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That title just filled about a thousand fans with rage who are already typing furious replies, so I should start out by saying I'm probably not going to respond to any of them.

I'm a former long-term forumer who left a while ago because I didn't like the direction Mearls was taking the game with Essentials.  I haven't posted in a long time, but I still stop by now and then to read the articles and see where 5e might be heading.  I just wanted to express some dissatisfaction. 

I left because I didn't like the direction things were headed.  A lot of other people didn't like the direction either, and many of them probably stopped hanging around too.  I just want to make sure that Mearls, and now Cook, and the rest of the designers and market researchers, don't forget that there are people who did like D&D, and who could be 5e customers, who aren't participating in this web site anymore.  All of these new polls about what 5e should be like worry me because it looks like Mearls is essentially doing market research on an echo chamber.

When 3e came out, it alienated some 2e folks, when 3.5e came out, it alienated some 3e folks, when 4e came out, it alienated quite a lot of 3.5e folks, and when 4.E came out, it alienated a bunch of 4.0 folks.  The people who are left regularly participating on this site are people who were happy with the shift from 3 to 3.5 to 4.0 to 4.E to the future.  In short, they are the people who stood by every change D&D made and are happy with Mearls's recent changes and the decision to start going retro.  Setting up a bunch of polls asking if these people like everything Mearls wants to do and then getting back a "yes" does not mean that these ideas for 5e are actually good ideas.  It means you've narrowed down your fans to Mearls fans.  The polls are also incredibly "leading", they follow an article all about how Mearls or Monte thinks that something from 3e/4e sucks, and how a very vague and not thought out idea might somehow be better, and then ask "So which is better, the new awesome thing, or the crappy terrible thing that I will phrase in such a way that most people won't choose it?"

So I just want to make sure my voice is heard, and make sure WotC remembers that there are people who actually LIKED 4e who could be your 5e customers, and there were people who actually LIKED 3.5 and moved to Pathfinder who could also be your 5e customers, and that it's a bad idea to put two people who hate 3e and 4e in charge of 5e, and believing that questionably worded polls show that "the majority" agree with them that 1e was the only good edition and that everything from the last twenty years needs to be scrapped.

Retro is bad.  Unbalanced is bad.  Making all the rules flimsy and unusable on purpose to allow "DM freedom" to try and rule on the fly is bad.  System Mastery is bad.  "Rules hurt roleplay so we're allowed to make **** rules that everyone will ignore" is bad.  "It doesn't matter that my designs are unbalanced and won't work in an actual gameplay setting, because they're REALISTIC and FREE and FLAVORFUL" is bad.  "Magic and items and powers and classes and monsters shouldn't be held to strict formulas, we should be free to write whatever numbers we want and the DM should figure out how to balance it on his own" is bad.  Pretty much everything I've read in L&L is bad, bad, bad.

If you look at the poll numbers though, everyone seems to be totally on board with turning 5e into 1e.  The forums will be full of people rabidly defending every column and every idea that gets posted by the designers.  Please, PLEASE, just remember that these people aren't the only ones out there.  Float these ideas in front of Pathfinder fans, in front of people who don't like Essentials, in front of people who stuck with 3.5 or 3.0, in front of younger kids who like WoW, and lots of other groups.  All of them could be 5e customers if you do it right.  If you stay insular and only bounce these ideas off a bunch of 1e grognards, of course it will seem like you've found the ultimate design to 5e.  PLEASE tell me that you have designers out there trying these ideas on people who aren't already 100% predisposed to agree with everything the designers are going to say.

Thanks, and see you in a few months when I'm next filled with nerd rage.

-makeshiftwings

Love how grognards assume that the maximum number of people who played D&D were in the 1e/2e days, and the numbers have been declining ever since, with no new players who happen to like it.