Losing any interest in playing

[cagwyn]

The adaption of the ruleset... the lack of relatable characters... the dragged out release...

For someone who was super-hyped, I don't even know if I will play this at release now.

[Lord_WC]

Originally posted by Alealexi:

Originally posted by Lord_WC:

Just because you or a lot of players are unable to make choices, are unwilling to learn and hates messing up a character it doesn't mean the solution is to remove all choices. Praising 5e for not running the same characters when in 5e the ruleset doesn't even allow you to run another kind of character that has been designed for a certain (sub)class is such an incredibly false statement.

From your statement it shows you never played 5e. Your play style changes drastically with every feat you pick. Same with each class as every subclass will force you to play differently. No two clerics or fighter will play alike in 5e.

Feats are a poor substitute for prestige classes - just look at 3.5 mystic theurge or 5e 'mystic theurge'. The list goes on and on, 5e severly limits your freedom. I don't have issues with the simplistic ruleset, I have issues with subclasses forcing you into a pidgeon hole and there are not enough pidgeon holes. That's for CRPGs obviously. For tabletop 5e will never substitute for 3.5 as it simply doesn't have the rules for building a world. Which I guess is very good for WOTC, but bad for the players.

[Locutus99_56]

Yeah how dare they suffer delays on a major project that was fully explained to be an early access build. And such a project suffering major delays, shameful. I mean its not like there has been any major global events that might possibly have had some impact on productivity for large scale projects like thisOHWAIT. as for adaption of the ruleset, its a pretty solid adaptation of D&D 5ed if youve ever actually played it, and as for the characters, youve seen a tiny fraction of all their stories and theyre varied and interesting thusfar. This is just a pointless entitled whine.

[Vixziค็็็็็n]

Originally posted by Tinball:

3.5 and Pathfinder are still king in the eyes of 30-40 year old white males that cannot get over the nostalgia. I LOVED 1e and still play it today, but I can see the 40 years of changes and improvements that have developed in D&D over the decades. 5e is as clean and good of a version that has ever come out. It's very easy to teach new players.

If you want stats and bloat, you can easily add all that in 5e. Since the first page of the PHB in 1e, the 'rules are only a guideline.'

First of all I'm neither of those things so stop the stupid perception bs. This is completely your damn opinion at best. Fact is that yes 5e brought on a player base that likes the fact that the rule set has been streamlined which to some of us means dumbed down tbh. Has nothing to do with nostalgia and everything to do with variation and bordering on the extreme of choice and possibility. Now one can argue that with that comes an overly complex rule system but on the other side is people who are just fine with the complexity if it means the ability to make something unique. 3.5 allowed people to push the boundaries of what was possible and gave context to what that would mean in terms of rules. 5e tries limiting that by making the rules around resource management (some resource management mind you without limiting where it really should matter) and simplifies many other rules. It makes it great for a video game setting but it doesn't hold a candle to 3.5 in a table top setting.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

I haven't enjoyed a game this much in decades.

There are really only two games for me: Baldur's Gate 3, and Star Citizen.

[Dragon Master]

Originally posted by Tinball:

Originally posted by Lord_WC:

If you run a bit of 5e and generally become more experienced with tabletop you will notice how lacking it is in tools to support campaigns and worldbuilding. It has the huge advantage that the rules are extremely simple so it's easy to pick up. That's also the reason why it's relatively popular - funnily nearly as many people play pathfinder and 3.5 still as people play 5e.

The simple rules however are rather simplistic when it's about more complex things like character building, or doing anything on a non-PC scale. Even 2nd edition was superior in these regards.

Played every version since 1e (except 4th). Started on 1e. Have logged 1000s of hours at the table in 5e.

PF is not nearly as popular as 5e. You have no #'s to back that up. Go look at Roll20 alone and see the number of available 5e campaigns compared to PF. That is the only stat I can find out there that gives a decent clue.

D&D 5e games account for over 58% of all Roll20 campaigns. Pathfinder sits at a whopping 3.8 percent and lastly 3.5 = 1.06% this last quarter.

Read 'em and weep.

https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-group-industry-report-q4-2020-8-million-users-edition/

3.5 and Pathfinder are still king in the eyes of 30-40 year old white males that cannot get over the nostalgia. I LOVED 1e and still play it today, but I can see the 40 years of changes and improvements that have developed in D&D over the decades. 5e is as clean and good of a version that has ever come out. It's very easy to teach new players.

If you want stats and bloat, you can easily add all that in 5e. Since the first page of the PHB in 1e, the 'rules are only a guideline.'

What does being white and male have to do with nostalgia and playing an older version of the game?

Anyone who played the game back then can have nostalgia regardless of skin color or gender.

[NixAhmose]

Originally posted by Tinball:

Originally posted by Alealexi:

Sounds like we found a bloatfinder fan.

Exactly. I don't mind playing PF or 3.5 once in a while, but I love all this 5e bashing as if theses other editions are superior in some manner. I believe most people that think that are just in love with nostalgia.

I think a lot of it comes from just comparing PF or 3.5 combat to 5e combat and going "Well PF/3.5 gives you way more options and combat depth, ergo its better" and kinda ignore/don't realize how that excessive amount of options and "depth" causes a lot of people to just get turned off by it.

[NixAhmose]

Originally posted by Vixzian:

It makes it great for a video game setting but it doesn't hold a candle to 3.5 in a table top setting.

Personally I half disagree with that statement.

While I think its great that PF offers you a lot of "choices", the way game is balanced around said choices heavily punishes you for not min-maxing and taking the most optimal choices. To an extent there's always going to be some level of punishing poor character-building optimization, but with how huge stat bloat gets in stuff like PF, you might as well reroll a new character if you didn't build it the "correct" way. But that issue is only made worse with how dense the rules are, making it very hard to figure what class options/feats work best with your character without the use of a guide.

I think those complex systems are only necessarily better if you play with a group of people who are mainly interested in the number crunching, build theory, and optimization aspect of tabletop rpg rather than the roleplaying. While something like 5e may have less options, by design its much harder to come up with a unusable character build even going off of raw official 5e adventures since most class options are good in someway and feats are much less important. So if you're more into the role-playing and less into the number-crunching, I think 5e is a better tabletop system than PF.

[Hobocop]

Originally posted by NixAhmose:

Personally I half disagree with that statement.

While I think its great that PF offers you a lot of "choices", the way game is balanced around said choices heavily punishes you for not min-maxing and taking the most optimal choices. To an extent there's always going to be some level of punishing poor character-building optimization, but with how huge stat bloat gets in stuff like PF, you might as well reroll a new character if you didn't build it the "correct" way. But that issue is only made worse with how dense the rules are, making it very hard to figure what class options/feats work best with your character without the use of a guide.

I think those complex systems are only necessarily better if you play with a group of people who are mainly interested in the number crunching, build theory, and optimization aspect of tabletop rpg rather than the roleplaying. While something like 5e may have less options, by design its much harder to come up with a unusable character build even going off of raw official 5e adventures since most class options are good in someway and feats are much less important. So if you're more into the role-playing and less into the number-crunching, I think 5e is a better tabletop system than PF.

The only way I can even tolerate 3.5e/PF1e anymore is if it's done in a computerized medium so I don't need to do the spreadsheets and can focus on actually roleplaying. And frankly, if we're going to keep getting games along the same ilk as Wrath of the Righteous, I'm probably just going to stop with that ruleset entirely, because I'm tired of being bombarded with bloated combat encounters where 95% of the outcome is determined before initiative is even rolled.

[NixAhmose]

I would also like to add that the reason why the difficulty of making a useable character build is important is because a lot of people who are mainly interested in the role-playing aspect of the game just want to pick options that they think would be fun and thematic for their character rather than what would be the most optimal playstyle.

In something like 5e, you can just do that and 80% of the time come up with a useable character build as there aren't that many bad options. So you can still make a creative character build(or at least theme) without needing to consult a guide or spend multiple hours planning out the entire level 1 through 20 build before session 1.
In something like Pathfinder, doing the same thing will 80% of the time will result in a terrible character build that becomes exponentially more useless the higher you go in terms of levels. If you want to make a roleplay focused build that feels decent to play, you have to do much more research/planning and even then, you'll likely have to pick multiple character options that don't align with the character you wanted to roleplay as.

[Ronin Gamer]

Originally posted by Locutus99_56:

Yeah how dare they suffer delays on a major project that was fully explained to be an early access build. And such a project suffering major delays, shameful. I mean its not like there has been any major global events that might possibly have had some impact on productivity for large scale projects like thisOHWAIT. as for adaption of the ruleset, its a pretty solid adaptation of D&D 5ed if youve ever actually played it, and as for the characters, youve seen a tiny fraction of all their stories and theyre varied and interesting thusfar. This is just a pointless entitled whine.

Well, when you have people constantly wanting their game and they want it now, it amazes me how often we get games that aren't complete messes. God forbid a game dev takes the time they need to develop a game, something that usually takes years if you are talking about something on the level of a AAA release, all the while people/children whine about the game not being thrust into their gaping maw regardless of if it's actually been completed or a bug filled broken mess.

[Auburn2]

Originally posted by Lord_WC:

Originally posted by Alealexi:

From your statement it shows you never played 5e. Your play style changes drastically with every feat you pick. Same with each class as every subclass will force you to play differently. No two clerics or fighter will play alike in 5e.

Feats are a poor substitute for prestige classes - just look at 3.5 mystic theurge or 5e 'mystic theurge'. The list goes on and on, 5e severly limits your freedom. I don't have issues with the simplistic ruleset, I have issues with subclasses forcing you into a pidgeon hole and there are not enough pidgeon holes. That's for CRPGs obviously. For tabletop 5e will never substitute for 3.5 as it simply doesn't have the rules for building a world. Which I guess is very good for WOTC, but bad for the players.

People talk about choice in 3.5, but you had choice only at very low levels, for some things only at 1st level. Once your character was built and had a few levels over half the "choices" were no longer available at all and of those that were available; many were very poor choices that would put you way behind. You had very little actual choice once you got started. There is far more diversity and choice in character building in 5E for two reasons:

1. In 5E You can build things into your character in a variety of ways, you don't have to pick a prestige class or multiclass to get things. Want thieves tools? There are numerous ways to get it. Want to have a fighting style, again numerous ways. Want to learn some spells, numerous ways. Aside from having multiple avenues, very few of these choices are restrictive or lock you out of others. In 3.5 you had all kinds of stupid rules and penalties for combining classes. You want your 10th level dwarf Rogue to take a wizard level. Well you can't do it ... or actually you can but then you are capped at 11th level and can get no more experience points. If you are an Elf or Halfling though you are fine! That is simply a rule for a rule's sake and makes no sense at all. It actually locks you out of some of those prestige classes you are raving about.

You need stupid chained feats and prerequisites for virtually everything. If you want to take a certain prestige class you need to be able to cast level 3 arcane spells and have a +5 BAB and have these three skills all to a certain level and then have these two feats. That is so F-in stupid! If I want to take that prestige class let me take that prestige class. These feat, class and skill trees make it so at level 1 you had to know ahead of time what you want your level 11 character to be, because you had to start investing in it at level 1, if you didn't your "build" would be delayed or impossible.

Even a simple feat like Cleave - I need to get a power attack feat first. This means my Rogue who is using light weapons needs to take a feat that is completely useless to him before he can pick up cleave. WHY!!!!! That is not really a "choice".

Once you write your class and race on the top of the character sheet a lot of choices are locked out and choices you make in the first 2-3 levels will put you on a path that you can not get off of easily or sometimes at all. If the RPG and story drives you another direction you are screwed, you are largely tied to the build you envisioned at 1st level. Example that Dwarf I mentioned above ends up working for a high level wizard and wants to take some wizard levels and maybe serve on the wizard council - no way to incorporate that into the story at that point. You are screwed and have no choice in the matter.

2. Bounded accuracy makes it so you are not overly penalized for making a "poor" tactical choice. Some builds are better than others in 5E but all builds are pretty playable. In 3.5E you were heavily penalized for going "off track" on your build to the point that a few choices could make your character completely non-relevant.

Simply put - 3.5E was about building a set of numbers and mechanics based on illogical and overly restrictive rules, 5E is about building diverse characters with flavor bounded by rules and guidelines.

FWIW I have been playing D&D since 1981 and 5E is the best version I have played by far.

[Ninjamestari]

Originally posted by cagwyn:

The adaption of the ruleset... the lack of relatable characters... the dragged out release...

For someone who was super-hyped, I don't even know if I will play this at release now.

The release is not "dragged out", the game has NOT release yet, a release date hasn't even been ANNOUNCED yet. Seriously, stop whining like a little ♥♥♥♥♥, recognize that the game is nowhere near release just yet and wait patiently to somewhere around 2023 when the game release will probably actually occur at its earliest.

[dolby]

yeah i guess we all feel that way abit cos of the long release as you can only play EA so many times before it gets boring... especially with a cap of 4 party members... but when release comes you gonna play it. Not like there are lots of Rpgs being made anyway...

[Ninjamestari]

Here's a radical idea; how about DON'T PLAY THE EA YET!?
Are we so pathetic addicts that we can't simply a) play something else or b) do something more productive with our time?

[NixAhmose]

Originally posted by Ninjamestari:

Here's a radical idea; how about DON'T PLAY THE EA YET!?
Are we so pathetic addicts that we can't simply a) play something else or b) do something more productive with our time?

I'm surprised that more people don't just do what I did and just stop playing once I've had my fill of it. I loved this game back when it came out last year, did most of the quests over the course of two playthroughs, and haven't touched the game since as I eagerly await the full release.