(snip) Rigorous Mechanical Design with heavy playtesting is definitely not going to happen for the foreseeable future. It requires a lot of effort that has not proven to be that valuable in the market. I think this is the reason why we haven't really seen a spiritual successor to 4e appear on the market. Tabletop RPGs don't justify the sort of economic resources required to build a game with that level of rigor.
(snip) Wow. That's a good insight. And it's sad. (snip)
You're right: That is both insightful and sad.
I think it's fair to conclude that the D&D fan base is dominated by nostalgia both when it comes to rules and to adventures. No wonder 5E seems to be succeeding!
I'm currently playing 4e in a converted Kingmaker (Pathfinder) Adventure path. We are having a blast.
Interestingly enough I was recently invited to join in a Pathfinder game and declined because my experiences playing and running 3.x and Pathfinder, after playing 4e, have been extremely disappointing. (snip)
I would put this really bluntly: Paizo APs work better with 4E. It's easier for the DM to run and it forces the DM to remove a lot of the grind that the APs otherwise rely on to get the PCs to the right level for the next grindfest.
Similar to your experience, I find it difficult to go back (yes, I consider it a backwards step) and play 5E. I don't enjoy those constipated feelings that come from playing what is, in effect, an earlier edition. I mean, looking up spells in a book? Stuff that. I want everything on my character sheet.
(snip) But for my money, the experience of 3.x was all about:
a) Terrible Action Economy - Heavily favoring casters while very negatively impacting mobility (perpetuating battlefield stagnation) and melee characters (PCs and NPCs aliike)
b) LFQW...cubed
c) Horrendous combat budgeting (in many ways directly related to a and b)
d) Granular noncombat task resolution predicated on process-sim and featuring fiddly build mechanics and binary (non-dynamic) action resolution
e) Magic Item Economy and all the notorious impact that proliferated onto the rest of the system and setting as a result
f) An exceedingly narrow sweet spot of play
g) Related to (b), but needing a spot on its own, is the overwhelming, conflict-neutering power of Divinations, Conjurations, and Transmutations. (snip)
I loved 3.5E until I discovered 4E and learnt that I could build a stat block in under 20 minutes no matter what level monster or NPC.
3.5E was becoming a full time job as a DM. If I relied on the pre-built stat blocks they were full of errors plus I needed to do almost as much work looking up feats and spells as I would have done building them myself and learning the feats and spells that way. And the amount of work I put into a stat block had no effect on how long I would be able to use it in play. No, I cannot go back to that... and 5E is much the same.
I'm not sure if it's just me (because I don't truck in 5e circles), but I've noticed a definite, well, I wouldn't call it "pushback" exactly, but perhaps, nostalgia (?) for the "good bits" of what made 4e great. Maybe the community at large (not the echochamber of ENWorld) might be ready to integrate 4e into the fabric of D&D history and to acknowledge what it brought to the game. (snip)
I DM 99% of the time. I don't have any interest in playing. So, as a DM, I look at 5E - which I have both run and played - and all I can see are how it's going to have the same problems as 1E and 3.5E as time moves on. Like 1E, playing theatre-of-the-mind with a system that relies heavily on strict measurements is ultimately going to require grids and minis for times when players would otherwise want to argue with the DM and like 3.5E it's still a lot of work to play a complicated monster because you still have to look things up, like spells, that appear on the stat block.
More power to 5E because I do like to see D&D succeeding but the problems that 4E solved are still there. But that's clearly OK because, as stated above, nostalgia is clearly of vital importance to the D&D fan base. And that nostalgia trumps a lot of the elegance of 4E design.
