If "pemertonian scene framing" for 4e was easy to "grok," and was providing the same kinds of experiences as it is for your group for the D&D fan base at large, then why did the bulk of the fan base--to say nothing of the company that produced it--largely abandon it?
To me this was and is a clear signal from the fan base to the makers of the game---we want less gamism, not more; we want a more "naturalist" approach to encounter design. If the collective "We," meaning the "average" D&D game group, has to indulge Gamist Player Bob in his need to "step on up," there'd better be a very, very good counter-payoff that makes an RPG experience wholly unique as a social and entertainment art form, one that is DIFFERENT from the thousands upon thousands of other gamist, "step on up" avenues Bob has at his disposal.
RPGs only matter as an entertainment form BECAUSE they inherently offer more than "step on up."
I very much agree that PSF, while an interesting and effective way to use the 4e rule set, was not the style of play initially imagined, nor explicitly presented in the rule books (though I think there were implicit hints).
However, I don't think I can quite get on board with the above quoted portion.
It seems common wisdom that WotC's goals with D&D have been to bring "the fan base" with them from edition to edition. I don't believe that historically that has been the case. Jeff Grubb has explicitly said that the company did not care if any TSR-era players got on board with 3e, and that they even made t-shirts denigrating 2nd Ed. The company has always been looking for new players, and their design strategies have reflected that. 3.x made a deliberate move from the abstractness and baroqueness that had always been a hallmark of D&D to create a unified system with elaborate character generation. This was a move to grab players who heretofore had not been interested in D&D, and along with other factors (new edition buzz, OGL, etc) was very successful.
Likewise, 4e made a distinct move away from the rules-as-physics aspects of 3e and pursued a kind of design that tapped into Eurogames, MMORPGs, and indie design, combined with an ambitious digital initiative and introduction of a subscription model of service. Again, the main impetus here was not to bring along "the fan base", but to grab new players who heretofore had not been interested in D&D. It was again successful, if not to the degree hoped for when the pitch was initially made.
5e, likewise, looks very much like an attempt to get back to basics, with a very easy buy-in and adjustable complexity. But I do not believe they are really looking to bring along the 4e fan base, or even to bring back the Pathfinder players, or to court OSR/TSR players. I do think that, unlike in previous editions, they are interested in picking up money from those fans in the form of adventures that can be usable, with some conversion, to various historical editions. But I don't believe they expect people to drop their current editions and jump wholeheartedly on the Next train.
To be sure, WotC is always happy when people cross over to the next edition. But the essential conceit of RPGs makes this a poor strategy to rely on in the main. In the end, it's a limitless game. Once you buy a set of rules, you never
need to buy anything more, and certainly you don't need to buy a new edition. And most casual gamers don't. TSR left behind millions of players with 2e. WotC left behind millions of players with 3e. They left behind millions of players with 4e. They will undoubtedly leave behind millions of players with 5e, as far as the core books go.
The 3e/4e split may be based on rules-as-simulator versus rules-as-balanced-action-resolution. But by the same token, the 2e/3e split was based rules-as-DM-guidelines versus rules-as-simulator. What is at play here is not playstyle agendas (i.e., gamist v. narrativist v. simulationist), but rather the role of rules as a mediator. Mearls has not talked much about "telling stories", "simulating a genre" or "creating challenges", but he's talked a lot about "simplicity", and "letting the rules get out of the way". Like it's predecessors, 5e is making a move away from the previous paradigm -- the interaction with the rules themselves providing the fun (be that 3e style character building/system mastery or 4e style finely-tuned tactical combat), towards a paradigm of simple rules with optional complexity and greater reliance on the DM/group to decide the degree of rules desired, and their role thereof. And like it's predecessors, this is less about moving the fan base to the next edition than it is about bringing in people who heretofore have not been playing D&D.