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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7674220" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think the problem with Essentials is that it was ill-conceived at a BUSINESS level. The idea was that they felt the 4e line was too complex and extensive, and that the PHB1 was somewhat obsolete already. If they released a '4.5e' PHB1, that would just FURTHER complicate the product offering. Consider when potential new customers come to Amazon or FLGS and want to buy D&D, they were finding 3 PHBs, lots of other books, plus probably old 3.x stuff, and just not knowing if they could buy PHB2 and play D&D or not. Imagine if they also saw 'PHB1 v 4.1' as well, brain melt, go home without making purchase, get distracted by latest video game. So the IDEA was to offer a visually distinct product at a lower price point that could easily be kept in stock. The mechanical 'redesign' (to the extent there was one) was IMHO a secondary thing, but also a mistake. The problem was, adding more product to the mix didn't make customers less confused. It may have had some positive benefits for stock keeping and whatnot, who knows? The fact that they also revised the CONTENT of the game, making a very different set of classes, didn't help, it just added divisiveness.I think they should have issued an errataed PHB1, maybe eventually the same for PHB2, and just continued to sell the system. The truth is, if some people liked 3.x better and wanted to buy PF, no amount of playing around with 4e classes was ever changing that, and really, that ship has sailed.Its still a good question whether 5e even made sense. I mean they say it has been selling well. Undoubtedly it has done OK, but in 2 years will they even be above the long term curve that 4e sales were on? Seems to me they are unsure of that too, and this is why basically the 5e core books are it, they're actually still following the 4e release schedule! In essence they replaced some late 4e supplements with 5e and at this point 4e would have what, 2 adventures a year? Maybe a new setting? Sounds pretty much like business-wise 5e is just a minor blip. It will simply be a 'success' or 'failure' depending on if it recoups its dev and sales/marketing expenses.</blockquote>

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