Got it. You think 3e and all versions of D&D before 4e are bad, with primitive, poorly written unbalanced rules that supported only CaW, which you think is no fun.
I think D&D, though doing so slowly, had been improving over it's various editions. AD&D was more ambitious than 0D&D, 2e refined AD&D and improved production values, 3e made a real stab at modernizing the game, roughly balanced it at single-digit levels, and took the bold step of going open source. 4e further improved over 3e.
Seemingly, a perfectly desireable state of afairs...
But you know what? Grognards like playing traditonal D&D, and we just don't like 4e.
I do know that. And I am totally OK with it. Indeed, I'm an older gamer myself, and have my first loves from the olden days. I adore 1st ed Gamma World, even though I recognize that it's a terrible game by modern standards, and a pretty marginal one even by the standards of 1978 (that did have it competing with RuneQuest, afterall).
I don't go around trying to tell people that it's /better/ than later, more refined, better executed versions of the game. (Though, nothing could be quite as bad as the 3rd ed...)
We like CaW, and like the old rules that we think better support it.
The OP just made up 'CaW' a little bit ago.
Many of us dislike the "modern" redesign goals of 4e, like balance.
Kudos to you for admiting an actual dislike of balance. That actually heads off a lot of back-and-forth we might otherwise have.
They took out the resource management/logistics by making spells/powers recharge. They took out the flavor differences between character classes by making every class have spells/powers that were mechanically similar -- even the warrior classes essentially are spellcasters now, and there's no Vancian magic.
Here's were we get into the problem areas. There's opinion, and there's misrepresentation.
4e did not take resource management out of the game. Far from it, there are still dailies, more broadly in fact, and in addition to hps and healing there are surges to manage, there are still one-shot items like potions, and there's an extra layer of resource management in encounter powers.
Consistent mechanics do not take away flavor. Again, far from it, they allow the game to cover a much broader range of possible flavors without unecessary complexity. Your claim of similar mechanics robbing flavor is doubly bogus, because common mechanics have always been in use. In 1e, shocking grasp, for instance, did 1d8+n damage. So did a scimitar. They were not the same, even though they shared that mechanic.
The wizard still uses recognizeably Vancian magic. In fact, the wizard's dailies are a bit closer to the magic of the Dying Earth than they ever have been, since they don't memorize rediculous numbers of them at high level.
Warriors are not spellcasters - 'essentially' or otherwise. They are merely no longer inferior to casters. Martial characters use expoits. Wizards use spells. Attack exploits are virtually always weapon powers - and /never/ implement powers. Attack spells are virtually always implement power. Attack exploits typicaly do untyped damage, or damage based on the weapon. Attack spells do a whole range of typed damages. The mechanical difference, alone are significant. The similarities are only significant in terms of balance. In terms of flavor/fluff or concept, they're meaningless.
By all means, feel free to express your opinions about 4e class balance and your preferences and opinions. But do not say that 4e classes are the same, that fighters cast spells, or that wizard's don't prepare spells. Because those statements are false.
They took out tradeoffs between classes dating back to AD&D, when Rangers clearly rocked at 1st level (2d8 hit points) and Wizards were weak to start, but at higher level, Wizards came into their own, if they survived.
Sure, part of balance, which you don't like. No problem.
race differences had already been filed down by 3e, but 4e obliterated them in the name of balance.
Actually, with all the racial feats and powers 4e introduced, the differences among races were probably a little greater than in 4e. PC races. Not LA races, that is.
And WOTC also tried to get rid of the "danger" we craved, because no one likes having a character die -- no more "save or die" effects, no need for a cleric to heal, and advice to DM's about "balanced" (there's that word again!)
Yep, and once again, feel free to go on in that vein all you like. You'll get no argument from me. 4e takes a very different direction in what it's trying to model or simulate. 3e modeled an internally consistent world in which the elements of fantasy stories might exist (and, once in a blue moon, the story of a PC party might even end up resembling one, slightly, if the dice were being really crazy). 4e modeled the story rather than the world. In most fantasy stories, most of the heroes don't die meaningless deaths at 1st level (whatever '1st level' would be in a narrative...). Different aproach, different results, different preferences. No bearing on how good a game either one is (was).
The thing is, both sets of opinions are strongly held. People who dislike traditional D&D or dislike 4e have had 4 years of edition wars to reconsider their opinions, and I don't think anyone is going to convert at this late stage, especially by being told "what you are doing is wrong".
3 years. It hasn't even been 4 yet. They've also had those 3 years to get their facts straight.
It's fine for people to say what they like, and for people to say what they don't like, but what's the point of arguing with other people's opinions and telling them they should think the opposite?
Aparently, if done often enough, stridently enough, viciously enough, and combined with a veritable boycott, it can kill a 3-year-old edition of D&D for the first time in the history of the game.
