Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
One other element that hinders folks from enjoying it and recruiting new players is the loss of support for the universally-loved Character Builder software. The one* piece of the suite of electronic tools that were intended to support the edition that really worked as intended. Folks loved that thing. Folks loved using it to build characters. They willingly paid for an ongoing subscription to it so they didn't have to buy and flip through all the books (though most folks still bought some) and just for its ease-of-use and printable character sheets with customization and power and equipment cards.
An element of 4E's demise (and before that, failure to thrive like it was meant to) that has to be acknowledged is the failure of the electronic side of it. The world literally was not ready for the VTT experience 4E was designed to natively support. WotC accurately saw how great and important VTT play would become. They recognized the desire people had, have, and would have for a way to play with one's friends and family scattered all around the country and the world. A ton of people get into the game when they're young and have a lot of free time, especially in school years (including college/university), then wind up dropping out of active play when work, family needs, or other time-consuming priorities cause their group to split up. Some of those folks keep buying books (at least for a while) despite not being able** to play anymore. But many of them simply drop out, though some come back later.
One silver lining to the pandemic for many of us has been finally biting the bullet and playing online. Is it the same as playing in the same room as your best friends, sharing snacks and laughs and beer? Absolutely not. It's got its technical challenges and annoyances. It requires some prep and overhead. But is it a way we can easily play when we otherwise couldn't? Very much so. Whether our desire is to play a less-popular game or edition, or just to play again with friends scattered across different time zones, or to squeeze a game in on a week night when we have a kid sleeping in the next room, no babysitter, and can't spare the time or physical displacement to drive to a game at someone else's house, VTTs let us play.
WotC planned 4E to fill this need. The intent wasn't just to have a character builder, monster builder and online rules compendium. The intent was to have a full VTT with 3D character, monster and terrain images, viewable in first-person and overhead perspectives. With light/visibility controls for each player based on what their character could see. Similar to what Roll20 does, but with 3D graphics.
And the rules were designed to work with this platform. The way the powers were written in clear, keyworded, easily-parsed language was meant to be implemented easily by the software. The way feats and powers were conditional based on range and distance from the origin? Would have been easily managed by the software as well. All the little modifiers and opportunity actions which got annoying to remember at high level? Much less of a problem if you're playing online and the VTT reminds you every time.
But unfortunately the vendor WotC chose could not provide what they had promised. The murder/suicide certainly didn't help matters, but given the total failure of the VTT, it's apparent that sufficient time and resources simply had not been devoted to development and coding.
On top of that, I do believe what I wrote above that the world probably wasn't ready. While Roll20 and other online play venues certainly existed before the pandemic, it took a big event like that to make them explode. And it's possible that fourteen years ago not enough RPG players had good enough internet and hardware to support a VTT like WotC was trying to sell anyway. I see enough issues with people just getting Roll20 video to reliably work nowadays.
So when we consider the failures of 4E to live up to expectations, we can certainly consider the marketing issues. And we can consider the thrice-damned GSL. And we can consider the big shifts in the rules and how they went a bridge too far violating "look and feel" for a lot of players. But one factor we definitely shouldn't forget is that one of its biggest features and intended advantages was completely stillborn. Never even saw the light of day. So the 4E we got was always missing something it was supposed to have.
But even aside from that, even stuff like how the powers/rules were laid out was always intended to be regularly used in conjunction with/alongside online tools like the character builder which made it much easier. And again, that's something which doesn't immediately come across if we just look at the rulebooks now.
(*Ok, the monster builder/encounter builder was pretty good too)
(**Some no doubt would be, if they networked around their local gaming store or whatever, but this can be an intimidating social challenge, and many folks struggle to connect with a group like they did with their original group of friends)
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