Community

My friends and I played D&DNext for the first time today. We had a blast with the new rules, I've only played 3.5 before this and I really don't want to go back to it after playing Next.
I've never played 4th edition, never could find anyone willing to play, so I won't be able to make comparisons to it. We've only played 1 session and we are level 1 character so I can't really comment on higher level play.

Character Creation 

I've always hated character creation in 3.5. It always takes me forever and I get confused, too many variables to juggle and constant page turning.
I really enjoyed creating my DnDNext character. It was quick and easy but still will benefit greatly from organization and layout. My group's understanding of the backgrounds is that they are really just suggestions and you could ignore them and make up your own if you wanted. However, the backgrounds included are great and we all chose existing backgrounds.
The subclasses are also great, I really only read the ones for Fighter Class because that's what I played, but the other players, a Wizard and a Monk seemed to find subclasses that suited the way they wanted to play as well. My Slayer Fighting Style and Soldier Background really helped me create a unique detailed character that I can't wait to play again.

Gameplay 
 
Gameplay was swift and fun. I was a human fighter and had only four skills. I really liked having so few skills and I like that the character sheet didn't have a big ugly skill table taking up a chunk of the page. I never had to look at my skill list to remember how many points I could add to whatever situation. The skill dice mechanic doesn't seem like it should make such a big change in gameplay but checks seemed smoother and more intuitive. I felt like a layer between me an my character had been removed and soon forgot about the new mechanic altogether because of how naturally it blended into the game.
Martial Die was the same way but after reading some posts on the forum I realize we were not using them correctly. I would use my martial die to add damage to my attack, and we incorrectly assumed that meant I could not use the die to parry during that round because I had used up my martial die. Apparently you can use the martial die for your attack during your turn and then again to parry during your enemy's turn. That seems like kind of a bummer because it added a fun extra layer of strategy to the fighter that was a lot of fun. I liked having to think about going the aggresive route and choosing damage or going the defensive route and save my energy for parrying. It especially added some extra drama to situations where I was injured and had multiple enemies surrounding me. I hope the game developers with take that into consideration because everyone in my group commented on how neat that mechanic was.
We also really like the advantage/disavantage mechanic. It's easy to understand and makes certain situations flow much smoother.

The High Elf Wizard really liked having his at will spells and it really felt like our characters roles in battle were very unique but equally important in and out of battle. The Dwarf Monk in our group played much like a fighter and didn't seem like such a distinct class but when the player explained his feats to me after the game it sounded like he really did have a lot of unique things he could do but just chose not to.

Overall the game felt much smoother and more intuitive than the 3.5 games I've played. Even though we had to look through the rules a bit it was mostly because we wanted to make sure we were understanding a new rule/mechanic. Still less rules referring than any 3.5 game. I know we didn't get all the rules right this first time, we kept using 3.5 AO rules without thinking about it. But I really hope to play all future sessions with next rules.

Sorry if anything wasn't clear and let me know if you want me to clarify anything above.

I definately agree with you on the MDD application. We house ruled it so that we use them that way actually. I have to be more attentive to the flow of things when it comes to monster numbers, but it is worth it to watch a fighter agonize over trying to kill a guy outright or mitigating damage while doing things to take the heat off of other party members.
 

I like the either/or damage/parry use of MDD as well. We played D&D Next the other night for the first time, and that's how we thought it was supposed to be played, until further reading of the rules anyway. We'll probably keep playing it this way.

The MDD seem overpowered as they are. I took out 2 enemies with 2 shots of a longbow in our first battle, while our wizard was chipping slowly away at a single enemy. I had a lot of fun creating my character as well, but during gameplay it seemed like it would be a poor decision to choose to use the martial die for a Precision Shot or any other manuever rather than just beefing up damage dealt.

Had our second session today. Got to level two which gave me a new maneuver, Lunge, which costs a Martial Die to perform. We played the same as before where martial die only renew each round and having a new way to spend the die added more strategy to combat. Our Wizard was much less conservative with his spells this time and it was pretty awesome. I was rolling terrible today and missing a lot but he brought out the big guns and blasted hordes of goblins away. I like how much faster combat has been than in 3.5. We had a lot of battles in relatively short session.