NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9224586" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I'm pretty sure it came down to the fact that 1), D&D wasn't making all of the money.  There was actually a serious rival in the form of Paizo, who built their success on the grave of the previous edition.  And 2), not all of the promises of 4e came to fruition.The rules set seemed ideal for a video game adaptation- never happened.  The VTT was going to complement the online subscription and become the future of TTRPG's- also never happened.Miniature sales were lackluster.  And to be honest, this one I don't really understand.  There were some very good D&D minis out there.  And when Paizo made their own Pathfinder minis, those sold like hotcakes (I own quite a few of them)-curious for a game that is supposedly less reliant on minis and battlemaps than 4e, lol.The online subscription was a double-edged sword, since it gave you access to content without needing to buy actual books.  The adventures were largely lackluster.In addition, inside of two years, a stupendous amount of content was produced for 4e in the form of new powers, new "subclasses", new classes, new feats- and the quality wasn't very consistent.  Some classes barely functioned.  The Seeker didn't seem to know what class it was.  Sorcerers were supposed to be damage dealers, but were actually fairly lackluster.  Monks and Psions were fiddly, Wardens and Battleminds lacked a decent melee basic attack (and the feat that could give you one was eventually nerfed).  Ardents barely did anything, lol.While some races and classes got more support, others languished.  The Wizard class got more support than anything.  The Swordmage, on the other hand, was mostly relegated to niche or hybrid builds.The Warlock's "Y" design meant half the Warlock powers might be useless to you.  Paladins couldn't even be decent Defenders until Divine Power was released- making a character required a lot of diligence on your part, maybe even more so than in 3.5!And sure, the online builder helped.  In fact, it was practically necessary, as even if you owned all the books, the errata was all online, as were the various "Dragon magazine" online articles that fixed things, like "Class Acts".Some rules didn't even function, as seen with the various revamps to things like Stealth.  And when the final version of Stealth arrived, some powers that had been designed with past versions in mind didn't even function properly (I saw this in action when I ran for a Ninja, and they had chosen an Assassin Utility power that claimed it would let them stealth, but didn't actually do any such thing).And there was significant power creep as well.  Backgrounds, for example.  Suddenly everyone is doing end runs around Constitution by being "Born Under a Bad Sign" or coming from Thay to get better hit points.  Themes granted additional powers with no real downside.  There were "patch feats", because you know, everyone loves a tax to overcome a flaw in the game's design!And Essentials added some dubious content like Vampire as a class, lol.  Because I really enjoy having someone asking me for a spare healing surge so that they can contribute in a fight!Simply put, while I enjoyed playing 4e, I have to admit now that, as it was being published, it likely would have collapsed even if Hasbro didn't pull the trigger on it.  It reminded me of the late TSR era, with it's dizzying array of products, rules scattered across a dozen books, very little oversight or even communication from one team to the other, and in the midst of everything, "a whole new system" to shake things up (Player's Option, etc.) when the existing system was groaning under it's own weight due to sheer bloat.A true "4.5e" was necessary to turn things around, not a halfhearted effort to try and woo back players who weren't coming back at the expense of the things the existing fans liked, lol.</blockquote>

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