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I think this is an important question, as if D&D Next follows in the same footsteps as 4th, then there really isn't a point in making a new game. What were the things about 4th that kept you from playing it and is D&D Next following in 4th edition's footsteps?

For me it was my friends hated 4th, so therefore I ended up not playing it. Even so there were a couple of changes that seemed too much. Like fighters being limited with encounter and daily powers. This makes no sense for a fighter. Another issue was the temperary loss of favorite classes (which D&D Next is certainly not doing).

 

No one around me wanted to play it.

Nov 12, 2012 -- 11:17PM, NightsLastHero wrote:

I don't 4E-bash.

You are actively doing it in this very post.

It is in a lot of ways I see D&D Next heading in a similar direction as to why people have told me they didn't like fourth. If D&D Next is going to copy those reasons, then it is destined to be a failure. I would prefer D&D Next not to be a failure and that those same friends that didn't like 4th would actually want to play D&D Next.

Implying that 4E was a failure doesn't count as bashing to you?

*Ahem*

Please keep in mind, I didn't turn away from 4e. I played it, I didn't like it as much, but it was the sitting edition and I got other players to play it with me. It can't be forgotten that 4e was a reaction to the fact previous editions weren't raking in the dough like they ought to have been, which is why we are now getting 5e, so please keep in mind everything below happened for a reason, and that many people enjoyed it, but these were the turn offs for me and my table. My goal here is not to edition bash but to answer your question honestly (and with any hope diplomatically) from my point of view.

The things I didn't like though were pretty simple.

Number One on my list is Option Paralysis. The powers system felt really neat and cool at lower levels, and I didn't know anyone who disliked it at those levels. However, with players that weren't used to playing spellcaster, and consequently knowing lots of things to deal with this lead to this horridly long combat at higher levels, and when I say higher I mean greater than 10, which isn't that high. This is why I have advocated for a simple fighter option, specifically because of these players. This was infuriating as both a DM and a player. As a DM it made it horrid to try to keep players x and y engaged while player z tries to decide which power to use. As a player I was a hypocrite because I got bored waiting for my turn. Eitherway, the  option explosion hurt combat for my table and made it more bookkeeping than anything exciting.

Boring advancement was another. The level of character customization was weak at best. As someone coming from 3.5e's pethoria of feats, classes and multiclassing options invested in creating powerbuilds and RP build that felt very very different from each other. 4e's weak multiclassing and feat system that, quite frankly, was trivial a lot of the time and never resembled a tree like 3.5e's did, I was a bit let down. Ironically this is a huge reason people left D&D when 3rd edition came out so please understand this is just my opinion, and just as much a turn off to 3rd edition some as it was a let down to me that 4e didn't have it.

Lack of commonality and exception based play was rather big too. There was a general understanding and framework in previous editions. While classes were distinct, there was a fairly complex (sometime maybe to much) core most people had to follow. In 4e the core was super watery and most of it got contradicted anyway.

The next bit, everyone feeling a lot alike, almost seems to clash with the above but bare with me. The way powers ended up made it so that most classes felt alike. You could pick up a new class with new powers, but particularly if you play the same role not to much changed (I provide with this the caveat that as time progressed they added things that made this less and less true but even then the basic at-will, encounter, daily became a staple).

Finally, and this really encompasses a lot of the above, 4e was just too different. To me it didn't feel much like the prior D&D systems at all. That is not to say it was a bad system and I maintain that if wizards had developed and called it anything other than D&D it would not have received the brutal treatment it did. That said  my table and I have been liking next a lot more and eyeing leerily some of the more 4e features creeping in. Some of them are alright (the rogues maneuvers haven't really held things up like powers did), while others are a bit more problematic (crucifying the wizard was met with annoyance by the whole party).