Please help me with my thesis

[Complete4th]

@ Azrael: To gain a more balanced perspective, go visit ENworld, RPGnet and the WotC forum. They each have active 4e forums, with forum-goers who can actually speak intelligently of 4e's successes and failures.

To reiterate ... early on 4e got lots of attention over here.
It's just that "over here" was BG at the time.  Plenty of
the guys were posting at 4e C.O. too.  There were even
some of the 4e playtesters here and there. 

Fair enough. I wasn't around BG at the time, so I'll take your word for it.

[Azrael]

To reiterate ... early on 4e got lots of attention over here.
It's just that "over here" was BG at the time.  Plenty of
the guys were posting at 4e C.O. too.  There were even
some of the 4e playtesters here and there. 

iirc - the volume of posts on the BG 4e board was higher
than the BG 3e board for a while.

I suppose I'll have to use way back machine but as I recall there was a lot of CO going on back then, but at the same time it died off rather quickly and most people switched back over to 3.5, that seems to be problematic to me. But if you are saying that a greater number of players migrated off the boards and back to the WotC boards and that number is greater than the number of people that remained on the BG boards then I guess I'll have to look into that.

It had rules consistency, true, but it had no heart. My player's don't play RPGs to "win". They play them to experience the political intrigue of trying to unify the entire Moonsea under one nation ruled by their patron god while trying to figure out what five different Gods are up to while assassin's appear to kill key NPCs... so they can KILL said assassin and take his really Bitchin' equipment!

Probably gonna use that quote.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Oh you don't have to work that hard.  Brilliantgameologists.com
is the "wayback" for minmaxboards.com (which is technically
still part of brilliantgameologists).

Like here is July 2008 with 4 more pages already past.
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?board=28.150

The first "real" attempt at one-shotting Orcus was rather quickly
shot down.  It seemed strange at the time, that the monsters
would even try to fight back, or wonder what these weird dudes
not from around here, were doing.

[Azrael]

Cant you just one-shot him with a maxed out on orb save reduction wizard?

[Captnq]

It had rules consistency, true, but it had no heart. My player's don't play RPGs to "win". They play them to experience the political intrigue of trying to unify the entire Moonsea under one nation ruled by their patron god while trying to figure out what five different Gods are up to while assassin's appear to kill key NPCs... so they can KILL said assassin and take his really Bitchin' equipment!

Probably gonna use that quote.

Thank you.

If you wish context, I just checked, we're pushing session 300 of a campaign that has lasted 4-ish years. (actually hopping to delay it a week and have #300 on Halloween.) so the 3.5 campaign has been epic for over a year now. PCs practically only get xp from RP bonus at this stage so advancement has slowed to a crawl, but they don't mind. Maybe it's the system, maybe it's my DMing, but something keeps them interested in these characters, even if they aren't getting "kwel stuf" anymore. They aren't into one shots. They don't like having multiple characters. I've mentioned starting new campaigns or different systems. We looked at Pathfinder for a while, but nothing came of it. Just not interested.

I suspect I'll be running 3.5 when they come out with 6.0. Although I do have this idea for a White Wolf campaign where I turn on the wayback machine and start back in 1990. I've run through it once. I know where my mistakes are. I think I could do a much better job the second time around.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Cant you just one-shot him with a maxed out on orb save reduction wizard?

Well yes, after Adventurer's Vault 1 came out.
But that's been nerfed more than once, since then.

[krusk]

I think it boils down to something pretty simple.

3.5 - Tons of tactically interesting choices at every level. Depending on what you play, you can also get choices every time you play a session. (What spells do I prep, which monster do I summon)
4e - Way less choices. All of them are uninteresting. +1 to hit, 2W Damage and slide 1, or 3w damage and push 1. You only get choices when you level.

With online boards, you have people constantly theorycrafting builds and running through various combos and very quickly the "Correct" 4e builds were flushed out. Conversation didn't immediately end because WoTC would throw out some errata that changed stuff, and that might revive it for a few weeks. Optimization basically became "Play one of the top tier builds, which are all some variant of ____". If your group doesn't optimize much it was "Play a tier 2 build, A, B, or C is good". If you don't want to optimize, why would you go online to discuss your build? Go somewhere edition neutral and talk about his story or plot elements.

4e isn't fun to talk about, so no one does. I suspect once 5e is out, there will be a strong 3.5 community, a weak 2nd ed community and a respectable 5e community (but based on what I've seen, I don't see it being better than 3.X, and so I don't see much migration)

[Azrael]

I think it boils down to something pretty simple.

3.5 - Tons of tactically interesting choices at every level. Depending on what you play, you can also get choices every time you play a session. (What spells do I prep, which monster do I summon)
4e - Way less choices. All of them are uninteresting. +1 to hit, 2W Damage and slide 1, or 3w damage and push 1. You only get choices when you level.

With online boards, you have people constantly theorycrafting builds and running through various combos and very quickly the "Correct" 4e builds were flushed out. Conversation didn't immediately end because WoTC would throw out some errata that changed stuff, and that might revive it for a few weeks. Optimization basically became "Play one of the top tier builds, which are all some variant of ____". If your group doesn't optimize much it was "Play a tier 2 build, A, B, or C is good". If you don't want to optimize, why would you go online to discuss your build? Go somewhere edition neutral and talk about his story or plot elements.

4e isn't fun to talk about, so no one does. I suspect once 5e is out, there will be a strong 3.5 community, a weak 2nd ed community and a respectable 5e community (but based on what I've seen, I don't see it being better than 3.X, and so I don't see much migration)

Those are basically my thoughts exactly.

Essentially, what it boils down to is interesting choices vs. uninteresting choices and more options vs. less options.

Its not to say that 4.e has less "options" than 3.5 (althought it probably does have less than 808 classes, 3,120 feats, and 3,778 spells), it just amounts to most options resulting in essentially the same character (on the mechanical level), whereas in 3.5 you can create a multitude of (mechanically different) characters.