New Dice notation. Do not like.

[Magusrex777]

How does this really affect anyone? Please explain it to me. The people this bothers all seem to have a deep understanding of how the d20 system works and what these posted ranges actually mean. So it does nothing to you right? You log in, see the description get mad on principle and don’t want play?, some claim it makes them want to quit something they enjoy. It doesn’t make any sense.

So, this might affect the new player under the 10d6 description they might have zero idea what that means at all and in the 10-60 description they may be mislead to how it is calculated but will at least understand AND the range will be correct but the average would not be accurate, they can play just fine under that condition. If they don’t understand d6 at all…not so much. With that change you can play exactly how you played before, you should have just as much fun. It feels like people want to complain for the sake of complaining. Someone even suggested sometimes they wish the game had died rather than see what it has become. Why not quit and do something else then?

[Dingdongtudelu]

That is exactly what most people are doing, Magusrex. Now, what is the worst of the two evils? Newbies that need to be educated instead of going 'dur, me push this button and monster go splat', or a game that bears the name dungeons&dragons, but no longer respects its roots, and loses all followers that were interested in playing D&D in the first place?

It might mean little to you, and you can voice your opinion like everybody else, but accept that people have their own too, and a lot of people really like seeing the xDy in D&D.

You should probably also read posts in the beginning of this thread, suggesting an alternative solution to tackling this issue. Both newbies would understand, and veteran players would not be annoyed by some of the propositions.

[Magusrex777]

That is exactly what most people are doing, Magusrex. Now, what is the worst of the two evils? Newbies that need to be educated instead of going 'dur, me push this button and monster go splat', or a game that bears the name dungeons&dragons, but no longer respects its roots, and loses all followers that were interested in playing D&D in the first place?

It might mean little to you, and you can voice your opinion like everybody else, but accept that people have their own too, and a lot of people really like seeing the xDy in D&D.

You should probably also read posts in the beginning of this thread, suggesting an alternative solution to tackling this issue. Both newbies would understand, and veteran players would not be annoyed by some of the propositions.

I am OK with some of those alternatives. I love the game, I am not going to let a change in a description that I know exactly what it means affect me at all. I am just going to continue having fun. in the end it means some new players wont precisely know the average or even more precisely the curve of the results, then again some will now know the range where before they knew nothing. I will, it will be like I have some inside info because I actually played and loved the game DDO was somewhat modeled after. I say somewhat because I played mostly 1st and 2nd edition, DDO is kinda far from from that.

[Zenako]

How does this really affect anyone? Please explain it to me. The people this bothers all seem to have a deep understanding of how the d20 system works and what these posted ranges actually mean. So it does nothing to you right? You log in, see the description get mad on principle and don’t want play?, some claim it makes them want to quit something they enjoy. It doesn’t make any sense.

So, this might affect the new player under the 10d6 description they might have zero idea what that means at all and in the 10-60 description they may be mislead to how it is calculated but will at least understand AND the range will be correct but the average would not be accurate, they can play just fine under that condition. If they don’t understand d6 at all…not so much. With that change you can play exactly how you played before, you should have just as much fun. It feels like people want to complain for the sake of complaining. Someone even suggested sometimes they wish the game had died rather than see what it has become. Why not quit and do something else then?

Its about the tone and feel of the game. Lets try something as an example. Lets toss out the idea that they decided to change the "Look" of the toons to something like Zelda, or Mario, since those games are easy and popular and changed nothing else about the underlying mechancis in the game. Made the kobolds cute and puffy too. The gameplay was the same, the DPS was the same, the character leveling was the same. Everything was the same, other than this minor thing about the appearance of the toons. Would that matter to many? I would thnk so! Well for many people the core connection to the dice is central to their attachment to the genre. It is emotional. When they also cloud the issue by changing things to actually be inaccurate on top of things, that really pushes some buttons.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Of course someone can say what D&D is or isn't: since it's an Intellectual Property, it has a propietor, which is WoTC.
They made a game and called it "D&D 3.5ed". It has rules, it uses dice and so on.
They have rights to tell what is D&D and what is not.

I don't think you can claim another product is "based on D&D 3.5ed" if for example it has no dice rolls, enemies are aliens and there's only one playing character called Duke who kills the aliens using shotguns...

+1 for the Duke Nukem Reference.

Of course I would have gone with the Castle Wolfenstein example

[Magusrex777]

Its about the tone and feel of the game. Lets try something as an example. Lets toss out the idea that they decided to change the "Look" of the toons to something like Zelda, or Mario, since those games are easy and popular and changed nothing else about the underlying mechancis in the game. Made the kobolds cute and puffy too. The gameplay was the same, the DPS was the same, the character leveling was the same. Everything was the same, other than this minor thing about the appearance of the toons. Would that matter to many? I would thnk so! Well for many people the core connection to the dice is central to their attachment to the genre. It is emotional. When they also cloud the issue by changing things to actually be inaccurate on top of things, that really pushes some buttons.

I am very emotional about D&D. My 2 best friends are like brothers to me, these are the people I started playing D&D with so long ago. I graduated with a degree in EE and chose to open a store where I could run D&D for others everyday and make a living. I love it, you guy all love it, I understand the emotion. I just do not not understand something you do not see during game play, does not affect your play and in some ways actually helps some new players. I feel like this is just a rally point, I think there is something deeper fueling all this rage. Just my opinion.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

How does this really affect anyone? ?

Ironically +Mad got it partly right when he said that the D&D franchise brought with it a distinctness that gave them a flavor and market edge. That's what they are now giving up.

I am very emotional about D&D. My 2 best friends are like brothers to me, these are the people I started playing D&D with so long ago. I graduated with a degree in EE and chose to open a store where I could run D&D for others everyday and make a living. I love it, you guy all love it, I understand the emotion. I just do not not understand something you do not see during game play, does not affect your play and in some ways actually helps some new players. I feel like this is just a rally point, I think there is something deeper fueling all this rage. Just my opinion.

Partially correct. It is the most direct attack on D&D feel and icons so far, but it is the "last straw" in a series of such attacks.

In this same mod also look to the changes to Trolls (breaking the ones that work by the rules so they are easier to kill and don't follow D&D tradition like the rest of the trolls in th game), and the particular method of gaining fame (looting bodies, not achieving goals) that goes with the new guild level system.

[Borror0]

I just do not not understand something you do not see during game play

We do see it during gamplay. Every time we read a description, in fact.

[I_Bob]

Its about the tone and feel of the game. Lets try something as an example. Lets toss out the idea that they decided to change the "Look" of the toons to something like Zelda, or Mario, since those games are easy and popular and changed nothing else about the underlying mechancis in the game. Made the kobolds cute and puffy too. The gameplay was the same, the DPS was the same, the character leveling was the same. Everything was the same, other than this minor thing about the appearance of the toons. Would that matter to many? I would thnk so! Well for many people the core connection to the dice is central to their attachment to the genre. It is emotional. When they also cloud the issue by changing things to actually be inaccurate on top of things, that really pushes some buttons.

/signed

Been playing PnP for many years and the "odd" dice really give it some of its flavor. It's not WOW, or Zelda (which I love), it's D&D. Leave the dice alone please. Nothing wrong with learning new things. Stop learning, start slipping down a long slope to extinction.

[phillymiket]

How does this really affect anyone? Please explain it to me.

Pardon my repetition with this analogy.

If baseball changed the phrases "top of the ninth", "home plate", "dug out" and "left field" to something easier to understand to a layman the game would still play the exact same way.
But people would flip out because it doesn't "feel" like baseball anymore. It would imply an insult to the founders of the great American pass time.
See where I'm coming from?
It's silly but at the same time meaningful.

[Magusrex777]

We do see it during gamplay. Every time we read a description, in fact.

I meant during active game-play, I am not reading descriptions while in combat. Don't be picky for no reason.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

I meant during active game-play, I am not reading descriptions while in combat. Don't be picky for no reason.

If you are a D&D fan you know the game is about more than the time you are swinging you sword.

It's about the flavor of the game.

Heck, its even about the pizza and beer.

And he isn't being picky, you are being unduly narrow.

[Magusrex777]

Pardon my repetition with this analogy.

If baseball changed the phrases "top of the ninth", "home plate", "dug out" and "left field" to something easier to understand to a layman the game would still play the exact same way.
But people would flip out because it doesn't "feel" like baseball anymore. It would imply an insult to the founders of the great American pass time.
See where I'm coming from?
It's silly but at the same time meaningful.

You an I really don't need analogies. We both play DDO, played D&D extensively and it means a lot to both of us? We can stay in they D&D world but I love baseball too so lets go there.

I have been a fan of baseball since the 70's, my grandfather introduced me to it, he was a semi-pro player. We spent summers together watching game almost every night all the time telling me stories about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Mickey mantle, Joe D, Shoeless Joe and more than I could name. Baseball has changed in so many ways and the terminology has in fact changed, the rules have even changed. TV and money have changed the game.

I could talk about these things for pages and pages. I will spare us both the details. My five year old daughter(I was this old when I started) watches baseball games with me, she knows our team, she even has a favorite player. I tell her stories like my grandfather told me. Even though in many ways I am watching a very different game, played at a different pace largely by ballplayers who care more about salaries and advertisements than they do about wins and losses I don’t get caught up in that. It is me and my daughter spending quality time together like my grandfather and I. Just like D&D, it was me and my friends doing something together limited only by our imaginations, not the terminology.

[DANTEIL]

Well, since everyone is chiming in on this hot topic, my opinion is this: The change doesn't bother me all that much -- As Long As The Numbers Presented Are Accurate. I understand that dice involve a probability distribution -- I get that. But the numbers as displayed are usually presented in game as a "range" and the range is the same regardless of whether you include the d6 info or not. The dice notation is more informative, true (because you get info about the probabilities) but I believe that there is likely a substantial segment of the playerbase for whom it is irrelevant that a result of 11 or 12 is more probable than a result of 2 or 20. Note, however, that this does not make them bad players or bad people or neanderthals -- it just makes them focused on the parts of the game that interest them more. Just as not everyone cares about DPS calculations (I don't), not everyone cares about how their armor looks or their hairstyles. This is why I thought that the option to toggle on/off the dice information was reasonable -- the people who cared could use that info and the people that didn't could ignore it.

And I am speaking as someone who started playing D&D with the original whitebox set. I like dice. I also do statistics as part of my job, so I like understanding probabilities. But when playing DDO, I've already accepted so many things that make it clear that I am playing a video game -- not a tabletop roleplaying game, that this is a line in the sand that doesn't seem all that crucial to me.

However, again as someone who grew up on D&D, I do understand the position of people who do care very much, which is why I haven't really chimed in before now.

[Akristorn]

That is exactly what most people are doing, Magusrex. Now, what is the worst of the two evils? Newbies that need to be educated instead of going 'dur, me push this button and monster go splat', or a game that bears the name dungeons&dragons, but no longer respects its roots, and loses all followers that were interested in playing D&D in the first place?

It might mean little to you, and you can voice your opinion like everybody else, but accept that people have their own too, and a lot of people really like seeing the xDy in D&D.

You should probably also read posts in the beginning of this thread, suggesting an alternative solution to tackling this issue. Both newbies would understand, and veteran players would not be annoyed by some of the propositions.

hey im a self professed "newb" who has played this for about a year, i'm in my late 20's so i was able to play some of the original games on say commodore 64 atari and such. what attracted me to this game was its heritage yes no other rpg online can hold a candle to the system that d&d implements. many have said that the new system does not correctly display the probability factor with the new dice rolls and as someone in college for engineering i understand and agree..xdy is all about how you build your toon to add xdy+z make sense? if you change xdy+z to arbitrary numbers like 1-20+z an algorithm/equation ceases to make sense and is actually harder to figure out since many items add or subtract form your +to atk saving throws blah blah blah you get my point.
it makes more sense to leave it as is since the rolls are not the problem, its not broken, therefore there is another reason for the change.. im going to go out on a limb and say it is because of the recent purchase of turbine by warner, and the fact that warner desires to make this game more user friendly, but by irritating its existing customer base i think they should take a closer look at its people that are paying for this "wonderful service" and less at the possible profit margins. There i said it. I also think that toning down some of the "nerfing" (to reuse an already overused catchphrase) might be a good idea, or you may see a massive return to the pen and paper, are you going to reprint all of the dungeon manuals as well to represent the changes? i think not.

that being said i am willing to give this update a chance to see if it actually is set to improve gameplay.
if it does i think we should embrace change not fear it, if it means i have to re roll my smite paladins and rangers then so be it, BUT if it does nothing to improve "DPS lag" then i believe you should roll back to what originally was working. if you don't, i can promise you there will be a large migration to a place called Sabbaticaland and your high end players that have shown much loyalty to dnd even before it changed from ADnD will find something else to occupy their time with. people are trying to downplay this update as if its nothing. that just shows how little they understand about this game, like no glancing blows when a barbarian is moving? i hope you make all the mobs stand still or reduce them to 2hp. or the many other changes..to builds, to capstones, to abilities. you are tweaking everything and i wish you luck with making it work. If not, well then good luck on cleaning up the mess you just made.

now im going to have to go back and read the notes on the update to make sure i got this right...

Thelanis

Raistlinamon Majere tr paladin 20
XisaacX Asimov barbarian 19 death frenzier.
XXedwardXX elrich the full metal paladin lvl 13 2wf smite paladin
Lunitarai Evangelion lvl 5 sorc/repair bot
Hikari Shinji lvl5 heavy repeating crossbow ranger/dex 2wf

Cannith

2 lvl 1 toons i started before the current update mess.

more to come if this works itself out.

[kamikazikyle]

i agree with most of the people on this thread i have only played for 1-2 months and i am used to the dice[i sadly never played pnp [no one in my area does lol] ] but i am used to the dice now and when i see x-y i stop for a second because im used to xdy im sure i could get used to it if i had to but i [the player/payer] do not want to


edit: forgot to say that a solution to this 'problem' like many others in this thread have said would be to make it a option and/or make a pop up on korthos that explains it like make a picture or something with arrows and everything so its idiot proof and if someone stil doesnt get it they can ask in the chat once they make it to the harbor or something

[Magusrex777]

If you are a D&D fan you know the game is about more than the time you are swinging you sword.

It's about the flavor of the game.

Heck, its even about the pizza and beer.

And he isn't being picky, you are being unduly narrow.

That is exactly my point, it is you folks who are being narrow. The flavor of the game is still there, it is exactly the same. The worst payers I ever ran across were the ones that could quote rules word for word and knew what page they were on. Yes, the rules are important but people would let them interfere with their enjoyment. When a new player joined my game and we would go through character making, when choosing a weapon, I would say a great sword does 1-10 damage against a S/M sized creatures and 3-18 damage against large ones. I did not say 3d6, no one at at the table was offended. It did not change the flavor, when we finally got to combat and it was time to do damage, you told them to roll 3 six sided dice until they knew for themselves. New players reading the descriptions in DDO don't have a live group of people to help them.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

That is exactly my point, it is you folks who are being narrow. The flavor of the game is still there, it is exactly the same. The worst payers I ever ran across were the ones that could quote rules word for word and knew what page they were on. Yes, the rules are important but people would let them interfere with their enjoyment. When a new player joined my game and we would go through character making, when choosing a weapon, I would say a great sword does 1-10 damage against a S/M sized creatures and 3-18 damage against large ones. I did not say 3d6, no one at at the table was offended. It did not change the flavor, when we finally got to combat and it was time to do damage, you told them to roll 3 six sided dice until they knew for themselves. New players reading the descriptions in DDO don't have a live group of people to help them.

I talk about A, you complain about B.

I was talking about flavor, you bring up rules lawyers, two seperate things completely.

[Magusrex777]

I talk about A, you complain about B.

I was talking about flavor, you bring up rules lawyers, two seperate things completely.

I brought more than rules lawyers, I talked specifically about 3d6 and 3-18 not affecting flavor at all, maybe you missed that part.

[Borror0]

It did not change the flavor

We get it. You don't think like nearly everyone else. Fine. Why are you trying to persuade us we're wrong?