I think most of the things that people took offense to with 4e came down to not having a coat of paint on them. Like if an ability said "your blows are so forceful, they can batter down the strongest defense", maybe nobody would have batted an eye at half damage on a miss for Martial attacks?
Mike @mearls himself more or less said this in his GDC talk in 2020:
...My favorite one --and actually I talked about how the 4th and 5th edition, the reactions, sparked this entire train of thought in my mind--is the difference between Powers versus what's termed 'Vancian magic' in 5th edition. So I'm gonna describe the Power system from 4th Edition to you. This was a system that MANY, many players complained about, and said "it just feels too artificial, it feels too much like a game mechanic. It doesn't feel like something that's springing out of the world."
So in 4th Edition, every character has a set of Powers. Those Powers are special exceptions-based mechanics that you use to, say, maybe make a special attack, or maybe it's a trick you can use, like to create an illusion if you're a wizard. If you're a warrior, a fighter, it might be a special combat move, like "oh I can bash my shield into a monster and knock them back." Some of the powers you could use whenever you wanted, and other ones had cooldowns (essentially, you picked the power ahead of time, and when you used it, you couldn't use it again until a certain increment of time passed)." And that was seen as "it's just too gamey."
Vancian magic, on the other hand, is a set of exceptions-based mechanics, you pick them ahead of time, you decide "here's the spell I want to use" (in this case it's just magic, it's not--if you have a sword and shield you're not using Vancian magic, it's always a spell), you pick it ahead of time, when you use it (some of them you can use again and again, others are on a cooldown), it's gone until a certain amount of time passes in-game, then you regain it.
Now, I HOPE what you're getting [at] is—what you're seeing is— th- these two systems are essentially the same. The Powers in 4th Edition and Vancian magic in 5th Edition are basically the same net game mechanic? And what fascinates me is: why was one seen as "this is pure game design, I just feel so-- I don't feel immersed at all," and Vancian magic—despite being incredibly idiosyncratic and magic (other than Jack Vance the author who described this magic system in some of his works) is found nowhere else in fantasy fiction or in fantasy world-building, and yet it's in D&D and our player base saw that and said "that feels like D&D, that feels like fantasy, that feels immersive and believable."
I think really what it comes down to, is that the Power system, when you look at it, in some ways [and] it was almost TOO good, it felt like "oh, this works really smoothly, it makes sense, and it doesn't seem to have any of the rough edges you'd expect a magic system to have."
It was also a case where the system was the same whether you were playing a warrior (a fighter), or a wizard. And I think that made players think, "well, there isn't any chrome here, there's nothing coming from the world, it really is just purely coming from the system, it's really just aimed at the player as opposed to the character."
Now that, to me, makes-- it does make some sense, though there is the caveat that in 5th Edition, of our core character classes, only two of them don't use the Vancian magic system. The other ten-plus all do. [slt laugh] So this idea that well, I guess really just comes down to "since people who who don't use magic don't use it, then it feels more like this really is how magic works"?
But I do think there is something there, about it has these sort of burrs in it. Where, like it feels a little idiosyncratic and weird and strange, it doesn't feel like anything anyone would design, so therefore you have to try to explain it in terms of the world. In terms of "the flow of the weave" and how casters tap into magic and it taxes them physically and spiritually, and once they cast the spell, it's gone, and how it takes time to prepare a spell, to learn it, and every morning after you wake up you study your spellbook or, if you're a sorcerer, you just have these inborn talents. I think really just the fact that Vancian magic and Powers have the same endpoint, but one loops through very clearly game design structures that are aimed at the player's understanding, and the other one—to justify its idiosyncratic nature loops through worldbuilding explanations to explain it essentially to both the player and the character, I think that is what helped Vancian magic still...after 40-something years and innumerable complaints (especially game designers, who usually are not fans of Vancian magic, but players seem to like it), it still seems to resonate.
Now, learning from 4th Edition vs. 5th Edition. I think this is one area when I think of 4th Edition fighter Powers. "Oh, in 4th Edition, we have these fighter Powers, these essentially special abilities (I've excerpted a few here on the slide) that fighters can use." And we kinda don't really have those in 5th Edition, and I personally really miss them. I think what happened here is if you look at some of these abilities, if you can read them, there's one for instance called Tide of Iron that's down here on the slide. It's essentially a shield bash. You use your shield, you knock an enemy back, you create some space, in a tactical situation it's really useful, like maybe you need to clear a door out, or there's a monster threatening your wizard, so you give him a good bash from your shield, and send him flying back. I think...the miss here may have just been the name "Tide of Iron." If we had named it "Shield Bash," I think it makes it a lot easier for players to understand what's going on. Same with Reaping Strike. The nice thing about Reaping Strike is if you swing but you don't hit, you still deal some damage to the monster. And a little bit more damage if you're using a two-handed weapon. If this had been called, "Two-Handed Strike," or, you know, "Greathammer Attack" or something like that and been tied to a specific weapon, I think it would've been more evocative to people. And if mechanics were working, hopefully then the player would think, "well, of course when I use my Greathammer as a fighter, I get these benefits of it. I'm swinging this giant hammer. It knocks people back. Or even if it's a glancing blow, their armor can never absorb the full impact, they're gonna take some damage."
