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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nork" data-source="post: 5506725" data-attributes="member: 59879">When 4E came out, there were a number of people who said that 4E was terrible because they couldn't play a fighter who "just swung a sword" and that they couldn't understand the system because of that.Then you had the 4E and Pathfinder schism that cost WotC customers.  I suspect that many of those customers were perfectly fine with 4E but were in groups where they had a die-hard anti-4E holdout saying they couldn't figure out how to swing a sword in 4E.I think Essentials is an attempt to address the expressed complaints about 4E in a bid to get back part of their market that they lost to Pathfinder.The problem is that I strongly suspect that they didn't lose many of those customers for the reasons that those customers claim.  Very rarely will someone admit to negative behavior like wanting to play a "god" class or that they simply hate change, and as such they will come up with elaborate complaints about a system to justify that their dislike of the system is for rational reasons.Hence all the "I can't understand martial classes!  How do I swing a sword!  This is sooooo confusing!" noise.  The mistake was to not recognize that this is just nerds giving nerds a well deserved reputation for being people nobody likes, and that they are pretty much completely unreasonable and that any attempt to court them in a reasonable manner is going to be about as successful as getting them to stop flipping out over minor continuity points in a TV show.Hence you have Essentials.  A set of perfectly reasonable classes targeted at people who supposedly get confused about how to swing a sword in 4E.  The problem is that it was never about the sword.  They are not coming back because their stated problem was addressed, they will rationalize a new reason because they are operating on Xbox vs PS "logic" at this point.  Now you are left with the 4E population that is split between people who were happy with 4E and look at the reasonable classes and find them to be a nice change of pace that adds to their existing options and you've got the nerds who migrated over to 4E now pitching a fit about change, dumbing down the system, 4.5/5E conspiracy theories, 3E retrograde conspiracy theories, imagined slaps in the face, and all sorts of irrational behavior.So while I happen to like the Essentials classes, just like I like the non-Essentials classes, and play in a game where there are both Essential and non-Essential classes at the table... and I see the inexperienced player with the Thief constantly get confused by when all the different bonuses apply...  I don't feel like anyone at that table really needed Essentials to make them a customer or keep them as a customer.So I see Essentials as a mistake, because it won't get them the "I play Pathfinder because XYZ is wrong with 4E" players back, it didn't address an actual failing in 4E, roleplaying games are sufficiently complicated that a simple version won't lower the bar to entry, and it is causing another mini edition wars.  (All of this ignores people who just like Pathfinder for Pathfinder, as they either buy 4E books too or the only way to get them is to re-write the system from the ground up to be a Pathfinder clone.)</blockquote>

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