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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fedifensor" data-source="post: 5478896" data-attributes="member: 7289">I switched to 4E due to burnout on 3E.  Pathfinder is cool, and I own the core rulebook...but every time I look at the magic item system I cringe.  Spending 6 hours cataloging magic items and preparing a level 20 character sheet for Living Arcanis completely burned me out on the system, which I had played for nearly a decade.  Pathfinder is an improvement from 3.5, but the backwards compatibility means the broken mess of magic items and high level spellcasters remains. I've been playing 4E since it came out, and I plan to continue playing 4E for the short-term.  However, I don't see any new products on the horizon that I'm interested in, and I don't plan to renew my DDI subscription when it expires.  Which means WotC is done getting income from my purchases.There has been talk in this thread about whether you should stop purchasing a system because of the decisions of the company.  My take on it is that when the company's business decisions is harming the line, then you have to think about whether it's worthwhile to keep investing in new products, or just stay with what you have and don't buy new supplements.  In my opinion, the original design goals of 4E have been abandoned due to financial decisions, which is why I'm reluctant to buy anything else from WotC.4E had some good goals.  No "must-have" feats.  A reduction in magic items, so that you only really needed three items to be competitive (armor, weapon/implement, and neck slot).  Limitations on how a person could increase their attack bonus.  It wasn't perfect, but the PHB did a decent job of meeting those goals.Then, the problems arose, and WotC fixed them not with errata, but with a calculated scheme to provide fixes via new product.  Armor Class didn't scale in the upper levels, so Masterwork Armor was introduced in Adventurer's Vault.  Instead of instituting a "math fix" for the reduced chance to hit in the upper tiers, they introduced Expertise feats and Paragon/Robust Defenses in PHB2.  Suddenly, the game had must-have feats and equipment that was only in non-core books, making PHB-only characters inferior in comparison.  This only got worse with Essentials, making those must-have Expertise feats and Defense feats (Superior Fortitude/Reflex/Will) even better, and giving each of them a secondary benefit that is worth a feat by itself.  For all the people that railed against introducing a flat math fix via errata (+1 to hit per tier, for example), how is this better for the system?Of course, we also had power creep in other ways.  New supplements introduced Wizard powers that were superior to most powers in the PHB (and the few powers that were must-haves from the PHB were toned down via errata).  Entire new slots for magic items were created (tattoos) and more powerful items were introduced, taking a step back towards the 3.5 philosophy that "clothes make the man".   Even mundane equipment became more powerful...who takes a greatsword now that a fullblade is only one feat away?There is no point to buying a PHB anymore - it's as outdated as a 3.0 book was for 3.5.  This has happened for one primary reason - WotC wanted to maximize the sale of new books.  I don't begrudge a company the right to seek profit, but I think the short-term profits from using new books as stealth errata has damaged the overall brand.  This is why Pathfinder is catching up to 4E.  Consumers aren't stupid - Essentials is a way to make WotC's customers repurchase the rules they already own.Then, there's DDI.  A good idea that has gone horribly wrong.  When you replace the shining star of DDI with a replacement product that is inferior to what was previously offered, you're going to turn away customers.  When your offerings in Dragon and Dungeon and magazine are significantly less than before (and by many accounts, inferior), you're going to turn away customers.  When those magazines take much more work from a paying customer to acquire than they did in previous months (requiring individual downloads instead of a single PDF file), you're going to turn away customers.  When you encourage piracy by providing no legal way to get PDF copies of your books (a stance that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the RPG industry), you're going to turn away customers.All of these reasons are why WotC is on a downward spiral.  So far, they've been saved by brand loyalty, and customer who feel locked into new purchases because they don't want to abandon something they've invested a lot of time and effort into (Living Forgotten Realms playes are an example of this).I don't have exact counts from the convention that ran locally over President's Day weekend, but Pathfinder tables seemed as numerous as LFR tables...despite the presence of an all-day LFR Battle Interactive that was run for the first time in the midwest.  If this is similar to what is happening in the rest of the country, WotC should be very, very worried.</blockquote>

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