Actually that may speak to my earlier points too. Music by and large isn't produced by record labels to be dissected by communities of fans on message boards. That's an important but not the prime target for products the industry designs to sell well for about a year. There are some artists that some people will invest in for life. But for the most part, the biz is looking to milk a talent for a couple of records until the public's taste changes. Of course it will hold onto the rights to said creative product when he nostalgia or period soundtrack wheels come round. Again, I enjoy TTRPG including D&D, and maybe because I'm more aware of it after a recent FFG SW binge, but while I'm reading a game book I can say I'm generally enjoying it and looking forward to adding it to my play, but everything I've looked at in 5e and the FFG line I have a side thought that I too am being played in that moment.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Actually that may speak to my earlier points too. Music by and large isn't produced by record labels to be dissected by communities of fans on message boards. That's an important but not the prime target for products the industry designs to sell well for about a year. There are some artists that some people will invest in for life. But for the most part, the biz is looking to milk a talent for a couple of records until the public's taste changes. Of course it will hold onto the rights to said creative product when he nostalgia or period soundtrack wheels come round. Again, I enjoy TTRPG including D&D, and maybe because I'm more aware of it after a recent FFG SW binge, but while I'm reading a game book I can say I'm generally enjoying it and looking forward to adding it to my play, but everything I've looked at in 5e and the FFG line I have a side thought that I too am being played in that moment.
Yeah media businesses will acquire a lot of different things over time as they begin to buy different libraries and companies.
Ultimately they may make small shell companies to consolidate things into different buckets (See Disney with Disney+ and Hulu).
WotC is like that for Hasbro and they seem to trust the current leadership as they are making good money and its growing each year....my guess would be an increase in output of more of the same for some time until that subsides.
Not sure how well this parallel holds up, but if Grand Theft Auto V has taught me anything its that a company will gladly put smaller updates to their current game rather than invest resources into designing/advertising a new game well past when one would expect the game to "die off" and be replaced if the current game is insanely popular.
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You can therefore be a Terrifying Goblin that tears through a group of enemies, scares one to death, then jumps off a cliff to bounce away....its.....glorious.
This really, really feels like halfway between 3rd ed's glut of feats to unlock exclusive options and 4th ed's powers. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, in fact I think it could be a very good thing and I expect 6E to swing back towards being a bit more complex and technical again, but it's one of the things 5E explicitly moved away from - going to take some selling to the 5E veterans.
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6e is targeting VTTs just like 4e was targeting digital DMs.
WotC was trying to build a VTT during 4E. If they'd managed to, I fully expect that edition to have lasted a good bit longer. 4E and Theatre of the Mind didn't match, and WotC needed that VTT to bridge the gap for players who weren't interested in mucking about with minis and battlemaps. It'd still have been a compromise and it'd have taken a leap from those players, but it likely would have helped.
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Using some MMO-type techniques isn't the same as targeting MMO players. And 4E really only used one, powers, and those timers still worked differently from an MMOs. This claim was, with all due respect to you, a cheap and easy shot at the new edition by those who were unhappy with it.
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So The Escapist interviewed the manager of 4e's design and development as well as the brand manager for D&D at the time of 4e and it's pretty clear that MMOs definitely had an influence in the design of 4e. MMOs, particularly Warcraft had high engagement and they looked at how games liked that worked so that D&D could sustain that level of engagement. Of course, they also looked at Cattan. But folks insisting there isn't an MMO influence in 4e's design just need to let the objection go and realize it is in fact in 4e's DNA.
Found that interview via POCGamer's blog where he analyzes 4e, but rather than rehashing his argument I just figured I'd show the citation he mentions of an interview with two people largely responsible for 4e's direction.
Whenever a 6e is developed, I don't think we're going to see as radical a departure from the conventions of D&D and TTRPG mechanics and play.
Using some MMO-type techniques isn't the same as targeting MMO players. And 4E really only used one, powers, and those timers still worked differently from an MMOs. This claim was, with all due respect to you, a cheap and easy shot at the new edition by those who were unhappy with it.
Just one? The AoO rules were a lot more, mechanical, for want of a better term, the kind of thing much more efficiently processed automatically by computer handled coding than by a DM manually going through the same steps in said coding.
Nonetheless, I don't know of any MMOs using AoOs other than those based on D&D in the first place. Not to mention that AoOs have been in D&D since 3rd edition, so it's hard to argue they're an attempt to make 4th edition more MMO-like.
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So The Escapist interviewed the manager of 4e's design and development as well as the brand manager for D&D at the time of 4e and it's pretty clear that MMOs definitely had an influence in the design of 4e. MMOs, particularly Warcraft had high engagement and they looked at how games liked that worked so that D&D could sustain that level of engagement. Of course, they also looked at Cattan. But folks insisting there isn't an MMO influence in 4e's design just need to let the objection go and realize it is in fact in 4e's DNA.
Found that interview via POCGamer's blog where he analyzes 4e, but rather than rehashing his argument I just figured I'd show the citation he mentions of an interview with two people largely responsible for 4e's direction.
Whenever a 6e is developed, I don't think we're going to see as radical a departure from the conventions of D&D and TTRPG mechanics and play.
The influences are more apparent because of cultural and market saturation. The article goes into much greater detail than you do, and I think you're being overly dismissive.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition was an amazing experiment. Some later errata made early books nigh-unusable, but it was a remarkably well-balanced system. Gone were the linear fighters and quadradic wizards. You could scale monsters up and down, by the formula for their role, seamlessly. The old wealth by level was replaced with a form of bounded math that expected characters to have certain bonuses from magic items, and if you fell outside that range the math would begin to break down. And this was essential to organized play, since you don't want people showing up under- or overpowered. Combat often ran long, but it was never boring. And lots of things that were introduced in 4E were carried over to 5E.
And it was meant to be played online. It's a shame they never got it to work because, if they had, more people might look back on it fondly.
So The Escapist interviewed the manager of 4e's design and development as well as the brand manager for D&D at the time of 4e and it's pretty clear that MMOs definitely had an influence in the design of 4e. MMOs, particularly Warcraft had high engagement and they looked at how games liked that worked so that D&D could sustain that level of engagement. Of course, they also looked at Cattan. But folks insisting there isn't an MMO influence in 4e's design just need to let the objection go and realize it is in fact in 4e's DNA.
Found that interview via POCGamer's blog where he analyzes 4e, but rather than rehashing his argument I just figured I'd show the citation he mentions of an interview with two people largely responsible for 4e's direction.
Whenever a 6e is developed, I don't think we're going to see as radical a departure from the conventions of D&D and TTRPG mechanics and play.
The influences are more apparent because of cultural and market saturation. The article goes into much greater detail than you do, and I think you're being overly dismissive.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition was an amazing experiment. Some later errata made early books nigh-unusable, but it was a remarkably well-balanced system. Gone were the linear fighters and quadradic wizards. You could scale monsters up and down, by the formula for their role, seamlessly. The old wealth by level was replaced with a form of bounded math that expected characters to have certain bonuses from magic items, and if you fell outside that range the math would begin to break down. And this was essential to organized play, since you don't want people showing up under- or overpowered. Combat often ran long, but it was never boring. And lots of things that were introduced in 4E were carried over to 5E.
And it was meant to be played online. It's a shame they never got it to work because, if they had, more people might look back on it fondly.
It does honestly get a worse rap than it deserves...it was a system that I truly felt I could balance well as a DM.
So The Escapist interviewed the manager of 4e's design and development as well as the brand manager for D&D at the time of 4e and it's pretty clear that MMOs definitely had an influence in the design of 4e. MMOs, particularly Warcraft had high engagement and they looked at how games liked that worked so that D&D could sustain that level of engagement. Of course, they also looked at Cattan. But folks insisting there isn't an MMO influence in 4e's design just need to let the objection go and realize it is in fact in 4e's DNA.
Found that interview via POCGamer's blog where he analyzes 4e, but rather than rehashing his argument I just figured I'd show the citation he mentions of an interview with two people largely responsible for 4e's direction.
Whenever a 6e is developed, I don't think we're going to see as radical a departure from the conventions of D&D and TTRPG mechanics and play.
The influences are more apparent because of cultural and market saturation. The article goes into much greater detail than you do, and I think you're being overly dismissive.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition was an amazing experiment. Some later errata made early books nigh-unusable, but it was a remarkably well-balanced system. Gone were the linear fighters and quadradic wizards. You could scale monsters up and down, by the formula for their role, seamlessly. The old wealth by level was replaced with a form of bounded math that expected characters to have certain bonuses from magic items, and if you fell outside that range the math would begin to break down. And this was essential to organized play, since you don't want people showing up under- or overpowered. Combat often ran long, but it was never boring. And lots of things that were introduced in 4E were carried over to 5E.
And it was meant to be played online. It's a shame they never got it to work because, if they had, more people might look back on it fondly.
Someday, some bright group will figure out how to integrate VR (or even just your high end graphics) with the ability of a DM to quickly create encounters. When that happens, a big chunk of tabletop D&D goes bye bye. When a customizable WoW, with a massive library of baseline, but also customizable monsters and encounter locations, comes online, well, watch what happens.
Using some MMO-type techniques isn't the same as targeting MMO players. And 4E really only used one, powers, and those timers still worked differently from an MMOs. This claim was, with all due respect to you, a cheap and easy shot at the new edition by those who were unhappy with it.
Just one? The AoO rules were a lot more, mechanical, for want of a better term, the kind of thing much more efficiently processed automatically by computer handled coding than by a DM manually going through the same steps in said coding.
Nonetheless, I don't know of any MMOs using AoOs other than those based on D&D in the first place. Not to mention that AoOs have been in D&D since 3rd edition, so it's hard to argue they're an attempt to make 4th edition more MMO-like.
You know MMO's that run truly turn based the same way D&D does? Even the D&D based MMO's have combat in real time. The closest there is to a turn based structure is ability cool downs. You go near a hostile creature, it hits you. You run from it, it chases you in real time, if it can, which is more than AoO actually allows.
Not to be flippant, but: so? You can get chased in D&D too, and none of that makes MMOs have AoO equivalents or AoOs a 4E concept.
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Attacks of Opportunity were not 'chasing MMOs'. They were chasing real combat, because you do not simply enter the weapons reach of a hostile creature and then leave that reach freely. Without some way of attacking someone who tries to flee your range, melee combatants would not have any way to command space in a turn-based game like D&D. In a real fight, moving within sword reach of an enemy wielding a sword is a great way to get attacked by a sword, but the bizarre-yet-necessary disconnect of D&D's turn-based system means that without some way to interrupt another entity's turn with your sword, creatures can move around you for free.
The attack of opportunity is an extremely important part of the combat engine in D&D. It allows melee characters to exert control over the area they occupy the way they're supposed to, which is important given how incredibly disadvantageous melee combat normally is.
And frankly, even if AoO rules are "chasing MMOs"? Who cares? MMOs do combat much, much better than D&D does as a general rule. They kinda have to - the weakness of an MMO is the extremely limited action set available to any given character, as opposed to the "literally anything you can conceive of" of a TTRPG like D&D. They have to ensure those limited actions are as fun and in-the-moment enjoyable as they can. D&D could perhaps learn a thing or two from those goals and make their Official Actions as cool to use in the moment as possible, ne?
To be honest, reach is a more complicated matter than it seems. In my very limited experience, if I have a mace and am fighting a guy with a longsword (a true longsword, not the 5e arming/bastard version), he wins as long as he keeps me at a distance, but if I push through his guard, I win, because he can’t swing effectively from so close. D&D doesn’t represent that because it’s too caught up in crazy magic to bother about medieval realism, but I digress.
Regardless, Yurei is right, MMOs are irrelevant. It’s about reflecting real combat and making melee a good choice. Give LARP or HEMA a try, and you’ll find you can’t just turn and run from an engaged opponent to shoot them with arrows: they will mess you up.
To be honest, reach is a more complicated matter than it seems. In my very limited experience, if I have a mace and am fighting a guy with a longsword (a true longsword, not the 5e arming/bastard version), he wins as long as he keeps me at a distance, but if I push through his guard, I win, because he can’t swing effectively from so close. D&D doesn’t represent that because it’s too caught up in crazy magic to bother about medieval realism, but I digress.
Yes, I say this a lot: D&D combat is drawn in broad strokes to be fleshed out by what some call fluff. I mean we don't have hit locations either even though the one thing I rememberer from the fictional debut of Drizzt was that slashing hamstrings was like the default tactic in Icewind Dale. Mechanically one attacks and resolves success and damage, what "realistically" happened is a matter for the DM and player to collaboratively narrate. Oh, this fight is mechanically occurring in six second increments ... if you're cognating a real fight in six second intervals you're going to be very confused in second two. There are TTRPG games that get into the fractional seconds of combat, they basically succeed at the boutique level.
Regardless, Yurei is right, MMOs are irrelevant. It’s about reflecting real combat and making melee a good choice. Give LARP or HEMA a try, and you’ll find you can’t just turn and run from an engaged opponent to shoot them with arrows: they will mess you up.
I'm not sure if you're trying to identify a deficiency in the game. Again combat, including tactical movement, is done in broad strokes. Turning and running (dash) makes you more vulnerable than disengaging or dodging. Seems like a compromise might be to have turns declared in order of initiative and folks lower or holding their turns can use their turn to either assist (cover) or intercede (attack/block) a declared movement. This works easily in theater of the mind, on a battle space environment a "move" is more a vector that isn't complete until the turn is truly over. And yes there are the aforementioned boutique TTRPG tactical games that actually have mechanics like that in play. They're great, but also in the boutique market for a reason.
I dunno about MMOs, I think there's some overlap, but the turn based combat in D&D I think was really influential on the turned based squad combat game X-Com: Enemy Unknown (the original 90s version, I've yet to play any of the reboots from the past decade).
What is even your point at this stage, Kotath? That MMOs are terrible and we should all burn them like the heresy they are? I legit have no idea what argument you're chasing anymore. What's the end goal, here?
You know MMO's that run truly turn based the same way D&D does? Even the D&D based MMO's have combat in real time. The closest there is to a turn based structure is ability cool downs. You go near a hostile creature, it hits you. You run from it, it chases you in real time, if it can, which is more than AoO actually allows.
Not to be flippant, but: so? You can get chased in D&D too, and none of that makes MMOs have AoO equivalents or AoOs a 4E concept.
You get chased in real time in D&D? Rather than on the opponent's initiative? In an MMO, you do not move away, then pause, then the enemy moves to you and pauses. You do not disengage and they reengage. Also if you run past a monster, it does not have to wait until its turn to hit you as you run past, since it is simply always available to hit someone.
No, the AoO rules are not exactly like an MMO, merely closer than conventional turn based mechanics. And deliberately so.
Whether in real time or based on initiative, you can get chased either way. MMOs typically don't have AoOs - the ones that do are based on tabletop D&D. Which came up with them in 3rd edition. So, forgive me, but it seems a little far fetched to point at AoOs as an argument of 4E emulating MMOs.
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Using some MMO-type techniques isn't the same as targeting MMO players. And 4E really only used one, powers, and those timers still worked differently from an MMOs. This claim was, with all due respect to you, a cheap and easy shot at the new edition by those who were unhappy with it.
There are plenty more elements that bring MMO to mind other than powers - even if they were not designed by MMO's, they are definitely popularized by them.
Bloodied. A staple in most MMO's when bosses have those enraged timers based on their HP.
The enemy description: "Solo", "Artillery", "Minion"
Locking classes behind official descriptors harder than before and after. "Controller", "Striker", "Defender". Evocative names, right?
The whole idea that a solo dragon can have a 1.2k HP and your best Daily power can deal something silly like 5d10+attribute
None of those are indicative of basing it on MMO and sure, you can argue each and every one of them individually - probably with success - but because of their combined presence in one system, I wouldn't fault anyone for thinking that MMO was an inspiration.
Lastly, I agree that MMO's should not be brought down here. I have played Tera for a long time and despite the lack of original content, the overall sillyness of existing content, it has probably one of the best combat mechanics ever designed in an MMO. The calculations and rotation of skills that have to be used in order to maximize the potential of your class were truly inspiring and the theorycrafting of the community in that game dwarfed anything that I have seen in D&D.
Just saying "totally real combat" I don't think was ever a stated goal of any iteration of D&D. It's been documented that 4e definitely researched if not consulted the functionality of action systems as well as general function of MMOs. Show me an interview with a developer that says the 4e combat system was intended to be more "realistic" and I'll take that argument being bandied as having more oomph to it than the rhetorical equivalent of professional wrestling. Nothing wrong with professional wrestling, it's just not very useful in a conversation where factual claims behind design approach are being weighed.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
So The Escapist interviewed the manager of 4e's design and development as well as the brand manager for D&D at the time of 4e and it's pretty clear that MMOs definitely had an influence in the design of 4e. MMOs, particularly Warcraft had high engagement and they looked at how games liked that worked so that D&D could sustain that level of engagement. Of course, they also looked at Cattan. But folks insisting there isn't an MMO influence in 4e's design just need to let the objection go and realize it is in fact in 4e's DNA.
Found that interview via POCGamer's blog where he analyzes 4e, but rather than rehashing his argument I just figured I'd show the citation he mentions of an interview with two people largely responsible for 4e's direction.
Whenever a 6e is developed, I don't think we're going to see as radical a departure from the conventions of D&D and TTRPG mechanics and play.
The influences are more apparent because of cultural and market saturation. The article goes into much greater detail than you do, and I think you're being overly dismissive.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition was an amazing experiment. Some later errata made early books nigh-unusable, but it was a remarkably well-balanced system. Gone were the linear fighters and quadradic wizards. You could scale monsters up and down, by the formula for their role, seamlessly. The old wealth by level was replaced with a form of bounded math that expected characters to have certain bonuses from magic items, and if you fell outside that range the math would begin to break down. And this was essential to organized play, since you don't want people showing up under- or overpowered. Combat often ran long, but it was never boring. And lots of things that were introduced in 4E were carried over to 5E.
And it was meant to be played online. It's a shame they never got it to work because, if they had, more people might look back on it fondly.
I don't know what I'm being dismissive of so I don't understand what you're contending. There seems to be some counterfactual work claiming there was no influence of MMOs into 4e and it clear it was (WotC looked a lot of high engagement games, including Cataan). Acknowledging MMO lessons learned was is not a dismissal of 4e. I am aware of some of the innovations 4e attempted to employ for the edition to flourish, and I probably use a few of them myself picked up from Colville video or wherever. So I'm just going to take your dismissal as some sort of posture in the sadly antagonistic polarization this discussion seems to always take.
4e being _meant_ to be played online is probably part of the problem. The beauty of TTRPG in general is that they can be played without technological infrastructure. There are many community centers and after school programs that are on the disadvantaged side of the technological divide we don't like to talk about in the U.S., making online or computer based play integral to D&D I feel is a step in the wrong direction. Online play, as everyone who's migrated knows suffers on the interpersonal level. I think WotC is more aware of that in its efforts to make 5e a more accessible ruleset.
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Actually that may speak to my earlier points too. Music by and large isn't produced by record labels to be dissected by communities of fans on message boards. That's an important but not the prime target for products the industry designs to sell well for about a year. There are some artists that some people will invest in for life. But for the most part, the biz is looking to milk a talent for a couple of records until the public's taste changes. Of course it will hold onto the rights to said creative product when he nostalgia or period soundtrack wheels come round. Again, I enjoy TTRPG including D&D, and maybe because I'm more aware of it after a recent FFG SW binge, but while I'm reading a game book I can say I'm generally enjoying it and looking forward to adding it to my play, but everything I've looked at in 5e and the FFG line I have a side thought that I too am being played in that moment.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah media businesses will acquire a lot of different things over time as they begin to buy different libraries and companies.
Ultimately they may make small shell companies to consolidate things into different buckets (See Disney with Disney+ and Hulu).
WotC is like that for Hasbro and they seem to trust the current leadership as they are making good money and its growing each year....my guess would be an increase in output of more of the same for some time until that subsides.
Not sure how well this parallel holds up, but if Grand Theft Auto V has taught me anything its that a company will gladly put smaller updates to their current game rather than invest resources into designing/advertising a new game well past when one would expect the game to "die off" and be replaced if the current game is insanely popular.
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This really, really feels like halfway between 3rd ed's glut of feats to unlock exclusive options and 4th ed's powers. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, in fact I think it could be a very good thing and I expect 6E to swing back towards being a bit more complex and technical again, but it's one of the things 5E explicitly moved away from - going to take some selling to the 5E veterans.
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WotC was trying to build a VTT during 4E. If they'd managed to, I fully expect that edition to have lasted a good bit longer. 4E and Theatre of the Mind didn't match, and WotC needed that VTT to bridge the gap for players who weren't interested in mucking about with minis and battlemaps. It'd still have been a compromise and it'd have taken a leap from those players, but it likely would have helped.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Using some MMO-type techniques isn't the same as targeting MMO players. And 4E really only used one, powers, and those timers still worked differently from an MMOs. This claim was, with all due respect to you, a cheap and easy shot at the new edition by those who were unhappy with it.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
So The Escapist interviewed the manager of 4e's design and development as well as the brand manager for D&D at the time of 4e and it's pretty clear that MMOs definitely had an influence in the design of 4e. MMOs, particularly Warcraft had high engagement and they looked at how games liked that worked so that D&D could sustain that level of engagement. Of course, they also looked at Cattan. But folks insisting there isn't an MMO influence in 4e's design just need to let the objection go and realize it is in fact in 4e's DNA.
Found that interview via POCGamer's blog where he analyzes 4e, but rather than rehashing his argument I just figured I'd show the citation he mentions of an interview with two people largely responsible for 4e's direction.
Whenever a 6e is developed, I don't think we're going to see as radical a departure from the conventions of D&D and TTRPG mechanics and play.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Nonetheless, I don't know of any MMOs using AoOs other than those based on D&D in the first place. Not to mention that AoOs have been in D&D since 3rd edition, so it's hard to argue they're an attempt to make 4th edition more MMO-like.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The influences are more apparent because of cultural and market saturation. The article goes into much greater detail than you do, and I think you're being overly dismissive.
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition was an amazing experiment. Some later errata made early books nigh-unusable, but it was a remarkably well-balanced system. Gone were the linear fighters and quadradic wizards. You could scale monsters up and down, by the formula for their role, seamlessly. The old wealth by level was replaced with a form of bounded math that expected characters to have certain bonuses from magic items, and if you fell outside that range the math would begin to break down. And this was essential to organized play, since you don't want people showing up under- or overpowered. Combat often ran long, but it was never boring. And lots of things that were introduced in 4E were carried over to 5E.
And it was meant to be played online. It's a shame they never got it to work because, if they had, more people might look back on it fondly.
It does honestly get a worse rap than it deserves...it was a system that I truly felt I could balance well as a DM.
Someday, some bright group will figure out how to integrate VR (or even just your high end graphics) with the ability of a DM to quickly create encounters. When that happens, a big chunk of tabletop D&D goes bye bye. When a customizable WoW, with a massive library of baseline, but also customizable monsters and encounter locations, comes online, well, watch what happens.
Not to be flippant, but: so? You can get chased in D&D too, and none of that makes MMOs have AoO equivalents or AoOs a 4E concept.
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Siiiiigh
Attacks of Opportunity were not 'chasing MMOs'. They were chasing real combat, because you do not simply enter the weapons reach of a hostile creature and then leave that reach freely. Without some way of attacking someone who tries to flee your range, melee combatants would not have any way to command space in a turn-based game like D&D. In a real fight, moving within sword reach of an enemy wielding a sword is a great way to get attacked by a sword, but the bizarre-yet-necessary disconnect of D&D's turn-based system means that without some way to interrupt another entity's turn with your sword, creatures can move around you for free.
The attack of opportunity is an extremely important part of the combat engine in D&D. It allows melee characters to exert control over the area they occupy the way they're supposed to, which is important given how incredibly disadvantageous melee combat normally is.
And frankly, even if AoO rules are "chasing MMOs"? Who cares? MMOs do combat much, much better than D&D does as a general rule. They kinda have to - the weakness of an MMO is the extremely limited action set available to any given character, as opposed to the "literally anything you can conceive of" of a TTRPG like D&D. They have to ensure those limited actions are as fun and in-the-moment enjoyable as they can. D&D could perhaps learn a thing or two from those goals and make their Official Actions as cool to use in the moment as possible, ne?
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To be honest, reach is a more complicated matter than it seems. In my very limited experience, if I have a mace and am fighting a guy with a longsword (a true longsword, not the 5e arming/bastard version), he wins as long as he keeps me at a distance, but if I push through his guard, I win, because he can’t swing effectively from so close. D&D doesn’t represent that because it’s too caught up in crazy magic to bother about medieval realism, but I digress.
Regardless, Yurei is right, MMOs are irrelevant. It’s about reflecting real combat and making melee a good choice. Give LARP or HEMA a try, and you’ll find you can’t just turn and run from an engaged opponent to shoot them with arrows: they will mess you up.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Yes, I say this a lot: D&D combat is drawn in broad strokes to be fleshed out by what some call fluff. I mean we don't have hit locations either even though the one thing I rememberer from the fictional debut of Drizzt was that slashing hamstrings was like the default tactic in Icewind Dale. Mechanically one attacks and resolves success and damage, what "realistically" happened is a matter for the DM and player to collaboratively narrate. Oh, this fight is mechanically occurring in six second increments ... if you're cognating a real fight in six second intervals you're going to be very confused in second two. There are TTRPG games that get into the fractional seconds of combat, they basically succeed at the boutique level.
I'm not sure if you're trying to identify a deficiency in the game. Again combat, including tactical movement, is done in broad strokes. Turning and running (dash) makes you more vulnerable than disengaging or dodging. Seems like a compromise might be to have turns declared in order of initiative and folks lower or holding their turns can use their turn to either assist (cover) or intercede (attack/block) a declared movement. This works easily in theater of the mind, on a battle space environment a "move" is more a vector that isn't complete until the turn is truly over. And yes there are the aforementioned boutique TTRPG tactical games that actually have mechanics like that in play. They're great, but also in the boutique market for a reason.
I dunno about MMOs, I think there's some overlap, but the turn based combat in D&D I think was really influential on the turned based squad combat game X-Com: Enemy Unknown (the original 90s version, I've yet to play any of the reboots from the past decade).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
What is even your point at this stage, Kotath? That MMOs are terrible and we should all burn them like the heresy they are? I legit have no idea what argument you're chasing anymore. What's the end goal, here?
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Whether in real time or based on initiative, you can get chased either way. MMOs typically don't have AoOs - the ones that do are based on tabletop D&D. Which came up with them in 3rd edition. So, forgive me, but it seems a little far fetched to point at AoOs as an argument of 4E emulating MMOs.
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There are plenty more elements that bring MMO to mind other than powers - even if they were not designed by MMO's, they are definitely popularized by them.
Bloodied. A staple in most MMO's when bosses have those enraged timers based on their HP.
The enemy description: "Solo", "Artillery", "Minion"
Locking classes behind official descriptors harder than before and after. "Controller", "Striker", "Defender". Evocative names, right?
The whole idea that a solo dragon can have a 1.2k HP and your best Daily power can deal something silly like 5d10+attribute
None of those are indicative of basing it on MMO and sure, you can argue each and every one of them individually - probably with success - but because of their combined presence in one system, I wouldn't fault anyone for thinking that MMO was an inspiration.
Lastly, I agree that MMO's should not be brought down here. I have played Tera for a long time and despite the lack of original content, the overall sillyness of existing content, it has probably one of the best combat mechanics ever designed in an MMO. The calculations and rotation of skills that have to be used in order to maximize the potential of your class were truly inspiring and the theorycrafting of the community in that game dwarfed anything that I have seen in D&D.
Just saying "totally real combat" I don't think was ever a stated goal of any iteration of D&D. It's been documented that 4e definitely researched if not consulted the functionality of action systems as well as general function of MMOs. Show me an interview with a developer that says the 4e combat system was intended to be more "realistic" and I'll take that argument being bandied as having more oomph to it than the rhetorical equivalent of professional wrestling. Nothing wrong with professional wrestling, it's just not very useful in a conversation where factual claims behind design approach are being weighed.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I don't know what I'm being dismissive of so I don't understand what you're contending. There seems to be some counterfactual work claiming there was no influence of MMOs into 4e and it clear it was (WotC looked a lot of high engagement games, including Cataan). Acknowledging MMO lessons learned was is not a dismissal of 4e. I am aware of some of the innovations 4e attempted to employ for the edition to flourish, and I probably use a few of them myself picked up from Colville video or wherever. So I'm just going to take your dismissal as some sort of posture in the sadly antagonistic polarization this discussion seems to always take.
4e being _meant_ to be played online is probably part of the problem. The beauty of TTRPG in general is that they can be played without technological infrastructure. There are many community centers and after school programs that are on the disadvantaged side of the technological divide we don't like to talk about in the U.S., making online or computer based play integral to D&D I feel is a step in the wrong direction. Online play, as everyone who's migrated knows suffers on the interpersonal level. I think WotC is more aware of that in its efforts to make 5e a more accessible ruleset.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.