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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6048936" data-attributes="member: 2067">Relax. Take a deep breath. We're all well-intentioned D&D dorks here. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />So, two things.First, what makes "a good game" is very subjective. What makes your table go "yaaay" might make Barry's table go "eeeeeech." When you're trying to bring on 40 years' worth of players, all of whom want some pretty contradictory things, you are not going to get many on board by giving them only one possible option for how to do things. Give them one version of the wizard that might be a perfectly awesome wizard, but 60-80% of 'em will hate it for some idiosyncratic, personal reason, and then you've got a division: some people love it, some people hate it, and you're never going to bridge that gap. Come out with another wizard later, and the first people will feel jilted and the second people will feel like an afterthought. If you don't give people choice up-front, you wind up giving them a "This or go play a different game!" choice. And given that D&D has a lot of competitors (some of which are more successful than it!), it's not hard to find a different game. A lack of diversity is only going to harm you.Second, the "simple default basic mode" classes will be a good game, for those who don't want to tinker with their D&D. It just won't necessarily meet the needs of a community like ENWorld, which is necessarily a more intense fanbase, given that we spend our free time babbling about D&D on an unofficial message board. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />I think it's a little more subtle than that. I think it probably has to do with WotC attempting to lock down brand identity a little too strictly, but the upthrust is that WotC was seen as trying to be the DM and decide what was good and what was bad for millions of D&D players. ADEU was better and if you disagreed,  you weren't welcome. Dragonborn and tieflings were necessary, and if you disagreed, tough noogies. New fiction was good, and if you like the old stuff, well oh well, we're going this new way. There was no fun police, but there was a persistent feeling that those who weren't on board with the changes weren't welcome in the game, because the game was trying very hard to forge its own identity.  I think they realized that this was probably not a great idea, in retrospect. They realized you're never going to get everyone on board with One True Way, even if you think it's awesome. Retroclones and Pathfinder made it clear that no RPG is going to be able to drag along an unwilling fan-base. It's not enough to be the 400 lb gorilla in the cage anymore -- people have found out that the cage has doors, so there's nothing keeping them there. They will leave if you are not what they want to be around, and their reasons for leaving can be completely arbitrary -- you're not going to win them over with a logical appeal. But the modularity DOES help that, because the DM can say, "Verner's a newbie, so he can use one of the basic default classes." And Verner's basic cleric (or whatever) can adventure alongside Olivia's super-complex monk/assassin multiclass, and they will be comparable in power over the course of an adventuring day, if 5e delivers on its promises.There's nothing about increased complexity that necessarily yields a more powerful character. Regardless of their complexities, they can have similar power levels.</blockquote>

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