# Review of Heroes of Neverwinter (Facebook App) by Atari



## Neuroglyph (Oct 13, 2011)

Whenever an intellectual property is interpreted into a new media format, it can generate both hopeful anticipation and nervous dread from its fan-base.  Movies become video games, video games become movies, and novels and comic series are transformed into both video games and films.  And each time, fans of the original material must wait to see if their favorite novel/comic/movie/videogame has been faithfully interpreted, or has been embarrassingly misrepresented.

As a tabletop game, *Dungeons & Dragons* has had a remarkable share of good and bad transformations into videogames, movies, novels and comic books over the years, and the list of new media formats keeps growing and growing.  This year, the release of the *Neverwinter Campaign Setting*supplement at GenCon 2011 carried with it a wide range of new media  formats, including a new board game, several novels, and a new series of  _D&D Encounters_ events at local gaming stores.  The campaign setting’s release also hailed the first D&D game app for *Facebook*, which was produced by Atari and entitled *Heroes of Neverwinter*.  And the gaming app has just completed its “open beta” - and it is now available to the Facebook online social community. 

But is this transformation of D&D into a Facebook app destined to be considered a good or bad interpretation?

*Heroes of Neverwinter*


*Developer*: Ed Del Castillo (Liquid Entertainment)
*Publisher*: Atari
*Release Date*: October 2011
*Media*: PC Game App (Facebook account required) 
*Retail Price*: Free to play (Premium perks cost extra) 
 
*D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter* is a game application designed for use with the Facebook online social network.  It allows players to experience Dungeons & Dragons in parts of the Neverwinter Campaign Setting, and to share their experience with their Facebook friends.  The games contains 50 dungeons to explore with characters from Level 1 to Level 10, and offers four different races (Human, Eladrin, Halfling, and Dragonborn) and four different classes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard) to choose from.  The game includes monsters, magic items, and a wide range of adventure settings, from underground dungeons to forested lands.

Game Specs
*
D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter* seems to have fairly low hardware specs, although I never found a listing for it online, but is capable of running on any machine that can handle running Facebook.  I did find that it ran faster on my Windows 7 desktop machine than my laptop which runs Vista, but both computers had no trouble giving a decent performance for the application to run.

Graphics, Sounds, and Interface

The graphics in *D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter* are pretty darned good, offering full-color maps for the play environment and fairly detailed depictions of the monsters and the characters.  The view is not unlike what a player would have if they were sitting at a gaming table in front of a grid map, looking down at the miniatures of monsters and characters, with some terrain bits thrown in to make it look nifty.  The monster and character miniatures have some fun animation, such as falling to the ground or swinging their weapons, and players will note that their favorite hero changes appearance as they get new types of weapons and armor.  Spells and powers also have unique appearances, based upon the type of elemental effect being generated.

The interface is an intuitive point-and-click style, with a choice between a command wheel which forms around the target, or a series of buttons along the bottom of the screen.  It’s not fancy, but it is simple to understand to almost anyone who has played a video game, and easy to pick up for new players to get into the action quickly.  Battle damage and conditional effects appear as floating text above the character or monster for a couple seconds, giving the player a chance to take note of situations as they change during a fight.

The music and sound effects are also pretty darned good, with monsters making their own unique sounds, and characters shouting out “battle yelps” and “arghs” as appropriate for the action.  Spells have unique sounds to them, as does opening chests, traps being set off or disarmed, and even the setting (forest or underground) has background noises.  The sounds and music are simple but fun, and help to increase immersion in the fantasy game setting.

Game Play

When the press release for *Heroes of Neverwinter* was sent out in October, it included this quote from Atari:“Heroes of Neverwinter delivers a high level of depth, polish and authenticity that will fundamentally change the way players think of RPG gaming on social platforms” said Jim Wilson, President and CEO of Atari, Inc. “Existing fans of the D&D franchise will find the translation compelling in all areas of the gameplay experience, while more casual gamers will find the adaptation accessible and intuitive.”​While the first statement might be true for gamers, depending on what sorts of apps they played prior to finding Heroes of Neverwinter, the second statement is open to much debate.  But it is important to note how freely Mr. Wilson uses the words “translation” and “adaptation” in the same sentence, giving a free warning that *Heroes of Neverwinter* is not quite as much D&D 4E as existing fans might like it to be.

It should be noted that while there are some “good points” to this gaming app, they are regretfully far fewer than the “bad points” and misinterpretations of D&D 4E.  On the good side, the developers used material from the *Neverwinter Campaign Setting* to decent effect, and created their adventures from many aspects of supplement, such as the Neverdeath cemetery, the Ashmodai, and the rebel Sons of Alagondar to name a few – complete with flavor text and descriptions to create a storyline.  They chose to use four iconic fantasy gaming character classes and at least three iconic races (Dragonborn are not quite iconic to either D&D nor fantasy gaming quite yet), and allow the player to create any race class combination, even customizing their character’s appearance and statistics.  The app even includes a Dungeon Maker special application when a hero reaches 10th level, allowing the player to create custom dungeons for other players to access, using a toolset not unlike what was used to make the adventures in *Heroes of Neverwinter* by the developers.

There are even some cool social networking actions that players can do with their Facebook friends who also play *D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter*, such as sending minor magical gifts and consumables, gold, and occasionally one of the “premium” currencies – an astral diamond.  Players can also use their friends’ characters, generating an NPC version to take along in their four man party on their quests.  Their friends are alerted to when a simulacrum of their hero is being used, and can enter a spectator mode to watch the play, offer advice, and the occasional boon or healing.

Yet all of this is a pale moon-cast shadow of what *D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter* could have been had the developers simply used D&D rules-as-written, and not been so concerned with ways to try and extort real currency from the players for in-game premiums at every turn.

Like *D&D Daggerdale* released earlier this year, Atari developers seem obsessed with wanting to change 4E’s form and function at every turn, rather than just transforming the existing tabletop RPG into a computer game.  It’s ironic that one of the major complaints by D&D players of older edition is the “video game” feel which some people feel the current edition has, with defined and packaged powers and maneuvers built into each class.  Yet despite this, Atari developers seem incapable of translating these pre-packaged powers into their games, choosing instead to make sweeping alterations, guided by no clear logic that I personally can fathom.

Using a turn-based combat and a tabletop view with a grid map, the developers of *D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter* were well on their way to create a much updated version of the “Gold Box” engine that successfully powered a dozen AD&D computer game titles in the bygone days.  The spells and powers of each class are specifically detailed, and ready to be programmed into the game engine in order to create an authentic D&D 4E experience -a game which has already been playtested and revised for over two years now by WotC and its fans.  Building an authentic-feeling adventure should have been a snap with rules for encounter design and monster archetypes specifically designed to work versus the characters’ powers and spells.  

But for some reason, all that was thrown by the wayside, as the developers of *D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter* decided to re-invent the D&D wheel, and create their own interpretation of what 4E is all about.

The misinterpretations start right at the beginning with the racial powers at character creation, and they carry all the way through to class powers, monster design, and even to the very rules of D&D 4E combat itself!  Whatever it was that the Atari CEO thought existing fans would find “compelling” about the game app is beyond reckoning, apparently failing to realize that fans tend to find faithfulness and authenticity to the original work to be big factors in making a game they want to play.

Races


All races are staged down version of themselves, lacking some racial features and skill bonuses (there are no skills).  


Humans are the most poorly interpreted, having their stat bonus changed to be +2 to CON and WIS rather than +2 to any score, no bonus feats (there are none of those either), no bonus at-will power (there is only one at-will per class).
 
Classes & Powers


Daily Powers Gone - Characters gain one at-will and one encounter power to begin.  There are no daily or utility powers in the game, and instead they have been transformed into encounter powers instead.  
 

Explosive Acid Arrow - The area of effect, damage output, and combat conditions have also been changed on many powers, giving them much larger areas in most cases.  _Acid Arrow_ is the first and most obvious re-invention encountered by Wizards, covering a 4x4 area with damage and ongoing acid damage – it’s acid fireball now!  But strangely, _Magic Missil_e has reverted to the old version and can once again miss.
 

Minimal Healing - Other powers have been substantial reduced, such as the healing effects of all Clerical spells.  The base heal spell does a pathetic 3-6 points of healing, and _Cure Light Wounds_ does 4-10 points of healing.
 

Fighters & Rogues not wanted - Fighters get no marking abilities, and Rogues no longer get sneak attack or stealth abilities.  In essence, the most important features of these classes have been removed, making them sub-par strikers.
 

Character Advancement – The character advancement table has been revised to allow 1st level characters to hit second after 500 xp.  But they can’t hit 3rd until they amass 2500 xp.
 Combat Rules


No Opportunity attacks – You can just scoot around the map, unblocked by threat zones.
 

Combat Advantage – Changed to happen when any two enemies are adjacent to their target – flanking is not an important consideration.

 

No Healing Surges – Characters cannot heal themselves after a combat, except with left over healing spells or magic items.
 

No Second Wind – only the Fighter gets a _second wind_, while other character must rely on healing spells and items.
 

No Death Saves – If a character drops to 0 hit points, they are immediately dead unless an Elixir of Life is administered.  Elixirs of Life are only available using Astral Diamonds which cost real money.  By the way, if the random monster targeter aims most of the incoming attacks in a round at the player’s character, they will most likely die.  If that character dies, the adventure cannot be completed by the rest of the party – start over!
 Monsters & Encounters


Encounter Imbalance – Encounters are not made more difficult by increasing the number of monsters, but by increasing their level – substantially!  A first level dungeon, on Heroic difficulty, presented my party with a Level 9 Flaming Skeleton – bit over the top really - and I got a whole 10 gold as a reward at the end of the fight!
 

Super-Minions – at higher difficulty levels of play (Hard/Heroic), minions not only increase in level, but are given more hit points – 9 and 17 respectively.  Minions do about 3x expected damage for their level (up to 10 hit points), and usually from ranged attacks.
 

Experience Points – XPs are not accurately tallied for the monsters faced. Typically, the player loses 100 or more experience points per adventure.
 Miscellaneous Oddities


Evil Treasures – The treasure system conforms neither to the DMG treasure parcels, not to the random rolls from the Rules Compendium.  The new system is a set of cards which one can flip using potions of luck – which cost Astral Diamonds of course – and you get to keep only the last card flipped.  So if you get 25 gold pieces, it’s possible to flip the next card and get 10 gold.  After you are stuck with your card, they turn over all the cards, showing you what you might have chosen if only you had been lucky.  It’s awesome how the programmers made one of fun parts of D&D into one of the most frustrating and angering.
 

Bonus Mega-Stacking – Bonuses from magic items stack unlimitedly, instead of using the bonus stacking rules that D&D has.  Getting multiple items with the same bonus type – like healing or initiative – allows for game breaking characters. My friend has a cleric that is +30 to all healing he does, meaning that he cures around three times MORE than if the developers had just left in _second wind_ and healing surges.  Oh, and his Wizard always goes first in a combat, due to a +17 initiative bonus.
 

Gold-grubbing Hirelings – If you don’t have friends playing Heroes of Neverwinter, so that you don’t have a pool of hirelings you can use for free, you have to hire three heroes to make the team of four.  The cost is equal to [(Level – 1)*5] gold per hireling, so by 5th Level, it costs 60 gold (20gp per team mate) just to enter a dungeon for an adventure!  I guess there is sort of an incentive to make your friends play and advance their characters, or else you’ll find yourself without enough money to do anything in the game.
 

Energy Bar – There is a cost to enter the dungeon called Energy, ranging from 5 -20 points.  You have a 20 point bar that slowly refills over time, keeping you from playing as often as you want.  Of course, you can temporarily refill the bar by spending Astral Diamonds (real money) or by spending a lot of Astral Diamonds to remove the bar on your account forever – about $25.00 in fact.
 There are actually about a dozen more misinterpretations and other issues with this game that make it even less remotely resemble D&D 4E, but time and space prevent me from continuing on beating what is clearly a dead horse.

*Overall Score*: 1.50 *out of* 5.0  (It’s free.  It has decent graphics and uses some Neverwinter setting fluff in the adventure design.)

Critique

It’s so very disappointing to see how badly D&D 4E was mangled to create the Heroes of Neverwinter Facebook App.  This app could have been a wonderful introduction to 4E had it bothered to maintain some accuracy in its interpretation of the game.  Given the size of the Facebook audience, D&D gamers could have said to their non-gamer friends, “Hey, check this out... this is the game I play every Friday night.  Check out this app, and see if you like it and maybe we can get you into our gaming group.”  But instead, we have an app that is nothing like D&D 4E, and if anyone does play it, then picks up the actual tabletop game, they will likely be simply confused and even frustrated to try and puzzle through rules they never knew existed.  About the only good thing about this game is that it is free, and kills time if you’re completely bored with life, but it’s a joke to serious 4E gamers, who will find very little “compelling” them to spend their time playing it.

_So until next review… I wish you Happy Gaming!_


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Oct 13, 2011)

We're not "all on Google+ now." In fact, according to a leaked memo, there are highly placed people at Google who feel the project's already been abandoned by the company. Like it or not, Facebook's not going anywhere for a while.


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## Dannager (Oct 13, 2011)

This review doesn't give me high hopes for the reviewer's future work. It seems to set the metric of the game at true-to-form 4e, and then dings it whenever it doesn't "live up" to the original game.

This is a Facebook game. It is not supposed to be identical to playing the D&D 4e tabletop game. It is a casual, short-play-time, social network game. In the same way that it is silly to reduce a video game's score because it doesn't feature a physical board, it's ludicrous to mark down a social network game for not being identical to a tabletop version of that game.

Having played this game since the beta, it's easily the most engaging Facebook game to date, trumping anything Zynga has put out.

Next time you review a product, judge it on its own merits. You have absolutely _failed_ to review this game in any sense except on how it measures up to playing D&D around a table with 5 friends. That's not what this game is about, and it's worrisome that you decided to hold it to that standard anyway.

Again, your job as a reviewer is *not* to tell us how similar something is to something else. It's to tell us whether or not something is enjoyable.

Oh, and we're all on Google+ now? Please.


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## jeffh (Oct 13, 2011)

While I agree with much of what's said here, there is so much emphasis on faithfulness to 4E _uber alles_ that this reads like a parody of stereotypical fanboyism. (Poe's Law fully applies here.) The problem isn't that they changed things from the way 4E works, it's that they often did so _for no good reason_. The problem with the changes to class' powers, for example, is not that they fail to match 4E, it's that they utterly neuter the Fighter (and to a lesser extent the Rogue).

I noticed right away that the game resembled earlier editions more than it did 4E, and a short time afterward, that in a lot of important respects, it sucks. But the relationship between these two facts is a lot more complicated than this review makes it sound.


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## Morrus (Oct 13, 2011)

I'm with the "it's a decent Facebook game" rather than the "it's not a good D&D game" crowd.  It has its flaws - I'd like to see opportunity attacks so that tactical movement matters, XP for user-created dungeons, and a few more classes and races (which I imagine are coming) - but as Facebook games go it's pretty good.  I certainly prefer it to_ Farmville_ and its ilk. 

I didn't go into it expecting to feel like I was playing D&D on a tabletop; I expected a D&D-themed Facebook game, which is pretty much what I got!

The energy thing is kinda annoying though.  But then I guess you could probably finish it in a few hours of solid play, and the viral effect needs people to keep going back to it day after day, so I can see why it works like that.


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## Stumblewyk (Oct 13, 2011)

Yeah, I gotta say - it's a _Facebook_ game.  We're not talking about a D&D video game here.  We're talking about a low-to-no system requirements, web-based, social game app.

It's a _good_ Facebook game.  A really good Facebook game in fact.  Before HoN, I was playing a lot of Dragon Age on Facebook, and this has completely supplanted it.

It's a D&D-themed Facebook game.  That's all.  I don't get the reviewer's hatred at all.


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## Plageman (Oct 13, 2011)

I do agree that as as reviewer the OP should have put into light the differences between the game and a regular 4E-inspired CRPG and kept tone neutral but I myself can't shake off the feeling that the changes made the game frustrating.

I could live with a 4E rules light game but I absolutely hate the treasure method and the revised healing process. Both made me stop playing as I don't want to spend real world money of such games.


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## DM Howard (Oct 13, 2011)

I'm with the others in that it is a good facebook game.  Sure it has it's flaws but to me it just shows how awesome a game that brought more features of 4E into play would be.


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## Fergurg (Oct 13, 2011)

To all those who don't like the comparisons in the review, we have to remember this:

this is being called a Dungeons & Dragons game, which means it is supposed to be similar.

This is like the Godzilla movie in 1998; the biggest flaw with the movie was its title. If it was called "The Giant Iguana", it probably would not have garnered the negative emotions it had.


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## Filcher (Oct 13, 2011)

I, for one, enjoyed the thorough review. I think Neruo makes some excellent points. It says D&D on the cover, so I'd like it to behave like D&D. 

Alas, no astral diamonds for me.


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## Brainwatch (Oct 13, 2011)

What I find most annoying is the quest chains. Do quest A, get item X. Item X is required to do Quest B, which rewards item Y, which is required to do Quest C. IF for any reason you fail to complete quest C. You need to go all the way back to Quest A, because you no longer have the required item to do quests B or C. Unless you want to spend real money to skip the requirements.


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## Neuroglyph (Oct 13, 2011)

Dannager said:


> This review doesn't give me high hopes for the reviewer's future work. It seems to set the metric of the game at true-to-form 4e, and then dings it whenever it doesn't "live up" to the original game.




Well agree with me or not, that's your prerogative, but its a bit low to call into question my ability to do reviews simply because I chose not to like the HoN app or disagree with your PoV.

As someone else aptly pointed out in a later comment, if you're going to put D&D on the cover of new product, then the expectation is that the game behaves like D&D 4E.  And this one does not.  

The changes made to the rules and character class structure broke the gaming experience, made Fighters and Rogues useless, and the treasure system is designed to be nothing but a big eff-u from the coders to make you feel frustrated you don't have astral diamonds.  By removing the fundamental combat tactics of flanking positions, marking/taunting, and forced movement, the game has become nothing more than a DPS/Healing race between the player and the computer.

In other words, by not remaining faithful to the original game, they broke the system, and created a substandard gaming experience.   I thought my points made that abundantly clear.

In fact, the optimal almost-never-will-fail group is 2 Clerics+2 Wizards.  Try it out!  You can run through the first 10 dungeons on Hard or Heroic with this combo and barely break a sweat.  You have tons of AoE damage and tons of healing - assuming that your friends made their characters reasonably, and didn't take silly things like shield spells.  If you add a Fighter or Rogue to the mix, you'll feel just how weak those classes are in the D-Atari-D game of who-can-deal-the-most-raw-damage-first-wins.  The melee classes are gimped with substandard damage, no AoE abilities, and few combat effects that actually matter - and of course, they cannot heal the party.

As far as the Google+ quip, I see that I offended some Facebook users being a smart-aleck.  Mea culpa.  I've removed the offending remark.  But it doesn't change my opinion of the app, and I certainly won't be spending my time playing it.


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## TerraDave (Oct 13, 2011)

This is a PnP RPG site. So it is perfectly good and normal to have that PoV in the review. Presumably their are plenty of other sites that could review it as a video game. 

And besides, I think the astral diamonds were the source of the hatred.


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## Stumblewyk (Oct 13, 2011)

Neuroglyph said:


> The melee classes are gimped with substandard damage, no AoE abilities, and few combat effects that actually matter - and of course, they cannot heal the party.



 While I won't disagree with you that you can nearly completely circumvent the difficulty of adventures with a non-standard adventuring party, and I don't disagree that decision to not build "stickiness" into the fighter, and increased damage output into the rogue are strange decisions, the developers are still inviting player feedback, and the issues you mention are high on the list of "fixes" requested by other players.

However - I've found a rogue's Stunning Blow is almost necessary for locking down the adventure Big Bad, or any spell caster, really.  You slap a Stunned condition on something, and you can easily ignore that enemy for multiple rounds in most occasions.  Couple that with Knockout and trap disabling, and you've got a more than viable party member in my opinion.

Additionally, a fighter with Sweeping Blow and Thicket of Blades can chop through multiple minions/melee baddies and keep them off the backline - especially since ToB slaps a Slowed condition on the targets (as does the fighter's At-Will power).  I guess that's enough stickiness for now.

As for the over-importance of clerics, I think this is far more a problem with the fact that the class is the only one in the game that's 2-stat dependent.  More times than I care to consider I've hired a cleric who has WIS as their primary stat and has nothing but melee powers based off of STR.  Or vise-versa.  It's far too easy to end up with a cleric who can't do their job.  You probably *would* need 2 in some cases.

It sounds to me like your chief complaint against the game is that it's "breakable."  You can abuse the intended system in ways it's not intended to be played.  Sounds a _lot_ like D&D to me, in that respect.

I guess, in the end, I'm happy to play the best game on the Facebook "platform", despite it's flaws.  The fact that it's not "4e-pure" doesn't effect me in the least.  The fighter is recognizably a fighter, the rogue a rogue, the cleric a cleric, and the wizard a wizard.  That's good enough, in my opinion.


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## doctorhook (Oct 13, 2011)

As others have pointed out, this review is really quite unfair, not to mention unnecessarily cynical. Yes, this game is not a perfect adaptation of the 4E ruleset, and yes, it obnoxiously asks for your money like every other FB game, but it's a lot more true to D&D than I was expecting anyway. Why the hate-on?


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## Neuroglyph (Oct 13, 2011)

doctorhook said:


> As others have pointed out, this review is really quite unfair, not to mention unnecessarily cynical. Yes, this game is not a perfect adaptation of the 4E ruleset, and yes, it obnoxiously asks for your money like every other FB game, but it's a lot more true to D&D than I was expecting anyway. Why the hate-on?




I think you're confusing critique with hatred.  I would argue that it isn't hatred to point out the areas of the game that failed to live up to my expectations as a gamer - offering that opinion is part of the review process.  Certainly it isn't hatred to have the opinion that I will not be playing this game because I don't like it.  And I'm fairly certain it isn't hatred to question why a software company would choose to make sweeping changes to a game system that works as it interprets those rules and powers into a video game format.

As a reviewer, my job is to praise the stuff that's good, and make mention of the stuff that is bad, and then form an opinion on the good-to-bad ratio.  I mentioned several good things about the app in the review, and many bad things I disliked about the app.  Based upon the fact that there was more bad things than good things, and that those bad things made me not want to play the app, I think my review was quite reasonable.

And I'd be curious to know what part of the review was unfair.  Is it unfair to ignore (and not write about) the parts of the game that cause Heroes of Neverwinter to not be like D&D?  Or is it more unfair to the reader who has never played the game, and then reads a review that doesn't tell all the facts about a game?


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## Dannager (Oct 13, 2011)

Neuroglyph said:


> Well agree with me or not, that's your prerogative, but its a bit low to call into question my ability to do reviews simply because I chose not to like the HoN app or disagree with your PoV.




No, it's not.

You are a reviewer. Your job, as I (and I imagine most others here) expect it, is to examine a product and tell me whether or not this website's audience would find it enjoyable.

Your job is *not* to compare a product to some other product in an entirely different medium (online) and format (Facebook-casual) and decide it sucks because they're not identical. That doesn't tell me anything worthwhile, except that the Facebook D&D game is not like playing D&D with five people around a table with a DM. I didn't need your review to tell me that. I need your review to tell me whether or not the game is _*fun*_, and why that is or isn't the case.



> As someone else aptly pointed out in a later comment, if you're going to put D&D on the cover of new product, then the expectation is that the game behaves like D&D 4E.  And this one does not.




It behaves like D&D 4e in a lot of ways - far more than you give it credit for. It's obvious in playing it that it's based on 4e. Unmistakably. Yes, they removed some of the fiddly bits, because this is designed as a quick, casual experience.

Either way, though, slapping D&D on the "cover" tells me that it'll feature adventure, monsters, magic, and treasure. This game has all of those things.



> The changes made to the rules and character class structure broke the gaming experience,




I played during the _*beta*_ and it was perfectly playable. Not broken at all. I'm sure it's even better now that the game is actually out.



> made Fighters and Rogues useless,




The Fighter's ability to remain standing and in the fight makes him a great addition. The Rogue doesn't deal enough damage, you're right. That's a valid criticism, because it judges the game on its own merits.



> and the treasure system is designed to be nothing but a big eff-u from the coders to make you feel frustrated you don't have astral diamonds.




lol



> By removing the fundamental combat tactics of flanking positions, marking/taunting, and forced movement, the game has become nothing more than a DPS/Healing race between the player and the computer.




Or it's supposed to be a casual game that you can play in 15 minutes. Again, you should not be describing the game with terms like "By removing..." because that demonstrates that you're judging the game by some other game's rubric. There is plenty of room for tactical thought in the Facebook game, it just doesn't take an hour to get through an encounter.



> In other words, by not remaining faithful to the original game, they broke the system, and created a substandard gaming experience.   I thought my points made that abundantly clear.




You did. You made it very clear that you think this game sucks because it's not another game. That exists in a different medium. In a different format.

Here. Go to a game review website. Look up some Game Boy Advanced/SP game reviews for The Legend of Zelda Four Swords. Now look up some GameCube reviews for The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker. I want you to count how many of those reviewers decided to give the Game Boy Advanced/SP game a lower score because *its graphics didn't live up to the GameCube game*. Not many, right? You know why that is? Because it's silly to criticize a Game Boy game for having less advanced graphics than a GameCube game.

Now, *that's* silly. But you know what would be sillier? If someone wrote a review for a Legend of Zelda *board game* and criticized it for not having sound quality on par with the Wind Waker console game. *That* is what you're doing in this review.



> As far as the Google+ quip, I see that I offended some Facebook users being a smart-aleck.  Mea culpa.  I've removed the offending remark.  But it doesn't change my opinion of the app, and I certainly won't be spending my time playing it.




You didn't offend anyone. I don't think anyone in here has any strong loyalties to a particular social network beyond convenience. It was just sort of a non-sequitor that isn't really supportable.


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## Dannager (Oct 13, 2011)

Neuroglyph said:


> And I'd be curious to know what part of the review was unfair.  Is it unfair to ignore (and not write about) the parts of the game that cause Heroes of Neverwinter to not be like D&D?  Or is it more unfair to the reader who has never played the game, and then reads a review that doesn't tell all the facts about a game?




It is unfair to say "This game is on Facebook, and therefore cannot be like a game that is not on Facebook. I only like my D&D games in a not-on-Facebook format, so this game sucks," and call that a review.

Here's what you *should* write: "This is a Facebook game. It is designed for casual play, and you can get through a dungeon on your lunch break from your work computer. If you are looking for an experience that is similar to playing Dungeons & Dragons around a dinner table with four friends and a DM, look elsewhere. But if you're looking for a way to get your adventuring fix in a spare 15 minutes, here's what you need to know about Heroes of Neverwinter..."


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## Dannager (Oct 13, 2011)

Oh, and Hard and Heroic dungeons are designed to be completed by characters at levels higher than the adventure's rating. So yes, if you go into the Heroic version of a 1st-level dungeon with a 1st-level party, you will encounter monsters of a much higher level than you. That should serve as a hint that you're not supposed to be there yet.


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## Erdrick Dragin (Oct 13, 2011)

To the OP, I'm on your side. Don't make a "D&D" game if it can't even have the fundamentals of a D&D game, simple. The app is just pure crap and if it had been more in line with 4E-rules and the classes and races better, than yes, I'd be introducing this to my friends. However, it's exactly as you described it and I'm not going to waste my time on it anymore.

Atari needs to just...stop making D&D games. They clearly don't know what they're doing.


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## Hussar (Oct 14, 2011)

On the idea of reviewer=completely unbiased observer.

Ballocks.  I'm sorry, but do any of you read movie reviews?  Or car reviews?  Or, heck, reviews of pretty much anything out there?  Reviewers are not unbiased.  Reviewers are not there to tell the audience a neutral point of view.  Look at virtually any movie reviewer and you'll see that they are most certainly not a neutral observer.

A reviewer reviews based on his or her preferences and makes those preferences pretty clearly obvious.  Neuroglyph has done that and done it pretty clearly.

The fact that you are spending time talking about his review means he's done his job well.  Criticising him for doing what a reviewer should do is pretty strange.  

Look at his criticisms.  Do you agree with them?  Do you disagree?  Think about what he's actually written.  THAT'S what a reviewer should be doing.  Forcing the reader to actually consider different viewpoints. 

Dull, dry presentation of "facts" without interpretation is not a review.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 14, 2011)

Morrus said:


> I didn't go into it expecting to feel like I was playing D&D on a tabletop; I expected a D&D-themed Facebook game, which is pretty much what I got!





Yup.  It's a good way to keep the brand in front of the eyes of a whole lot of people.  They plugged the hell out of the brand on The Big Bang Theory recently, too.  It's all gotta be good for the game and tabletop gaming overall.


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## Dannager (Oct 14, 2011)

Erdrick Dragin said:


> To the OP, I'm on your side. Don't make a "D&D" game if it can't even have the fundamentals of a D&D game, simple.




I think you might have some odd ideas of what the fundamentals of a D&D game are. Adventure, monsters, treasure, magic - _*those*_ are fundamental to D&D.

The difference between getting a +2 to attack when you're *across* a monster from an ally as opposed to *next to *a monster with an ally? That ish is _*not*_ fundamental.



> The app is just pure crap




It's being pretty universally acclaimed as one of the most advanced, enjoyable Facebook apps to date. So, I mean, maybe you don't like it, but I think your problem has more to do with the format than the game.



> and if it had been more in line with 4E-rules and the classes and races better, than yes, I'd be introducing this to my friends.




Here's an idea: introduce your friends to _*actual*_ Dungeons & Dragons. Because if the game were in-line with 4e's rules, classes, and races, then that's exactly what they'd be playing anyway.

This is a casual introduction to the game. And those of you who say it sucks as a casual introduction need to take about twenty steps back and put yourselves in the shoes of someone who would *actually need a casual introduction to D&D*.



> Atari needs to just...stop making D&D games. They clearly don't know what they're doing.




Atari is responsible for some of the best-reviewed D&D games ever made.


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## Dannager (Oct 14, 2011)

Hussar said:


> On the idea of reviewer=completely unbiased observer.




No one is saying this. I'm not sure where you got this idea.



> Ballocks.  I'm sorry, but do any of you read movie reviews?  Or car reviews?  Or, heck, reviews of pretty much anything out there?  Reviewers are not unbiased.  Reviewers are not there to tell the audience a neutral point of view.  Look at virtually any movie reviewer and you'll see that they are most certainly not a neutral observer.



Ostensibly, reviewers *are* supposed to support a "neutral" point of view, or at least represent the point of view of their average readership. Good reviewers keep that in the back of their mind while playing/watching/reading through (and later analyzing) the game/movie/whatever in question - something might irk them personally, but unless they feel it would also irk their average audience, they'll disregard it for the sake of the integrity of the review.



> A reviewer reviews based on his or her preferences and makes those preferences pretty clearly obvious.  Neuroglyph has done that and done it pretty clearly.



That's fine, if your preferences and review criterion are close enough to your audience's to make them useful. This thread, however, makes it pretty clear that Neuroglyph's style of review _doesn't_ provide the sort of information or viewpoint much of his audience is looking for in a review.



> The fact that you are spending time talking about his review means he's done his job well.



Reviews are not high art. Critical discussion of their content does not elevate them.



> Criticising him for doing what a reviewer should do is pretty strange.



And if he were doing what a reviewer should do, you would have a point. We've pointed out, however, that he has _not_ reviewed this product. He has compared it to another game in another medium and another format and found it lacking for the sake of the medium and the format. But if I'm the sort of person *looking* to play in that medium and that format (that is, I'm the sort of person who might be interested in a review of a casual, Facebook D&D app), then criticizing the game on account of its medium and format tells me *nothing*; I've already accepted their inherent strengths and limitations, and what I'm looking for is whether or not the game provides an enjoyable play experience that takes advantage of those strengths and limitations.



> Look at his criticisms.  Do you agree with them?



Most of them, yes. But unfortunately his real criticisms of the *game* are buried in a pile of lackluster comparisons to a different game.

For a perfect illustration of why the "review" style of comparing a game to a different game and finding it lacking is a terrible way to review something, look at the Metacritic scores of Dragon Age 2.

The original Dragon Age (Origins) has a Metacritic score of 86. Dragon Age 2 has a score of 79. That's only seven points lower. And you know why? Because professional reviewers *know what they're doing*. Yes, the second game made some significant departures from the first, but it remained _an enjoyable play experience_, and the job of a reviewer is to tell you whether or not you should go out and buy the game.

But *user reviews*? Those reviews done by random guys on the internet?

*They're terrible*.

Dragon Age 2 has an aggregate user review score of _*4.4*_ out of 10. Meanwhile, Dragon Age: Origins? _*7.5*_. If we translated these to a 100-point scale, Dragon Age 2's user review score would be *31 points* lower than Dragon Age: Origins'.

Again, difference in professional review scores? _*Seven*_. Difference in user review scores? _*Thirty-one*_.

Why is this? Because random internet guy after random internet guy showed up to complain about how Dragon Age 2 sucked _*compared to Dragon Age: Origins*_.

Well great. That's awesome if I loved Dragon Age: Origins and am so fickle with my gameplay demands that changing the game will ruin the series for me, no matter how enjoyable a game the sequel is. But if I'm new to the series? Suddenly I don't want to play Dragon Age 2, because the whole internet seems to hate it.

So review-by-comparison is terrible, and puts you on the same level as the hundreds of random internet people who pop into aggregate review sites to give a game a big fat *zero-point-zero* because it's different than what they're used to.

For an even more ridiculous illustration of how random people make terrible reviewers without reasonable rubrics, see this story on Portal 2's after-launch user reviews. Of course, after people actually *played* the game (and read the scores of professional reviews lauding it as one of the best games ever made - it has a professional aggregate score of 95), the user review score began gradually climbing to where it is now. But initially? Some people were angry that it didn't measure up to another game (in this case, Portal), and it caused the aggregate user review score to spiral into meaninglessness.



> Do you disagree?  Think about what he's actually written.  THAT'S what a reviewer should be doing.  Forcing the reader to actually consider different viewpoints.



What different viewpoints? I don't read reviews to find out what other people took away from the game compared to what I took away - after all, I haven't even _played_ it yet if I'm combing through reviews. I read them to find out if I'll enjoy it. Ideally, I won't have to read multiple reviews. In fact, ideally, I should be able to hit up an aggregate review site and make purchase decisions based on its aggregate score and perhaps a handful of summarized bullet points.



> Dull, dry presentation of "facts" without interpretation is not a review.



No one is asking for dull, dry presentation of facts. Facts are good, and an author's viewpoint that does its best to account for the audience of a review (and the intended audience of the product in question) is also a good thing.

What I _don't_ want is a review for a wheelchair that sums up by saying the wheelchair is crap because how are you supposed to run a marathon in this thing?

And if anyone's interested, here is a list of recent news articles and reviews discussing Heroes of Neverwinter. Spoiler: they're *generally positive*.


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## Dannager (Oct 14, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> Yup.  It's a good way to keep the brand in front of the eyes of a whole lot of people.  They plugged the hell out of the brand on The Big Bang Theory recently, too.  It's all gotta be good for the game and tabletop gaming overall.




Is this something you know? As far as I'm aware, the show's creators are generally responsible for products (games, movies, comics, etc.) appearing in BBT.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 14, 2011)

Dannager said:


> Is this something you know?





What's to know?  The FB app is a good way to keep the brand in front of people.  BBT plugged the hell out of D&D by featuring it prominently on the show.




Dannager said:


> As far as I'm aware, the show's creators are generally responsible for products (games, movies, comics, etc.) appearing in BBT.





Really?  My "They" wasn't meant to imply who plugged it, just that it was plugged.  Does "As far as I'm aware" mean that you actually have some inside knowledge of the product placement process?  I'd love more details if you actually have them.


As far as a review of the app is concerned, I haven't played it so I can't really judge that yet.  However, D&D has become a brand no longer exclusive to RPGs, for quite some time now, so if the owners of the property wish to have games with that brand on them across multiple platforms (RPGs, boardgames, computer games, apps, etc.), FB seems a fine enough place to attract some attention to the brand as any other.


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## Dannager (Oct 14, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> Really?  My "They" wasn't meant to imply who plugged it, just that it was plugged.  Does "As far as I'm aware" mean that you actually have some inside knowledge of the product placement process?  I'd love more details if you actually have them.




My mistake, I thought you were implying that the D&D team was responsible for its product placement in BBT.

As for how this sort of thing works, I don't have any insider information, beyond knowing that when it came to the D&D episode of Community, it was the Community guys who came up with the idea and approached WotC to make sure everything was kosher with them producing the episode. I'm inclined to think that's how it typically works, but I don't know that there are enough examples of D&D being shown off on network television for there to really be a "typical" anyway.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 14, 2011)

Dannager said:


> My mistake, I thought you were implying that the D&D team was responsible for its product placement in BBT.
> 
> As for how this sort of thing works, I don't have any insider information, beyond knowing that when it came to the D&D episode of Community, it was the Community guys who came up with the idea and approached WotC to make sure everything was kosher with them producing the episode. I'm inclined to think that's how it typically works, but I don't know that there are enough examples of D&D being shown off on network television for there to really be a "typical" anyway.






It's my understanding that most product placement is purchased.  Community wasn't using current products so maybe they actually needed permission on that score.  BBT has used a number of current games as parts of scenes, but I don't recall them being named except for D&D 4E and Magic.  I've seen them play Talisman unnamed.

There's a discussion of this here -

What game was played in 'Big Bang Theory' the 6th October 2011 in the US? | BoardGameGeek | BoardGameGeek

And more info here -

http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/family/articles/120097.aspx


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## kitsune9 (Oct 14, 2011)

I'm in the camp that the game needs to be more like D&D if it has the label.


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## kitsune9 (Oct 14, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Dull, dry presentation of "facts" without interpretation is not a review.




Dead on Hussar!


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## Neuroglyph (Oct 14, 2011)

kitsune9 said:


> Hussar said:
> 
> 
> > Dull, dry presentation of "facts" without interpretation is not a review.
> ...




Thank you for your support Hussar and Kitsune9, and I'm gratified that you enjoyed my review style.  And I tend to agree with you as well, that a dry presentation of facts is not a review - at best, it's simply a "news report" about a game, and at worst it's just free advertising/propaganda for the product.

It's too bad that some gamers only like that review style if it agrees with their own opinions.  But if nothing else, a controversial review does offer an opportunity to spur on a lively debate... and it definitely pleases me to see how passionate gamers can become defending their favorite game - even if it is just a Facebook app.


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## JohnnyZemo (Oct 14, 2011)

Sorry, but I have to agree with Dannager.

The purpose of the review should be to tell the reader whether or not the game is made well and worth playing.  

Is it reasonable to expect D&D novels to precisely follow 4E combat rules?  How about the Book of Vile Darkness movie?  What if it doesn't match up exactly with the 4E ruleset?  Would that make it a bad movie?

Clearly, the reviewer was hoping that this game would be a precise rule-for-rule port of D&D 4E, and the game is not.  It would be reasonable to note that in the review and mention some of the key differences, but spending the entire review angrily detailing every difference between the game and 4E is pointless.

This review is mainly concerned with the reviewer's expectations of the game rather than the quality of the game.  You have to review something for what it is, not what you were hoping it would be.

I'm not a big fan of Facebook games, so I tried this game once and haven't returned to it.  However, many of my other Facebook friends (many of whom are lapsed D&D players) seem to like it quite a bit.


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## Dannager (Oct 14, 2011)

Neuroglyph said:


> It's too bad that some gamers only like that review style if it agrees with their own opinions.




This is one of the most disappointing parts of how this has been handled; you could have posted a review that did nothing but praise Heroes of Neverwinter for its strict adherence to the 4e rules and giving it a 5.0/5.0, but as long as you spent the entire review comparing HoN to tabletop 4e, I (and others here) would *still* have issue with how the review is written.

You need to understand this: Our complaints aren't about the fact that you don't like the game. They're about the fact that you have written your review in such a way that we essentially have no idea whether or not this game is actually enjoyable to play, because you haven't actually talked about what makes the game enjoyable and what makes it unenjoyable (beyond, of course, how closely it mimics 4e rules; and frankly, that really has no bearing on any game's fun-factor, especially when translated to a different medium and format).

I am sure that there are video game reviewers who *hate* sports titles, but are forced to review them anyway. Does that mean that they give them 1/10 scores and walk away? No.


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## Dannager (Oct 14, 2011)

JohnnyZemo said:


> Is it reasonable to expect D&D novels to precisely follow 4E combat rules?  How about the Book of Vile Darkness movie?  What if it doesn't match up exactly with the 4E ruleset?  Would that make it a bad movie?




Bingo.



> Clearly, the reviewer was hoping that this game would be a precise rule-for-rule port of D&D 4E, and the game is not.




This is also kind of troubling. Why did the reviewer go into playing this game with the expectation that a *Facebook game* would hold itself to a strict interpretation of the 4e rules?


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## Dannager (Oct 14, 2011)

kitsune9 said:


> Dead on Hussar!




Again, no one is arguing against this. If you think we are, you have not understood what we're saying.


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## Dannager (Oct 14, 2011)

Mark CMG said:


> It's my understanding that most product placement is purchased.  Community wasn't using current products so maybe they actually needed permission on that score.  BBT has used a number of current games as parts of scenes, but I don't recall them being named except for D&D 4E and Magic.  I've seen them play Talisman unnamed.




Thanks for the links! It certainly could be that it was purchased product placement. It sort of makes me wonder if producers of stereotypically geeky products are lined up to get their goods on BBT.


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## jeffh (Oct 14, 2011)

Dannager said:


> You need to understand this: Our complaints aren't about the fact that you don't like the game. They're about the fact that you have written your review in such a way that we essentially have no idea whether or not this game is actually enjoyable to play, because you haven't actually talked about what makes the game enjoyable and what makes it unenjoyable (beyond, of course, how closely it mimics 4e rules; and frankly, that really has no bearing on any game's fun-factor, especially when translated to a different medium and format).



Yes, exactly. As disappointing as the review itself is, what's far worse is how egregiously the criticisms of it are being misunderstood.


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## Hussar (Oct 15, 2011)

Meh.  On a site devoted to table top RPG's, criticising a video game based on a TTRPG for not following the rules of that game isn't exactly straying too far from what the intended audience of the review would consider as good or bad.

If this site was devoted to video games, yeah, I could better see the criticisms of the review.  However, on a site where daily several people spend considerable amounts of time debating whether or not a +1 to hit spread over thirty levels is a broken feat tax or not, basing your review of a 4e video game on the mechanics of said game isn't too much of a stretch.

Just my 2 cents worth.  To be honest, I've never played the game, nor do I ever really intend to.  Just not my thing.  But whinging about how the review of the game focuses too much on the mechanics of 4e on EN WORLD seems a bit strange to me.


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## Dannager (Oct 15, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Meh.  On a site devoted to table top RPG's, criticising a video game based on a TTRPG for not following the rules of that game isn't exactly straying too far from what the intended audience of the review would consider as good or bad.




I'd honestly prefer to believe that there aren't that many of us for whom strict adherence to a set of rules from another game in another medium in another format wins out over the game's playability and fun factor. That would say some very unflattering things about the community on this website.

EDIT: Furthermore, I can't imagine the awful review scores Neuroglyph would have given a game like Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, an old arcade side-scroller ranked in the top 50 arcade games of all time. But it has D&D in the name and doesn't follow the D&D rules, so *it must suck*.


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## jeffh (Oct 15, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Meh.  On a site devoted to table top RPG's, criticising a video game based on a TTRPG for not following the rules of that game isn't exactly straying too far from what the intended audience of the review would consider as good or bad.
> 
> If this site was devoted to video games, yeah, I could better see the criticisms of the review.  However, on a site where daily several people spend considerable amounts of time debating whether or not a +1 to hit spread over thirty levels is a broken feat tax or not, basing your review of a 4e video game on the mechanics of said game isn't too much of a stretch.
> 
> Just my 2 cents worth.  To be honest, I've never played the game, nor do I ever really intend to.  Just not my thing.  But whinging about how the review of the game focuses too much on the mechanics of 4e on EN WORLD seems a bit strange to me.



These things are definitely of interest to people here, but they're hardly make-or-break. It's one thing to discuss them, it's quite another to seemingly base the entire review on them. Even Neuroglyph seems able to distinguish between fun factor (as Dannager has been calling it) and faithfulness to 4E when pressed, which makes it all the more disappointing that the review itself treats them interchangeably when they obviously aren't.


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## RedShirtNo5.1 (Oct 16, 2011)

If the game was not labelled "Dungeons & Dragons", would the reviewer have found it fun? 

Say I don't play 4e.  Would I have fun playing this game? 

Is this game more or less fun than Farmville?  

I would like a review that answered these questions.


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## Saeviomagy (Oct 16, 2011)

Dannager said:


> I'd honestly prefer to believe that there aren't that many of us for whom strict adherence to a set of rules from another game in another medium in another format wins out over the game's playability and fun factor. That would say some very unflattering things about the community on this website.



Personally I'd have to say the game would be more playable and fun if it HAD stuck to the 4e mechanics in a number of places. As others have said, rogues are basically in your party for a single reason: stunning blow combined with a high initiative makes that BBEG spellcaster weep. Mistakes with how conditions work (ie - a dazed, prone individual will get to stand and attack) make many other powers useless.
Fighters really have no reason to exist - because heals are a flat amount instead of being surge based, more hitpoints just means you have more healing needing done... but you filled the spot with a fighter, so you don't have it.
Conversely the fact that anything that would be a minor action is a free action instead makes clerics gods. You can burn through your entire healing stash in a single round while still attacking.
And any wizard spell that isn't AOE isn't worth casting.
Items are a bit wierd too - powers often mention [w] in how much damage they do, but the weapons list their damage ranges with all the modifiers mixed in, so a weapon that does 5-15 damage may have a higher or lower [w] value than another, and the only way to find out is to check it out during a dungeon (when you can't swap gear...).
Incidentally I've no problems with the monetization stuff. It's expected.


> EDIT: Furthermore, I can't imagine the awful review scores Neuroglyph would have given a game like Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, an old arcade side-scroller ranked in the top 50 arcade games of all time. But it has D&D in the name and doesn't follow the D&D rules, so *it must suck*.



Are there really so few arcade games? It was a pretty bog standard side-scrolling beat em up with only a vague handwave towards D&D.
The worst thing is that 'it's a facebook game' really doesn't stop them from adding any of the 4e rules in. This stuff is basic logic that flash is more than capable of handling.


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## Dannager (Oct 16, 2011)

Saeviomagy said:


> Personally I'd have to say the game would be more playable and fun if it HAD stuck to the 4e mechanics in a number of places. As others have said, rogues are basically in your party for a single reason: stunning blow combined with a high initiative makes that BBEG spellcaster weep. Mistakes with how conditions work (ie - a dazed, prone individual will get to stand and attack) make many other powers useless.
> Fighters really have no reason to exist - because heals are a flat amount instead of being surge based, more hitpoints just means you have more healing needing done... but you filled the spot with a fighter, so you don't have it.
> Conversely the fact that anything that would be a minor action is a free action instead makes clerics gods. You can burn through your entire healing stash in a single round while still attacking.
> And any wizard spell that isn't AOE isn't worth casting.
> ...




And if all of these things contribute to making the game unenjoyable, then they become valid criticisms of the game. The stuff you outline above is a pretty clear illustration of class imbalance. But what you're doing here is explaining why these things harm the gameplay experience, rather than simply pointing out that they have deviated from 4e and must therefore be _bad_.



> Are there really so few arcade games? It was a pretty bog standard side-scrolling beat em up with only a vague handwave towards D&D.



It's considered by many to be the pinnacle of arcade side-scrollers. But yes, it's obviously a reinterpretation of D&D rather than a faithful implementation of the game in arcade form, which is why I'm inclined to think that we'd find Neuroglyph giving it a 1.5/5.0.



> The worst thing is that 'it's a facebook game' really doesn't stop them from adding any of the 4e rules in. This stuff is basic logic that flash is more than capable of handling.



The rules are implemented differently, but not because of any software or infrastructure limitations. They streamlined some of the rules to make the game more accessible, and faster to play.


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## Saeviomagy (Oct 16, 2011)

For some stuff I can buy the "we made it simpler because it's a facebook game" explanation, but so many of the changes are just arbitrary and result in things that make less sense than the pen and paper version that I don't think there was really a plan.

Oh, there's one very, very important point that I believe the original review missed. Despite being "out of beta" the game still has some stability and bug issues which have the capability to eat up astral diamonds if you've chosen to use them. For that reason I would heartily recommend NOT buying astral diamonds with cash for a while.


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## Aberzanzorax (Oct 17, 2011)

RedShirtNo5.1 said:


> If the game was not labelled "Dungeons & Dragons", would the reviewer have found it fun?
> 
> Say I don't play 4e. Would I have fun playing this game?
> 
> ...




Allow me to interpret:

If the car was not labelled "porche" would the reviewer have found it fun?

Say I don't drive cars. Would I have fun driving this vehicle?

Is this vehicle more or less fun than a vespa?

I would like a review that answered these questions.




Irrelevant questions IMO....and a harsh, harsh criticism of the reviewer. Why doesn't your review of cookies compare it to doughnuts, and their enjoyable qualities?!? You clearly have only compared apples to apples. How should the oranges feel?!?!?



EDIT: To tone back my own obnoxiousness....

The comments responding to the review have bugged me (if that wasn't clear)...not because they were negative, but because, IMO they were unfair.



I support the review of a D&D game being D&D. If I slap the name D&D on plants versus zombies (my favorite app OMG I love that app), I'd give it a crappy review. IT IS NOT D&D.

So make a great non D&D app and I'll play it (just don't call it something it's not as a "trick" to get me to buy it). Maybe make a true to form D&D app that would suck for non rpr's (but be good for ppl who actually play D&D) and I'd play it too.


But don't try to sell me "here's D&D in another modality" when it's just a computer game with the barest of bare hints/nods in the direction of fantasy (nevermind D&D) and not an actual D&D product. 

BE D&D...don't pretend to be it or hint at it.

Really, it shouldn't be that hard.

For shame.


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## Wayside (Oct 17, 2011)

Neuroglyph said:


> Well agree with me or not, that's your prerogative, but its a bit low to call into question my ability to do reviews simply because I chose not to like the HoN app or disagree with your PoV.



I question your ability because I find your reviews to be consistently unhelpful. They do have lots of words, which for some people amounts to them being "thorough," but your habit of criticizing products for not conforming to some metric you just made up of what they should be doesn't cut it. It's lazy criticism. On the other hand, at least you don't come off as a paid shill like the Pathfinder reviewer does.



Neuroglyph said:


> As far as the Google+ quip, I see that I offended some Facebook users being a smart-aleck.  Mea culpa.  I've removed the offending remark.  But it doesn't change my opinion of the app, and I certainly won't be spending my time playing it.



You didn't offend anyone. The claim was simply wrong, and we all know what happens when someone is wrong on the Internet. Google+ has about 6% of Facebook's active user base, and the vast majority of them still use Facebook as well. There's also the small matter of Google+ not yet being a serious gaming platform, for reasons partially spelled out by Google employee Steve Yegge in a rant from earlier this week.


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## thomkt (Oct 17, 2011)

I'm not sure why people keep saying the game is out of beta.

Their fan page on Facebook says it's still in beta, I launch it and the graphic in the upper left corner says "Beta" and the version number is 0.7171 - release is typically 1.0.

There's a big difference between open beta and release.


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## Wycen (Oct 17, 2011)

I like the game.  I like that there is no aggro and it is simplified.  The only complaint I have is the lack of interaction between PC and NPC or player to player, but that's why table top RPGing will always be my favorite.


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## Dannager (Oct 17, 2011)

Aberzanzorax said:


> If the car was not labelled "porche" would the reviewer have found it fun?




Are you freaking kidding me?

Come on, Aberzanzorax.

This review is like someone saying "So here's my review for this car: it said Porsche on the tail but it was actually a Ford, so 1.5/5.0," completely ignoring the question of _*how good of a car is this car?*_



> Say I don't drive cars. Would I have fun driving this vehicle?



No. This is like asking "I'm not a big fan of your typical SUV. What does this SUV bring to the table that makes it different from the rest?"



> Is this vehicle more or less fun than a vespa?



Nothing is more fun than a Vespa.



> Irrelevant questions IMO....



None of those questions were irrelevant. Not a one. And *all of them* are more relevant than "How many times did their rules deviate from the standard 4e rules?"



> I support the review of a D&D game being D&D. If I slap the name D&D on plants versus zombies (my favorite app OMG I love that app), I'd give it a crappy review. IT IS NOT D&D.



You understand how slapping the label "D&D" on Plants vs. Zombies and slapping the label "D&D" on Heroes of Neverwinter are two *very* different things, yes?

Tell me you understand this.

Again, Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara is one of the best-reviewed D&D games of all time. But here you are telling me you would have given it a terrible review score, because it's not enough like *real* D&D for you.

And again, this is irrelevant. If you gave _Plants vs. Zombies D&D Edition _an awful review for no other reason than that it had the label "D&D" tacked on, you'd also be branded as an awful reviewer. The fact that it wouldn't really have anything to do with D&D might warrant a cautionary note in the review (again, something like "If you're looking for a faithful Dungeons & Dragons experience, look elsewhere. This is a Plants vs. Zombies game. But if you're curious as to whether _Plants vs. Zombies D&D Edition_ is an enjoyable game, read on.") To make the thesis of your review "This isn't enough like real D&D, even though it at no point tries to convince you that it's real D&D!" is to completely miss the point of a game review.



> So make a great non D&D app and I'll play it (just don't call it something it's not as a "trick" to get me to buy it).



If you think Heroes of Neverwinter had the D&D brand attached to it as a "trick", you're *straight up delusional*. This is a D&D game. This is not Starfox Adventures.



> But don't try to sell me "here's D&D in another modality" when it's just a computer game with the barest of bare hints/nods in the direction of fantasy (nevermind D&D) and not an actual D&D product.



I'm sorry, _*what*_?

Heroes of Neverwinter features D&D classes. It features D&D races. It features monsters. It features magic items. It features dungeons. It features dragons. It features adventures. It features _*the city of Neverwinter and its environs*_. It features powers. It features ability scores. It features initiative. It features move actions, standard actions, and free actions. It features hit points. It features AC, Reflex, Fortitude, and Will defenses. It features *dozens* of other things that come to mind when one thinks of D&D.

How in the *world* is this "not an actual D&D product" to you?

In fact, you know what *would* be weird? If Heroes of Neverwinter _didn't_ have the D&D name attached to it. That would be really odd, given how it's basically D&D.



> For shame.



*Right. Back. At you.*


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## Hussar (Oct 17, 2011)

Dannager said:
			
		

> This review is like someone saying "So here's my review for this car: it said Porsche on the tail but it was actually a Ford, so 1.5/5.0," completely ignoring the question of how good of a car is this car?




Y'know what?  If someone put a Porche tag on a Ford and tried to call it a Porche, giving it a 1.5/5 is, in my mind anyway, PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE.

But, y'know what woud be even more useful than sitting around bitching about this review?  Writing your own and submitting it to Morrus to put on the main news page.  It's not exactly that hard.


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## Hussar (Oct 17, 2011)

Dannager said:
			
		

> This review is like someone saying "So here's my review for this car: it said Porsche on the tail but it was actually a Ford, so 1.5/5.0," completely ignoring the question of how good of a car is this car?




Y'know what?  If someone put a Porche tag on a Ford and tried to call it a Porche, giving it a 1.5/5 is, in my mind anyway, PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE.

But, y'know what woud be even more useful than sitting around bitching about this review?  Writing your own and submitting it to Morrus to put on the main news page.  It's not exactly that hard.


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## Dannager (Oct 17, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Y'know what?  If someone put a Porche tag on a Ford and tried to call it a Porche, giving it a 1.5/5 is, in my mind anyway, PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE.




And that's fine, because you're just some internet guy. You can submit your user review, and it'll get lumped in with all the other equally arbitrary user reviews, and it will end up having a relatively tiny impact on a relatively useless metric.

But Neuromancer is offering the official EN World review of this game, and I (and many others who have also voiced their opinions here) believe that demands a higher standard - something that at least _resembles_ professionalism.

This game _clearly_ deserves better than the equivalent of 3/10. We all know it. I'm sure even _you_ know it.

This review is more like giving it a 3/10 for faithfulness to 4e rules. Now, that's still low, since this is a much more faithful recreation of D&D rules than we've seen in a lot of D&D games. But a review should be based on more than that. Like, y'know, *how enjoyable the game is*.



> But, y'know what woud be even more useful than sitting around bitching about this review?  Writing your own and submitting it to Morrus to put on the main news page.  It's not exactly that hard.




I don't have the inclination to do this, so I won't.


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## Hussar (Oct 17, 2011)

Honestly Dannager?  I have no idea how good or bad this game is.  I really don't.  Never so much as looked at it so I don't have a horse in this race.  It could be the greatest thing since Baldur's Gate for all I know.  Don't know, don't care either.

I just find it funny that you'd spend that much time criticizing someone's review of a product and refuse to spend the same amount of time just writing a review that you feel is more "professonal " and submitting it.

IMO, Neurglyph has been perfectly up front and clear about why he doesn't like this game.  If you have different criteria, fine, there's a million other reviews out there to read that will fit your criteria.  But, on a board devoted to D&D players, tabletop RPG players and people that most certainly do not qualify as casual gamers, basing your review on the mechanics that serve as the inspiration of the new game isn't too far out of line.  Again, IMO, YMMV and all that.


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## Dannager (Oct 17, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Honestly Dannager?  I have no idea how good or bad this game is.  I really don't.  Never so much as looked at it so I don't have a horse in this race.  It could be the greatest thing since Baldur's Gate for all I know.  Don't know, don't care either.
> 
> I just find it funny that you'd spend that much time criticizing someone's review of a product and refuse to spend the same amount of time just writing a review that you feel is more "professonal " and submitting it.




I was sort of hoping that I wouldn't have to explain myself to you (because that's actually kind of silly). I spent half the thread wondering when someone would come along with the brilliant idea of saying, "Oh yeah? If you think it's so bad why don't you do it yourself?"

My many reasons come mainly from two directions.

The first, grounded in logistics. I've played Heroes of Neverwinter. I've probably spent five hours on it. But that's not enough to write a solid review. In order to do the game justice and actually experience its full range of features, I'd have to get a character to level 10, start screwing around with the dungeon builder, and have some of my friends run through my dungeons (which requires that _they_ level their own characters, which they'd have to do anyway because leveling by yourself takes a ton of gold). Because of the energy-replenishment backbone of the game, this would take quite a long time. Even if I'd started leveling my character when Neuroglyph first published his review, I still wouldn't be done right now. There's a reason Neuroglyph didn't mention the dungeon builder - he didn't play long enough to gain access to it. And then, once all of this was done, I'd have to actually write the review. Which brings me to the second set of reasons.

Neuroglyph is the official D&D product reviewer for EN World. I could write a review, but I'm not a professional reviewer. I don't have a lot of review experience. I didn't get my degree in journalism, English, or communications. I'm sure I could write a review, but that would do nothing more than lump me in with the hordes of amateur-hour user reviewers that I see as a sort of pimple on the internet. It would be nice if EN World had some truly _good_ review staff. Most forms of entertainment have people that are looked to when they need to know whether or not something is worth investing in. It's a shame that tabletop RPGs really haven't. Some of us were hoping that this criticism might be an eye-opener for Neuroglyph and compel him to return to his original review and revise it (or, if not, at least change his review style going forward). This doesn't mean that I want to write reviews myself, or that I should have to in order to have a voice here. I _have_ offered suggestions for how parts of the review could be worded in order to highlight the differences between 4e and HoN. But I'm not here to write reviews.



> IMO, Neurglyph has been perfectly up front and clear about why he doesn't like this game.




He has.

If I write a review of Dungeons & Dragons, and I say at the start of the review, "Just so you know, I hate tabletop RPGs and everything they stand for because they suck," and proceed to give D&D a 0/10, presumably you'd have _no problem_ with the usefulness of that review. You know. As long as he was up-front about it.

In reality, of course, such a review would be laughable. It's completely useless unless you happen to also hate tabletop RPGs with a passion, in which case you probably don't _care_ about a review of D&D in the first place because you'd have no interest in playing it. But if you're like _most people_ who either enjoy tabletop gaming or have no strong opinions on it one way or another, such a review does _nothing_ for you. And that's what we're saying here. Most of us really don't _care_ that a _Facebook game_ designed for casual play takes some (actually quite minor) liberties with the 4e rules in order to fit the format. We want to know _if it's a good game_.



> If you have different criteria, fine, there's a million other reviews out there to read that will fit your criteria.




Ahh, now you do have that right. But it would be nice if I _didn't_ have to start using another website to find news and reviews of D&D-related stuff. I thought EN World was supposed to be a sort of one-stop-shop for D&D fans.



> But, on a board devoted to D&D players, tabletop RPG players and people that most certainly do not qualify as casual gamers, basing your review on the mechanics that serve as the inspiration of the new game isn't too far out of line.




Again, presumably you would give Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara an equally abysmal review score. And since I know that's a fantastic game (as do most video game critics who've experienced it), it's tough for me to take what you say on the subject of game reviewing very seriously.

(Also, this says nothing of those who are defending Neuroglyph's review in this thread who would undoubtedly internet-lynch you for writing a negative review of Shadows over Mystara - I'm sure there are a few. People don't have consistent philosophies on stuff like this. I doubt many are supporting Neuroglyph on principles; most of them probably just don't like Facebook games, or HoN in particular.)


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## jeffh (Oct 17, 2011)

Dannager said:


> This game _clearly_ deserves better than the equivalent of 3/10. We all know it. I'm sure even _you_ know it.



I "know" nothing of the sort; it rates _maybe _a 4 on a good day as far as I'm concerned. I don't disagree with Neuroglyph's overall impression; I just think he did a _terrible_ job of justifying it (and that you've mostly correctly identified the reasons why).


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2011)

Dannager said:
			
		

> He has.
> 
> If I write a review of Dungeons & Dragons, and I say at the start of the review, "Just so you know, I hate tabletop RPGs and everything they stand for because they suck," and proceed to give D&D a 0/10, presumably you'd have no problem with the usefulness of that review. You know. As long as he was up-front about it.




Yes, I would have absolutely no problem with it.  I'd probably not bother with the next review that person writes, but, I'm not going to bitch about what he's written.

The question is, in my mind, is he wrong?  Is he factually mistaken?  I honestly don't know, having never played the game.  If he's not wrong, and he's been absolutely clear on his criteria, it's up to you as the reader to decide whether or not this review is useful or not.

If I'm looking for a game that has the D&D brand label on it and I expect that game to follow D&D closely, then this review is pretty much spot on.  OTOH, if the mechanics are not that important to me and all I'm looking for is a game that uses the trappings of D&D - monsters, classes, whatnot, then this review is less useful.  

But saying that the review is useless just because he doesn't use your criteria for what is good or bad reflects much more on you the reader than him the reviewer.  The next time he writes a review, just don't bother with it because you know his tastes and yours don't match.


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## Dannager (Oct 18, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Yes, I would have absolutely no problem with it.  I'd probably not bother with the next review that person writes, but, I'm not going to bitch about what he's written.




Which is my point: if the way a reviewer writes causes half his readership to not continue reading his reviews, the reviewer is doing something wrong.



> The question is, in my mind, is he wrong?  Is he factually mistaken?



It doesn't matter. He could call the grass green and an apple red, but if I want to know the color of a ripe banana, none of that helps me.



> I honestly don't know, having never played the game.  If he's not wrong, and he's been absolutely clear on his criteria, it's up to you as the reader to decide whether or not this review is useful or not.



And we're saying, pretty resoundingly: it's not.



> If I'm looking for a game that has the D&D brand label on it and I expect that game to follow D&D closely, then this review is pretty much spot on.



But that doesn't tell you whether the game is good or not. All it tells you is what you already knew: a D&D Facebook game probably isn't your thing.



> OTOH, if the mechanics are not that important to me and all I'm looking for is a game that uses the trappings of D&D - monsters, classes, whatnot, then this review is less useful.



Or if you're looking for an enjoyable gameplay experience, period.



> But saying that the review is useless just because he doesn't use your criteria for what is good or bad reflects much more on you the reader than him the reviewer.



Look, Hussar, there's sort of an established set of criteria for determining the quality of a video game. Review websites have this down to a science. And they sure as hell take more into account than how the video game compared to some other not-a-video-game from the same multimedia franchise.

That's what we expect. An actual review. Not a side-by-side of a Facebook video game versus a tabletop roleplaying game. That's just a joke.



> The next time he writes a review, just don't bother with it because you know his tastes and yours don't match.



I'd much prefer it if the official EN World reviews were something that I could read and say, "Hey, I'm glad I read that!"


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2011)

> But that doesn't tell you whether the game is good or not. All it tells you is what you already knew: a D&D Facebook game probably isn't your thing.




Well, actually it does tell me whether the game is good or not, if being true to the 4e game mechanics is important to me.

It's not important to you.  Fine.  No problems.  You judge a game based on different criteria.  The source material is not important to you.  And that's groovy.  It is important to the reviewer and, presumably, to at least some of the readers.

See, you're presuming that your tastes are universal.  That what you find "fun" or "not fun" is the same for everyone else.  Again, this doesn't make the review bad.  It just means that the review is not for you.  Not a big deal really.

You want the reviewer to base things more on the in game mechanics.  Ok, fine.  Stop reading the review just before the end of the Game Play section.  There, that's got all the stuff that's important to you.  Now for other people, maybe the latter sections are more important.  I don't know, could be.  People have really, really weird, indiosyncratic tastes when it comes to games, so, for some, like Neuroglyph, the nuts and bolts of game play are less important than how well it mirrors 4e mechanics.

That's not your criteria.  Again, fine.  No problem.  But, not sharing your criteria does not make him wrong.


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## jeffh (Oct 18, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Well, actually it does tell me whether the game is good or not, if being true to the 4e game mechanics is important to me.



Even if it is, surely it's not the _only_ thing that's important to you.



> See, you're presuming that your tastes are universal.  That what you find "fun" or "not fun" is the same for everyone else.



No, I don't think he is, and I certainly am not. This is precisely the egregious misunderstanding I referred to about two pages ago. All we are saying - and we're not _assuming_ it, good reasons have been given in support of it - is that there are more and less useful and informative ways to write reviews. Good reviews are such that as large as possible a portion of the potential audience will find them useful, even taking into account that tastes differ.

I wouldn't have thought this was a particularly controversial claim. Just because something has subjective aspects, doesn't mean there aren't better and worse ways to approach it. (Nobody actually believes that all opinions are equally valid, though some people hide behind that claim when defending particularly unpopular or ill-informed ones...) There are fairly well-established best practices for doing reviews, which any reviewer with any pretense of professionalism should either use, or be able to articulate good reasons for not using. Neuroglyph doesn't even appear to be aware of their existence.


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## Hussar (Oct 18, 2011)

See, your arguments are based on the idea that he's completely misreading his audience.

I look at En World, a site that has spent vast amounts of bandwidth decrying 4e based solely on how it changes what came before, and I think he's reading his audience pretty darn well.  If we can spend THREE YEARS condemning a game for basically not following what came before, I'm thinking that panning a Facebook game for exactly the same reason isn't much of a stretch.


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## jeffh (Oct 18, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, your arguments are based on the idea that he's completely misreading his audience.



Actually, they're based on the things I said they were based on - namely, failure to use reasonably well-understood best practices - not on something else. It's not so much misreading his audience as (A) writing for far too narrow an audience and (B) writing things that are not maximally useful _even for that intended audience_.

But, let's run with your current misunderstanding for a bit anyway, since it's at least closer to the mark than your previous one...



> I look at En World, a site that has spent vast amounts of bandwidth decrying 4e based solely on how it changes what came before, and I think he's reading his audience pretty darn well.  If we can spend THREE YEARS condemning a game for basically not following what came before, I'm thinking that panning a Facebook game for exactly the same reason isn't much of a stretch.




"EN World" has done nothing of the sort. I don't think it _has_ an official position on the matter, and as an organization, continues to support and even produce products for 4E.

_Some individual EN World members_ have done things that superficially resemble what you describe. Not all; not a majority; not even a lot; but some. But in general, edition warriors _don't_ simply say "they changed it, now it sucks"; for every one that does, there are at least three that _give reasons_ why the changes negatively affect their enjoyment of the game. Nobody, or at least nobody worth listening to, thinks the bare fact that it changed is a sufficient criticism all by itself. They _give reasons_.

TL;DR version: (A) "ENWorld" does not speak with one voice on, well, anything I can think of really, beyond maybe the basic idea that tabletop RPGs are kind of cool; and (B) I think you misrepresent even the smallish part of the ENWorld membership that _does_ sort of look the way you describe if you squint at it right.

(And (C) As per the newly-added top part of my post, even if I were wrong about (A) and (B), which I'm not, it would do little to undermine my _actual_ argument anyway, only your caricature of it.)


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## Dannager (Oct 18, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Well, actually it does tell me whether the game is good or not, if being true to the 4e game mechanics is important to me.




One game matching the mechanics of another game does not have *any* bearing on whether that game is a good game, *especially* when the two games are in entirely different mediums and formats.

You can say that you have a preference for matching mechanics, but calling the game better just because it has the same mechanics as another game (with absolutely no regard for how those mechanics impact the play experience)? That's silly. I mean really, really silly.



> It's not important to you.  Fine.  No problems.  You judge a game based on different criteria.  The source material is not important to you.  And that's groovy.  It is important to the reviewer and, presumably, to at least some of the readers.




Those readers don't need a whole review dedicated to their "criteria". They need one sentence: "This is a Facebook game, and as such deviates from the traditional 4e rules in a number of places - don't expect a necessarily faithful implementation of the 4e mechanics."

That gives him the rest of the review to actually review the game.



> See, you're presuming that your tastes are universal.




Hardly. If I presumed my tastes were universal, I'd be chiding him for not praising HoN. But I'm not. I'm chiding him for failing to review the game at all.

I *do* presume that there are right ways and wrong ways to review something, and that this review is an example of the latter.


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## Dannager (Oct 18, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, your arguments are based on the idea that he's completely misreading his audience.
> 
> I look at En World, a site that has spent vast amounts of bandwidth decrying 4e based solely on how it changes what came before, and I think he's reading his audience pretty darn well.  If we can spend THREE YEARS condemning a game for basically not following what came before, I'm thinking that panning a Facebook game for exactly the same reason isn't much of a stretch.




I'm firmly in the pro-4e camp, and even _*I*_ can understand that there's a difference between criticizing the next iteration of a game for its departures, and criticizing *an entirely new game in a different medium and different format with a loose association to the original game* for its departures.

I mean, you can understand this, right? How changes from 3e to 4e might be worth getting up in arms over, but how changes from 4e to _D&D: The Facebook Video Game_ aren't really something to get up-in-arms over, assuming the rest of the game is good?


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## Hussar (Oct 19, 2011)

Dannager said:
			
		

> One game matching the mechanics of another game does not have any bearing on whether that game is a good game, especially when the two games are in entirely different mediums and formats.




Really?  So, if I put up a Facebook game called, "Chess" and bill it as a chess FB application, the fact that it uses a round board, allows pieces to be placed on the board every round, and uses dice in no way affects whether or not this is a good game?

Now, I realize that's hyperbole, because obviously the FB game isn't that far removed from D&D.  Fair enough.  But, it's just as wrong to claim that the inspiration for a game is unimportant as well.  Heck, look at the criticisms of I Robot the movie.  There is a fairly large segment of the audience that is turned off by the fact that I Robot deviates considerably from the novel.  Are their criticisms likewise invalid and unimportant so long as the movie was fun?


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## Hussar (Oct 19, 2011)

This obviously isn't going to go anywhere, and people have started playing the "Oh, you just don't understand my argument" card so I'll be bowing out now.

Personally I think Neuroglyph's response in http://www.enworld.org/forum/en-wor...verwinter-facebook-app-atari.html#post5705465 pretty much says everything that needs to be said.


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## jeffh (Oct 19, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Really?  So, if I put up a Facebook game called, "Chess" and bill it as a chess FB application, the fact that it uses a round board, allows pieces to be placed on the board every round, and uses dice in no way affects whether or not this is a good game?



Nope. There are _lots_ of kinds of chess, and don't quote me on this, but I think all the elements you mention have been part of at least one at some point (though not all at once). It should probably at least have an adjective in front of "chess", if for no other reason than to attract the audience you'd want to attract with such a game (not particularly an issue for HoN) but I wouldn't automatically assume the word "chess" had no place there.

Oh, and when your response to my argument is a complete _non sequitur_, albeit one that is moderately interesting in its own right, what the hell am I supposed to do _other than_ "play the 'you're misunderstanding my argument' card"? You _were_, and to judge by that comment might still be, misunderstanding my argument, and I think I showed that reasonably effectively. You seem to be insinuating that there's something underhanded or otherwise inappropriate about pointing that out, but I don't see what.


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## Dannager (Oct 19, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Personally I think Neuroglyph's response in http://www.enworld.org/forum/en-wor...verwinter-facebook-app-atari.html#post5705465 pretty much says everything that needs to be said.




Yes, unfortunately, it does.


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## Dannager (Oct 19, 2011)

Hussar said:


> Really?  So, if I put up a Facebook game called, "Chess" and bill it as a chess FB application, the fact that it uses a round board, allows pieces to be placed on the board every round, and uses dice in no way affects whether or not this is a good game?
> 
> Now, I realize that's hyperbole, because obviously the FB game isn't that far removed from D&D.  Fair enough.  But, it's just as wrong to claim that the inspiration for a game is unimportant as well.  Heck, look at the criticisms of I Robot the movie.  There is a fairly large segment of the audience that is turned off by the fact that I Robot deviates considerably from the novel.  Are their criticisms likewise invalid and unimportant so long as the movie was fun?




I love when people bring up chess as a sort of inviolate, pristine game that has never been altered or messed around with.

No, what you're talking about would be if someone put up Steve Jackson's Knightmare Chess on Facebook, and then someone reviewed it saying it was terrible because it changed the rules of chess to something else.

Of course, even *then* it wouldn't be a solid analogy, since chess could easily be implemented with perfect rules faithfulness to the casual Facebook game format (and I'm quite sure has been already), something that is impossible with D&D, but I'm sure you get my point.


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## Mark CMG (Oct 20, 2011)

Maybe the D&D brand name is being spread too thin for some folks?


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## DonTadow (Oct 25, 2011)

It doesn't surprise me that an online game dosnt have skills. I have no idea why, oh why, are there no skills in MMOs of any kind. It's like designers think that options are too complicated. 60 buttons on my keyboard and I"m limited to using 7.


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