I advocate for a D&D game that has a successful tradition of dominating the market exclusively for nearly thirty years.
No. No you don't. You are advocating for a 2e-approach. You advocate for the only strand of the D&D tradition that
failed to dominate the market - even now the competition to D&D is from D&D. You advocate for the only part of the D&D tradition that was ever actually outsold while it was putting content out. For a time 2e was actually outsold by Vampire- and even when Vampire wasn't outselling it in the 90s White Wolf gave D&D some stiff competition.
I do not advocate to exclude new ideas or add-ons to this base. But when I cannot play in the original D&D playstyle at all then I believe they've went wrong.
The
original D&D playstyle, Gygaxian and Arnesonian, the one that dominated the market for fifteen years wasn't Actor Stance. It was Pawn Stance. You do not, as far as I can tell, even
try to play in Pawn Stance. And there certainly isn't anything in 4e to prevent pawn stance being used.
Actor Stance was mostly a 2nd edition D&D thing. And 2nd edition had many good points - but it was the edition that ran TSR into the ground in part because it tried to turn D&D into something it simply wasn't and however clunky the system Storyteller used it was made for this.
I'm not saying D&D cannot expand to include additional playstyles.
Just as well. It expanded to include yours.
You though want to stomp out my playstyle.
No I don't. You want to stomp my ability to play non-casters out. I want a live and let live situation that seems to be anathema to you. It's your decision to cry "I can't live with a game where there is an option to allow this" - that's the cry of someone who wants to stomp a playstyle out.
The irony is that we both want the same thing here - immersion. However we just approach that in different ways. You never want to make a choice that doesn't directly map to an IC choice. I want to make a choice close to the one my character makes. That is the difference.
Which is your choice but from a business perspective it's a real bad idea. Pathfinder adopted that "antiquated" playstyle as you like to think it and is now number one. A ton a retroclones have also adopted it and they are selling to someone.
How many 2e retroclones are selling? Most of the OSR games are for Pawn Stance pieces.
And the OSR is
seriously overrrated in size IME. Also I'm not sure what WotC could have done to help Paizo more. Giving control over their regular creative content to a third party. Aggravating and dismissive statements and marketing. And then to cap it all, when it looked like there was competition, instead of raising their game they stopped publishing books thereby handing a large chunk of the market to Paizo giftwrapped with a nice bow on top.
Almost everything round 4e has been done either excruciatingly badly or with spectacular bad luck (see Gleemax or Borders going bust just after they announced Essentials) except the game itself. The game is good - but if I were
trying to sabotage it the results would only be different by a computer virus or two.