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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwoSix" data-source="post: 5670749" data-attributes="member: 205">In general, restating an opposing point to make it sound as implausible as possible will make it much harder to accept.  Some people find complexity fun.  Some people find complexity boring.  Is that so hard to accept?  Some people find building complex characters fun.  Other people find it paralyzing, because they have no desire to grapple with a multiplicity of options.  The essentials builds went part of the way to making characters simple.  I would argue that rather than making them too simple, they didn't make them simple enough.  Ideally, for a simple 4e, you'd have a choice between 4-5 races (with no impact on class choice at all, an elf fighter should be as valid as a dwarf fighter), and then maybe 6-8 classes, and then a choice between 2-4 customization options.  Essentials didn't go far enough, because it didn't roll up feats into the class progression.  And I've seen these, because whenever I've tried to make characters with people who aren't regular gamers, the feat section has invariably frozen them, even when it's been restricted to just the general feats section of the character builder.  15 options is simply too many.I think you're making a too strong of a demarcation between "new" gamers and gamers who desire simplicity.  My 4e group consists of myself, my spouse, two other married couples, and one other single friend.  Everyone in the group has been playing together since 2002, and most of us have been gaming since the '90s.  The majority of my players have no desire to master the rules other than being able to run their characters without having to ask exactly what to roll.  They enjoy the game, they enjoy combat, but they have no desire to fiddle with their characters other than to make sure their character is reflective of the concept they want to play.  While they enjoyed 4th, the sheer bulk of the combat system weighed them down considerably.  So the relative simplicity of Essentials (along with me streamlining magic items) was a godsend for my group.  Now, I know you could say that they would be happy with pre-gens.  I've tried that before, but it never took.  They want to think up concepts, they simply have no patience for honing that concept into playable mechanics.  Essentials has made that possible, without requiring nearly as much input from me.That be worthless for you, but Wizards has my full support on the Essentials line.  For me, the failure of Essentials was that it was published in 2010, instead of as the first 4e book in 2008.</blockquote>

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