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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9220399" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I mean, this shouldn't really surprise anyone. 5e does not have a mechanical vision. Its vision is, and always has been, centered on marketing. That is why they pretend that mechanics are trivial to design, while claiming that feel is extremely difficult. Early on in the Next playtest, there were inklings of an actual mechanical vision: modularity as it was originally presented, the playtest Sorcerer and Warlock actually making flavor and mechanics go hand in hand, the noble but likely untenable idea behind &quot;Specialties,&quot; their excitement about the &quot;tactical combat module&quot; that ended up being pure vaporware, etc. All of these things had to be retreated from, for two key reasons. One, they had dithered about with basic-level stuff for far too long, blowing at least 18 months of playtesting time while making almost no progress (e.g. it took nearly the entire 2+ years of public playtesting to get just the Fighter class, and we never saw a second attempt at Warlock nor Sorcerer before launch). Two, counter to Mr. Mearls' statements, they realized that designing many of the things they had claimed to be making would be very difficult, so they had to continually retreat from their vision until all that remained was &quot;do the thing that is sufficiently popular.&quot;I genuinely don't think 5e set out to have no design vision, but the overconfident and frankly languid attitude toward actual rules design painted them into a corner. As you noted elsewhere, several things changed rather sharply (and in both our opinions, not for the better) between the final playtest packet and official 5e. Most of what we know as 5e today only came into existence within eight months of its publication date. Not hard to have a muddied or absent vision when there was such a rush to get the final product out the door.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9220399, member: 6790260"] I mean, this shouldn't really surprise anyone. 5e does not have a mechanical vision. Its vision is, and always has been, centered on marketing. That is why they pretend that mechanics are trivial to design, while claiming that feel is extremely difficult. Early on in the Next playtest, there were inklings of an actual mechanical vision: modularity as it was originally presented, the playtest Sorcerer and Warlock actually making flavor and mechanics go hand in hand, the noble but likely untenable idea behind "Specialties," their excitement about the "tactical combat module" that ended up being pure vaporware, etc. All of these things had to be retreated from, for two key reasons. One, they had dithered about with basic-level stuff for far too long, blowing [I]at least[/I] 18 months of playtesting time while making almost no progress (e.g. it took nearly the entire 2+ years of public playtesting to get [I]just[/I] the Fighter class, and we never saw a second attempt at Warlock nor Sorcerer before launch). Two, counter to Mr. Mearls' statements, they realized that designing many of the things they had claimed to be making would be very difficult, so they had to continually retreat from their vision until all that remained was "do the thing that is sufficiently popular." I genuinely don't think 5e set out to have no design vision, but the overconfident and frankly languid attitude toward actual rules design painted them into a corner. As you noted elsewhere, several things changed rather sharply (and in both our opinions, not for the better) between the final playtest packet and official 5e. Most of what we know as 5e today only came into existence within eight months of its publication date. Not hard to have a muddied or absent vision when there was such a rush to get the final product out the door. [/QUOTE]

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