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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Buzzardo" data-source="post: 4304728" data-attributes="member: 18120">Just read Pramas' review.  On target completely.  I offer a different take on the whole thing:An analogy to the "New Coke" fisaco of the mid eighties.Having read most of the 4e PHB, I am of the opinion that 4e is an unmitigated disaster.  Here are a few brief reasons:1- The game is now a set of rules to support a hack & slash style of play.  All prior editions were flexibile enough to support different styles and approaches to the game.  4e is the least flexible with respect to supporting different styles of play.  It's not that 4e cant support a heavy role playing or deep story approach to the game... It's just that 3.5 is much better for those styles of play.  The entire theme of the 4e PHB is combat, combat, combat.  Bottom line... they stripped all the soul out of the game, and just left it as a souped up version of D&D minis. 2- Far from streamlining combat, they made it more unwieldy and less fun.  One huge drawback of 3e is that when you go into the "big" fight at the end of an adventure, you are usually so armored up and buffed that you now have a dozen different variables to keep track of (Oh wait!  I forgot there was a Bless.  I did hit the dragon 2 rounds ago!).  But that only happened in the big fight.   Now in 4e, there is no such thing as a straight forward routine combat.  Every combat now is a big fight and has half a dozen or more variables to keep track of, and to make matters much worse, they aren't the same variables for the entire encounter... They change ROUND by ROUND!  Add to that in 3e you mostly had to keep track of modifiers on your own PC.  Now you have negative modiers that stack up on your enemies, to track as well.   Every single attack, by every single PC creates combat variables, EVERY SINGLE TIME.  How is that fun?3- Chris is right.  They are going back to the well again to sell more books to the already converted.  Problem is... 40% of the audience HATES it, many of whom will decide not to adopt.  I hate it, and for the first time in 28 years of consitant gaming, will be returning an official D&D product to the store.  Lets face it.  It's not like there isn't enough 3.5 stuff out there to last me and my friends (who all hate it to varying degrees) the rest of our natural lives.  This means WOTC will actually sell less books, and they will end up further fracturing an already fractured market.   4- Chris's point (I think) was that for D&D to be truly a success, it has to do two things.  It has to hold the base, AND it has to reach out and bring in new blood.  His assessment is that it fails to bring in new players.  Which of course it does.  It has failed in that regard as badly as prior editions. I would add:  It has also failed to hold the base.  When 3e came out, there were a FEW low volume grumbles from 2e loyalists.  1e & 2e were both badly flawed as everyone now recognizes.  The rare grumbles soon subsided.   4e is getting a strong backlash from a frightening percentage of the base.  I myself am not saying I won't PLAY it.  If I sit at a table at a Con that happens to be 4e... fine.  But I won't invest in the books, and I certainly won't subscribe.  I dont' think I am alone there.As for measuring the overall success, there are only a few combinations:Holds Base, Brings New Blood - Huge SuccessLoses Base, Brings in lots of new blood - Moderate Success (see also McCain, John and Obama, Barak - very risky political stragegy)Holds Base, Brings in no new blood - Moderate FailureLoses Base, Brings in no new blood - Huge FailureThat's it in a nutshell.  Now... Where do you think 4e will land on that scale?  My money says 90% chance Huge Failure. 8% Chance, Moderate Failure (This would mean that I have missed someting in my reading, and that given time at the table, will wake up and come around...but I doubt that) 2% Chance, Moderate Success.  This means that a large segment of the base abandons and sticks with 3e, but something about 4e and the whole online approach really appeals like crazy to a younger audience.  I doubt that too.  Virtual tabletop will never be as cool as WOW to the young whippersnappers of today.  So there you have it... If you LOVE 4e... Great.  I am glad you do.  But it doesn't change the fact that WOTC has made a HUGE business blunder here, and the likleyhood is that 4e is headed for huge failure.The net effect of all this won't be seen for a year or more.  But here is my prediction.The backlash will mount.  Sales at WOTC will fall short of expectations, because new gamers aren't entering the market, and a LARGE segment of the base will not adopt.  The mistake will become more and more clear.  Just like new coke.What does WOTC want?  Really? It isn't to sell lots of books. They want high margin, recurring, online subscription revenue.  Millions of users, all ponying up every month.  Just like Blizzard.  They could have had that by dealing properly with 3e, or a better implementation of 4e. In the luckiest accident in the history of business, "New Coke" turned out to be CocaCola's best marketing evar.  When they finally brought back Classic Coke after being off the market for a year... Sales skyrocketed, higher than ever, and stuck.Let's see where WOTC is in a year.  I could be wrong here, but my money says that they will finally admit the mistake they have made and look for ways to correct it.  Hopefully it will be good for the game in the long run.</blockquote>

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