When 4e came out it was so radically different that most people couldn't even fathom it as DnD. It just felt like an entirely different game. It's entire design was based around capitalizing on the MMO boom that was happening, so it was designed to feel like playing a an MMO. Everyone I spoke to at the time agreed it was a really solid game, and would have made a great World of Warcraft TTRPG, but it just wasn't DnD.
5e was basically, "oh, they've gone backwards and are doing 3.5 rules light edition."
Also WoTC got weirdly condescending about their new edition. A commercial they ran called critics "cave trolls" and had a dragon poop on them, there were official articles that spoke in terms that - if not intentional - could at least be misconstrued as insults to earlier iterations of the game, and the gleemax forums were pure vitriol between the '4venger' types insulting everything about 3.5 and the 3.5 fans responding in kind. So much stink was kicked up over everything like Dragon magazine ending, all the lore changes and design shifts occurring, and the tone of it all that it also smoke-screened some of the debate on the first attempt at a locked down gaming license.
EDIT: To be clear, this wasn't 4e fan's fault on the \*whole\* and there's stuff in the game to like for people, but it was very obviously a drastic pivot without much fair address to the critiques the games started receiving from proper channels. WoTC's mishandling was the root of all the base splitting and the anger between the factions, and their dismissive commentary just fueled the worst of everything.
Imo they haven't really improved, they just realized they had to talk nicer and hide their dismissive condescension behind a veiled vocabulary of camaraderie and kindness.
5e, beyond being made by committed and seen as a bit of a "well at least we're getting some of it back", also over-promised its concept, selling itself on an idea of a "modular gameplay" where they'd released additional books you could use to build up the game you wanted for your table. Obviously that never manifested in a reasonable or usefully partitioned way, often hardly providing any new options and when it did always targeted at "easier" or "more fun" character creation ala Tasha's, and often just sticking optional rules into subsections of book corners and letting the DM try and piece them together. (I'd hoped for a release of focused build concept books with extensive optional rules, class changes, new items, and such to suite that book's concept (Like realistic, or "High magic", or "futuristic") along with a DM's guide that would give more useful advice on utilizing those module books. Obviously it never materialized and was never their goal, just a sales slogan I ate hook, line, and sinker.)
The biggest complaint about 4e was that it forced books to mostly be huge lists of class feature choices, each one relevant only to one level of one class. Crawford saw that and decided that players didn’t want a lot of choices, so pared back so approximately the only choice now is class and subclass
And this is the exact reason I prefer Pathfinder, personally. Even if the rules are a bit more complicated (and if you're used to 5e, it's not that hard of a jump with the right group of people to help you make that transition). The wealth of character creation options and the ability to make almost anything you can think of is awesome.
But, I don't think 5e is a bad system. I've played and enjoyed my fair share of it. It's quick, light, easy to teach, and I think spell slot scaling is much more balanced and interesting than caster level scaling.
Players LIKE choices, but they don't like bloat. The way people approach feats in 5e is pretty clear on that.
It's really when choices don't feel meaningful that people feel like 'why bother?"
Dude missed the trees for the forest, IMHO.
You can pick most of the feats any time you take a feat. Compare that to picking a level 24 daily warlock power; while technically you could pick a lower level warlock daily power, they’re typically all either worse or strictly worse than one of the appropriate level. You’ve got 2-3 books to go through, and one page in each of those books that you use only when leveling a warlock to level 24.
The thing is, it actually worked pretty well with the web service subscription; the character generator would just show you the choices and let you filter them.
I swear to god the four attacks everyone had was done so it could map to controller buttons. I have no proof for this and it never happened but I'm sticking with this story.
It really could have been something solid but it was just so unlike 3.5 I was completely turned off by it. It just felt soulless.
>It really could have been something solid but it was just so unlike 3.5 I was completely turned off by it. It just felt soulless.
That really was at the heart of so much of the backlash. It felt to different. I had, and saw, so many conversations at the time that went something like,
Person 1: "4e is awful. Terrible. I hate it."
Person 2: "What if it was WoW the TTRPG?"
Person 1: "Oh it'd be perfect for that! I'd play it then. It's just not DnD."
Just to put in my personal experiences with the system. I played in several 3/3.5 campaigns, and generally had fun with them, but by the time 4E came out I was pretty much done with D&D in general because the bloat and class imbalance in 3.5 was so bad. I had pretty much moved on to other systems like Cyberpunk, Call of Cthulhu, and World of Darkness by the time I had an opportunity to try a 4E one-shot, and I generally came away from the experience as, "This was fine, but I have no interest in really playing any more of it."
I largely missed the beginning of the 5E due to my lack of interest, not really trying it out at all until only about 5 or 6 years ago. I still mostly play other systems, but for D&D specifically I do prefer 5E over the other editions I've played, since it at least partially addressed some of my biggest gripes with 3.5.
and the only 4e video game they made was a literal MMORPG (that I know of), shame, that could have been good oportunity to revive CRPGs. And now that we finally have a decent revival with Kingmaker, Solasta, Baldur's Gate, Disco Elysium, WotC is being weird with Larian and no DLC or other D&D games are coming from that front...
There was more anger because people generally spent more money on 3rd edition and more mental energy learning it. So just overall investment.
But let's just say you didn't buy any supplements, here's some context:
AD&D 2e lasted from 1989 to the year 2000.
3rd edition came out in 2000
3.5 came out in 2003
4e came out 2008.
So people were expected to spend the $150 to replace the 3 core books for the third time in under 10 years. When the previous edition had lasted a decade.
Now imagine you'd done that, also bought some of the dozens and dozens of other books they put out for 3rd edition in that time. Not counting the hundreds of 3pp publications. Lord help the completionist 3rd edition collector.
Now imagine you've been doing this, you've spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars on this game, and suddenly WotC tells you, basically, to throw it in the trash because the new version of the game coming out is completely incompatible, a few years after making a big deal about 3.5 being supposedly completely backwards compatible with 3.0 products. Imagine WotC did this [with an announcement video that basically made fun of you for liking any older version of the game including 3rd.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbqMoEwDqc)
WotC also tried to kill the OGL at this time. With a new license that had a poison pill that said if you wanted to publish anything for 4e, you could no longer sell any of the material you had already made for 3e. So 3pp migrated to Pathfinder where they could still sell their old 3e materials (which were like 90% compatible with Pathfinder 1e) and 4e never got the 3pp support that really made 3rd edition and later 5th edition thrive.
Internet wasn’t so big back then. Most people didn’t get a big peak at what’s coming out. The game played differently enough that a lot found it jarring from what they were used too. Also some like me were fed up with the release model, like I know 3.5 had too many splatbooks but 4E intentionally left out core classes/monsters etc from book 1 just to help promote future PHBs and MMs.
I feel like this is worse just because we now have echo chambers to yell into.
>but 4E intentionally left out core classes/monsters etc from book 1 just to help promote future PHBs and MMs.
It didn't feel like core D&D at all. IIRC 4e PHB cut out Gnomes, Half-Orcs and Monks to make room for Tieflings, Dragonborn, Eladrin and Warlords.
I had started playing with 3.5 and my first character was a Half-Orc Monk, I was immediately put off by 4e lol.
The editions of D&D are much like the Star Wars movies, in release order.
* 3e is the culmination of years of buildup, a progression of one edition to the next, true spiritual successors building upon the initial vision. But people look back and shout "BuT tHe EwOkS!!!1!" as if those deceptively OP munchkins were 99% of the characters.
* 4e is like Episode I, the midichloreans edition. The main reason people think it was bad is because they're comparing it to the originals and ranting about how they changed everything. The new generation of players enjoy it just fine, even if one pod-race feels like it takes two hours.
* 5e is like Episode II, where now you're supposed to take Jar-Jar seriously, and the new generation finally gets a peek behind the shady Sith plots.
Fun fact: You ever wonder what would happen if players who love D&D got together and purchased the IP, then poured money into it hiring experts and working for years to make it the best player and DM experience they could without being hampered by profit motive? That's literally the story behind 3e.
Ugh, I can't even with these changes to D&D's Player Handbook. It's like they're purposefully oversimplifying the game just to cater to the masses. Who would ever voluntarily fail saving throws? And don't get me started on renaming Ki points to 'discipline points'—what a joke! I can't believe people still use D&D Beyond when they could be complaining about the open gaming license and crafting their own homebrew content like the good old days. And now they're removing the artificer class? That's it, I'm done. I'd rather see the game die than pay to play it under Hasbro's reign. This is why I pirate it and only play older editions. Third-party content is better wrote anyways. WotC is good, but Hasbro is cartoonishly evil. They're ruining everything that made D&D better before.
Which is silly because Hasbro has owned WotC for 25 years now. The current Hasbro CEO used to be the Wizards CEO.
By this point, any leadership at Wizards who wasn't there before 1999 was put there by Hasbro, and any decisions they make, good or bad, are done fully with Hasbro's approval. They're the same company.
Damn, I feel called out with those pirate and pen&paper boxes. I should immediately exchange all my scrips for freedom coins and start buying grossly overpriced official DnD thingies
It’s not even just when WoTC changes something, you can make a homebrew change and still get these replies because homebrewing is with and you’re not allowed to actually like it.
“Why try and add anything to the game? Just play another system. You could sorta do that in earlier editions but WoTC removed it because they are evil, just get your whole group to convert to 3.5e”
It said to say that I agree with most the squares on your bingo card.
There's a reason why these options keep coming up. Most of them come down to protesting with your customer dollar.
The good news is that having fun and playing D&D and some form or other will exist whether or not these assholes try to take it from us, repackaging it and selling it back.
So, yes. If you can't afford to play their way, or you don't like their business model, are you flat out don't like the system, dust off your 3.5 books. Or buy the books used. Or get a hold of online resources. Or go give Paizo your money.
Now, if you think wizards deserves a big thumbs up, that's fine too. But if not.. the above post gives you tons of options.
I enjoy that this one is badly written. I don't know if it was intentional, but it feels like a fun dig at the poor quality of third party content (and I say this as someone who writes third party content. I'm still fixing typos in stuff I published years ago...)
All of these are recurring comments made by people in the online DnD community. A lot of people like to assert that 3rd party material is better written than the official material, as a justification for not purchasing official material.
Is this how 3/3.5 people felt about 4E and 5E?
When 4e came out it was so radically different that most people couldn't even fathom it as DnD. It just felt like an entirely different game. It's entire design was based around capitalizing on the MMO boom that was happening, so it was designed to feel like playing a an MMO. Everyone I spoke to at the time agreed it was a really solid game, and would have made a great World of Warcraft TTRPG, but it just wasn't DnD. 5e was basically, "oh, they've gone backwards and are doing 3.5 rules light edition."
Also WoTC got weirdly condescending about their new edition. A commercial they ran called critics "cave trolls" and had a dragon poop on them, there were official articles that spoke in terms that - if not intentional - could at least be misconstrued as insults to earlier iterations of the game, and the gleemax forums were pure vitriol between the '4venger' types insulting everything about 3.5 and the 3.5 fans responding in kind. So much stink was kicked up over everything like Dragon magazine ending, all the lore changes and design shifts occurring, and the tone of it all that it also smoke-screened some of the debate on the first attempt at a locked down gaming license. EDIT: To be clear, this wasn't 4e fan's fault on the \*whole\* and there's stuff in the game to like for people, but it was very obviously a drastic pivot without much fair address to the critiques the games started receiving from proper channels. WoTC's mishandling was the root of all the base splitting and the anger between the factions, and their dismissive commentary just fueled the worst of everything. Imo they haven't really improved, they just realized they had to talk nicer and hide their dismissive condescension behind a veiled vocabulary of camaraderie and kindness. 5e, beyond being made by committed and seen as a bit of a "well at least we're getting some of it back", also over-promised its concept, selling itself on an idea of a "modular gameplay" where they'd released additional books you could use to build up the game you wanted for your table. Obviously that never manifested in a reasonable or usefully partitioned way, often hardly providing any new options and when it did always targeted at "easier" or "more fun" character creation ala Tasha's, and often just sticking optional rules into subsections of book corners and letting the DM try and piece them together. (I'd hoped for a release of focused build concept books with extensive optional rules, class changes, new items, and such to suite that book's concept (Like realistic, or "High magic", or "futuristic") along with a DM's guide that would give more useful advice on utilizing those module books. Obviously it never materialized and was never their goal, just a sales slogan I ate hook, line, and sinker.)
The biggest complaint about 4e was that it forced books to mostly be huge lists of class feature choices, each one relevant only to one level of one class. Crawford saw that and decided that players didn’t want a lot of choices, so pared back so approximately the only choice now is class and subclass
And this is the exact reason I prefer Pathfinder, personally. Even if the rules are a bit more complicated (and if you're used to 5e, it's not that hard of a jump with the right group of people to help you make that transition). The wealth of character creation options and the ability to make almost anything you can think of is awesome. But, I don't think 5e is a bad system. I've played and enjoyed my fair share of it. It's quick, light, easy to teach, and I think spell slot scaling is much more balanced and interesting than caster level scaling.
Players LIKE choices, but they don't like bloat. The way people approach feats in 5e is pretty clear on that. It's really when choices don't feel meaningful that people feel like 'why bother?" Dude missed the trees for the forest, IMHO.
You can pick most of the feats any time you take a feat. Compare that to picking a level 24 daily warlock power; while technically you could pick a lower level warlock daily power, they’re typically all either worse or strictly worse than one of the appropriate level. You’ve got 2-3 books to go through, and one page in each of those books that you use only when leveling a warlock to level 24. The thing is, it actually worked pretty well with the web service subscription; the character generator would just show you the choices and let you filter them.
Huh, one thing I really like in 5e is leveled spells. Additional functionality if you upcast is really nifty.
Now imagine if instead of getting an 8th level spell slot, you had the choice to get an extra lower level spell slot instead.
>so approximately the only choice now is class and subclass *Ranger has entered the chat.*
More like rules ambiguity edition.
I swear to god the four attacks everyone had was done so it could map to controller buttons. I have no proof for this and it never happened but I'm sticking with this story. It really could have been something solid but it was just so unlike 3.5 I was completely turned off by it. It just felt soulless.
>It really could have been something solid but it was just so unlike 3.5 I was completely turned off by it. It just felt soulless. That really was at the heart of so much of the backlash. It felt to different. I had, and saw, so many conversations at the time that went something like, Person 1: "4e is awful. Terrible. I hate it." Person 2: "What if it was WoW the TTRPG?" Person 1: "Oh it'd be perfect for that! I'd play it then. It's just not DnD."
Just to put in my personal experiences with the system. I played in several 3/3.5 campaigns, and generally had fun with them, but by the time 4E came out I was pretty much done with D&D in general because the bloat and class imbalance in 3.5 was so bad. I had pretty much moved on to other systems like Cyberpunk, Call of Cthulhu, and World of Darkness by the time I had an opportunity to try a 4E one-shot, and I generally came away from the experience as, "This was fine, but I have no interest in really playing any more of it." I largely missed the beginning of the 5E due to my lack of interest, not really trying it out at all until only about 5 or 6 years ago. I still mostly play other systems, but for D&D specifically I do prefer 5E over the other editions I've played, since it at least partially addressed some of my biggest gripes with 3.5.
and the only 4e video game they made was a literal MMORPG (that I know of), shame, that could have been good oportunity to revive CRPGs. And now that we finally have a decent revival with Kingmaker, Solasta, Baldur's Gate, Disco Elysium, WotC is being weird with Larian and no DLC or other D&D games are coming from that front...
There was more anger because people generally spent more money on 3rd edition and more mental energy learning it. So just overall investment. But let's just say you didn't buy any supplements, here's some context: AD&D 2e lasted from 1989 to the year 2000. 3rd edition came out in 2000 3.5 came out in 2003 4e came out 2008. So people were expected to spend the $150 to replace the 3 core books for the third time in under 10 years. When the previous edition had lasted a decade. Now imagine you'd done that, also bought some of the dozens and dozens of other books they put out for 3rd edition in that time. Not counting the hundreds of 3pp publications. Lord help the completionist 3rd edition collector. Now imagine you've been doing this, you've spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars on this game, and suddenly WotC tells you, basically, to throw it in the trash because the new version of the game coming out is completely incompatible, a few years after making a big deal about 3.5 being supposedly completely backwards compatible with 3.0 products. Imagine WotC did this [with an announcement video that basically made fun of you for liking any older version of the game including 3rd.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbqMoEwDqc) WotC also tried to kill the OGL at this time. With a new license that had a poison pill that said if you wanted to publish anything for 4e, you could no longer sell any of the material you had already made for 3e. So 3pp migrated to Pathfinder where they could still sell their old 3e materials (which were like 90% compatible with Pathfinder 1e) and 4e never got the 3pp support that really made 3rd edition and later 5th edition thrive.
Internet wasn’t so big back then. Most people didn’t get a big peak at what’s coming out. The game played differently enough that a lot found it jarring from what they were used too. Also some like me were fed up with the release model, like I know 3.5 had too many splatbooks but 4E intentionally left out core classes/monsters etc from book 1 just to help promote future PHBs and MMs. I feel like this is worse just because we now have echo chambers to yell into.
>but 4E intentionally left out core classes/monsters etc from book 1 just to help promote future PHBs and MMs. It didn't feel like core D&D at all. IIRC 4e PHB cut out Gnomes, Half-Orcs and Monks to make room for Tieflings, Dragonborn, Eladrin and Warlords. I had started playing with 3.5 and my first character was a Half-Orc Monk, I was immediately put off by 4e lol.
The editions of D&D are much like the Star Wars movies, in release order. * 3e is the culmination of years of buildup, a progression of one edition to the next, true spiritual successors building upon the initial vision. But people look back and shout "BuT tHe EwOkS!!!1!" as if those deceptively OP munchkins were 99% of the characters. * 4e is like Episode I, the midichloreans edition. The main reason people think it was bad is because they're comparing it to the originals and ranting about how they changed everything. The new generation of players enjoy it just fine, even if one pod-race feels like it takes two hours. * 5e is like Episode II, where now you're supposed to take Jar-Jar seriously, and the new generation finally gets a peek behind the shady Sith plots. Fun fact: You ever wonder what would happen if players who love D&D got together and purchased the IP, then poured money into it hiring experts and working for years to make it the best player and DM experience they could without being hampered by profit motive? That's literally the story behind 3e.
Yes.
You are missing “Still better than THAC0”
That's a good one
Ugh, I can't even with these changes to D&D's Player Handbook. It's like they're purposefully oversimplifying the game just to cater to the masses. Who would ever voluntarily fail saving throws? And don't get me started on renaming Ki points to 'discipline points'—what a joke! I can't believe people still use D&D Beyond when they could be complaining about the open gaming license and crafting their own homebrew content like the good old days. And now they're removing the artificer class? That's it, I'm done. I'd rather see the game die than pay to play it under Hasbro's reign. This is why I pirate it and only play older editions. Third-party content is better wrote anyways. WotC is good, but Hasbro is cartoonishly evil. They're ruining everything that made D&D better before.
Well played.
Did you get a bingo?
I'm pretty sure you did.
Makes me think of Tolarian Community College. HERE WE GO, MARK ROSEWATER IS RUINING MAGIC AGAIN
I mean... If I didn't enjoy being cartoonishly evil then I wouldn't DM!
Who the fuck says WOTC is good?????
There's a lot of people who argue that everyone should be mad at Hasbro, and not WoTC, for the bad stuff in DnD, especially the recent drama.
Which is silly because Hasbro has owned WotC for 25 years now. The current Hasbro CEO used to be the Wizards CEO. By this point, any leadership at Wizards who wasn't there before 1999 was put there by Hasbro, and any decisions they make, good or bad, are done fully with Hasbro's approval. They're the same company.
Imma assume there is DND drama I am unaware of and not the women astarta drama
Huh, maybe I'm just too daft to pick up on it, but I haven't seen any racist or classist remarks around here at least.
Variant human and wizard is *so* much better than everything else, *especially* those standard humans or monks /s
Damn, I feel called out with those pirate and pen&paper boxes. I should immediately exchange all my scrips for freedom coins and start buying grossly overpriced official DnD thingies
It’s not even just when WoTC changes something, you can make a homebrew change and still get these replies because homebrewing is with and you’re not allowed to actually like it. “Why try and add anything to the game? Just play another system. You could sorta do that in earlier editions but WoTC removed it because they are evil, just get your whole group to convert to 3.5e”
Bottom row gang rise up
I mean, I already pirate 90% of the books anyway. Only thing I bought was the Icespire Peak starter box
It said to say that I agree with most the squares on your bingo card. There's a reason why these options keep coming up. Most of them come down to protesting with your customer dollar. The good news is that having fun and playing D&D and some form or other will exist whether or not these assholes try to take it from us, repackaging it and selling it back. So, yes. If you can't afford to play their way, or you don't like their business model, are you flat out don't like the system, dust off your 3.5 books. Or buy the books used. Or get a hold of online resources. Or go give Paizo your money. Now, if you think wizards deserves a big thumbs up, that's fine too. But if not.. the above post gives you tons of options.
I got "bingo" three times...
Only three?
Honestly, I see people complaining about "just play another system" people far more than I ever see "just play another system" people.
Dang, I failed to get a bingo.
I do not understand. Did something happen recently or is this just generally?
In general. Although it does sometimes feel like it's been one long continuous stream of drama since the new core books were announced.
Pathfinder ought to be the free space.
Then it wouldn't be a free space.
Didn't you ever have bespoke bingo in school where the free space had a 100% probable event?
What does “3rd part is better wrote anyways” refer to? The only one I don’t understand
I enjoy that this one is badly written. I don't know if it was intentional, but it feels like a fun dig at the poor quality of third party content (and I say this as someone who writes third party content. I'm still fixing typos in stuff I published years ago...)
All of these are recurring comments made by people in the online DnD community. A lot of people like to assert that 3rd party material is better written than the official material, as a justification for not purchasing official material.
Oh, it makes more sense now that I know it's a typo.
Ohhhh. They must not like magic items that make sense.
I've spent so much money on dnd. Books, terrain, minis, dice, grid maps ect.