Things 4E got wrong/missed the boat on?

[dulsi]

the presentation to the community was bad.

I really disliked the amount of books. I felt more rules/classes/races should have all been in the ph and just a few supplements after that, too many ph's etc.
they could have churned out settings and modules instead of tons of phs and dmgs.

The number of phs didn't really change that much from 3.5. Just in 3.5 they were called "Races of ..." and "Complete ...". Granted changing it to PHB2 makes it sound more important than they were.

I do find the number of books a little problematic. Not because there are more than 3.5 but because they did a good job at balancing things. In 3.5 the default was nothing outside the core books without approval. In 4e, that hasn't been necessary. It makes it difficult to keep track of what the PCs can do. Granted you could just default to no like in 3.5 but I like allowing people to use the books they purchase if they don't unbalance things.

[BotWizo]

the presentation to the community was bad.

I really disliked the amount of books. I felt more rules/classes/races should have all been in the ph and just a few supplements after that, too many ph's etc.
they could have churned out settings and modules instead of tons of phs and dmgs.

The number of phs didn't really change that much from 3.5. Just in 3.5 they were called "Races of ..." and "Complete ...". Granted changing it to PHB2 makes it sound more important than they were.

I do find the number of books a little problematic. Not because there are more than 3.5 but because they did a good job at balancing things. In 3.5 the default was nothing outside the core books without approval. In 4e, that hasn't been necessary. It makes it difficult to keep track of what the PCs can do. Granted you could just default to no like in 3.5 but I like allowing people to use the books they purchase if they don't unbalance things.

I think we are saying the same point in different ways. so i agree with you. even if we are not i still agree with you. lol

It would have been great to reduce the 4e phs and dmgs put all that in the first ph and dmg.
It made the game feel like you had to keep buying the upgrades so you can unlock all the content. I'm exaggerating to make a point.

they could have produced the same amount of books, just made modules and settings. the reason I think they did not was then users would not have felt that would be an essential buy to keep playing the game.

I hope for next they use a different strategy, but I do not sit and think about the publisher business angle much so releasing rule upgrades may be a more successful business model, to encourage buying additional content.

We have archived 4e and we are now waiting for 5e, it should be interesting. (we are currently playing a BECM/1e mashup)

[Bouv]

Not so much a 4E per se, but just a lack of video games. They did a couple Facebook games but those were only temporary. They had one game and I didn't hear good things about it. I miss the days of the 1990's where there were a lot of choices for games. And it seems that 4E's mechanics would lend itself to a good video game.

[Big Mac]

The negative hype from the marketing people is probably my biggest gripe with 4th Edition.

Instead of focusing on cool new concepts that 4e designers had thought up, they led with an attack on 3rd Edition and Forgotten Realms both being "too complicated". I really do hate negative marketing campaigns. It doesn't put me in a happy mood and make me want to buy new stuff if all people can do is run down the competition. But when companies run negative marketing campaigns against their discontinued products, what they are actually doing is telling their older customers that they made a mistake buying their stuff.

This isn't really something new to 4th Edition. It's been going on for several editions of D&D now, but it really does suck.

It looks like they have got rid of most of this negative advertising hype for the 5th Edition era and I couldn't be happier.

When 4E was announced, WotC stated that they were going to release one new setting per year. Although I am not sure if every setting is suited for 4E, I was disappointed that so few settings appeared. Lisencing out the old settings like in the 3E era would have made me happy.

^ This.

When 4th Edition came out, I waited for them to publish campaign settings that I was interested in.

I didn't expect to see Spelljammer come back as a campaign setting, but if I was going to play Spelljammer, under 4th Edition rules, I would need to have Krynnspace and Greyspace, as well as Realmspace.

The 4th Edition Forgotten Realms timejump made a 4e Realmspace problematic, but not impossible. So I waited. And I waited and waited and waited. And then somebody said 4th Edition was "bad" and they cancelled Nentir Vale just as it started to get interesting and began playtesting D&D Next.

Now that 5th Edition is out, we don't have a "one campaign setting per year" promise. We have more of a "we will get one campaign setting right, before we move on" promise. That seems better, but I'm looking at 5th Edition wondering if it is going to get cancelled before they publish the sort of campaign setting products I want from it.

So I don't think that WotC have repeated this 4e mistake, but I'm not sure that what they are doing is going to be better...yet.

I'm waiting to see what happens. I'm not holding my breath.