Neonchameleon
Legend
A lot of other people strongly preferred other games.
It failed.
These two things appear connected.
This is *NOT* circular.
By those standards the biggest failure in D&D history was 3.0. Off the shelves and replaced two and half years after it was first published. The second biggest failure was Mike Mearls' own 4e Essentials.
D&D 4e was a failure based on the $50 million/year target. A couple of months ago DDI alone was still earning about $6 million/year or around half of Paizo's annual turnover.
I doubt someone would use the term 'disassociated mechanics' on their own. But sorry, it is a real thing. A long-time player of mine puts it more in terms of "the powers are cool and everything, but I prefer just to say what my characters does in the game world, and not be looking at my character sheet all the time to decide what to do."
One problem is that that isn't Disassociated Mechanics. Disassociated Mechanics, as originally defined, are a failure of imagination that people can't interpret the mechanics and turn them into fiction.
The "I want to act then have the mechanics follow that rather than set up then use the OODA cycle for my character" is a different complaint. And one I have a lot of sympathy with.