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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ipissimus" data-source="post: 4024717" data-attributes="member: 41514">What I find amusing is that all this gnashing of teeth is, in part, all our fault.For years, we've been identifying problems areas of 3e in the same way that we (the players) have since 1e. Back in 1e, it was the lack of character options. I remember when every fighter, paladin and ranger was sword 'n board and the only thing you could do was take a swing in combat and at first level, the wizard was completely useless. Unearthed Arcana 1e and later 2e tried to fix that problem by giving us more options to create the characters we wanted to play rather than forcing us into a jello mould (thank the dark elf for his part in this). But the big bugbear for 2e was the nonstandard modifiers and they never really did too much for making combat a bit more exciting.3e rolls around and everyone can make their voices heard through the internet. We all take this opportunity to let the devs know the problems they're encountering with 'GAME BALANCE' being the new buzzword. In an effort to address their audience's discontent with such issues as Polymorph, favored classes (ie people actually wanted to play Paladin/Monks), dice mechanics, etc. They take a look at the rules and try to fix them to please us. After all, the people who don't like the changes can just stick to the old rules just fine and the people who are complaining get satisfactions that they're being heard.Then one day, we wake up and realize that the house is more band-aid than wood. The only way they could fix it is a new edition, knocking the thing down and rebuilding from almost nothing. And they're doing it for us, to fix the things we've been complaining about (rather rudely in some cases) for years. Oh, and money of course. They're an industry, after all.So, they know this is going to be a hard sell (particularly after 3.5), and the marketing department's looking down the barrels of our verbal shotguns. And, unsurprisingly (because it's what marketers do), they hit us with the hard sell. '4E will be wonderful, we're fixing all the problems, don't be scared because 4E is the second coming... ok, fourth coming... fifth if you count 3.5'. It sounds good... too good. Years of media exposure have tought us that anything that sounds like it's too good to be true probably is. So, people panic. They try to read between the lines and read into things more than was probably intended.Of course the same thing happened with 2e and 3e, there are only a certain number of reactions to the same circumstance. History repeats itself (or rhymes... seriously, guys, you're taking the saying too literally. You really think people who say that believe that exactly the same people go through exactly the same circumstance with exactly the same reaction?) in the same way a glass of spilled water creates a stain. What's interesting for me this time around is that i'm seeing a greater cross section of the 'stain' through the 'net.</blockquote>

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