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Agreed, though it actually goes back further than that.  Entire power sources promised at edition's start, some of which people I knew began playing 4E entirely in anticipation of, never appeared or were cut down into subclasses.  Part of this came from what I've talked about before in how there was no concern for design space when creating the PHB classes.  A lot of the fault lies with arcane magic being such a nebulous concept that it devours elemental and infringes heavily on both psionic and primal.

There were a lot of long-term ideas but no long-term planning past PHB2.  For instance, Psychic Lock is a ridiculously ill-conceived feat when classes that do nothing but psychic damage are considered, but at the time of publishing it was nearly worthless because there was no consistent way to do psychic damage.  Ki was scrapped entirely when it should have been folded into martial, and instead psionic took the only survivor (the monk) and the fact that it's entirely a last-minute add-on is made obvious by how it doesn't even follow the same rules as the other psionic classes.  I personally despise Psionic Augmentation as a design decision, and really kind of regret purchasing PHB3 all things considered, but at minimum it was a decision that shouldn't have been done halfway.  Speaking of PHB3, did the runepriest or seeker ever get support to make them even decent?

You're right that it's a management issue.  Even if the development team doesn't know what exactly they're going to do with later material, they need to A: know enough about where they're going to keep their promises realistic, and B: make sure their immediate content is complete but leaves open enough design space to let other supplements not just retread the same ground.  Leave room for psionics to be something different than "arcane magic with MP".

I don't care about edition transitions.  That ****'s inevitable.  

What I'm frustrated about is a failure to properly develope promised content, and how poor planning leads to WotC repeatedly designing content under an assumption that weak areas or missing areas would be revisited in a future supplement.  

The last thing anyone should want is another batch of core books missing critical information that is promised to show up 1-2 years down the line but never does.

I think the only reasonable way to do what the OP suggests is for WotC to only announce books at the last minute after the books have been sent to the printers.

That way no one is upset when a (potential) product is cut before it makes it to the final production stage.

Feb 29, 2012 -- 3:06PM, Archaeologist wrote:

Feb 29, 2012 -- 12:46PM, Shasarak wrote:

I think the only reasonable way to do what the OP suggests is for WotC to only announce books at the last minute after the books have been sent to the printers.

That way no one is upset when a (potential) product is cut before it makes it to the final production stage.

The problem originates from annoucing content that hasn't been started or near completion.

Don't plan for something that might not happen.  If you're going to plan for a tie-in prduct/ book then it has to be penciled in as an immediate priority for this quarter or the next.   

Yes and no.

Some people want to know what is coming down the pipe as soon as they can - gives them something to look forward to and the longer that it is advertised the more publicity it gets.