I'm not bothered that a designer keep on designing. That would be silly.
I am perplexed by his view of bonus actions however, as I think the implementation is currently fantastic.
Which makes me wonder what he sees that I dont.
OR what I see that he has overlooked.
This is exactly where my confusion and exasperation is coming from.
because I like bad analogies:
It's kind of like someone saying that they don't like the engines in cars because they don't feel quite right, so they begin looking at building a clockwork mechanical horse to pull the car along the road.
It seems like going backwards and making things worse, but is there actually a fix that is more elegant and useful that we just aren't seeing or is he just changing things for the sake of changing them because one part doesn't quite work like they wanted it to?
We've had a month or so of this discussion of bonus actions and no one has been able to show a way it works that I actually find to be a better design than our current design, but people keep insisting it would be an improvement.
Are you a RPG game designer? The answer to your question is possibly buried in there somewhere.
And this answer bugs the living crap out of me.
Does Mike Mearls have a Master's Degree in Board Game Design? How about Gygax and Arneson were they both professional Game Designers before they started work on Chainmail and DnD?
Yes, he gets paid to make games and has made a successful game, that's why when he says this stuff about Bonus Actions and we can't see the grand solution he has worked up we don't just dismiss it out of hand. He's got to have something, right? So what the heck is it?
I remember listening to the video and he was talking about "Eldritch Tactics" where instead of a cantrip as a bonus action an Eldritch Knight would have this ability that said "Cast a cantrip and make an attack". Immediately I saw a problem that if he devoted more time to his answer I'm sure he would have seen. By 11th level, as currently designed, you would be changing three attacks and a cantrip for one attack and a cantrip, which is a massive reduction. This would be fixed... unless part of the point is to weaken the Eldritch Knights offense. Unlikely, but I spotted the problem as soon as he said it, and I'm not a Lead Game Designer with a massively successful game. Clearly just from playing the game I couldn't, you know, understand some of the ways it works and the systems involved.
Of course, it is possible that those of us who have played this game and other similar games for years on end, might actually have some understanding of how they work and therefore have legitimate questions or concerns when a piece of design doesn't look quite right