While I find you arguments interesting, this is why I made the point of saying that I can't wait to see the actual data.
Again, you say that you want a 4.5e. But as I've already written about, by the time of Essentials, 4e was already dead internally. Now maybe this was just an issue of not matching expectations, and a renewed push (and a 4.5e) would have been worth it. Or maybe it was a case of seeing the numbers and trends, and realizing that it would just be more good money spent on bad results.
We won't know until and unless we see actual numbers. Until then, most people will simply reiterate the points that align with what they want to be true.
In fairness, even after we have the actual numbers, people will still do that. But I prefer numbers!
Oh no, I agree. We've needed hard data on this for a very long time now, just to dispel a lot of the myths about 4e. But the fact that the edition did not live up to it's promise is apparent. And yes, by the time Essentials was launched, there was no way we could have gotten a 4.5e. The powers that be had decided a strategy of trying to lure back players who, again, weren't likely to be lured back to D&D by any means meant Essentials was doomed to fail.
If you were playing 3.5 still, you were happy with 3.5 If you went to Pathfinder, you were likely happy with Pathfinder. If you were an OSR or even "old school D&D enthusiast", you bounced off of 3e, and were unlikely to check out this newfangled thing.
Now you might say "but wait a minute, James, what about all those people who came back for 5e?". And to that, I can only say is that gamers go where the game is. Whether they like a game or not, if it's what everyone is playing, they'll probably be dragged in, kicking and screaming.
When 4e was around, it was not as popular as 5e is now. Many are the times myself (and others) have bemoaned the fact that we'd rather play game X, Y, or Z, than 5e, but tons of people are playing 5e and are not interested in other games, and much fewer people are playing X, Y, or Z.
That may change in 2024. I don't own a crystal ball. 5e has inertia on it's side. All these new alternatives slated to come out next year might fail to get the needed attention. Certainly, there's going to be a big marketing push around 2024 that I don't think other publishers can touch.
And the fact that WotC is promising you can still use all your old stuff with the update (whether you believe that or not) is going to be a big selling point for many.
But that's enough of a segue about 5e's future in a thread about 4e.
I suppose one other thing I should mention about 4e was the OGL. If you were gaming in the d20 era, then you know that just about every licensed property had a d20 game. Even other games had a d20 version. Sometimes these were just terrible (a good example was the well-meaning, but misguided BESM d20, where they assumed the Monk was super powerful because it got features at
every level.
Wow!).
At that point, people who didn't even play 3e were no doubt familiar with it's rules, and could quickly adapt to playing 3e fairly quickly- D&D's game engine had become almost ubiquitous.
But with 4e, D&D was pretty much on it's own. No other game really worked like it. If you came in from another game,
even other versions of D&D, it might seem strange, with it's little Power cards and esoteric terms like "Hit: 3[W] damage and target is defenestrated (save ends)".
WotC went from an industry standard model to bespoke software that only really worked with itself. Which meant that it really couldn't be the game that everyone played.
While not as ridiculous as the d20 boom, there's certainly a lot of 5e licensed games and 5e conversions (some of which are really neat, like Adventures in Rokugan) out there. Which again, gives that crossover appeal, and means that lots of people are effectively playing 5e, even if they're actually playing in Middle Earth or the Hyborian Age, or something more heavily modded, like Level Up.
