Samurai
Adventurer
I liked and had been playing 3.5 regularly before 4e was announced, but I didn't mind the idea of a new edition. I figured it would be an evolution of 3.5, fix a few things, add a few new ideas, but hopefully still pretty compatible. Rules info on the new edition was very, very sparse, and nearly all the previews focused on either setting/cosmology changes (which I thought sounded pretty cool, I was never a big fan of the great wheel, it's too artificial) or vague promises of faster, better ways to do things, like grappling. These reinforced my original assumption of 4e, so when 4e came out, I was surprised. Lots of traditional D&D things were gone (races, classes, spells, and entire design structures were missing or changed), and while some people were cheering about so many "sacred cows being slaughtered", many others were disappointed.
Personally, I was a bit put off by it all, it didn't "feel" like D&D to me with so many radical (and IMO unnecessary) changes and omissions. And there was a sense that it was rushed out the door because things like Skill Challenges (a supposedly important part of the new system) were so obviously broken as written that it was clear no one playtested it. Errata suggestions and forum threads about how to fix things were very common, and eventually my own house rules grew to 9 pages and the official errata grew to at least 113 pages (that was the last one I bothered downloading). Some books were eventually considered obsolete because most of the powers and stats in them were changed in the errata, and if you used the online tools for character building, the errata was automatically applied, but that no longer matched what the book said when you look up a power at the table.
The rest of my gaming group looked at 4e but were unwilling to switch to it. The consensus was "too much focus on combat and too much errata needed". We continued with 3.5 until Pathfinder was announced, and then we switched to it (first the Beta rules book, then the final version). I still wanted to play 4e, to try it out at the game table, so I played in a few organized events at game stores. It was very disappointing, 99% wargame with a short intro story for fluff. I still remember when my 1st character, in my 1st encounter, wanted to try talking to some people standing in the road (he was a Chr-based character). I won initiative and approached them, greeting them and asking if there was a problem. The other players rolled their eyes and shook their heads. When the next character's initiative came up, he charged and attacked the nearest "enemy", because "of course they are enemies, there wouldn't be a battlemap and initiative if they were friendly, just kill them all!"
I decided I'd try running my own games after that, and I volunteered to run 4E Encounters at my FLGS. Pretty much every adventure was just like what I'd experienced as a character (this was in the early days, Encounters adventures did slowly get a little better and have more story after a few years, but it was still pretty much just a string of (very long) combats loosely tied together, and unfortunately, by the time the stories did start to improve a little, interest in Encounters had waned to the point that I was lucky if 3 people showed up to play.)
Essentials was a very controversial release. It divided the 4e community in several ways, and I saw people playing "original 4e only" and "4Essentials only". They were meant to appeal to a variety of people... to new players, it was a new entry point into the game (because the old 4e PHB had so much errata that it was no longer valid), and to current players it had entirely new builds for the existing classes. It also printed a great deal of the errata that had previously been online, and made more changes as well, including changing racial bonuses, some feats, many powers, etc. Fans of original 4e were not happy with some of the changes. The new class versions harkened back to previous versions of D&D, with martial classes that made basic attacks rather than used attack powers, but they could ignore those if they wanted to. The changes to races, powers, feats, etc were incorporated into the errata and the character builder, and were harder to ignore. The books that came out after Essentials tried to appeal to both camps, featuring new options for both Essentials and original 4e classes and a greater emphasis on fluff. The difference between the old Adventurer's Vaults and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium shows just how big a shift in direction there had been from the beginning of the edition to the end... the AV's were huge list of magic items with almost no fluff at all, while the MME had several paragraphs on each item, discussing its history, uses, etc. (and made an effort to include classic items from D&D's past, not just all new stuff)
All in all, 4e was made to appeal to a very specific sub-set of D&D players, and to them, it's likely to remain their favorite edition. To everyone else that had different priorities in their game, they either had to struggle to get 4e to do what they wanted or, more likely, they moved to another game that did what they wanted better. Personally, I hold no animosity toward WotC for trying 4e, even if it wasn't my cup of tea, and I'm gladly going to buy 5e as it looks like a return to what I enjoy.
Personally, I was a bit put off by it all, it didn't "feel" like D&D to me with so many radical (and IMO unnecessary) changes and omissions. And there was a sense that it was rushed out the door because things like Skill Challenges (a supposedly important part of the new system) were so obviously broken as written that it was clear no one playtested it. Errata suggestions and forum threads about how to fix things were very common, and eventually my own house rules grew to 9 pages and the official errata grew to at least 113 pages (that was the last one I bothered downloading). Some books were eventually considered obsolete because most of the powers and stats in them were changed in the errata, and if you used the online tools for character building, the errata was automatically applied, but that no longer matched what the book said when you look up a power at the table.
The rest of my gaming group looked at 4e but were unwilling to switch to it. The consensus was "too much focus on combat and too much errata needed". We continued with 3.5 until Pathfinder was announced, and then we switched to it (first the Beta rules book, then the final version). I still wanted to play 4e, to try it out at the game table, so I played in a few organized events at game stores. It was very disappointing, 99% wargame with a short intro story for fluff. I still remember when my 1st character, in my 1st encounter, wanted to try talking to some people standing in the road (he was a Chr-based character). I won initiative and approached them, greeting them and asking if there was a problem. The other players rolled their eyes and shook their heads. When the next character's initiative came up, he charged and attacked the nearest "enemy", because "of course they are enemies, there wouldn't be a battlemap and initiative if they were friendly, just kill them all!"
I decided I'd try running my own games after that, and I volunteered to run 4E Encounters at my FLGS. Pretty much every adventure was just like what I'd experienced as a character (this was in the early days, Encounters adventures did slowly get a little better and have more story after a few years, but it was still pretty much just a string of (very long) combats loosely tied together, and unfortunately, by the time the stories did start to improve a little, interest in Encounters had waned to the point that I was lucky if 3 people showed up to play.)
Essentials was a very controversial release. It divided the 4e community in several ways, and I saw people playing "original 4e only" and "4Essentials only". They were meant to appeal to a variety of people... to new players, it was a new entry point into the game (because the old 4e PHB had so much errata that it was no longer valid), and to current players it had entirely new builds for the existing classes. It also printed a great deal of the errata that had previously been online, and made more changes as well, including changing racial bonuses, some feats, many powers, etc. Fans of original 4e were not happy with some of the changes. The new class versions harkened back to previous versions of D&D, with martial classes that made basic attacks rather than used attack powers, but they could ignore those if they wanted to. The changes to races, powers, feats, etc were incorporated into the errata and the character builder, and were harder to ignore. The books that came out after Essentials tried to appeal to both camps, featuring new options for both Essentials and original 4e classes and a greater emphasis on fluff. The difference between the old Adventurer's Vaults and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium shows just how big a shift in direction there had been from the beginning of the edition to the end... the AV's were huge list of magic items with almost no fluff at all, while the MME had several paragraphs on each item, discussing its history, uses, etc. (and made an effort to include classic items from D&D's past, not just all new stuff)
All in all, 4e was made to appeal to a very specific sub-set of D&D players, and to them, it's likely to remain their favorite edition. To everyone else that had different priorities in their game, they either had to struggle to get 4e to do what they wanted or, more likely, they moved to another game that did what they wanted better. Personally, I hold no animosity toward WotC for trying 4e, even if it wasn't my cup of tea, and I'm gladly going to buy 5e as it looks like a return to what I enjoy.
