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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 6217671" data-attributes="member: 85870">When viewed through that lens, particularly point #2, it becomes pretty revealing of every WotC decision made since the Hasbro merger. To hit the kind of profits Hasbro wants from the property, D&amp;D must be viewed not as an &quot;RPG,&quot; but as a &quot;brand&quot; and an &quot;extensible product line.&quot; The total &quot;quality&quot; of the 4e product was irrelevant; what was important was that it fit into the proper &quot;line extension&quot; and &quot;business model.&quot; And if that's your mindset it quickly becomes obvious where the entire 4e game paradigm came from. 4e is an obvious manifestation of this --- &quot;modular&quot; rules sell more, because they can be used everywhere. 4e would become this &quot;evergreen&quot; system, living in its own happy ecosystem all based on the same core design, with the board games, video games, MMOs, licensing, and media extensions (books, movies, cartoons) all playing into that. Based on 4e's basic combat system and its reliance on minis, it also seems somewhat transparent that they expected it to transition at some point into other &quot;skirmish&quot; game modes, maybe even as a &quot;lite&quot; competitor with Warhammer.To be honest, this, more than anything else, is to this day my primary beef with 4e. It's that the RPG product was clearly and obviously created as something to &quot;sell more units&quot; than because it was the best possible product for its time. The fact that the game feels stilted, overly &quot;dissociative,&quot; and not in harmony with my vision of a &quot;core D&amp;D experience&quot; are really secondary to this.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 6217671, member: 85870"] When viewed through that lens, particularly point #2, it becomes pretty revealing of every WotC decision made since the Hasbro merger. To hit the kind of profits Hasbro wants from the property, D&D must be viewed not as an "RPG," but as a "brand" and an "extensible product line." The total "quality" of the 4e product was irrelevant; what was important was that it fit into the proper "line extension" and "business model." And if that's your mindset it quickly becomes obvious where the entire 4e game paradigm came from. 4e is an obvious manifestation of this --- "modular" rules sell more, because they can be used everywhere. 4e would become this "evergreen" system, living in its own happy ecosystem all based on the same core design, with the board games, video games, MMOs, licensing, and media extensions (books, movies, cartoons) all playing into that. Based on 4e's basic combat system and its reliance on minis, it also seems somewhat transparent that they expected it to transition at some point into other "skirmish" game modes, maybe even as a "lite" competitor with Warhammer. To be honest, this, more than anything else, is to this day my primary beef with 4e. It's that the RPG product was clearly and obviously created as something to "sell more units" than because it was the best possible product for its time. The fact that the game feels stilted, overly "dissociative," and not in harmony with my vision of a "core D&D experience" are really secondary to this. [/QUOTE]

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