Well, I now listened to what they are actually saying, and what they say is that they approach classes with a concept first and then start to think for how this concept can be represented through mechanics.
Quote: "Where have this classes came from and how have they changed over the years? The ranger is a good example because in AD&D, when it first showed up, it was very Tolkien in its flavor. Rangers had a code of conduct they had to obey, they had to be good. And then from second and third edition the ranger kind of became the more generic nature warrior. They could be any alignment, they were more the goof archer, good skirmisher type of guys, the fighter in light armor. And that might be something where we tend to flavor it back a bit and say the gnoll archer can be just an expert fighter who has taken the right options. But the ranger now is going to mean something in the world. It's going to be more than a guy with a bow or a guy with two weapons, getting back to that stuff, of you know, I mean about that code of conduct, it's an actual, it's some organization of some sort, some sort you know... things like that bringing a little more flavor to the classes in either tweaking them back to where they were, or in some cases like the warlock or sorcerer, adding some sort of detail and depth there, to really give them a place in the world. The idea being that if you see something like a paladin or ranger in a novel, in a video game, or in an RPG, you have some sense of what that person is. You know, it means more than just the mechanics. And that's really where I think the payoff of the stuff to the story elements of the game, is 'paladins are not just fighters with an alignment restriction and they can lay on hands', there is something more about there."
You don't have to studied speech patterns (like I actually did) to see that at the point about giving the ranger a code of conduct he is just making up some examples on the spot. Those are not definite plans that already exist, but a vague idea they have in mind.
Though I have to praise him on his ability to speak smoothly, he polishes up all the small mistakes so quickly it's terrible difficult to hear them even when you are trying to transcribe them. ^^
And to the issue as a whole, I think he is expressing an overly bleak perception of classes in the last editions, which was not actually as bad as he makes it sound, what he is actually saying is not that special. It's exactly what makes people love Binders, bemoan that truenammers have terrible mechanics, and makes them want to play monks. It's not the mechanics people love, it's the ideas of the concept they love, even if the mechanics are terrible.
"A ranger is not just a light armor fighter with a bow or two weapons" is all he is saying and that's something nobody really would disagree with.
