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Basically, persistent defences were too high so you could never hit each other.
General Exalted Thread
As mentioned, this is flatly wrong. Mechanically, its an early Storyteller game. Its bad but still playable, and a lot of people did, still do, and mostly changed over only out of the fact that was where the majority focus had shifted. Its not without its flaws (stacked persistants, race-to-0 init, every NPC having double the stats listed for Power Combat, Power Combat itself, etc), but the writing seemed more honest about what it was trying to be and establish itself as.
The writing in 1e has a lot more fresh and expressive ideas being articulated, because the writers were allowed to keep things brief and focus on interesting topics, generally exploring the room they were given, not pad out a checklist of things mentioned from a prior book and adhere to them like rote. Additionally, writers were assigned to books they seemed to be enjoying writing about. You can read Neph's opinions on Abyssals where he made up little first-person narratives about the Neverborn (then called Malfeans, its complicated), or Jenna's work on 1e Sidereals and the quotes from her about it and see that back when, everyone really loved to engage with the fans and Talk about the implications of what got wrote, and asked fans to come up with interesting variations and try new and unexpected things with it.
Compare this to the books of 2e which seem to be kind of dry or poorly planned, flatly mistaken about their outlook on certain vital elements or worse with nearly zero writer-interaction in many cases, or the Ex3 method which is almost antagonistic towards any possible reinterpretation of writer intent and disdainful of their own audience except when work can be offloaded to "fix your own game, guy."
Like, check out this section on Source Materials from the 1e Fair Folk book, which the 2e book has no direct analogue for:
High-falutin' language aside, that is a genuine, non po-faced recommendation to look at Fair Folk interactions in the context of one long rambling Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck or Wile E. Coyote vs the Road Runner episode, albeit between hyper-aggressive chaos elves. Which to me, makes them about 10 times more interesting and even sensible in a way they weren't before and haven't been portrayed since.
Graceful Wicked Masques and later Ink Monkeys work take them entirely too seriously, and the material loses something of its punch as a result.
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"As mentioned"? Everyone else seemed to reply "yeah, we still end up playing 2e because 1e combat doesn't end".
I can buy 2e fluff text being worse than 1e fluff text. But at least on a mechanical level 2e seems to have been a clear improvement despite crippling flaws. And nothing seems to have stopped folks from playing 2e mechanics with their preferred headcanon combo of 1e and 2e fluff.
I suspect that if the Exalted playerbase doesn't just evaporate altogether, there will be a slow migration to 3e mechanics (possibly with extensive houserules ala Revlid and Earthscorpion) with a continued assertion that 1e fluff was the best fluff. And eventually a newcomer like me will ask "y'all have all these criticisms of 3e, but no one seems to actually talk about playing earlier versions" and he'll be told about paranoia combat and so on.
You realize that 3e isn't universally unpopular, right? It's just not popular here. A lot of people quite like it. Like, seriously, 3E is way better than 2E, it doesn't require homebrew, it just has themes and design choices that bug a lot of people, but that a lot of people also don't mind and even like. I certainly wouldn't be interested in a game homebrewed as extensively as ES and Revlid homebrew 2E. I'm in more than one chats that feel about the same. There are also a lot of 3E fans on the official forums.
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The main complaint here about 3e is that the quality is unexpectedly low. Especially given the amount of money and time that was involved in creating it.
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While I dislike 3e to some degree, it is true that it's not universally disliked.
I will not comment on anything else.
A lot of the quality complaints are also opinions.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
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If the official forums are at all similar to rpg.net in terms of "ratio of mods who are close to or on the dev team" and "their tendency to ban people who say anything negative about them", I'm not terribly surprised.
Well yes. If we're going to take that angle, all of the anti-2e complaints are opinions, and the dislike for paranoia combat is just an opinion, and hey, maybe 1e combat never ending isn't palatable to you, but that's just your opinion.
When you interpret the word "opinion" to mean "any belief or statement made about a piece of entertainment media's quality on any grounds", it does not hold a great deal of weight.
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The last time someone was banned on the Exalted boards was for being a racist, homophobic bigot (or was it just homophobic? I'm not sure)
Other than that it's just playing wack-a-mole with Theion's sock-puppets (hi Theion).
There's actually quite a bit of disagreement and healthy debate on the OPP boards, including Coik's mere existence and some dude's project to rewrite literally the entire Charmset into the most boring, soul-crushing thing I have ever witnessed.
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Revlid
blob of bugs
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My understanding - as someone who hasn't played anything but Ex2 - is that Ex1 only fell into its particular mechanical trap over time, as a result of what was effectively power creep. Ex2 has material that especially deserves cutting, but there is no essentially functional core to draw back to. That said, my understanding of the issue is shallow and second-hand.
As far as "fixing" Ex2 goes, I don't believe it's possible and I haven't tried. EarthScorpion's "fix" comes closer to being a wholly new game every time he approaches it, and it's better for it. I suspect the only reason he's even sticking to the basic framework is for the sake of familiarity and not having to totally rewrite all the Charms.
I'm not especially involved in the game or community at this point, either way. Busy with other impenetrable and fundamentally broken fandoms.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Oh, so somebody's been booted since they tempbanned me for 'trolling' by quoting Holden's little nugget that he hadn't proofread the fiction anthology?
You assume much about my interpretation of opinion. Here's the thing. Sometimes, people can like something for the same reasons as someone else dislikes them. The complaints about Craft? Too long, too boring, too complex, too many Craft Charms, you have to make too many little things to fuel an artifact? I like Craft because it's very complex, very involved. I like Craft because the artifact evolves from the mundane swords I produce. I like how it's a minigame of its own. I like how Crafts point system works because it feels very engaging to me. A lot of the complaints leveled at Craft are reasons I like it inversed as criticisms.
Dual-Magnus Prana is something you dislike based on your own ideas about how it shouldn't bypass Sorcerous scrying and such, and a dislike of retroactively declaring something, if I recall correctly? I apologize if I misrepresent your arguments, it's been some time since I saw your post on it. But like...the thing I like about Dual-Magnus Prana is that it's so perfect a copy of you that it even beats sorcerous scrying. And that its a neat trick up your sleeve you can pull out, the Crafter being prepared enough to prepare for their death.
That's what I mean by opinions, Aleph. Sometimes, the things that annoy you about a game are the things that engage me. This is okay! Not all complaints about Third Edition are just opinion. But a lot of the big ones are.
Omi, the mods there actually were on a bit of a NO DISAGREEMENT spree for awhile. I got a big official warning and a scolding for mentioning the existence of the leak in passing once. It was bizarre.
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Link to this?
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Yes, see. The thing is, I can use that exact same chain of logic to say "you may not like Zeal because it breaks the primacy of defence, but the fact that it lets you be so dedicated to your swordsmanship that you can shatter even a Perfect Defence is what I like about it!" Or "some people hate on Obsidian Shards of Infinity for being what they describe as an instant 'I Win' button, but I really like the aesthetics of the style and the way I can choose one of five possible futures when I use the capstone Charm." And "sometimes, the things that you describe as broken about a game are the things that make it work for me."
This is, fairly evidently, ridiculous. And I'm genuinely not sure what, in your definition, does not qualify as an "opinion". Surely "I like mechanically broken Charms" is an opinion?
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Here. I think it's pretty cool!
I mean, ditching the flavour text entirely is pretty meh, but on the one hand it means I don't have to deal with "the Solars great beards have shattered their stone tables" and for another it seems to be a mechanics-only rewrite, so copying in the flavour/writing new cool flavour seems beyond the projects remit.
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Actually, is not. We are not discussing medical science here, we are talking about a entertainment product, and preferences change. The fact that you consider that his he likes are wrong doesn't make them wrong.
Ah. So by "some dude's project to rewrite literally the entire Charmset into the most boring, soul-crushing thing I have ever witnessed. " he means that's it's rewritten so that it's not soulcrushingly long. Interesting.
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... preeeetty sure you just missed the essential point of my argument. He's the one responding to criticisms with "look, those are just your opinions". I'm saying that yeah, every single review of the gameline is an opinion, so how does this invalidate the critiques? You can't just wave them off with "it's an opinion and therefore not valid", not when that means reducing the number of valid reviews - both positive and negative - to zero.
Dual-Magnus Prana doesn't shatter the game, nor does Craft. Dual-Magnus Prana doesn't screw with how the base mechanics work by fucking with your absolute panic button. None of the things I mention break how the game works. They're just things you don't like. They don't cause the horrific problems of Obsidian Shards of Infinity or let you break an important combat paradigm. They don't cause direct major problems, they just do things you don't like!
That's actually a terrible defense of my position. I appreciate it, but if I was actually defending Obsidian Shards of Infinity on the grounds she's making, she'd be right. She's comparing my examples to the most horribroken shit in 2E because she thinks that 'bypasses sorcerous wards and stops death at great cost' and 'is a complex system I find boring and overcomplicated' is comparable to 'shatters the entire game over its fucking knee'.
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The popularity of that guy's project is testament that some people do like this style of Charm-writing better!
But, no, what I actually mean was "the most boring, soul-crushing thing I have ever witnessed," since that's what I experience reading this.
Ditto. It was painful to read. Which is, of course, my opinion!
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
... In your opinion.
I'm not being flip this time. "Shatter the game" is an exaggeration, but the argument that it damages the integrity of the setting is pretty convincing to me, and brushing it off as just an opinion without making the least attempt to engage the argument seems pretty vapid.
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Craft I will give you - though I will maintain my position that it makes a fucking mockery of game design best practices - but Dual-Magnus Prana I am going to argue the point. It basically does fuck over the combat economy, because it lets someone completely gyp you of a hard-earned victory with absolutely no way to stop them or even see it coming, and then lets them instantly run away to the other side of the world and force you to hunt them down all over again. And unlike a PD - and it functionally is a PD - it has no Flaw of Invulnerability. It's a true Perfect Defence that also functions as a Creation-wide teleport with no Flaw that utterly no-sells a character who has sunk twice as much xp into Awareness Charms as Solar Magnus has put into Craft ones. It doesn't just shortchange Awareness builds, it spits in their faces and jeers.
What's your answer to a "walking human radar" character whose whole concept is that "I see everything, no matter how well it's hidden" complaining that what the fuck, they didn't even get a roll to spot that this dude was a robot despite being able to hear people's heartbeats through a foot-thick stone wall? Mocking laughter?
For a Charm combo that doesn't shatter the game and is fully legal, would you accept Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick as totally valid if someone likes the idea of an elder Sidereal being able to kicksplode everyone in Creation in the face?
How did you two even manage in 2nd edition if this was the worst stuff ever?
Given that the arguments presented are that they do, you'd actually need to present counter arguments rather than just state that it's all opinions.