Yup, same experience here. My group was fortunate that our first foray into 4E was a homebrew campaign (that I ran), and my campaigns tend toward fewer harder combats anyway, so it fit like a glove. When one of the guys tried running a prefab adventure, it was a grindy, tedious train wreck, but by that point we knew it could be better so we didn't give up on it.I think the biggest weakness was bad adventure design. In particular the H1-E3 adventure series (which I did try to run in the past year) was a big downfall. It was written with the design paradigms of previous editions - a bunch of meaningless fights designed to chip away at party resources. This is fine in editions in which combats are over in a matter of minutes, but when a combat can take 1-2 hours (or longer in the case of paragon or epic tiers), you can't reasonably make it through the adventures.
I don't want to get into a regular habit of bashing 5e or its fans, but I'm already really sick of the prevalent attitude that it's the pinnacle of good D&D game design and the One D&D to reunite all of the Edition Warriors. It's not that good. No matter how good some people think it is, it's not that good.
I don't see that here. On the contrary. Many threads in the recent month about 5e are complaints on how something is badly designed, sucks, needs to be changed or calls for a 6e. Sure some people defend it tooth & nail because the love it (just like other people defend OD&D) but it's not a prevalent attitude.
That's a comfort. I was burned recently-- not here-- and all the D&D servers I can find on Discord are almost purely 5e servers, so it's really starting to feel like I'm the only person who doesn't like it.
Oh man, that's great! Thanks!4e server on Discord with almost 1000 people:
Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text. Chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.discord.gg
4e server on Discord with almost 1000 people:
Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities
Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text. Chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.discord.gg
Thanks for sharing. Will join. Although Discord chat? Bleh.