That would be anything produced after 3.5.
The brand has been going down for a long time.
That’s not to say there is nothing good in the current 5e, just for me it seems like it lost its soul with corporate oversight.
I moved to Pathfinder 2e and I couldn’t be happier. The only issue I have is that one of my players is Mercer-coded (is that a thing?) and really hates any time a skill, class, or spell isn’t a 1:1 copy of DnD. He recently grabbed Bane as part of a feat for his barbarian and learned it isn’t the same as DnD Bane and had a meltdown.
We’re all close friends outside of the game and we are all used to each other’s quirks. It’s a pain sometimes, but he does genuinely enjoy the game, though. He’d only played 2 campaigns of DnD before-hand (Strahd and Frostmaiden), but has listened to every episode of Critcal Role. I decided to homebrew a full 1-20 campaign for the group as an introduction to Pathfinder so we could all (GM included) get a taste for it across the entire span of character growth, and it’s been a learning experience for us all.
That’s a common way of putting down 4e, but it’s not so. I have no interest whatsoever in WoW but I really liked 4e. 4e’s approach was to build a very consistent and rigorously-defined framework for the game, and then build its various elements (classes, monsters, abilities, etc.) strictly within that framework. I think it actually hit a very nice sweet spot; the framework was sufficiently flexible that a huge amount of interesting and distinctive content could be made, but it was also well-defined enough and simple enough to understand and apply that everything “just worked.” You could play as a fighter for a whole bunch of levels and then pick up a completely different character sheet for a wizard and you’d find that most of the mechanics worked the same. Combat was very positional, with lots of abilities that allowed you to set other players up for success, which encouraged teamwork and player interaction.
It annoys me greatly that WotC tried to set the system up to be dependent on their online tools, failed, and then tore the tools down to leave the wreckage largely unplayable. I can still play a 3.5e campaign just as easily as I did back in the day but it’d be rather hard to play 4e as easily even though I still have the books. The best tools were WotC-owned and they don’t allow third parties to fill the void they left when they decided to transition to 5e - presumably to avoid another Pathfinder situation.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t complain about the directions the fluid is flowing. In this case a specialized term for something that didn’t previously have a popular term describing it has been rapidly diluted to mean “bad change I don’t like.” So that thing doesn’t have a specialized term any more, which hampers discourse.
The thing is, “enshitification” was never defined as “abusing their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves”. That’s merely one of the stages that Doctorow outlined as part of the enshitification process.
Enshitification, as a whole, is the process of stripping value from a product or service from everyone except for shareholders.
Definitely gonna get enshittified
That would be anything produced after 3.5. The brand has been going down for a long time. That’s not to say there is nothing good in the current 5e, just for me it seems like it lost its soul with corporate oversight.
I moved to Pathfinder 2e and I couldn’t be happier. The only issue I have is that one of my players is Mercer-coded (is that a thing?) and really hates any time a skill, class, or spell isn’t a 1:1 copy of DnD. He recently grabbed Bane as part of a feat for his barbarian and learned it isn’t the same as DnD Bane and had a meltdown.
That sounds like a miserable person to play with
We’re all close friends outside of the game and we are all used to each other’s quirks. It’s a pain sometimes, but he does genuinely enjoy the game, though. He’d only played 2 campaigns of DnD before-hand (Strahd and Frostmaiden), but has listened to every episode of Critcal Role. I decided to homebrew a full 1-20 campaign for the group as an introduction to Pathfinder so we could all (GM included) get a taste for it across the entire span of character growth, and it’s been a learning experience for us all.
4e was D&D for people who would rather be playing WoW.
5e is a watered-down anemic shadow of 3.5.
That’s a common way of putting down 4e, but it’s not so. I have no interest whatsoever in WoW but I really liked 4e. 4e’s approach was to build a very consistent and rigorously-defined framework for the game, and then build its various elements (classes, monsters, abilities, etc.) strictly within that framework. I think it actually hit a very nice sweet spot; the framework was sufficiently flexible that a huge amount of interesting and distinctive content could be made, but it was also well-defined enough and simple enough to understand and apply that everything “just worked.” You could play as a fighter for a whole bunch of levels and then pick up a completely different character sheet for a wizard and you’d find that most of the mechanics worked the same. Combat was very positional, with lots of abilities that allowed you to set other players up for success, which encouraged teamwork and player interaction.
It annoys me greatly that WotC tried to set the system up to be dependent on their online tools, failed, and then tore the tools down to leave the wreckage largely unplayable. I can still play a 3.5e campaign just as easily as I did back in the day but it’d be rather hard to play 4e as easily even though I still have the books. The best tools were WotC-owned and they don’t allow third parties to fill the void they left when they decided to transition to 5e - presumably to avoid another Pathfinder situation.
They’re going to abuse their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves?
That word with a very specific meaning is popping up everywhere and used as “made worse” and it’s grating.
Language is fluid. Nothing new.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t complain about the directions the fluid is flowing. In this case a specialized term for something that didn’t previously have a popular term describing it has been rapidly diluted to mean “bad change I don’t like.” So that thing doesn’t have a specialized term any more, which hampers discourse.
The thing is, “enshitification” was never defined as “abusing their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves”. That’s merely one of the stages that Doctorow outlined as part of the enshitification process.
Enshitification, as a whole, is the process of stripping value from a product or service from everyone except for shareholders.