CapnZapp
Legend
I'd say you keep focusing on the wrong thing, Tony.Most of the things people complained loudly about in 4e, 5e retains in at least some measure. Fighters casting spells, wizards being 'nerfed' (relative to 3e), martial healing, overnight 'natural healing,' dissociated mechanics, etc, etc...
What makes you think 4E succeeded where 4E failed, even if all those things were true?
That's right - because it wasn't those things that made 4E fail, and it wasn't really those things that people disliked.
It was the way they were used in 4E that made people balk. Since the edition wars are long over, and this isn't about 4E anyway, let me skip the details and just establish that 4E and 5E looks, feels and plays very differently. That's what's important. Whether any given detail or feature is similar or even identical does not help or matter when that is so.
This just feels like you're bitter about the fate of 4E, tbh….No, 5e returned to meeting longtime D&D expectations. Random lethality at 1st level segueing into a 'sweet spot' followed by increasingly wildly powerful magic (LFQW), beating the game using 'smart play' (CaW) because it gives you the tool to recharge your resources at will (5MWD), magic items making you 'just better' if the DM gives you any, etc... all curated by the Empowered DM (be he Monty Haul or Killer or Good).
Why don't you abandon this unproductive viewpoint and instead listen to me when I tell you that 5E feels like a proper successor to 3E while truly fixing its most egregious faults in a way neither 4E nor PF did.
We've already been over this....and, you'd think, if they wanted to keep rolling with those same PF fans, they wouldn't want to radically reverse direction, no?
They can't be targeting the PF fans, not the hardcore ones at least. Why would they when the 5E fans are such a massively bigger group? Besides, why would they create a completely new (and incompatible) game if they really did go for the conservative, nostalgic approach?
If the game released in two weeks is neither d20 compatible, nor simple like 5E, with obnoxious walls of feats which players are forced to wade through to even create characters, then yes, PF2 might truly be the 4E of Paizo.
In the worst possible way - being a commercial failure. Yet another entry in the very long line of would-be "better than D&D" games nobody even remembers. Heartbreakers.