"Suck now, be awesome later" is bad design

[pragma]

Fair enough. I don't intend to defend their relevance since I've read the posts a few times and can't quite sort out what the conflict is.

Out of curiosity, is it a disagreement over whether MOBAs are a good point of comparison to DnD? Are they good/bad because players have to stick with the same character? Are they good/bad because the opposition is human controlled? Does declining/ascending relevance to the game work because the games are short?

[Chamomile]

I don't know MOBAs well enough to give a thorough answer, but one major difference leaps out immediately: In a MOBA, you can be reasonably certain that you'll play a game all the way through, and if you don't (because of server errors or whatever), you probably have enough time left in the evening to play another. In D&D, even a short campaign represents months of time invested, so if one falls through at the halfway mark right before your awesomeness comes online, you have to invest several more months before you can actually start being awesome.

[Kaelik]

Fair enough. I don't intend to defend their relevance since I've read the posts a few times and can't quite sort out what the conflict is.

Out of curiosity, is it a disagreement over whether MOBAs are a good point of comparison to DnD? Are they good/bad because players have to stick with the same character? Are they good/bad because the opposition is human controlled? Does declining/ascending relevance to the game work because the games are short?

The long and short of it is ALL OF THEM.

Competitive games have entirely different incentives than ones that do not involve competing against other people.

Games which don't let you play a level 18 character without playing level 1 first are different from ones that do.

Games which are 30 minutes are different from ones which are 3 months.

There is basically absolutely zero relevance in comparing a MOBA to D&D.

[SlyJohnny]

Guys, guys, Kaelik and others are discussing the existing status quo with D&D specifically. Others are speculating that it might be possible to design rulesets where weaker characters can still contribute meaningfully to a session, and catch up to the more experienced characters easily enough. You're arguing about two different subjects.

[Blasted]

I think you could compare a MOBA to a fast levelling convention game. Perhaps not D&D.
In most games you're going to want characters who are good at *this*, but not *that*. face vs. bruiser, diplomancer vs. thief, etc.
I could envision a game where your characters are good at that *time* but not others. But like every game, if your game is primarily about one particular scenario (such as combat), then everyone needs to be able to participate. So in the convention game about combat you could have someone who is good at diplomacy now, but not later and someone who is good at thievery later, but not now, but all are decent at combat. Or perhaps they add different things to combat at different times.

[infected slut princess]

No, it's not categorically bad design. I think blowjobs should give you a bonus to future action. Perhaps a "happiness bonus" or "lack of pent up sexual tension" bonus. On the flipside, too much tension generated by lack of sexual release could result in a penalty to skill checks and attacks. This requires further analysis before you can just go around saying "bad design!"

[PhoneLobster]

A thread founded on a poorly worded confused broad complaint descending into rambling chaos? Who could have imagined.

[tussock]

It's interesting in that ...

"But Wizards suck at low level" was a valid reason for most people to play other things in AD&D, then then Dual-Class into Wizard for the late game after begging up the stats to do that. Or just start over as a caster because catching up was easy.

Then they sort of fixed Wizards over time so that they didn't suck at low level, and you can't change class and still catch up after you hit 7th level in Fighter, and the monsters got much better at fighting but much worse against magic, and they took away all the castles and armies and shit, ... yeh, Wizards just win, and now you have to start as one from day one.