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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9444860" data-attributes="member: 6790260">It only failed because WotC's--or, rather, Hasbro's--expectations were sky-goddamn-high. It had to earn income loosely equivalent to Magic: the Gathering. That was never going to happen regardless of conditions. Then it got dealt possibly the single worst hand it could ever have gotten without considering the boneheaded mistakes (GSL) or unwise but hardly unusual development choices (releasing about 6-12 months before it really should have): one of the worst economic recessions ever (albeit not an actual economic depression), a murder-suicide on the critical digital tools team, the collapse of one of the nation's largest book sellers.They were "repulsive" because many 3.X fans were absolutely unwilling to accept anything but the horrible broken, buggy mess they had, because they loved it and didn't want to part with any piece of it. It took 4e's lifespan--and Pathfinder carrying the torch for them--for them to finally start admitting, okay, yeah, this is really buggy and broken and needs fixing.But because the edition warriors won, we're still stuck with the HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE design of 3e, almost 25 years later.With all due respect, given the...interesting beliefs about game design I see on this forum and elsewhere? I don't think the general public has the first idea what makes a good game, and the people who designed 5e displayed that in living color with numerous issues.They gave us something that the old hands loved--and which was full of bugs and bad writing. A design that is SUPER appealing but crashes and burns on the regular is worse than a design that is unappealing but works extremely well. That doesn't mean 4e doesn't have mistakes--it does! I've even eagerly discussed them when relevant!--but the vast, VAST, VAST majority of what people complained about had diddly-squat to do with what 4e actually was.The fact that even to this day, you get people celebrating "new" things in 5e that...were actually developed in 4e? And that the multiple things 5e butchered from 4e consistently produce some of the most bitter complaints (like "whack-a-mole" healing)? Yeah, kinda shows that a crap-awful design that feels nice will still run into some pretty damn serious trouble.It'll just make $$$ for the company before folks figure that out. Classic problem, shows up all the time with video games. Reputable series produces a new game that sells like hotcakes, but the game itself is actually crap. Company still pockets millions and promises to do better. This lasts for one new game, maybe two, and the cycle repeats.Which is and has always been a load of bull. This COMPLETELY ignores anything except the specific stores ICv2 talks to....including the extremely important D&D Insider, which was a huge money-maker. I don't recall the exact numbers, but folks were able to determine a minimum number of paid subscriptions back during 4e's day, because there was a forum group which every forum-registered user would be automatically added to if they were subscribed, and automatically removed from if they weren't.It had tens of thousands of people in it. IIRC, the numbers peaked somewhere in the low 100k, 110k range. Even if you assume that only earned them $10/month per person, that's $12 million a year being completely ignored by ICv2.Add to this the fact that WotC effectively stopped publishing 4e in 2011. Of course PF1e is going to outsell something that made all of TWO books in 2012!And this is exactly why it's so frustrating to discuss 4e and its legitimate flaws (both in game design and in business management)--people are SO committed to the myth that 4e was a horrible abject failure, that it could not possibly have achieved ANY financial success, that they'll straight-up invent stuff that isn't there, ignore stuff that is, or use outrightly biased data to support the story they're committed to.4e did not sell as well as WotC (or, rather, Hasbro) wanted--because what they wanted could not happen even if players had LOVED it. It was, certainly, divisive--though much of the signalling WotC got early on they DID in fact listen to! (As an example, the "Golden Wyvern Adept" problem, and how players didn't so much want to have their cake and eat it too, so much as wanting to never have a cake in the first place and yet also eat it.)</blockquote>

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