Zeromaru X
Arkhosian scholar and coffee lover
TBF it has a lot of rules and content for outside combat. The Skill Challenge system is the most developed system any edition has ever had for extended task resolution outside of combat or a single skill check. I think a lot of folks see the big lists of powers and their eyes glaze over a bit, where in other editions that kind of content is mostly confined to the spell lists.
TBH, I'm always gonna be puzzled by 5e downtime rules. Like, people actually need rules to know what their characters do with their free time? I always solved that through roleplaying and rulings (like determining how much the characters spent with their lifestyle, how much the bakery of this player earned, and that stuff).
Skill challenges were a good way to deal with social encounters, though I admit that at first they had problems and they were perfected in the later days of 4e.
I'm not sure a raw number is going to tell you anything significant about success/failure or on what level it succeeded or failed any more than "less than previous edition" will. That's what the rest of the context of "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" is really all about. Less than previous edition AND all this other stuff... and maybe we'll have a better understanding of what the heck happened and how it affected decisions afterward. Because I can tell you that there are a lot of us who have questions about what was going on, so I hope Riggs has some good insider (at the time) sources to offer their perspectives.
At the very least, this will help to solve the "4e sold less, therefore it was a failure" argument.
Have you flipped up a snail? It doesn't matter if the snail can stick to the walls, if you flipped it, the snail will need a time to reaccommodate... I consider the "tripping the cube" the same. After all, there should be a "main" face in the cube...But 4e does. The one that can be tripped.