Quote from: danbuter;507317Oh yeah, moving errata and most other articles online behind a paywall was an incredibly stupid decision. I refuse to pay money for online services like that. I'm betting a lot of other people were the same way.

I sort of forgot to address this, but they could have gone the "freemium" route, using a little free content to hook new users on the subscription. It might have been a balancing act to both make the free version solid and the upgrade worthwhile though.

I think that Bill Slaviscek and Scott Rouse promised waaay more than could be delivered, and all of the decisions and dropped balls followed from that. 4th edition is a good game. I think it's the best version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess to hate it, don't actually know that much about it other than "what they heard", which is tragic. I also would like to say I think Scott Rouse is a pretty nice guy. I don't know Bill. I do know that anytime I as an RPGA person tried to interact with Wizards about fairly simple and legitimate concerns I was treated pretty sternly.

That said, beyond the DDI meltdown, here's why it really failed: It's written to support roleplayers, presented to support boardgamers, and then errata'd to support powergamers.

The assumptions of D&D4 are the first since AD&D to strongly support multiple battles with multiple opponents, each doing interesting things, great quest rules, and really good DM advice. They "fixed" the 15 minute adventuring day..

AND THEN...

Then they put out adventures and the adventure is just the delve format strung together, with no assumption of actual human interaction whatsoever. And made sure they never showed an adventure where anyone ever did an extended rest or thought of other things to do during the adventure.  Because they thought they were "designing" the experience of play as well as the rules. Some of the better adventures are the RPGA ones, they don't really follow the delve format. Although they are still railroady as heck, because.. well, they are convention adventures. That's the approved concept, and has been since Raven's Bluff's Living City campaign from AD&D2e.

AND THEN.. to top it all off,

They spent way too much time trying to cater to the jackoffs who like to analyze rules so that they can prove how to outsmart them. Thus ensuring a continuously evolving set of errata, with nobody ever truly getting a handle on how anything worked, "invalidating" the books for new players, and then instead of letting some sleeping dogs lie, they would actually change some rules just to make room for new rules. They probably thought they were being responsive to the community. Actually I know this one. They thought they were being responsive to the community and being expert game designers. This was pure hubris.

FINALLY, by this time, they had no idea who their community was. Everyone was on the defensive because everyone was under attack at all times. Mike was put in charge, and he was trying to consolidate the whole thing with a beginners supplement that somehow brought the different pieces and goals all back together. That was Essentials. I'm not a fan of Essentials, although I can understand why people like it. The thing that was broken was how they interact with the fans and players. But when people try to say "Oh Essentials is the right direction, unlike "Heinsoo D&D" I think they are wrong. Heinsoo wrote a great game, and it was managed by people who were under a lot of pressure to make some guys look good, and by that time, there was no way to win.

I don't have any inside information, by the way, that's just how I see it.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw4th edition is a good game. I think it's the best version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess to hate it, don't actually know that much about it other than "what they heard", which is tragic.

Honestly, I'd rather we all just assume that people like or dislike games genuinely.

For myself, I just wasn't enthused. And neither were the less casual friends I play online with. We all gave it a shot and went back to the stuff we preferred. If my online friends had run a game in the system longer I might have played it, it might even have grown on me, and I might have run it for the more casual gamers I play with in person. As it was, that didn't happen. And learning a system that bored me for no one in particular's benefit seemed like a waste of time.

I like the focus on tactical as opposed to strategic character resources (as you put it, killing the 15-minute adventuring day), but it nixed most of my favorite content with the release, and a lot of the content it did have just felt too samey. This was before the "dissociated" thing became the most widely discussed sticking point, but even then I would have preferred no dailies to fighter dailies.

QuoteI also would like to say I think Scott Rouse is a pretty nice guy. I don't know Bill. I do know that anytime I as an RPGA person tried to interact with Wizards about fairly simple and legitimate concerns I was treated pretty sternly.

It's unfortunate that they treated you badly. Really, the RPGA is one of the better things WotC has going for it. I don't think there's any major competition for them in terms of organized play, and it seems like a great way to get players who would otherwise have a hard time finding or organizing a game.

QuoteThat said, beyond the DDI meltdown, here's why it really failed: It's written to support roleplayers, presented to support boardgamers, and then errata'd to support powergamers.

That's a point you're going to want to expand on. Especially the first and third points.

Are you saying because you can do more cool stuff in a fight it's more roleplay, or because stuff outside of combat is relatively handwaved, or what?

QuoteThen they put out adventures and the adventure is just the delve format strung together, with no assumption of actual human interaction whatsoever. And made sure they never showed an adventure where anyone ever did an extended rest or thought of other things to do during the adventure.  Because they thought they were "designing" the experience of play as well as the rules. Some of the better adventures are the RPGA ones, they don't really follow the delve format. Although they are still railroady as heck, because.. well, they are convention adventures. That's the approved concept, and has been since Raven's Bluff's Living City campaign from AD&D2e.

I'd like to hear more about the RPGA adventures, and maybe who wrote them. Typically, the mantra goes "settings don't sell," but they seem potentially important for boxed sets (if WotC wants to both keep the subscription model and sell physical product).

QuoteThey spent way too much time trying to cater to the jackoffs who like to analyze rules so that they can prove how to outsmart them. Thus ensuring a continuously evolving set of errata, with nobody ever truly getting a handle on how anything worked, "invalidating" the books for new players, and then instead of letting some sleeping dogs lie, they would actually change some rules just to make room for new rules. They probably thought they were being responsive to the community. Actually I know this one. They thought they were being responsive to the community and being expert game designers. This was pure hubris.

If they were designing for people who "outsmart" the rules, they weren't even catering to those guys. People don't figure out Pun-Pun or how to play as a sandwich with the psi rules in the hopes of actually playing as Pun-Pun (or a sandwich). They do it more as an exercise that's fun in its own right.

QuoteFINALLY, by this time, they had no idea who their community was. Everyone was on the defensive because everyone was under attack at all times. Mike was put in charge, and he was trying to consolidate the whole thing with a beginners supplement that somehow brought the different pieces and goals all back together. That was Essentials. I'm not a fan of Essentials, although I can understand why people like it. The thing that was broken was how they interact with the fans and players. But when people try to say "Oh Essentials is the right direction, unlike "Heinsoo D&D" I think they are wrong. Heinsoo wrote a great game, and it was managed by people who were under a lot of pressure to make some guys look good, and by that time, there was no way to win.

It at least looked as if they were going for new customers, so I'm not sure how the edition wars could have directly hurt the edition. Unless you're saying that the designers designed around the complaints, or that the new players 4e garnered were more forum-active (which, given the importance of the DDI, they may have been).

QuoteI don't have any inside information, by the way, that's just how I see it.

There's little enough concrete info to be found; I think we're all just speculating at this point.

I'm assuming that this is an unsubtle troll attempt, but I'll bite anyway.  The main reason that 4e failed was because it wasn't enough like 3e.  People can handle incremental change; they can't handle excremental change.  So when 4e decided that classes needed roles and that fighters needed weird powers and that spellcasters worked the same as everyone else and the game completely ditched any attempts at verisimilitude in favor of gamism--well, people weren't ready for that.  In two editions, maybe.  But people still liked and enjoyed 3e, and they were emotionally attached to it.  They were ready for change, but not that much.

Then there was the marketing campaign.  Given how gamers get attached to their hobby, changing things up and telling them they were playing the game wrong the whole time and not actually having fun will piss them off.  Along with the arrogant attitude of the 4e developers ("We're not going to show you anything but trust us, you're going to love it!"), the failure to address any concerns that 3e players had about their game compounded this issue.

On top of this, 4e was written to push tactical combat.  The majority of powers were designed with an emphasis on moving enemies around the board and activating status effects.  With their format, poor fluff, and dissociated mechanics, this resulted in really boring abilities.  X[W] + Y + status effect is not intriguing.  It does not pique my interest.  It does not make me want to play that class.

Finally, the galvanized 4vengers were another issue.  When popular online RPG venues are edition warrior territory, where any questions or criticisms of 4e are drowned out in a shitflood, where blatant favoritism is shown to those on the side of 4e, and you have a mess.  A horrendous, embittering mess that soured a number of people (myself included) on 4e.

Altogether, these things are the crux of 4e's problem.  Players can ignore bad mechanics.  They can even love bad mechanics.  2e/3e's mechanics were a disaster, but people loved those games.  Despite the shitty math, despite the dozens of pages of errata, despite Mearls admitting that they didn't know what they were doing with the wizard and that solo encounters were junk, despite skill challenges not functioning after three or four years of rules tweaks--despite all of that, people could still love 4e.  But they didn't for the above reasons.

P.S. Did you get the joke about incremental vs. excremental?  OY MY TALENTS ARE WASTED ON YOU LOT.

EDIT:

QuoteI think it's the best version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess to hate it, don't actually know that much about it other than "what they heard", which is tragic.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.  "If you don't love 4e, you're not smart enough to understand why it's so great."  Go fuck yourself, AM.

I can tell you why I didn't buy it: it was too far removed from what I think of as D&D.  It was a different game with the same name.  It's not what I wanted when I wanted to play "D&D."

Quote from: beejazz;507392If they were designing for people who "outsmart" the rules, they weren't even catering to those guys. People don't figure out Pun-Pun or how to play as a sandwich with the psi rules in the hopes of actually playing as Pun-Pun (or a sandwich). They do it more as an exercise that's fun in its own right.

.

I'm sure there's some people who do play it.  For every character optimizer who insists that everything is all theoretical, there's still someone who will want to try it.  Maybe not Pun-Pun, but I'm sure plenty of less extreme combinations to see play.

The problem with the Eratta is they were so busy playing catch up with power gamers that they have failed to fix problems with genuinely flavourful and popular game elements such as the Beastmaster Ranger which has never worked properly and wouldn't even be that hard to fix (at least for non-optimized groups).

They have also created new problems with overnerfing.  They nerfed the Hide Armor Expertise Feat because it allowed for ridiculously high Barbarian AC at Epic levels, and in the process made the Swarm Druid build completely unviable.  They over-errated the Ranger At-Will Throw and Stab and in the process pretty much gutted the Marauder Ranger build a mere few months after releasing it.

As a product, it failed commercially to meet its expectations. It failed to deliver WotC' 2005 objective of creating a D&D brand that would make 50 mio. in profits independently of licensed properties. That was the gist of the Dancey post at Enworld earlier this month.

Personally I'm actually not confident that any other post-3.5 edition could have met that objective. I remain curious whether 5E can meet it.

As to 4E's other failings, Abyssal Maw's posting is the best I've read so far, and in a very, very long time (by him or others) on 4E.

It was the monotony that killed the product's potential for enthusiastic play at home. Yes, Heinsoo indeed created a brilliant game, DDM 2.0, perhaps really the best ever base engine for a simple RPG like D&D. That base engine could have served to promote a variety of campaign styles, a math so simple, so transparent, so customizable, it should have been the wet dream for a next generation of time-pressed kitbashers.

Instead, WotC chained the product to one particular view of what to do with that engine, and tried to create an homogenized play style which I guess D&D has not seen since the very earliest days of the hobby. Why on earth this was attempted is anyone's guess. The attempt failed miserably, and the hobby is the richer for that.

Quote from: S'mon;507334Something I haven't seen mentioned before: IMO the core of the D&D game since 1978 is the Player's Handbook.  That's what potential new players buy; that's what hooks them or drives them away.

WoTC released the PHB before it was ready.  It's boring, badly presented, and errated to hell.  The Essentials books just mucked things up further by confusing new players - IMO new players are still arriving at my Meetup with PHBs, never "Heroes of...".

So: get the PHB right this time.

Except that the PHB was right, out of the gate. Unlike monster damage or monster defense scores, the PHB errata are mostly just a pile of steaming shit trying desperately to sell later classes ('Forget about the STR-cleric, here's our Runepriest (tm)!!!').

The fighter and cleric class are very clearly, and utterly unambiguously, not just among the two best classes in the game; they are arguably the best designs these classes have received in D&D's history, ever. This is never clearer than when comparing these Heinsoo designs to the crap in the DDI 'Class Compendium': apart from the opening flavour text, there's an impressive display of people at work who can't design. If I have one early grudge against 5E, it's that the people with the most talent got fired, while second rate hacks remained behind. But I get carried away.

So, the PHB was a stunning success by a lot of counts. While the presentation was hardly endearing on a first read, its functionality in play was undeniable. Also, it featured ritual magic (again, Essentials left that out, because Encounters-play-in-store wouldn't need it), and moreover, the most important rituals that the game needed were right there, out of the gate.

So, brilliant class design, brilliant base engine (see post above), and ritual magic... what could go wrong?

Very little, and it went a long way.

The big failings of the PHB was to leave out bards, gnomes, and half-orcs - 20 extra pages, I kid you not.

Point the second: had they used parched paper artwork instead of blank white, I bet you the book would have been received a lot better. Try to print Paizo PDFs after removing their parchment page design, and you'll see their layout is uglier than 4E stuff.


Yes, this.

However, the biggie is the wizard class. The wizard class failed to be a wizard class (in D&D terms), failed to be a controller class (in 4E) term, and failed to appease the 3.x hold-outs who frankly wanted a class which is a) insanely overpowered and b) takes months of in depth study time to figure out. It's a class that failed as a design in 3 editions all at once, and that's no small thing.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;507380I think that Bill Slaviscek and Scott Rouse promised waaay more than could be delivered, and all of the decisions and dropped balls followed from that. 4th edition is a good game. I think it's the best version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess to hate it, don't actually know that much about it other than "what they heard", which is tragic. I also would like to say I think Scott Rouse is a pretty nice guy. I don't know Bill. I do know that anytime I as an RPGA person tried to interact with Wizards about fairly simple and legitimate concerns I was treated pretty sternly.

That said, beyond the DDI meltdown, here's why it really failed: It's written to support roleplayers, presented to support boardgamers, and then errata'd to support powergamers.

The assumptions of D&D4 are the first since AD&D to strongly support multiple battles with multiple opponents, each doing interesting things, great quest rules, and really good DM advice. They "fixed" the 15 minute adventuring day..

AND THEN...

Then they put out adventures and the adventure is just the delve format strung together, with no assumption of actual human interaction whatsoever. And made sure they never showed an adventure where anyone ever did an extended rest or thought of other things to do during the adventure.  Because they thought they were "designing" the experience of play as well as the rules. Some of the better adventures are the RPGA ones, they don't really follow the delve format. Although they are still railroady as heck, because.. well, they are convention adventures. That's the approved concept, and has been since Raven's Bluff's Living City campaign from AD&D2e.

AND THEN.. to top it all off,

They spent way too much time trying to cater to the jackoffs who like to analyze rules so that they can prove how to outsmart them. Thus ensuring a continuously evolving set of errata, with nobody ever truly getting a handle on how anything worked, "invalidating" the books for new players, and then instead of letting some sleeping dogs lie, they would actually change some rules just to make room for new rules. They probably thought they were being responsive to the community. Actually I know this one. They thought they were being responsive to the community and being expert game designers. This was pure hubris.

FINALLY, by this time, they had no idea who their community was. Everyone was on the defensive because everyone was under attack at all times. Mike was put in charge, and he was trying to consolidate the whole thing with a beginners supplement that somehow brought the different pieces and goals all back together. That was Essentials. I'm not a fan of Essentials, although I can understand why people like it. The thing that was broken was how they interact with the fans and players. But when people try to say "Oh Essentials is the right direction, unlike "Heinsoo D&D" I think they are wrong. Heinsoo wrote a great game, and it was managed by people who were under a lot of pressure to make some guys look good, and by that time, there was no way to win.

I don't have any inside information, by the way, that's just how I see it.

. . . or it's just a SUPERHERO MINIATURES BOARDGAME

. . . which is NOT WHAT WE WANTED.

It wasn't "written to support roleplayers". It was written as a miniatures boardgame. The damn game IS a miniatures boardgame. Period.

You are reading too much into this. The WotC people have already told us why it failed, and what they did wrong. There's no need to read between the lines. 4e is worst edition of D&D ever. It's a pile of steaming shit. It's buried. The end.

Quote from: Windjammer;507402However, the biggie is the wizard class. The wizard class failed to be a wizard class (in D&D terms), failed to be a controller class (in 4E) term, and failed to appease the 3.x hold-outs who frankly wanted a class which is a) insanely overpowered and b) takes months of in depth study time to figure out. It's a class that failed as a design in 3 editions all at once, and that's no small thing.

I think you're missing the narrowness of much of the design.  Many people simply didn't want to play a Wizard the way the game was telling them to play one.  For a wizard character I much prefer the Artificer class that was released later, it fits much better with how I like to play Wizards.  The same for Rangers, just two narrow.  Mearls later said on Rpgnet that the two Ranger builds were basically based off Drizzt and Legolas respectively.  There was a kind of hubris in thinking that players were going to be happy with choosing between these two narrow options.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;507380I think it's the best version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess to hate it, don't actually know that much about it other than "what they heard", which is tragic.

Whatever.

I think it's the worst version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess that it is the best version of D&D, can't actually conceive of why enough people hated it--it is being shelved because it isn't D&D enough for the marketplace. I think everyone has a good idea on why that may be. But WOTC shelving 4e? That is not tragic; it is capitalism.

You have your game and books that they cannot take away, and Mearls has said they will not take away the DDI tools. The only thing you may lose out on are updates and errata if they choose to stop supporting 4e.

For me and the gamers I more identify with, they are reprinting the three core 1e books. Thanks to the OGL I have Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lords to point new players to if need be.

I think we all win.

EDIT: The rest of your analysis seems spot on though.

Quote from: 1989;507272Why did it fail? Because it's a SUPERHERO MINIATURES BOARDGAME.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;507286Really they focused on pleasing a narrow band of the player base and did so at the expense of those with different preferences. So I think then game quite simply lacks broad appeal as a result.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;507294The handwriting was on the wall for 4e with "Essentials".  Remember, the ad push for 4e was practically tailor-made to destroy any goodwill anyone felt towards Wizards.  The whole savings worth of said goodwill that they'd spent the introductory years of 3e building up went away in a flash.  An ad campaign that said "Your games sucked and you're stupid for having played them this way"...

So after flipping the bird to about half their customer base, they immediately scrambled to get that base back.  

Quote from: danbuter;507297Too many changes from previous editions.

Too much focus on combat abilities, while seemingly ignoring everything else. (I've since changed a bit about this, so if 4e came out right now, I doubt this would bother me).

Too much dependence on mats and minis.

Quote from: estar;507299It failed because it wasn't D&D.

The primary reason it failed was because of presentation issues not design.

Quote from: Doom;507336Certainly, a flipping off of "old school" gamers hurt (even if this insult wasn't intentional, it was perceived, so it IS a failure on the part of their PR).

Quote from: thedungeondelver;507367You know, I think we're overlooking the BIGGEST reason 4e failed:

not enough 4vengers

If only there'd been more people at every turn on open RPG forums telling people who enjoyed 3.5, 3.0, AD&D 2e, AD&D, original and basic of all its various stripes that they were dumb, that their opinions were dumb, that 4e was the pinnacle of game design, questioning the mindset and intelligence of people who didn't want to "evolve" or even worse people who'd go back and non-ironically play those earlier versions, 4e would have lived.

That's what my time here on theRPGsite and reading other forums has taught me.  At least that's what I take away from it.  Those poor guys they were being so screechy and hateful in an attempt to clap to keep Tinkerbell alive as it were.

Quote from: B.T.;507396Then there was the marketing campaign.  Given how gamers get attached to their hobby, changing things up and telling them they were playing the game wrong the whole time and not actually having fun will piss them off.  Along with the arrogant attitude of the 4e developers ("We're not going to show you anything but trust us, you're going to love it!"), the failure to address any concerns that 3e players had about their game compounded this issue.

On top of this, 4e was written to push tactical combat.  The majority of powers were designed with an emphasis on moving enemies around the board and activating status effects.  With their format, poor fluff, and dissociated mechanics, this resulted in really boring abilities.  X[W] + Y + status effect is not intriguing.  It does not pique my interest.  It does not make me want to play that class.

Finally, the galvanized 4vengers were another issue.  When popular online RPG venues are edition warrior territory, where any questions or criticisms of 4e are drowned out in a shitflood, where blatant favoritism is shown to those on the side of 4e, and you have a mess.  A horrendous, embittering mess that soured a number of people (myself included) on 4e.

Altogether, these things are the crux of 4e's problem.  EDIT:
This is exactly what I'm talking about.  "If you don't love 4e, you're not smart enough to understand why it's so great."  Go fuck yourself, AM.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;507397I can tell you why I didn't buy it: it was too far removed from what I think of as D&D.  It was a different game with the same name.  It's not what I wanted when I wanted to play "D&D."

Quote from: Windjammer;507401It was the monotony that killed the product's potential for enthusiastic play at home. Yes, Heinsoo indeed created a brilliant game, DDM 2.0, perhaps really the best ever base engine for a simple RPG like D&D. That base engine could have served to promote a variety of campaign styles, a math so simple, so transparent, so customizable, it should have been the wet dream for a next generation of time-pressed kitbashers.

Instead, WotC chained the product to one particular view of what to do with that engine, and tried to create an homogenized play style which I guess D&D has not seen since the very earliest days of the hobby. Why on earth this was attempted is anyone's guess. The attempt failed miserably, and the hobby is the richer for that.

Quote from: JasperAK;507408I think it's the worst version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess that it is the best version of D&D, can't actually conceive of why enough people hated it--it is being shelved because it isn't D&D enough for the marketplace. I think everyone has a good idea on why that may be. But WOTC shelving 4e? That is not tragic; it is capitalism.

All of the above.

4E just wasn't what I want out of D&D.

However, the fucking 4vengers and their support by WotC marketting were what drove me away from the game. Why? I play RPGs to have fun and escape the Real World for awhile. Having a brainwashed corporate schill tell me I am "lost in nostalgia" because I do not want to play a piss poor RPG simulation of an MMO just makes me want to kick those same schills in their crotches because it is an unneccessary load of bullshit drama to dump on a hobby that I unashemedly love.

Quote from: jeff37923;507440However, the fucking 4vengers and their support by WotC marketting were what drove me away from the game.

Were the 4vengers online or offline?

I don't think I've met anybody offline who was a 4venger.  If they were, they largely kept it to themselves offline.

Quote from: ggroy;507442Were the 4vengers online or offline?

I don't think I've met anybody offline who was a 4venger.  If they were, they largely kept it to themselves offline.

Both. I originally thought it was just online, but I actually ran into a few 4venging RPGA members who schilled the WotC hype. One worked at a local Nord's Games.

Actually, that one deserves mentioning. I had gone into Nord's Games to buy some 3E items that had been discounted. I had about $50 worth of stuff at the counter and was about to pay when this 4venging shit behind the register began teling me how I was an idiot to be buying that and not 4E - so I just agreed with him and left the store without purchasing anything. Haven't been back since. Way to make a sale, 4venging fucktard!

QuoteOriginally Posted by Abyssal Maw  
I think it's the best version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess to hate it, don't actually know that much about it other than "what they heard", which is tragic.

QuoteWhatever.

I think it's the worst version of D&D ever published. Most people who profess that it is the best version of D&D, can't actually conceive of why enough people hated it--it is being shelved because it isn't D&D enough for the marketplace. I think everyone has a good idea on why that may be. But WOTC shelving 4e? That is not tragic; it is capitalism.

Sheeeeeeeeesh, talk about extremism.  It is just a game, fellas, just a game.

QuoteOriginally Posted by jeff37923  
However, the fucking 4vengers and their support by WotC marketting were what drove me away from the game.

Can you say, NERD RAGE?

QuoteWere the 4vengers online or offline?

I don't think I've met anybody offline who was a 4venger. If they were, they largely kept it to themselves offline.

I have not either.  I suspect it is one of those lame conspiracy theorists spouting off as usual.