Zardnaar
Legend
The financial or popular success or failure of 4e is orthogonal to the point that is being made though.
The basic premise is that one of the elements that differentiates 4e from other editions is the lack of primacy of magic. Magic items are massively toned down in power and the classes are far more on par with each other. Martial classes are given abilities that equal (or even exceed) what magic can do.
That's not edition warring or complaining. That's just true. It's demonstrably true. A 4e rogue is capable of reliably performing feats that any other edition rogue couldn't possibly replicate. Such as "Cloud Jump" a 22nd level utility that lets the rogue chain two jump checks together without landing in between. IOW, it's a low powered fly spell, that, by that level, would likely allow the rogue to "jump" about 60 feet or more as a single move.
In any other edition, doing this would be impossible for a rogue. It would REQUIRE magic to replicate. There is just no way for a rogue, without magic, to do this.
Again, folks keep adding in value judgements here that do not exist. It's not that 4e is good, bad or indifferent. It's not. It's just DIFFERENT.
And that difference is a big difference. So many of the criticisms of 4e can be boiled down to the lack of "magical ness" in magic. The fact that 4e characters and the 4e system, makes magic far less "magical".
Other criticisms, like "reliance on the battle grid" apply to other editions and can be safely ignored. 3e was nearly as dependent on the grid as 4e. It was certainly expected in 3e that you would play on a grid (you don't have several pages of forced movement and Attacks of Opportunity rules for nothing). Did 4e take it further? Sure. Of course it did. It flat out presumed that the battle map would be used and leveraged that use in the rules. But, it's not like 3e presumed theater of the mind combat. Or 1e for that matter which has a large chunk of rules (mostly ignored to be fair) that relied on using a battle map, including things like space/reach and facing rules.
So, using a battle map isn't essential to the game, since Basic/Expert, 2e and 5e aren't really focused on needing a battle map, but 1e, 3e and 4e all do.
That's why the argument keeps getting brought up that most of the elements of 4e that people complain about DO exist in other editions. Maybe not to the same degree, but, they are there. OTOH, the one distinct element of 4e that differentiates it from all other editions is the degree to which magic plays a role in the game.
When trying to pin down the essential element of D&D, looking at the exceptions seems to be the logical route to take.
If you have Rogue double jumping 60 feet without an explaination it's getting into a different genre. That's superhero or wuxia.
If you can't see how that's not D&D as most people would understand it there's not a lot of hope. Doesn't have to be a magical explaination but low gravity would explain it.
That's different genre stuff.