So what IS going on with 4E these days.

[PhoneLobster]

OK so someone mentioned something with a link to WOTC forums about DDI subscribes bitching about plummeting Dungeon and Dragon e-zine content.

I went. I had a look. I had a look elsewhere. I am a bit freaked out.

The WOTC boards as I once new them were the foaming fan boy central. But the vibe I'm getting looking around out there is overwhelmingly of a depressed annoyed fan base.

The DDI threads are basically 95-100% negative on amount and quality of content. That Mearls article people are discussing here? They fucking HATE it over there. And a few others to boot.

DDI subscriber content was apparently officially cut in half after essentials, and apparently they then didn't actually produce that much content anyway.

Books are, apparently, being cut and the content is, apparently, being put on DDI... and there is apparently STILL no content.

Dungeon magazine. The one with the Dungeons in was apparently only supposed to have ONE dungeon this month. Apparently they then went and omitted the dungeon.

WOTC is making announcements that they are "slowing down" publication rates.

The 4E fan base seems pretty heavily split over "essentials" and largely don't like it and are very annoyed that no true 4E content is supported anymore. They have arguments over it being 4.5, which by the looks of the arguments it clearly is.

Those arguments were very interesting, especially the bits about how the designers were (and are) getting all "experimental" with new unfinished mechanics as early as PH3 and now with essentials.

Threads frequently use the ACTUAL words "doom and gloom" and "end of 4E" and also even the rather melodramatic "end of the world". Like its some sort of common terminology over there.

And alarmingly all up the guys I would expect to be the biggest 4E fanboys in town are, fairly dismally, talking up the potential early end of 4E/Essentials more than I had ever seen around here with the various "End of 4E" threads and material. That rather surprised me.

Hell they are even speculating that WOTC is gearing up to take on Pathfinder in some way, be it new edition, law suit, or of all things cutting a deal to make them part of official D&D. WOTC forum fan boys, said that, no really.

And looking at the bits and pieces, even with a very light skim, they're doing a pretty good job of convincing me 4E is very possibly on it's last legs already. To the point that before I went there I had thought "Essentials, that's gotta have maybe another 2 years in it, no matter how bad (or good) it's doing" and after going there I'm thinking... official slowdown, drying up material on DDI, Essentials line an apparently failure, recent materials looking like experimental unfinished mechanics that don't fit with the current edition, supposed crunch writers putting together more articles about "D&D retrospectives" and basic design wonk like "how complex should D&D Be?"...

And so that's making me think what? A surprise announcement in the later half of this year?

So yeah, what the heck IS going on with 4E. Enquiring minds want to know. What was the result of the Essentials experimentation, what is going on with their apparently rapidly shrinking schedule and general output in general?

Who is being fired?

What are they up to and is it 5E announcement betting pool time already?

And how many more sideways additional empty promotion/titles is Mike Mearls getting this time?

[Username17]

Yeah, the Essentials thing was on a rather short timetable, and it appears that the experiment was a failure. 2010 was supposed to be the year they brought out the "3s" and the "2s". That's stuff like the PHB3 and stuff like Martial Power 2. But that's as far as they got. By May of 2010, the DMG 3 and Arcane Power 2 were off the schedule. And Essentials was on the schedule. Everything else 4e was also off the schedule, they canceled the "PHB Races" books and all that shit. The entire schedule was cleared to pump out the "ten core products of D&D Essentials".

And those ten core products, although they never did really decide what they actually were, were intended to last from September of 2010 into Q1 of 2011. Then there would be a new direction. Late in 2010 they basically said that the new direction was going to be books that helped you mix 4e and Essentials products, tacitly admitting that they don't actually mix that well. But by the time they finished those books and products (even though they changed what those books and products were so I don't even know if they ended up with ten), the direction things were supposed to go was unclear. There seriously isn't a next event for 4rries to get excited about and pretend it will fix everything.

The really interesting thing is that there weren't any Christmas Layoffs this year. About 5 people got the sack (including that rat bastard Andy Collins) in April of 2010 right before the Essentials push, but there weren't any layoffs in December. The company is sputtering along producing almost no content with no visible or promised direction. And they are doing it with basically the same car full of clowns that did Essentials.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

As far as I follow it the 4E forums aren't very excited about the upcoming products.

Which as far as I can tell are a MM cut and paster for Essentials, a Fucking Neverwinter Nights setting (I just can't see that going well). And Heroes of Shadow.

And the thing they are most excited about is Heroes of Shadow. Because it will have shadow stuff in it. And apparently there isn't much of it. But apparently there still won't be much because the only class in the (seemingly tiny) book is Vampire, which they only reluctantly added at the last minute anyway! (Either some manager said, "FFS guys!" or alternatively "Only fucking Twilight Can Save Us Now!")

The no shuffling of the clown car might match the 4E fans apparent speculation about the D&D license being flat out farmed out. They seem fairly resigned to the theory that Piazo is gonna be handed D&D or something crazy. What's the staff clown car crowding level looking like over there? At mongoose? Good lord... Fantasy Flight? Any other contenders still left standing after the great 4E RPG slump?

Hell has someone dug Monty Cook up from his shallow grave and smuggled him to an undisclosed location for a secret project of some form just for the name recognition lately.

Usually someone around here knows these things, if not several someones.

[hogarth]

At the D&DXP convention, they had a Q&A with the developers that boiled down to "We don't know what we're going to change, but we're definitely going to be doing some serious rethinking". I posted a link to it in the 4E Deathwatch thread, I think.

[RobbyPants]

And the thing they are most excited about is Heroes of Shadow. Because it will have shadow stuff in it. And apparently there isn't much of it. But apparently there still won't be much because the only class in the (seemingly tiny) book is Vampire, which they only reluctantly added at the last minute anyway! (Either some manager said, "FFS guys!" or alternatively "Only fucking Twilight Can Save Us Now!")

What's FFS?

[sabs]

For Fucks Sake. it's a British CommonWealth expression.

[Username17]

What's FFS?

For Fuck's Sake.

The bottom line is that Heroes of Shadow is supposed to come out next month, and they don't seem to be able to articulate what the book is for or what it contains. It's supposed to have the fucking necromancer, and that is by far the most exciting thing on the table that 4e has ever announced.

Problem is: they announced they were "going to do it" back in June, and as of now they haven't yet announced that they've figured out how to minions in their system yet. Seriously.

-Username17

[Juton]

Hell they are even speculating that WOTC is gearing up to take on Pathfinder in some way, be it new edition, law suit, or of all things cutting a deal to make them part of official D&D. WOTC forum fan boys, said that, no really.

This is worrying because I think if they are going to try and compete with Pathfinder then the design talent they have left may try and duplicate the Pathfinder paradigm - namely tons and tons of largely irrelevant class features.

I don't know how much of the 3.5 staff is left at WotC, is WotC liked enough to be able to hire back their better game designers?

[Doom]

If they start putting Twilight ideas in D&D, that might be a big enough hammer to smash D&D for reals.

[Plebian]

the degree to which you guys are emotionally invested in desiring a game to fail even when there are no real signs of it doing so (no more so than the industry as a whole, at least) is scary

[Juton]

the degree to which you guys are emotionally invested in desiring a game to fail even when there are no real signs of it doing so (no more so than the industry as a whole, at least) is scary

Keep on trollin' Plebian, one of these days you might get good at it.

[hogarth]

Hell they are even speculating that WOTC is gearing up to take on Pathfinder in some way, be it new edition, law suit, or of all things cutting a deal to make them part of official D&D. WOTC forum fan boys, said that, no really.

This is worrying because I think if they are going to try and compete with Pathfinder then the design talent they have left may try and duplicate the Pathfinder paradigm - namely tons and tons of largely irrelevant class features.

One of the things they were quoted as saying at DDXP was that they didn't want to sell books where a player would only use 2% of it. Here's a synopsis that I ripped out of this GitP forum post:

1:00pm - Chris Perkins starts the festivities, introduces Mike Mearls, and starts the show!

1:02 - WotC wants to find ways to tie their print products into their organized play programs.

“March of the Phantom Brigade” comes out in February, ties into the D&D Essentials products.

D&D Fortune Cards tie into organized play as well.

“Heroes of Shadow” sourcebook allows players more options for character building.

“Lost Crown of Neverwinter” is next season’s D&D Encounters setting, Fortune cards will be tired to this.

“Beyond the Crystal Cave” is an adventure in this story arc, based on old adventure from UK special because the players didn’t have to kill everything to win. Adventure is based in the Feywild.

1:05 - Mike Mearls expresses their desire to make D&D encounter season adventures all share a common theme. Chris Perkins asks for thoughts from audience on D&D Encounters products.

“March of the Phantom Brigade” art shown. Dates for other products too, but too fast for me to type. (WIll get these for you all later.)

Coming up this year:

Player’s Option (Heroes of Shadow) - April
The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond - May
Monster Vault - Threats to the Nentir Vale - June
Neverwinter Campaign Setting - August

Talking about Monster Vault - it’s not just about monsters, but also about organizations too. Like bandit groups/factions/etc.

Neverwinter campaign setting has player and DM materials both, much like Dark Sun was. Also tied to an upcoming MMO by Atari/Cryptic.

“Madness at Gardmore Abbey Boxed Set - September
backstory: recovering an evil artifact that turns out to be the deck of many things, and lures monsters in and warps the surroundings and dungeons in a way that also makes them replayable as well as interesting, includes complete card set (yessssss)

Player’s Option: heroes of he Feywild has options for fey characters (obviously)

Book of Vile Darkness is tied to a syfy (ew) original movie of the same name. More crunch and flavor than old version They covered up part of the cover, perhaps it was racy, they won’t say

Boxed sets are an appeal for WotC this year because they can put more poster-sized maps in them. Looking at maps from Nentir Vale. Made deliberately generic so they can be used anywhere or as intended with the sourcebooks. showing maps of a swamp and a cave complex and a dungeon. Now showing some tokens, circular cardboard, one unique creature with a bloodied side. Has optional ring that turns a large creature into a huge one.

1:16 pm Greg Bilsland takes over.

Shadowfell sourcebooks starting to be discussed.

He is most excited about the Despair Deck. Divided into 3 aspects: madness, fear, and apathy. Adds flavor and atmosphere to game, gives cards to players and they affect their players. “Jealous” “Craven” “Fearless” are examples. Used for flavor and for mechanical benefits. If they overcome those effects they become more resistant to gloom and despair present in the Shadowfell.

Talking a bit more about poster maps. One of a city called Gloomrot and a dungeon map. Books detail a lot of creatures and factions native to Shadowfell, mid-heroic through paragon and a couple of epic tier things.

Showing Deck of Many Things. It looks awesome and I want it. Trevor Kidd asks who here has been in a campaign with the Deck in play, and also who saw someone die or get imprisoned or something else nuts. Everyone who raised their hand said yes. Now everyone is reminiscing a bit about the horrible cards. I love this place.

1:20pm - new in-store program being introduced in September. not aimed at same crowd as D&D Encounters (for new people to be introduced). This is for a single killer encounter who wants to test their mettle. Bring you own character. Name of event TBD. They’re saying there is a very good chance everyone will die. Multiple objectives, not just kill one monster. Hoping to create excitement for those wanting something more exciting and a challenge. Fortune cards can be used here, and are strongly encouraged (“any edge you can get&rdquo.

1:23 - Board Games!
Wrath of Ashardalon - February
Legend of Drizzt - October
Conquest of Nerath - June (more axis&allies sort of game than a dungeon crawl).

Wrath of Ashardalon and Legend of Drizzt are compatible. You can mix them together. Neat.

Conquest of Nerath has a big ass. Chris Perkins said it. Now he redacted it.

Several factions in Conquest of Nerath. Describing elves, infernals, etc

D&D Dungeon tiles upcoming:

Caverns of Icewind Dale - January
The Witchlight Fens - June
Shadowghast Manor (haunted house stuff)

1:25 D&D Books
Forgotten Realms novels
Talking about the Abyssal Plague, describing its origins. Kind of sounds like fantasy Gamma World. A series coming out about the Abyssal Plague soon.

They just called R.A. Salvatore “Bob Salvatore”. Haven’t heard that before. He has another Drizzt series coming out, about him meeting Theian (?) monks.

1:27 - MISSING IN ACTION!!
Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell
Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium
Hero Builder’s Handbook

Talking about doing research on how we use their content. They say these 3 didn’t fit into their master plan, and not putting out a book for its own sake. “We could put out Arcane Power II and you might only use 2% of it. We’re challenging our own plans. Is this good for the players, will it actually be used by the players in this format?” Books have been pulled off the schedule. They have the content, now how do they use it? So at least they’ll probably make it in eventually (especially the magic items, Mike Mearls says).

Audience member expresses desire for encyclopedia of magic items. They acknowledge him and that they know people want this. Mike Mearls stresses the need to make these things high quality.


1:33- D&D Insider: they will be looking at the content to make sure it’s as high-quality as what appears in the book. Process changes to how they make it internally are coming, particularly in how errata is handled (they were only doing them in the compilations of articles, but those didn’t have the errata applied, which will change so both have it now).

A lot of time is going into the compendiums right now, they are looking into changing their workflows to focus on the regular magazine more.

Ultimate agenda: deliver best content in the way we want, and they need us to tell them how they’re screwing up. Best way to tell them: “that’s why we’re here”. So if you are here, get your complaints on.

“Last-updated” stamp on articles being discussed.

Want to focus on site being more easily navigated. Want to keep people engaged in the game.

1:41 - looking at art of a Hezru demon carrying Lolth from an unannounced product

Floor just opened up to questions:

Any plans on making more plastic miniatures?: “We’re having issues with the global economy.” D&D minis were produced in China, less cost-effective to do it now, so they discontinued Minis (per se) but they will still produce plastic minis for some of their existing products (like Legend of Drizzt boardgame etc). They’re taking a “wait-and-see” stance.

Any plans to do item cards, as in a card you can hand a player with stats on it and say “you get this”. They actually have already designed a treasure card template and may appear in future products.

Guy is pleased by Unearthed Arcana series in Dragon (wacky stuff, branded “house rules” so they don’t include them in digital tools).

They are working on printing the item cards you can generate from CB and making them less ugly.

Only product they sell en masse (like not in a FLGS is Red Box). May put other products into Walmart, Target etc if they take off really big. They think stuff like Castle Ravenloft is more likely to do this. Stores have strict specifications on what they’ll take, and apparently some WotC products have trouble meeting these due to various factors.

D&D Minis license to be released to other companies so they can carry the torch? They’ve talked about it, but they can’t really discuss anything like licensing. Wow there are a lot of factors involved in making minis, most of them involving the costs of plastic. Discussing advantages of being owned by Hasbro in these matters and piggybacking their efforts, but even that hasn’t been enough to compensate with the situation in China. They know there is demand for it, and Chris and Mike still want to play it. Chris has a “coffin” full of Minis. Awesome.

Guy sponsors gaming group at a university, brings in tons of players and DMs, is upset that he doesn’t get any support like FLGSs do. Chris and Mike discuss the difficulties in this sort of thing (stuff ending up on eBay) but they offer to discuss this guy’s situation. Stores are more easily accountable than organizations to WotC. Would like to find a metric to measure organizations’ ability to bring in new people. This has been a topic of discussion at WotC for some time. Apparently this guy’s group is too big for his FLGS to support (!) Talked about hooking the guy up with Encounters materials. Apparently Encounters on Wednesday nights interferes with church for several audience members. “We are concerned about this. There are things we can’t do, but within these systems there are things we can do that are appropriate.”

Heroes of Sword and Spell is bridge between PHB and Essentials... is Essentials is new format going forward, is it compatible with old stuff, when do we find this out? They don’t have a timetable, it’s tied up in business planning, but they want to get it taken care of.

What about Ravenloft the campaign setting? They shelved it, they don’t think it’s ready yet. (ARG). They’re being very experimental. They don’t want to give people the same thing they had before. Strahd is very unamused. “I wouldn’t expect it to show up soon.”

Will there be options books coming out for the Essentials classes? “Players Option: Heroes of Shadow should make your Hexblade very happy”. They want books now to be “something for everybody”.With CB being web-based, they have info about who is playing what. They know what most popular classes are now. They can prioritize things to support things people play most. Talking about ability to change unpopular classes if they figure out WHY people don’t play them.

Most popular races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Eladrin.

Most popular class: Fighter
Least: Runepriest.

At least one guy will weep tears of joy if they “fix Runepriests”. Mike said they only make content for Fighters from now on.

“Champions of the Heroic Tier” will not be released but its content will, some of it already in the Hero Builders’ book.

One guy wants a Bard in Essentials. How much fluff/crunch do you intend to do from here on: Mike wants to see where they are, do updates, and wrap up from there. He doesn’t want to flood the market with mechanical content and have everyone baffled.

Have you ever considered something so simple as doing a product survey? They are writing articles covering topics dealing with fan/customer communication, and then asking for comments on those posts. No fair, blogging is our job.

New organized play programs will allow stores to run games whenever works best, as opposed to on a particular day.

“How people play is how the game is.”

Talking about rituals in Character Builder, and the lack of anything but 1 line of text. Also, about CB crashing. Trevor says there was a giant CB bug patch, covering over 300 bugs. Says he knows not everything is fixed and they’re still working on it. Wants to add in customizability too.

Release past Encounters products so people can play them at home on their own time? They’re talking about it, no decisions have been made but they like they idea. Also talking about using Dungeon magazine to pick up where the Encounters adventures/characters left off.

Is there a target date on Virtual Table? “No. We’re release it when it’s done.” Coming out with Monster Builder soon so you can use that content in VT and they want things to integrate properly. They’re not satisfied with the UI and want to refine things a lot. Trevor promises to give people the best timelines he can.

“Now with 30% less suck!”

Will the Monster Builder have all monsters in it, or just new ones? There’s some overlap. In the current version (alpha stuff, very early). If there were multiple versions, Trevor only saw the new one. If there’s a replacement, it appears. For instance if you want a black dragon, you get the Monster Vault version, not the Monster Manual version. You can sort and filter by the source the monster came from too.

Any plans to do more 3-d terrain tilesets like Athas? No distinct plans but they like it and want to do more of it. Discussion of how to pre-make a tiled setup and have them not shift around during transport or play? Mike Mearls uses toolbox liners, but that doesn’t work when you stack things on top. Some people use sticky tack. Some use scotch tape. I wish Bob Vila played D&D.

Still discussing ways to use paper maps. I liked the suggestion to use a cheap poster frame and turn into into dry-erase too.

Audience member wants something in OP to let their characters they’ve leveled up play outside Encounters. Their home characters are higher level and she wants them to be able to play at a convention. Mike has been thinking about this, and wants a means of letting everybody play “in the same sandbox” but without allowing cheating, etc.Living Forgotten Realms has been suggested for this, but just to pare down stuff from the character that wouldn’t be legal in that setting. Tough to reconcile DM freedom to create anything with common campaign used in OP. Mike: “you can recreate the spirit of those characters”.

I just realized @sarahdarkmagic is here. Perception check FAIL. Found out through Twitter. Wouldn’t want that to be awkward or anything..

Wrapping things up. Asking people to come up and ask them anything. If you have anything you want me to ask, hit me up at @direflail.

I GET TO STOP TYPING MADLY!!! YAY!!!!

The TL; DR bit:

1:27 - MISSING IN ACTION!!
Class Compendium: Heroes of Sword and Spell
Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium
Hero Builder’s Handbook

Talking about doing research on how we use their content. They say these 3 didn’t fit into their master plan, and not putting out a book for its own sake. “We could put out Arcane Power II and you might only use 2% of it. We’re challenging our own plans. Is this good for the players, will it actually be used by the players in this format?” Books have been pulled off the schedule. They have the content, now how do they use it? So at least they’ll probably make it in eventually (especially the magic items, Mike Mearls says).

[RobbyPants]

And the thing they are most excited about is Heroes of Shadow. Because it will have shadow stuff in it. And apparently there isn't much of it. But apparently there still won't be much because the only class in the (seemingly tiny) book is Vampire, which they only reluctantly added at the last minute anyway! (Either some manager said, "FFS guys!" or alternatively "Only fucking Twilight Can Save Us Now!")

What's FFS?

Ah, thanks. I've heard the expression before and could have figured it out at urbandictionary, but I assumed it was some vampire or gaming lingo I'd never heard.

[Swordslinger]

As far as I can tell, D&D seems to be more or less dead. The DDI fiasco really killed WotC, in which they decided to stop support for their one e-tool that everyone loved, the character builder, and replace it with a shitty bug ridden version that you require a DDI subscription to use at all. At the same time, they dropped the DDI content down to almost nothing, hoping people's love for the character builder would get them to shell out a monthly fee.

The aftermath was that most people just canceled their subscriptions and told WotC to fuck off.

It's sad because essentials was actually a decent product, but the marketing of it was terrible. They probably plan to lay low a while before either releasing 5E or selling the D&D brand to some other publisher. Whether Heroes of Shadow will get scrapped entirely or release as a half-finished piece of crap is anyone's guess.

[MGuy]

This is the time for WotC to start work on their next thing. 5th Edition is going to need a lot of development and talent. WotC has a LOT of apologizing to do and they might as well start now.

[gourdcaptain]

It's sad because essentials was actually a decent product, but the marketing of it was terrible. They probably plan to lay low a while before either releasing 5E or selling the D&D brand to some other publisher. Whether Heroes of Shadow will get scrapped entirely or release as a half-finished piece of crap is anyone's guess.

Sorry, lurker chiming in here - the quality of Essentials is debatable, but its biggest problem is trying to tack it onto 4e as a whole - it doesn't really work, and I'd actually call one of the origin points of the current discontent when they did a lot of errata to pre-existing material to make it match up with how they wanted to run the Essentials stuff. (The nastiest of this being when they changed up Melee Training to work with the new martial classes and in the process broke the band-aid that a few classes like the Avenger and Battlemind needed. Or in the case of the Avenger, without being limited to only gods of the Skill domain. )

Also, throw in the gigantic mess that is the Item Rarity system as implemented, and it gets ugly. The package system it replaced may not have been that good, but at least it could theoretically be used, and wasn't nearly as lazy. Plus, random rolling to determine drops? SERIOUSLY.

[sabs]

Do they also have it that the Named NPC's signature weapon only has a 1 in 17 chance of dropping the first time you run the adventure? And I think they need to add a token system, so that the more times your character does the same module, the more chances you have of getting the loot you're looking for.


That sounds like a great idea.

[gourdcaptain]

Do they also have it that the Named NPC's signature weapon only has a 1 in 17 chance of dropping the first time you run the adventure? And I think they need to add a token system, so that the more times your character does the same module, the more chances you have of getting the loot you're looking for.


That sounds like a great idea.

It's telling when the two 4e GM's in my area both completely ignore the new item drop system. Mind you, one of those two is heretical enough to run entirely non-combat sessions on occasion, so he may not count. There was actually a recent Q&A column that basically admitted-without-actually-admitting the new treasure system is unrunnable as written.

I kinda got into Tabletop RPGs with 4e, so even if I can start seeing the problems with it now and the new content and handling of it profoundly annoy me, I still have the same love-hate relationship with it a lot of people have with like D&D 1 or 2e or something. Plus, annoyingly, I can only find groups around here for 4e, 3.5e, and PF. At least the GM's are good enough it's still a decent experience.

[PhoneLobster]

Yeah the WOTC forums seem to hate the item rarity system, almost nobody at all uses it and pretty much the uniform response on it looked like "hell no I dont touch that with a ten foot pole its fucking stupid".

And yeah, they seem to hate the new DDI subscriber only character builder, (subscription aspect or not, they think the ap itself is shit) when yeah, in the past I only heard good things about the earlier character builder from 4E fans.

And really the point I'm making here is that I just had a browse around what I thought SHOULD be 4E happy happy land central and THEY had a great deal more "emotional investment in the imminent demise of 4E" than I've seen around here, or even had myself. And I though that maybe I WAS optimistic in thinking 4E might die in like 2 years, and now after seeing what the 4E fan boys are saying, I think I was over confident in 4E that's crazy! The fan boy chat... made me more inclined to think the product they are fans of is going to shit, that's not what you expect from fan boys, something is horribly wrong.

[shadzar]

As these two articles suggest, By Mearls opinion; gamers want more complex systems and characters that require longer to make the character than you would ever be able to play them.

http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20110308

http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20110315

So 4th, or maybe 5th edition, is moving to a game when you no longer play, but spend hours talking to your friends about making the characters at every level of complexity that will give some kind of bonus, I the character was played in games, from eye color to number of pubic hairs.

Every little thing you can choose will have some mechanical benefit in the hypothetical game they are supposed to be used in.

This is all thanks to the fact that every gamer has been playing for 30 years, and is tired of playing simple character, and jsut wants to create characters with more complex mechanics.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I kinda got into Tabletop RPGs with 4e

I feel like an old motherfucker now.

[Swordslinger]

Sorry, lurker chiming in here - the quality of Essentials is debatable, but its biggest problem is trying to tack it onto 4e as a whole - it doesn't really work, and I'd actually call one of the origin points of the current discontent when they did a lot of errata to pre-existing material to make it match up with how they wanted to run the Essentials stuff. (The nastiest of this being when they changed up Melee Training to work with the new martial classes and in the process broke the band-aid that a few classes like the Avenger and Battlemind needed. Or in the case of the Avenger, without being limited to only gods of the Skill domain. )

Yeah, essentials doesn't work well as an add-on to existing 4E, it's really meant as a replacement. That being said, the essentials classes are pretty well balanced with each other and all of them look rather playable.

Also, throw in the gigantic mess that is the Item Rarity system as implemented, and it gets ugly. The package system it replaced may not have been that good, but at least it could theoretically be used, and wasn't nearly as lazy. Plus, random rolling to determine drops? SERIOUSLY.

Yeah I never liked random rolling, but I liked the rarity system. Getting away from buyable magic items and back to special stuff you find is a good thing. Purchasing all your items was unbelievably dull, and worse still just led to a bunch of characters using the same gear. One of the things I loved about pre-3E editions is that everyone's gear had a story behind it. The rarity system was a great compromise between the 2E and 3E's systems of magic items.

[gourdcaptain]

Also, throw in the gigantic mess that is the Item Rarity system as implemented, and it gets ugly. The package system it replaced may not have been that good, but at least it could theoretically be used, and wasn't nearly as lazy. Plus, random rolling to determine drops? SERIOUSLY.

Yeah I never liked random rolling, but I liked the rarity system. Getting away from buyable magic items and back to special stuff you find is a good thing. Purchasing all your items was unbelievably dull, and worse still just led to a bunch of characters using the same gear. One of the things I loved about pre-3E editions is that everyone's gear had a story behind it. The rarity system was a great compromise between the 2E and 3E's systems of magic items.

The problem with rarity is it doesn't solve the fundamental problem that 95%+ of all magic items in 4e are terrible and uninteresting. And they seem to have no idea between what differentiates a good one from a bad one. I believe the reaction when they revealed the rare ones from EVERYONE was "That's it?" The fact they just threw everything already created into Uncommon kinda doomed the system - they didn't put in the effort to create consistent categorization, so it fails there. On an extra note, I don't think there's a commmon Ki Focus, which pretty much dooms the Executioner Assassin's playability, and makes some of the cool things you can do with a monk less viable.

As for essentials classes themselves, I'm not that happy. The slayer and such kinda shout to me a general return to "melee can't have interesting things" and in general they seemed to be lazy and lock down power categories without a reason - why can't the Hexblade pick their own encounter, for instance, or why does the Sentinel get only one at-will and predetermined encounter powers. I recognize there are people they appeal to, but they mostly seem dull as sin. Excepting the Mage, which is a 4e wizard with better class features. Yay.

[gourdcaptain]

I kinda got into Tabletop RPGs with 4e

I feel like an old motherfucker now.

If it's any consolation, I didn't get into Tabletop RPGs until college last year.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Not really.