Let's just get it over with so we can stop with the complaints. Make 5E completely DDI driven, and eliminate the actual books completely. This way, people won't have physical books that they'll complain about becoming "outdated" or needing to print out hundreds of pages of "errata" to update, or worrying about classifying the game as XE or X.5E or any of that nonsense. Run the game rules like computer games do, with new "patches" to the system when enough problems are found needing updates.
In the future if WotC discovers two years into their life cycle that their math was wrong in certain places, they can just do a true overhaul without "feat patching" for fear of outdating people's books. Or if their monster damage becomes off over time, they can update earlier info to match. Or change outdated feats when new rules make them unusable. Or add in things to old material like split racial modifiers, after discovering that it doesn't break the game.
If you don't have physical books to worry about making obsolete and pissing off a portion of the fanbase who hold to them like they are holy grails... you can keep the game balanced much, much easier, and expand and change the game over time as you learn the lessons from the playing populace. And with iPads and Droids, and netbooks, and portable computers becoming so much more commonplace... having the rules computer-only will not be so much of a problem in the coming years. So let's just put the physical book to rest once and for all.
In the future if WotC discovers two years into their life cycle that their math was wrong in certain places, they can just do a true overhaul without "feat patching" for fear of outdating people's books. Or if their monster damage becomes off over time, they can update earlier info to match. Or change outdated feats when new rules make them unusable. Or add in things to old material like split racial modifiers, after discovering that it doesn't break the game.
If you don't have physical books to worry about making obsolete and pissing off a portion of the fanbase who hold to them like they are holy grails... you can keep the game balanced much, much easier, and expand and change the game over time as you learn the lessons from the playing populace. And with iPads and Droids, and netbooks, and portable computers becoming so much more commonplace... having the rules computer-only will not be so much of a problem in the coming years. So let's just put the physical book to rest once and for all.
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