The love has gone ?

Istar

First Post
Okay I am not complaining about the amount of content coming out, just the type of content.

The emphathis is mainly essentials and other guff.

The excitement of the early game content has gone, unless your an essentials person.

What about the early adopters who like pre essentials, and got excited when the new PHBs came out, when the AV's were released, the power books that developed the game.

The dungeon mags that were about the origianl game.

Why cant they start doing a bit more of that, like some more fun magic items for example ?
 

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Tony Vargas

Legend
The most positive thing I can say about it is that it's probably not personal. It's not that Mr. Mearls wants to punish you for liking the game as it was before he took the helm. It's just that he's moving it back onto the course he always prefered.

There also really seems to be some major resource issues hounding WotC. I have no idea what they may be, but the lack of content coming out, and the design philosophies of Essentials and forward reveal a desperate need to make the design & development tasks easier.

Essentials classes are /much/ easier to create than 4e classes. You can bang out an E-martial class in a matter of an hour or two. The limitted AEDU builds in Essentials and forward also amount to much less content than their parent classes. It's a very canny development move. For all we know, this retrenchment may be the only thing that kept D&D in print.


(Yes, that was the /most/ positive spin I could put on it. Hey, I tried.)
 

Incenjucar

Legend
We really won't know the true direction of 4E for awhile... all the books coming out anytime soon were before any real customer response to Essentials could come about. Additionally, they very recently changed the heck out of the way they're dealing with DDI and the magazines, and pulling multiple books from the future catalog. Considering the backlash, there's a real chance that they'll try to change things to a more medium point, but it's going to take a long time for that to show due to the length of development cycles.

My advice is to enjoy what you have, because pre-Essentials 4E was fantastic, take that which you enjoy from Essentials (there's no reason to be close-minded about them even if you don't care for the trend), and don't build your hopes up too high for future content - you don't NEED it to continue having amazing games, after all. If the books that come out after now don't have what you want, learn to embrace homebrew and 3rd party support.

Whatever you do, don't let this introduce bitterness and spite into your heart as some do. There's no malice at play, simply an unfortunate difference of opinions between fans, and the ever-looming realities of business.
 

GameOgre

Adventurer
Also realize that many new players like Essentials far more than normal 4E. I have no clue at all if it sells better or worse than the hardback books but I don't think anyone else outside the company does either.

That said I don't need anything more for Essentials than I already have. Books for the normal game are very usable for us Essentials DM's so im really not sure what the issue is.

They set it up now so that they can put out fluff,adventures,ect.. and have it useable by both sets of DM's. There is no reason to keep one of them disapointed. Essentials does not need to be more than it is, a more simple easy to use version of the game with less choices.

I do say that in my opinion as a Essentials DM that it doesnt need to have the things missing in the main game. Don't put out the missing materials into Essentials! We love the less choice more streamlined factor. We don't need a Warlord for Essentials,we don't need any more than we have now. If we feel we do NEED those things we can just go get them from the main 4E game.

I guess im saying all this is at least some of us EDM's also feel like they need to turn back to the main 4E way of doing things as there main material output. I'm not saying never put out Essential products but we need much less as we can raid the main 4E game for anything we desire.
 

OnlineDM

Adventurer
I had put a long post up about my thoughts here, but I realized that it could be perceived badly, so I took it down.

I hear the OP - you like pre-Essentials stuff, and you're bummed that the company is putting more effort into supporting the stuff that you don't really care about. I like all of it, so I'm not unhappy, but I understand why you feel the way to you.

To me, it's all the same game. I acknowledge that not everyone feels that way.
 
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Kinneus

Explorer
I'm not a huge fan of Essentials-style characters. I might've been on board if they existed once 4e began, but when I started playing 4e, I was won over by the powers system. Fighters are no longer "beginner" characters (in fact, I think they're probably the most complex class in the original PHB), so players are free to play what they want regardless of skill level. Which was great news for me, because I was always the guy who wanted to play a wizard, but was told by the DM to play something "easier" until I learned the rules... which resulted in me playing a character I was bored with and not invested in, and getting bored of the game and walking away. I also loved how leveling up felt like a treat; you got to add some new shiny power or feat to your arsenal, from a list of exciting, ever-growing choices. Though the 'rules mastery' aspect is what initially scared me away from 3e, I started to really get into the 'char op' aspect of 4e. Since Essentials classes 1) reintroduce the "easy" and "complex" class dichotomy and 2) give you either fewer choices for benefits-per-level or no choice at all, I knew instantly that the Essentials classes simply were not for me.

But... that's me. That's my bag o' issues. Others might love the simplicity, and they should go ahead and play them. Essentials characters work fine alongside 'old-style' 4e characters. But still, I feel like it's a little disingenious to say "If you don't like Essentials options, then don't use 'em. No problem!" There is a problem when the Essentials options are straight up better than the 'old-style' options. Those of us that prefer the old style will be left in the dust as Essentials options bloat up.

It's pretty clear now that we're not going to see a 'fix' for a Warlock. The poor PHB1 Star Pact Warlock is a mess. Do you split Cha/Con so you can use all your powers? Well, be prepared to have absolutely horrid AC for your entire adventuring career. Do you sacrifice Con to go Cha? Sure, if you don't mind one of your two at-wills being completely and utterly useless to you. Go straight Con? Eh... better read a few levels ahead to make sure you have good, flavorful Con-based options open to you at every level. This is in addition to the usual warlock problems of doing sub-Striker damage, supposedly compensated by being a good "single-target Controller" (the benefits of a good "single-target Controller" kind of fall apart when you can stun in a blast 3 as an Invoker at level 1... but I digress).

I've heard the Hexblade is pretty bad, but I somehow doubt that it's worse off than the Star Pact Warlock. And now in Heroes of Shadow they'll be getting a Gloom Pact*. Who knows, maybe it'll fully eclipse the "old-style" Warlock.

Of course, this is a slippery slope argument, with all the flaws inherent in it. I'm just saying that the constant refrain of "If you don't like Essentials, don't use it!" is irritating, because it's implying that if we don't prefer Essentials, we can happily ignore it and everything will be the same. Until... you run a game with a Hexblade and a poor, poor 12 AC Star Pact Warlock in the same party. It's hard to ignore it when it's right in your face, outshining in you in every category and receiving a steady drip of support even though your chosen iteration of the Warlock has been sitting in the back of the class, waiting patiently for its teeth to come in, since pretty much Day 1.

I'm not anti-Essentials... I'm just anti-people-who-are-overly-dismissive-of-anti-Essentials-people's-concerns, if that makes any sense. I think it's fair to say that, yes, Essentials is receiving more attention than "old style" stuff. Asking "When are we going to see more support for the old-school stuff?" is a legitimate question to ask. Unfortunately, my guess is probably never. Right now, Essentials is new, and they'll likely want to develop it to the point where it has at least half as many options as "vanilla" 4e. Since it took us years to get to this level of content for "vanilla" 4e, I imagine it'll take a while before Essentials is essentially filled in enough to begin focusing on old school 4e once again. And, frankly, by that time, WotC might seriously be considering a 5e.

What I'd -really- like to see is some sort of errata that basically eliminates all the obsolete "trap" choices. Powers, generally speaking, are fun and numerous without getting unreasonable, but we have ridiculous feat bloat. Some, like Human Perseverance, are just plain outlcassed now, making them utterly useless. I'd like to see the "utterly useless" feats basically errated out of the game. I think you could seriously cut down on like 100 feats this way.

Anyway, that was a long, rambling mini-rant. To answer the OP's original question, though, I'd say: "I hear you, but don't hold your breath. Remember the Star Pact Warlock." Besides, we have enough options for vanilla 4e as it is (with the possible exception of a few classes, like the Seeker and Runepriest, and with the horribly-implemented magic item rarity). The only old-school support we frankly need (as opposed to just wanting real bad) is the cutting away of redundancies, like the feat issue I mentioned above. Or maybe a little warning label for the Star Pact Warlock.

*Yes, I'm aware that we'll also be getting powers that "any Warlock can take." Still, I think it's fair to assume that a sizeable number of them will be geared toward the new Gloom Pact. And new powers, no matter how shiny, will never fix what's broken with the old-style Warlocks.
 
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Riastlin

First Post
Unfortunately the old adage of "You can please some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time." definitely holds true here.

There are those who are excited by essentials, there are those who hate essentials. I know some people who finally tried out 4th Ed (after swearing never to try it because it was such a departure from the game they love) because of Essentials.

While I am with you in that I much prefer the "classic" 4ed style classes, I can't ignore that there are a lot of people who really like the E-Classes.

/shrug

And yes, I too am involved in a couple of campaigns that have both essentials and "classic" characters.
 

I appreciate that some folks like the power system. For me, though, I like the concept, but not the execution. The essentials designs are much more elegant. I don't have to pore over dozens of powers to find one I kinda like.

I hear, though, that they're planning to release better polished essentials-esque versions of the warlock and warlord in Dragon. That's great news to me.
 

Solvarn

First Post
We really won't know the true direction of 4E for awhile...

I'm sure once they know we'll know.
magic-8-ball.jpg


I think a lot of people find themselves transitioning from being an avid supporter of their products to being mildly interested or disinterested about their products. I assume it is because I'm not their market demographic anymore. If they put out something I like I'll buy it, and if they don't I won't. Their DDI stuff really burnt me out on their company and to be honest even though I really like Essentials the abrupt break in their release schedule has kind of broken my habit of buying their stuff.
 

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