I liked melee types in 3e and refused to touch casters with ye old ten foot pole most of the time due to complexity and/or frailness. So 4e making martial characters cool makes me happy. However, I also like the way 4e has made casters more accessible, and enjoy those as well now. My two most-played characters are a human warlock and bugbear rogue.
Essentially, 4e has made my preferred martial classes more fun, and made casters much more to my liking as well. Win / Win for me.
one point is missing---if i remember right from another poll, most of us here are dm's. might have been more accurate/telling if it was directed at people who play 75% of the time rather than dm.
presumably, based on some other polls and personal experience, most of us are old fat white guys with some sort of facial hair too. .
Old, fat, bearded, white guy is about 60% correct...
Anyway, i think the poll shows very little correlation between 3e/4e preference and spellcaster/melee preference, as for all 3 of the options of classes, the relative numbers are practically the same...
About the only thing we can say is that of those who responded, most preferred 4e...
Well, polls have always to be taken with the usual grain of salts, but... I am really not surprised that there is no correlation. I always found the claim that people didn't like 4E because they loved playing their overpowered spell casters was nothing more then an unfair accusation, or worse (a thinly veiled or an open insult.) It was and never will be conductive to the discussion on the merits of 4E by claiming only powergamers or munchkins hate (or love) it.
I always thought it was more true in reverse, for what its worth. 3E fans aren't all powergamers/munchkins who love playing overpowered spellcasters, but powergamers/munchkins who love playing overpowered spellcasters generally prefer what 3E offers them. Note that not all spellcaster fans are powergamers/munchkins who like to breakk game balance.
Actually, I would agree with this.
I think that parts of 3e are wonderful, and the ability to stat out literally anything is really, really cool. But the "balance" of the system, IMHO, is largely illusory, and if folks want to break it there is no better edition for that purpose.
So, cool game if you play with cool people (until the homework aspect creeps in as levels rise, and combats can suddenly become duller than dirtwater for no other reason than that they take...too....long), but this is a game where "smart play" includes powerbuilding your character.
IMHO, a game should never make "smart play" be at odds with "satisfying play".
RC
While unintentional, and if you only play with cool people, not universal, the overall effect of 3E was to make "smart play" at odds with "satisfying play", at least in the fact that if some players wanted to play "smart" to the point of damaging other players' "satisfying", there was nothing in the rules to stop them, not even a little.