I was having a discussion with someone else on another forum, concerning the topic of Pathfinder 2 (Electric Boogaloo), and a comparison came up between that game and D&D 4E. It was suggested that the two appear quite similar in many ways, because combat is very tactical (Theater-of-the-Mind being neither practical nor encouraged), and every character has a new choice to make at every single level. It was subsequently countered that making a choice at every level, in order to create an extremely customized character, was not considered one of the core defining traits of that edition.
Following that premise, then, what is the core defining trait of 4E? Is it the choices? The grid? The unified resource structure? What do you consider to be the essence of 4E, such that you would recognize a game as being 4E-derived if it shared such an element?
I'm definitely getting a 4e vibe from a lot of the Pathfinder 2 design. Both are expanding and building off of 3e and trying to fix the problems with that ruleset. And for some reasons, the Pathfinder people never once stopped to look at and play 5e to figure out how 5e moved away from the designs of 4e, so they can avoid making the mistakes of 4e....
Both games seem to be very gamist RPGs that use many jargon terms, keywords, and symbols rather than natural language. They both seem to be games that focus heavily on tactical miniature play with regular character choices every level (or twice at some levels) and a heavy focus on building characters, with the differentiation of characters being built into modular rules elements. And both seem to employ a Red Queen's Race element to levelling, where the numbers increase regularly so you need to continually increase in power and cannot fight foes too far above or below you.
I'm getting some serious déjà vu from the launch of Pathfinder 2.
Now, the essence of 4e...
I'd say the essence of 4th Edition very much was designing and customising characters. Because the rules of the game were for a tactical miniature wargame.
No... literally. This is not me edition warring. The combat rules for 4e and the rules for the revised D&D Miniatures game were almost identical. The difference was there was a condition in DDM that was not included in 4e. I gave copies of the DDM rulebooks to players to explain how to play 4e.
4e was literally D&D Minis where you could build your own token... and with a skill system tacked on. (And, boy, was the 4e skill system tacked on.)
Which is a very retro design when you think about it. D&D as a tactical miniature wargame where you play one character instead of an entire warband. Déjà vu... again.
That is the essence of 4e. You design a custom character that fits a role in the party with which to engage in interesting and dynamic tactical combat encounters. And it does that
very well.