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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 9256301" data-attributes="member: 12731">Plenty of people defended 3.5E as well, both leading up to release and for at least a couple of years.Took a while until the diehard arguments finally died down and people could see 3.5E for what it was:An edition that WotC sold as something that would fix 3.0, but an edition that mostly shuffled around the bits on the surface while fixing nothing systemic underneath. A major impact of these changes was that it no longer remained feasible to stick with 3.0. This impact is not felt on day one, so many people don't see it. I saw it and I was annoyed and tired by it. For every change where the nuisance of having to relearn some specifics were trumped by genuine improvement, there was probably five where 3.5 mostly just switched it up with no fundamentally significant improvement.But I bet WotC foresaw it and saw it as a huge benefit.And I see a repeat here because there's not nearly enough discussion of the type where you go okay so now we have 70% approval of this thing here. Now let's analyze if we really should make the change, given how a hundred little changes will cumulatively make the compatibility claim feel very hollow indeed.But hang on! Lets make all those little changes anyway, since we don't really want anyone to stick to 2014. We just don't want people being mad at us. We don't want them to feel forced to switch. We want them to want to switch. So we make sure 2024 abilities are never worse often better than 2014, and we make sure the notion of staying with 2014 dies the death of a thousand needles by making an overwhelming amount of little tweaks.We can always point to "this tweak gained 70% approval so you wanted it". After all, we made sure the conversation around changes never focused on "if we make this change we also don't make that change, so to keep down the total number of changes, which is essential to maintaining true compatibility"...If they really did care about compatibility, they would incorporate the extra material from Tasha and similar books, and then actively tried to keep down the number of changes, and only made the absolute minimum number of changes needed to bring unplayable or unplayed elements up to par. Every change that just shuffles around bits and pieces, and every change that represents minor adjustments, are just not made. The more popular classes should probably be kept completely unchanged for "compatability" to have even a chance to mean "I really CAN gain an overview of all changes relevant to my character"Note I'm not saying Crawford or anyone had this dialogue out in the open. But someone made sure the devs didn't worry about making a lot of little changes. Individually I'm sure nearly all of them can be justified one way or the other. But if you don't even have the conversation "let's set a goal of keeping 97% of 2014 completely intact and only make a change when it is really really needed"...Same with systemic changes. By focusing the gamer mind on playtests, and what kewl new powerz you might get, you shift the attention away from the places where 5E remain really poor or wonky. The hand usage rules that feel very out of touch with how 5E generally is an invitingly simple game. The way WotC just don't care to make gold useful in games with little downtime. And things D&D never even tried to do right, such as making the rock-paper-scissors aspects of the different elements interesting.The 3.5E designers weren't inept or stupid. Nor did they act with malicious intent. There don't have to be anyone lying, just making sure some things are discussed much more actively than others. WotC as a whole did successfully market 3.5 as a fix when it clearly was never going to be one. It would take about ten years until 3E really was fixed (with 5E in 2014), and it only happened because WotC felt it had to actively encourage the truly constructive discussions about the fundamentals of the game engine to happen. These discussions are entirely absent from this playtest.Everything I've read about 2024 suggests it will be the same game as 2014 while different enough in the details people find it easier to re-purchase all their books than trying to keep track of the differences.This is WotC stalling for time. They just want to keep milking the cash cow.</blockquote>

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