2 replies to this topic

[Archmage Silver]

According to Examiner.com, the D&D 4th Edition was supposed to be the house MMORPG for Wizards of the Coast. Perhaps it's a good thing that this never happened?

New York Times - this article points out that WotC has a new D&D edition in development. WotC intends to gather feedback from the D&D fans to get to know their opinion on how the franchise should be rebooted.

[Zyraen]

Even though it might have been designed in an MMORPG style, 4E has a lot of excellent, if not downright wonderful points.

Its main drawback was that there's no framework governing situations outside of combat (that and the MMORPG style "refresh" HP / abilities after a fight).

Generally, Players would be faced with a choice of
1) FIGHT! If you win, you get XP. With the "refresh" of most Powers (except Dailies), and assuming sufficient Healing Surges, there are no Real Downsides to a fight.
2) ROLEPLAY / TALK / NEGOTIATE. Going by the Rules of 4E, this may not grant ANY Experience, especially if there's no real chance of Failure. Consider this too - in a Talk / Negotiation that isn't explicitly a Skill Challenge, a DM may interpret that there's no real chance of Failure in the sense that, it doesn't hurt the Characters. If it results in a Fight when Talks break down, then the Fight itself is an Encounter that grants XP.
In other words, RP? Sure - You Might Not get XP, Though. Oh and definitely no loot.

Imagine - would you play BG2 differently if there was NO Quest XP given AT ALL ?
And if you didn't know what Item Rewards would be given out?

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That said, what determines the Quest XP in BG2 or earlier editions of D&D? The "DM", of course.
So, who determines the XP for non-Combat Encounters / Roleplay in 4E D&D? The DM as well.

End of the day, it becomes more combat-oriented, hence MMORPG-ish, mainly because
1) no lasting downsides to Combat Encounters
2) better defined rules (and less DM wiggle room) for awarding of XP in Combat Encounters

Hence, the Rewards framework is well defined in one area, poorly defined in another, and thus provides incentives for Players' actions to be more combat-oriented and less roleplaying.

Can this be overcome by an understanding between Players and DMs? Why, certainly.
But not all groups get to that stage, and generally, yes it becomes more "Rollplay" rather than "Roleplay".

Imagine - where would BG2 "Chapter 2 Quests" be if the difficulty of Combat in every Chapter 2 Quest could be easily scaled up to be challenging REGARDLESS of the level of the PC? From a Gamer POV, I think BG2's replayability would be hugely, tremendously improved.

That said, where does it take its cue from? MMORPGs "instancing", that Scales the Instance's Challenge to the Party's Level. Its not a bad thing, really, and makes DMing and Improvising a million, zillion times easier (if occasionally unrealistic)

Edited by Zyraen, 11 January 2012 - 06:57 PM.

[the bigg]

I actually like 4e (currently playing a 6th level Dwarven cleric), since it's far better than previous versions at ensuring that a Fighter and a Mage of similar level will face meaningful strategical and tactical choices.

True, the rules define in more detail how to handle and reward combat than interaction, but a good DM will always do a better job at rewarding social interactions than a set of rules IMHO (and a game with a bad/mediocre DM is definitively more fun when played as a straight dungeon crawl than as a social-heavy campaign).