Can we now admit the new 7th Sea is floundering?

[opaopajr]

Tootie what now?

2d20.

 

[Ladybird]

I'm thinking that Modiphius buying D&D and converting it to 2D20 would be one of the least outrage-inducing licenses that they can pick up. There are so many well-established, third-party versions of D&D now that it barely matters what the company with the license does.

Ehhh. You could literally reprint any edition of D&D, word for word, and it's fans would complain about the changes.

But maybe you're right; in 5e, you should always be rolling with advantage anyway if you're even vaguely good at the game, so nobody would notice the difference.

 

[Nick J]

So half finished rule sets and taking credit for other people's good ideas?

I meant generally. I dont play or care about a thing he's written ... or half-written as the case may be.

 

[Bunch]

I'm thinking that Modiphius buying D&D and converting it to 2D20 would be one of the least outrage-inducing licenses that they can pick up. There are so many well-established, third-party versions of D&D now that it barely matters what the company with the license does.

Man if they did that with D&D I'd renew my passport and pay a visit with a Pitchfork!

Not really. But I would shake my fist in the air vigorously and curse them!

 

[Baulderstone]

Okay, okay. I concede that people would get pretty pissed off. At the same time, 5E is a popular enough edition that it would continue to be widely supported.

 

[SkyMxe]

Hiya, so just made an account to necro this thread as it's been a very good read and wanted to give my thoughts.

I played 1e pretty extensively in the early 2000s playing in several campaigns and had some involvement in a living campaign that was run at major conventions through some good friends who were organizing it. So I am very familiar with the setting history mechanics etc of Theah and 7th sea.

As to my take on 2e vs 1e just is a meh overall. I only discovered it exists a few days ago after just recently discovering a "certain site" with a large collection of pdf files (I'm sure you've heard of it). And after a brief read on all the new stuff it's hard to put into words every thing I think went wrong but I'll try my best nonetheless. I will also state just having learned of it I have never played 2e so feel free to take whatever I say with some salt.

The concept:

The idea with 2e right from the start is it's stated that the 7th sea rpg is a "collaborative storytelling system", and it's going to do things differently from a standard RPG. A lot of design dynamics seem to be based off this overall ethos. But this whole idea seems counter intuitive to me. The way the game is designed doesn't seem to encourage roleplaying or gaming as you just spend points and things happen without the need to roleplay or come up with a strategy etc. Also isn't every RPG by default a "collaborative storytelling" experience? Whether the story is preplanned made up as you go or the result of what happened after a roll on a table every adventure you have is a story is it not?


The system:

2e basically tries to reinvent the wheel instead of improving the source material. 1e as a system had it's flaws for sure, traits overall trumped skills, panache was easily the strongest trait in combat, taking any arcana other than intuitive (which gave bonus xp) or a hubris (which gave extra points to build character) would make your character worse and swordsman's schools and sorceries varied widely in power. But for its flaws it's easy to learn, gives you total freedom to make your character however you want and leads to lots of interesting decision making. And since xp is also pointbuy you'll never permanently hamstring yourself as you can always improve attributes and skills you underestimated as you go. So though mechanically speaking dumping all your points into raising traits + fencing and footwork at character creation would be the "strongest" but when you see another char who knows 5 languages, has insane good looks is part of some sort secret order you don't know about and has a servant and owns a small ship while having just ok fighting skills you might rethink how important really was just having another kept die on all your rolls.

2e has none of this though as your your character is literally just made for you. Everyone is exactly the same but different as confusing as that sounds. Basically you still have some of the same decisions on who your are where your from what can you do etc but are you a fighter or a sorcerer etc but any real creativity is an illusion. You can't really be any stronger or weaker or more interesting or less interesting than anyone else at the table as every one will all end up with the exact same total of skills attributes backgrounds advantages. Now I'm not saying this is always a bad thing as there are other good games where you do the same thing and it's still arguably more customizable than many pure class systems. But personally I prefer something where I have the ability to try something crazy and see if it succeeds or fails than knowing I can't possibly make a bad character ever, even if I wanted to. Because if you can't make a bad one you can't really make a great one either.

This idea basically carries over everywhere else as well. Ecounters are just you rolling to get a number of raises which are basically actions and every action is a success. Further you can get tokens and as you spend them things just happen. You need to gain a villains trust? You need to break into a building to steal a secret document? No need to strategize a plan or roleplay just spend a token and it happens. Now I think streamlining things can be a great option and good gms will often do this anyway not wasting time forcing a dice roll on every single action and letting it happen is great. But skipping what could be an entire scene or adventure by spending a point is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Things like this as optional rules or used at a gms discretion could be great ways to speed up play but I feel like it doesn't constitute a system by itself. This sort of play is further from even a simple game like risk or monopoly and closer to how children age 4-6 play imaginary games where they go back and forth declaring what imaginary thing has happened between them.

The setting:

Is mainly the same but dumbed down compared at least to the wealth of content in 1e. The nation articles are mainly fluff and you can honestly skim past most of it as long as you know what historical nation they are talking about. The new areas of Africa and America seem like they had lots of thought put into them but aren't personally appealing to me but could be used for interesting npcs or a story hook that involves a visit to one of them.

The secret societies which were all some of the strongest material in 1e seem to have been mainly reduced to very short write ups that you'll probably just ignore unless you want to supplement with 1e content.

History and backstory:

Has been generally kept but reduced and simplified. There are some big changes in certain nations history and a new nation added which is interesting but other big parts of the history have been chopped.

The biggest thing that appears to have been chopped from the lore is an event called "the bargain". I won't spoil exactly what the event was as it's generally considered a secret part of the history but it's a very important underpinning to the entire setting. I will say though "the bargain" is key to understanding the true nature in the setting of both sorcery and the formation and motivations of several secret societies and was probably the strongest single piece of lore the 1e setting had in it so I'm sad it no longer appears to be canon.

Sorcery:

Sorcery is pretty good all around. New Eisen sorcery is generally cool and flavorful. Porte is about the same. Sorte is generally improved over 1e. Sorcery for the new nation is a little off the rocker though.

Sanderis appears to me to have been inspired by the anime series "death note" in that you have a personal invisible all powerful demon that follows you around and does your bidding. In death note though the demon was more limited to only being able to kill versus Sanderis which has even broader applications than just death. Their advice to balance this seems to show up earlier in the section as advising gms that any character that goes power mad should just become a villain (with sanders specifically you have to take villainous actions for power as well) which while I don't disagree it might not be a popular solution for the involved player at least without some forewarning. So overall their is some cost and flavor to make terrible trades for power but having one character with an all powerfully death note style demon seems like too far even for a game with teleporting french nobles and german warriors with unobtanium swords fighting over ancient aliens artifacts as someone described it earlier.


Stray thoughts:

Experience being linked to specific story objectives is a huge flaw and oversight. Seems like having 4-8 characters vye for their disparate plots to be completed for progression would be a lot to juggle and cause many problems. Also the predefined nature of these plots seems almost like game enforced railroading.

Organization in the book is kind of a mess. I had to skim through several times to figure out where any of the rules actually we're in the middle of the book and you have to reread a few times to get a grasp on how your actually supposed to play or build a character. Maybe in the future that information should be at the start.

Art is overall pretty good. General layout is more modern about to the level of what you would have seen from wotc books in the 3.5 era. I personally have a fondness for the old books with larger type more classical looking fonts and black and white art but to each his own.

The new ship rules seem pretty useful flavorfully if not mechanically.

Swordsman schools have been considerably dumbed down to a single ability each but being a duelist seems like a prerequisite to any fighter character.

Overall conclusion:

7th sea second edition as a game may be good for some tables but the overarching attempts to reinvent the wheel on what an rpg is and how it works probably won't gel with a lot of gamers and the amount of work required by the GM will be much higher than in a traditional system.

As a setting still some great stuff to explore but If using it I highly recommend supplementing information from the 1rst edition particularly the secret society books.

 

[Séadna]

SkyMxe great read and welcome!

 

[Baulderstone]

Hiya, so just made an account to necro this thread as it's been a very good read and wanted to give my thoughts.

I played 1e pretty extensively in the early 2000s playing in several campaigns and had some involvement in a living campaign that was run at major conventions through some good friends who were organizing it. So I am very familiar with the setting history mechanics etc of Theah and 7th sea.

As to my take on 2e vs 1e just is a meh overall. I only discovered it exists a few days ago after just recently discovering a "certain site" with a large collection of pdf files (I'm sure you've heard of it). And after a brief read on all the new stuff it's hard to put into words every thing I think went wrong but I'll try my best nonetheless. I will also state just having learned of it I have never played 2e so feel free to take whatever I say with some salt.

The concept:

The idea with 2e right from the start is it's stated that the 7th sea rpg is a "collaborative storytelling system", and it's going to do things differently from a standard RPG. A lot of design dynamics seem to be based off this overall ethos. But this whole idea seems counter intuitive to me. The way the game is designed doesn't seem to encourage roleplaying or gaming as you just spend points and things happen without the need to roleplay or come up with a strategy etc. Also isn't every RPG by default a "collaborative storytelling" experience? Whether the story is preplanned made up as you go or the result of what happened after a roll on a table every adventure you have is a story is it not?


The system:

2e basically tries to reinvent the wheel instead of improving the source material. 1e as a system had it's flaws for sure, traits overall trumped skills, panache was easily the strongest trait in combat, taking any arcana other than intuitive (which gave bonus xp) or a hubris (which gave extra points to build character) would make your character worse and swordsman's schools and sorceries varied widely in power. But for its flaws it's easy to learn, gives you total freedom to make your character however you want and leads to lots of interesting decision making. And since xp is also pointbuy you'll never permanently hamstring yourself as you can always improve attributes and skills you underestimated as you go. So though mechanically speaking dumping all your points into raising traits + fencing and footwork at character creation would be the "strongest" but when you see another char who knows 5 languages, has insane good looks is part of some sort secret order you don't know about and has a servant and owns a small ship while having just ok fighting skills you might rethink how important really was just having another kept die on all your rolls.

2e has none of this though as your your character is literally just made for you. Everyone is exactly the same but different as confusing as that sounds. Basically you still have some of the same decisions on who your are where your from what can you do etc but are you a fighter or a sorcerer etc but any real creativity is an illusion. You can't really be any stronger or weaker or more interesting or less interesting than anyone else at the table as every one will all end up with the exact same total of skills attributes backgrounds advantages. Now I'm not saying this is always a bad thing as there are other good games where you do the same thing and it's still arguably more customizable than many pure class systems. But personally I prefer something where I have the ability to try something crazy and see if it succeeds or fails than knowing I can't possibly make a bad character ever, even if I wanted to. Because if you can't make a bad one you can't really make a great one either.

This idea basically carries over everywhere else as well. Ecounters are just you rolling to get a number of raises which are basically actions and every action is a success. Further you can get tokens and as you spend them things just happen. You need to gain a villains trust? You need to break into a building to steal a secret document? No need to strategize a plan or roleplay just spend a token and it happens. Now I think streamlining things can be a great option and good gms will often do this anyway not wasting time forcing a dice roll on every single action and letting it happen is great. But skipping what could be an entire scene or adventure by spending a point is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Things like this as optional rules or used at a gms discretion could be great ways to speed up play but I feel like it doesn't constitute a system by itself. This sort of play is further from even a simple game like risk or monopoly and closer to how children age 4-6 play imaginary games where they go back and forth declaring what imaginary thing has happened between them.

The setting:

Is mainly the same but dumbed down compared at least to the wealth of content in 1e. The nation articles are mainly fluff and you can honestly skim past most of it as long as you know what historical nation they are talking about. The new areas of Africa and America seem like they had lots of thought put into them but aren't personally appealing to me but could be used for interesting npcs or a story hook that involves a visit to one of them.

The secret societies which were all some of the strongest material in 1e seem to have been mainly reduced to very short write ups that you'll probably just ignore unless you want to supplement with 1e content.

History and backstory:

Has been generally kept but reduced and simplified. There are some big changes in certain nations history and a new nation added which is interesting but other big parts of the history have been chopped.

The biggest thing that appears to have been chopped from the lore is an event called "the bargain". I won't spoil exactly what the event was as it's generally considered a secret part of the history but it's a very important underpinning to the entire setting. I will say though "the bargain" is key to understanding the true nature in the setting of both sorcery and the formation and motivations of several secret societies and was probably the strongest single piece of lore the 1e setting had in it so I'm sad it no longer appears to be canon.

Sorcery:

Sorcery is pretty good all around. New Eisen sorcery is generally cool and flavorful. Porte is about the same. Sorte is generally improved over 1e. Sorcery for the new nation is a little off the rocker though.

Sanderis appears to me to have been inspired by the anime series "death note" in that you have a personal invisible all powerful demon that follows you around and does your bidding. In death note though the demon was more limited to only being able to kill versus Sanderis which has even broader applications than just death. Their advice to balance this seems to show up earlier in the section as advising gms that any character that goes power mad should just become a villain (with sanders specifically you have to take villainous actions for power as well) which while I don't disagree it might not be a popular solution for the involved player at least without some forewarning. So overall their is some cost and flavor to make terrible trades for power but having one character with an all powerfully death note style demon seems like too far even for a game with teleporting french nobles and german warriors with unobtanium swords fighting over ancient aliens artifacts as someone described it earlier.


Stray thoughts:

Experience being linked to specific story objectives is a huge flaw and oversight. Seems like having 4-8 characters vye for their disparate plots to be completed for progression would be a lot to juggle and cause many problems. Also the predefined nature of these plots seems almost like game enforced railroading.

Organization in the book is kind of a mess. I had to skim through several times to figure out where any of the rules actually we're in the middle of the book and you have to reread a few times to get a grasp on how your actually supposed to play or build a character. Maybe in the future that information should be at the start.

Art is overall pretty good. General layout is more modern about to the level of what you would have seen from wotc books in the 3.5 era. I personally have a fondness for the old books with larger type more classical looking fonts and black and white art but to each his own.

The new ship rules seem pretty useful flavorfully if not mechanically.

Swordsman schools have been considerably dumbed down to a single ability each but being a duelist seems like a prerequisite to any fighter character.

Overall conclusion:

7th sea second edition as a game may be good for some tables but the overarching attempts to reinvent the wheel on what an rpg is and how it works probably won't gel with a lot of gamers and the amount of work required by the GM will be much higher than in a traditional system.

As a setting still some great stuff to explore but If using it I highly recommend supplementing information from the 1rst edition particularly the secret society books.

Welcome to the Pub. I admire your focus at reading through this entire thread and still managing to post on the actual topic.

 

[Fenris-77]

I have a lot if 1E stuff. I think I'll stick with that.

 

[SkyMxe]

SkyMxe great read and welcome!

Thanks!

Welcome to the Pub. I admire your focus at reading through this entire thread and still managing to post on the actual topic.

Thanks. It took me longer than I'll admit with all the food sidetracking.

 

[CRKrueger]

Also isn't every RPG by default a "collaborative storytelling" experience? Whether the story is preplanned made up as you go or the result of what happened after a roll on a table every adventure you have is a story is it not?

Nope, what happens when you’re Roleplaying is the creation of experienced events, much everything that’s happened in your life, only in this case it’s events in the PCs world. After the fact, a player or a PC might retell those events in a specific way. That’s a story.

If you think you are consciously creating a story and acting partly as an author, you’re not just roleplaying, you’re adding storytelling into the mix.

A lot of people just roleplay without storytelling and are not creating a story.

 

[D100Homebrew]

I've only played 7th Sea 2nd ed. twice at a Con a few years back, so my game play experience is limited. I had a blast both times, so I guess I don't see how the game is "floundering". SkyMxe, why do you have to pirate the game from a site that might rhyme with "Karl Rove" to come here and say it sucks by necro on this thread? Also, like Krueger said, lots play without being big storytellers. I'm not a big storyteller. I just play my role.

 

[TristramEvans]

Welcome to The Pub SkyMxe!

Enjoyed your analysis of second edition and admire your persistence getting through one of the most epically tangent-filled thread we've had at The Pub

Don't mind CRKruegar, he's rehashing a decades-old multi-forum semantic debate.

 

[CRKrueger]

Welcome to The Pub SkyMxe!

Enjoyed your analysis of second edition and admire your persistence getting through one of the most epically tangent-filled thread we've had at The Pub

Don't mind CRKruegar, he's rehashing a decades-old multi-forum semantic debate.

Hey, they asked, I’m just helping.

 

[James Gillen]

So far I liked some of the elements in 2E (like the Commonwealth and Sanderis) but I would have preferred they retained the Roll and Keep dice system.

jg

 

[SkyMxe]

I've only played 7th Sea 2nd ed. twice at a Con a few years back, so my game play experience is limited. I had a blast both times, so I guess I don't see how the game is "floundering". SkyMxe, why do you have to pirate the game from a site that might rhyme with "Karl Rove" to come here and say it sucks by necro on this thread? Also, like Krueger said, lots play without being big storytellers. I'm not a big storyteller. I just play my role.

Well first I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it so much. I honestly like the setting a lot and have played it plenty in my time and I wish all the best to everyone who loves it and is still playing. That said since you've played and enjoyed it do you have any specific feedback to what I've written or why I'm wrong other than that I'm a bad person for reading through it once and posting my opinion without paying money? I'm honestly interested in what you thought of it.

Hey, they asked, I’m just helping.

I've heard people reference old debates about things like "story now" vs "story later" or something like that but not really sure what the exact deal was. Without trying to get in a semantics debate though I will say I personally think anything (or at least any sequence of events) can be a story. Great (or terrible for that matter) stories can all be written by authors who planned everything just so, be totally improvised
or they can happen like in real life through seemingly random events coming together. Your definition may be completely different though and it doesn't bother me if it is, people don't always have to agree on everything

 

[CRKrueger]

Well first I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it so much. I honestly like the setting a lot and have played it plenty in my time and I wish all the best to everyone who loves it and is still playing. That said since you've played and enjoyed it do you have any specific feedback to what I've written or why I'm wrong other than that I'm a bad person for reading through it once and posting my opinion without paying money? I'm honestly interested in what you thought of it.



I've heard people reference old debates about things like "story now" vs "story later" or something like that but not really sure what the exact deal was. Without trying to get in a semantics debate though I will say I personally think anything (or at least any sequence of events) can be a story. Great (or terrible for that matter) stories can all be written by authors who planned everything just so, be totally improvised
or they can happen like in real life through seemingly random events coming together. Your definition may be completely different though and it doesn't bother me if it is, people don't always have to agree on everything

True, but words do have meanings and it helps if people don’t invent their own definitions. A story isn’t events happening. It’s an account of those events. Those are not the same thing.

You certainly could create a story through Roleplaying if that was your intent.
You also could not create a story through Roleplaying.

The idea that “RPGs create stories“ ignores, invalidates, and erases an entire playstyle for which that is not true.

 

[Charlie D]

True, but words do have meanings and it helps if people don’t invent their own definitions. A story isn’t events happening. It’s an account of those events. Those are not the same thing.

You certainly could create a story through Roleplaying if that was your intent.
You also could not create a story through Roleplaying.

The idea that “RPGs create stories“ ignores, invalidates, and erases an entire playstyle for which that is not true.

This might be a deep insight or I may just be tired. The difference is like asking someone to tell you their life story (what has happened so far and narrate the events) versus telling someone to go live their life (it hasn't happened yet, they have to go do it, without the real intent of turning it into their life story, even though it does).

I suppose if you are the type of person who wants to write a memoir you may actually live your life to tell a story (eventually). But most of us just live our life. And it may not even become a story if no one asks about it later.

Yeah, i'm probably just tired.

 

[robertsconley]

Thanks for the detailed account.

7th sea second edition as a game may be good for some tables but the overarching attempts to reinvent the wheel on what an rpg is and how it works probably won't gel with a lot of gamers and the amount of work required by the GM will be much higher than in a traditional system.

From the details you supplied it sounds like the wargame that behind the 7th Sea system actively gets in the way of people pretending to be a character having adventures in the 7th Sea setting of Theah. It sounds like you wind up playing dice games rather than getting onto the next thing you want to do as your character. And the system itself doesn't sound particularly interesting and enjoyable in its own right as a game.

For example a lot of folks enjoyed SJ Games Melee as a wargame as well as find it useful as the combat system for the Fantasy Trip RPG.

As a setting still some great stuff to explore but If using it I highly recommend supplementing information from the 1rst edition particularly the secret society books.

To compound the issues with the system, it sounds like they watered down the setting itself in favor of focusing on the system. I had some of the first edition books and the setting was very evocative. For most of the hobbyist who I know liked it, the setting was most of the appeal.

Echoing what CRKrueger said, sure you can make a game to help run a campaign where the focus is on the participants collaborating on creating a narrative. But RPGS, in my opinion are not well suited for that. The strength of RPGs in allowing players to pretend that they are a character having adventures in a setting a pen & paper virtual reality. This is accomplished by creating a description of the character with the players, and then the players based on what they know about their character and the setting tell a human referee what they do. The referee than tells them the result either based on their judgment or use of game mechanics. This cycle is repeated throughout the campaign.

Any system that gets in the way of this cycle causes issues for the players and referee by taking the focus away from pretending to be a character having adventures. Which is why my recommendation is if you want to use a game as an aide to a group creating a collaborative narrative then it work best when it is own thing and not when it is a hybrid RPG.

With traditional RPGs, the story is after the fact, an account of what happened to the characters that the hobbyists played.

2nd edition 7th Sea would have been better off focusing on helping hobbyist make more interesting characters within the world of Theah and helping referees bring Theah to life. As well as expanding the range of interesting situations that players can pursue within the setting. The original has some intricate elements to the background of the setting that gave it some depth. Often it takes a couple of tries for an author to make this relatable to a broad audience. That what 7th sea 2e should have focused rather then coming up with a new interpretative dice game.

 

[robertsconley]

But most of us just live our life. And it may not even become a story if no one asks about it later.

Yeah, i'm probably just tired.

No you are good, that sentence I quoted is the reason that most RPG stories are boring when recounted outside of the group. It not that any one of our life is "boring" but rather most of our circumstances are so specific that often they can't be appreciated unless it by people who were there with you. Obviously that not always the case as many of us do have a handful of entertaining stories to tell about what we experienced.

 

[TristramEvans]

I think you're all just taking the use of the word "story" far too literal. Not everyone is a veteran of the forum wars, and people hae been using "storytelling" as an analogy for the activty of playing RPGs since the hobby's beginning, it's only with the rise of actual narrative storygames that the distinction is suddenly So Important to some people.

And using the word story "ignores, invalidates, and erases an entire playstyle"? C'mon...don't be such a drama queen. It just comes across to me like you're all jumping down the throat of a new poster over some really silly semantics.

 

[CRKrueger]

I think you're all just taking the use of the word "story" far too literal. Not everyone is a veteran of the forum wars, and people hae been using "storytelling" as an analogy for the activty of playing RPGs since the hobby's beginning, it's only with the rise of actual narrative storygames that the distinction is suddenly So Important to some people.

And using the word story "ignores, invalidates, and erases an entire playstyle"? C'mon...don't be such a drama queen. It just comes across to me like you're all jumping down the throat of a new poster over some really silly semantics.

We all know what me jumping down someone’s throat looks like, and this ain’t it. I get it, you don’t want to scare away a new blood. Sorry, it was a lousy analogy to begin with, but it was good enough. Thanks to Laws and Edwards, “RPGs create stories” just doesn’t cut it anymore, because now it‘s literal, as in RPGs are a literary art form. When people assume as a default that this is true of everyone who plays, they’re simply incorrect, and if they’ve never encountered that opinion before, maybe they’d like to hear it. Neither me or Rob are beating anyone up.

 

[Bartmoss]

Hiya, so just made an account to necro this thread as it's been a very good read and wanted to give my thoughts.

I played 1e pretty extensively in the early 2000s playing in several campaigns and had some involvement in a living campaign that was run at major conventions through some good friends who were organizing it. So I am very familiar with the setting history mechanics etc of Theah and 7th sea.

Hello, nice to see you, I thought I would also add my thoughts on your post. Simply put, as someone who spent a long time trying to get 2nd Edition to work you have hit on most of my problems with it. If there is one thing I learned from the game, it is "be very careful at what you kickstart".

I found the game deeply frustrating until I really thought about John Wick and what he likes... and that is simply messing with his player's heads so much they quit the game. Just go read the war stories he writes. John Wick does not need dice to defeat his players (and I always believed it was his players he was playing against) he just needs to find a way to push and push and push until the player gives up. He will even go so far as to set up situations in which he can exploit the choices you have made in your character background...and it is this last part that made me realise how you can reverse the 2nd Edition dice mechanic so a GM can exploit it in their favour. If you design encounters ahead of time, with knowledge of which PCs are going to be there and what makes them tick then you are golden. Plus in this game, all a villain need do is spend their own "points" to learn what they need to know about a particular PC.

So, I no longer find it frustrating, I just find the entire ethos behind the game a bait and switch, "here come play heroes, and I will show you how you can't" is what I believe John Wick wanted to do with the game.