pushing or sliding one or more enemies to set up an ally to get extra value from a key daily. Or the Bard I played in one campaign using a power to let the whole party move off-turn to get into perfect formation for the next character to pay that off with another power.

Mearls' summary there seems like memory changing in hindsight. Not just because his release timeframe seems simply mistaken.

I'm not sure what he thinks MMO-style play means. The closest elements I recall from that were...

a) hoping to capture recurring subscription money (which they did, with all the groups I played with- EVERYONE used the character builder),
and
b) hoping to have a VTT which would allow people to play remotely with their old friends and family around the country or the world (which would also be more likely to get buy-in on said monthly subscription, as it would be a service more akin to playing EverQuest online with your friends, rather than just books in your house).

If by "MMO-style" he means "online play that you pay for on a recurring transaction basis" that makes sense. If he means in terms of play style, I don't think that comparison holds up. Playing 4E is not much like playing an MMO in terms of what your actual activities are while playing. How you spend your time and how you interact with the world, game, and other players. The kinds of decisions you make.