What went wrong?

I think OP means essentials specifically.
Still an op worthy of /tv/

Not just one of the people, a practically irreplaceable programmer who designed all the digital elements of 4e basically solo. He murdered his estranged wife before killing herself, and WotC weren't able to pick up from where he left off so they had to start it all brand new.

>a great game

>What went wrong?
OP embraced the Rainbow Side and became a complete faggot. There is no saving him now.

Yeah, it really was. We shall never see its like again.

A competently executed fantasy tactical combat game, plus some shit added on top... some that never worked like skill challenges.
Never been great. Not enough to be.

Can you point to an RPG that did heroic tactical combat better than 4e? It has its flaws as a system, especially on launch, but by the end of its lifecycle they were almost all fixed, either officially or by fanbase consensus, and the game as it exists now is honestly fantastic.

Skill challenges also work fine, they were borked in DMG1 but the DMG2 guidelines straighten things out.

Essentials?

Too complicated to make the Gronards happy, not OP enough for the CharOps fags, and too different for the 4rries to get behind.

But it got me into the hobby and a pretty good game group, so I'll always be grateful.

Who?

I like the simple essentials classes.

There, I said it.

Are they badly designed? Yes. Do they scale terribly? Yes. Do they ignore all the lessons learned from all the other classes? You fucking bet.

But there are some great ideas buried in all of them, and messing with the power format is kinda exciting and an unexplored design space. I love the idea of the stance based fighter and the movement based rogue, and the sort of metamagician sorcerer. They feel extra unique because of their core design/mechanics, even if they were mostly crap.

I'm also sorta glad the simple option exists for those who want to take it.

This 100%

I think that, as with most of 4e, the big issue was presentation.
We were 3 PHBs deep, then Mearls comes up with his talk of "recapturing the audience", and gives us two books with the most uninspired and boring martials ever along with a cleric and wizard that have nicer tricks than the originals. That rubbed a lot of us the wrong way.
After that first hurdle though, Essentials showed that there was still untapped design space in 4e, and that designers could do things with the power structure that were interesting and flavorful.
It's a shame that, at that point, we were already on the crashing course. Another year or two of 4e and it would have been a complete game.
Fuck Mike Mearls with a rake.

Hey I'm trying to get the Character Builder going on Windows 10 and I'm having a problem.

So I got the files from here pastebin.com/85Hm56k5

And I'm following the instructions from here rogue-elements.obsidianportal.com/wikis/offline-character-builder

But when I tried installing the character builder and do step 8.

8. Run the CBLoader.exe in the Character Builder directory and let it download .part files from the internet

It wouldn't open combined.dnd40.main

And the file of combined.dnd40.main in the folder was called combined.dnd40.main.encrypted

Has anyone else trying to use the off-line character builder had this problem and how did you fix it?

Would running it on XP help?

Nothing. Everything went exactly as planned.

Each edition is intentionally designed with inherent flaws that they can "correct" in the subsequent edition 5 years later. This keeps people buying the books in the naive hope that they'll finally get the perfect game they're looking for.

>What went wrong?

In brief?

The fact that this conversation could happen:

>Some friends and I want to start playing D&D
>Sounds good - do you want the starter set?
>No we've played that, we want some more.
>How much more?
>Just the Essentials
>Just fine. Let me tally it up... Your total comes to hundreds of dollars, here is a bag with several products not all of which are essential to playing D&D.

How the Fuck do you make a new series of books, label it "Essential" and then INCLUDE BOOKS THAT AREN'T ESSENTIAL TO THE GAME

"There's so many D&D products, we don't want to confuse new players" get FUCKED, the PHB+DMG+MM combo package doesn't confuse fucking anybody you daft hacks.

Essentials really needed to make a lot of those at-will heavy damage boost things work the first time you hit a guy in your turn. So that they don't become 'Best warlord target, ever'.

There was some decent ideas there but the implementation is really really lacking (Like a more extreme version of how Rituals didn't quite end up what was planned)

Murder/suicide of the lead and apparently only developer of the flagship features of 4e (the stupid software tie in), WotC leaving the much hyped etools completely up to one fucking person and having no one at all overseeing their work so it would have been possible to continue it without them, an advertising campaign that alienated a large chunk of their playerbase by basically calling them retards if they didn't immediately adopt 4e (ignoring the fact adamant 3.5 players who refuse to play anything else ARE retards) which in the end only pushed them into Paizo's open and waiting arms, releasing a 4.5e after swearing up and down from the beginning that they'd never do a 4.5e then denying to this day that Essentials isn't just fucking 4.5e (don't even try to argue it isn't, you're seriously brain damaged if you legitimately think it isn't), and just gross incompetence on WotC's part every step of the way.

And before you 4rry defense force start screeching at your monitors and slapping incomprehensible "counter arguments" into your keyboards with your fat greasy sausage fingers, I actually did like 4e.

The Essentials line proper was two PHBs with different classes, a DM's kit and a monster kit, plut accessories like tiles and shit. All the other books are visibly different and are not marked as "essentials".
They were pricey, probably, but the DM's kit had a ton of stuff in it, and the monster box too. You could go for a year of play with that stuff.

>memes

If you think Essentials is 4.5 you are the retard user.
Essentials plays alongside base 4e, so much so that there are options to swap things between the two.
When 3.5 came out, all the previous stuff was invalidated, and even if you could reasonably use stuff from 3.0, that wasn't supported or recommended, and in fact a ton of stuff was reprinted.
If you don't see the difference...

>literal brain damage

Case 1: Now I have Ranger (regular) and Ranger (hunter). I can have both in the party, both work well, and I can get stuff from one to the other and viceversa.
Case 2: New Ranger overwrites old Ranger. Old Ranger is obsoleted and unusable.

CLEARLY THE SAME THING

You're right about every point except one
The Adventure Tools, Character Builder and the Compendium are great tools.

>an advertising campaign that alienated a large chunk of their playerbase by basically calling them retards if they didn't immediately adopt 4e

This is one of the most repeated memes. I've never seen anything of sorts, aparte from that promotional video with the french guy that slightly poked fun at the fact that grapple rules in 3.5 are complicated.
But I don't expect people like you have sources for their memes.

Tactical combat is competent. The end.
Also you are delusional if you think that skill challenges work.

>Tactical combat is competent. The end.

Show me better. Please.

>Also you are delusional if you think that skill challenges work.

For all the games I have played, they have worked well enough. Do you have some specific issue?

The wotc forum fanboys did miracles in this regard. Not wotc fault but it did not go well.

I say is competent, the end. Nothing else is going for the game and is not a priority for many.
For the sc, you are simply brain damaged because you think that a multiple rill system with 2 outcomes is good.

Yes, the fanbase was shit, and there was a lot of shitflinging in every direction.
Hardly a marketing strategy though. Especially in the face of another company who was saying "we're the true D&D".

>s-showe me better
None gives a shit about your 3w plus slide 3 squares

>it's bad because I say so
>I don't need to backup my statements because I'm the source of gaming truth

Go see a doctor

Lmao imagine being so obsessed with yiur own shitty game to being compelled to talk about paizo when is discussed.
This is ehy I despise 4rries. Everything ends with "at least is not 3.pf/paizo".
End yourself.

>I say is competent, the end.

If you say "it's competetent" that implies that there's better. Because it IS important for me, I'd like to see better.

>For the sc, you are simply brain damaged because you think that a multiple rill system with 2 outcomes is good.

DMG2 actually recommends you modify the results according to how well the players did, so it's actually non-binary.

The tactical is ok. No criticism toward that.
Skill challenges ate stupid because yiu have a 2 results end with a multiple rolls mechanism.

You are so butthurt about the only thing going for your shitty system that you nitpick the exact word used
4th is better at tactical? None gives a shit.
Also noce system mate. 2 dmg to make it work. End yourself.

>57951519

not even going to give you a (you)

The fanbase is shit everywhere, here included because yiu cannot talk about 3.x without a 4rrie sperging out.

>4th is better at tactical? None gives a shit
I do

This is a thread about 4e, mongoloid.

>hey guy what went wrong with essentials
>whaaaa paizo
This happened in an handful of posts you pathetic lowlife.

Imposdible to have an honest converstation anyway.
Example Imagine how delusional one must be to write that.

>4th is better at tactical? None gives a shit.
I literally say that I do in the post you are replying to.

Why so angery?

>Murder/suicide of the lead and apparently only developer of the flagship features of 4e
what? who? when? source?

RPG players don't consider their hobby a game, but an art. It's about the feel.
D&D always used a more "obscure" description of the rules. When 4e showed the gears that moves the game, some players felt it lost its "magic", as if showing how a stage magician does a trick makes the trick less impressive, when in reality we're not dealing with the art of tricks, but the gears of a machine in a way that showing how the machine function allows for better use of it and ease to find and fix any problems. That's why 5e returned with that style of writing

That, and the sunk cost fallacy of people that spent thousand of dollars in a system and did not wanted to feel cheated or surpassed by a mechanically better (not perfect) one leading to mindless rage.

Google it, you fucking mongoloid

Mearls admits the name was a mistake, which is why 5e wasn’t separated into a basic and advanced line, and why they won’t make books like Player’s Handbook 2 and instead make titles entrenched in Forgotten Realms lore.

THE OP IS ABOUT ESSENTIALS
OP is a idiot for not specifying but is pointless to talk about 4th in general.
Is about the turning point of Essentials.

4th is not considered inherently better, just for some playstyle.
Sunken cost is stupid. People that played 3.X bought many more manuals of Pathfinder.

Essentials sold fine, 4e closed shop because it attracted next to no one new to the hobby and that was the metric Essentials was assigned.

5e had the same performance metric, and it's killing it. That's why WotC has been fellating streamers.

Mythras with the Classic Fantasy supplement is the best tactical combat game I can think of.

>5e had the same performance metric, and it's killing it. That's why WotC has been fellating streamers.
Elaborate this pls

WotC has repeatedly said that not only is 5e the best selling WotC edition by far, but that it has brought in (and kept) more new players than any edition.

Are they reliable?
One thing I noticed that people that did not touch 4th played 5th or at least were curious, but is anecdotal

It's better at least because it was clear of its design intention of being a combat driven, tactical, dungeon crawling instead of anything else.

And in the start, PF and 3.5 were interchangeable. Sunken cost apply.

A friend I know had that problem. We eventually bodged around it by having someone else zip up all the .part files from a working installation, sending them over and manually copying them into the appropriate folder.

Anyone willing to put it in a mega? or short term link?

>Essentials sold fine
Which is why there was a 2 year gap where no books were made, on top of the other issues with Essentials, like how it literally killed the setting book.

This is all marketing spin.
4e was discontinued because Hasbro set unrealistically high goals, and D&D failed to meet them.
That is way the whole branch was greatly downscaled, the in-house developers reduced, and the release schedule brought to 3-4 books per year.
5e is killing its market objectives, without a doubt, but those are not the same ones 4e had.

No, is good at THAT.
The fact that is better because of that is subjective.

In hindsight it's pretty clear that the moment Mearls took over, the decision to wind 4e down was already taken. The latest releases were just a padding out while the early NEXT stuff was getting ready to be rolled out. (Ironically they also have some of the most fun bits of writing)

Wasn't the monster vault considered the best monster manual?

drive.google.com/drive/folders/11QM_3z4_za4TFyUVVJ6ZpjOE2yd9W_I4?usp=sharing

I doubt anyone is looking for random content files online anyway. Tell me if it works, drives sharing features have always had issues for me.

grazie

It did

Cool, hope it helps. CBLoader is an unfortunately buggy mess, only more so as time goes on.

As I said, there was some fun stuff. The two monster vaults were bretty good (one was mostly recycled stuff but with a bit of new lore, the other one is the closest we got to a setting book for PoLand), heroes of Feywild had a lot of fun fluff, and the dungeon book too.
But they were also getting lighter and lighter on the crunch.

4.5

4e catered to the video game easy crowd but did it years too late, by that time popular sentiment had moved more towards a more gritty fantasy again with things like GoT.

Fuck off with your Diablo Edition 3e bullshit, 2e is the only real D&D

It's metrics we not by continuing to sell books to the same people, Essentials had the requirement of getting new players - and it didn't, at least not to whatever the metric set was.

Judging by the player numbers on roll20 4E in general has fuck all playerbase.

What the fuck are you projecting?

The problem was that Hasbro didn't wanted a metric, but a kilometric.

The problem is
>Wizards of The Coast

They have ruined everything they touch and make only bad games.

A game that was widely and viciously vilified, that had a troubled launch and lost support before being content-complete doesn't have a huge playerbase? My god, what a shock.

Honestly, I'm surprised it has as many players as it does.

Thanks doc

>lets make 4E more like 3.5

genious.

fpbp, trips of truth
if this was reddit they'd thumbs down you

In which measure it was?

>A game that was widely and viciously vilified
stop clinging to that meme

what did he mean by this

Except it's a statement of absolute truth? The hate brigade started before the rules had ever been seen and was almost entirely based on lies and wilful misinterpretation. WotC's actual fuckups on launch and the ongoing flaws of the system barely come up when you compare it to the factually incorrect, entirely subjective or patently absurd points most 4e haters rely on.

When 3e was released, it was accused of being a Diablo RPG because of the Veeky Forums success of Diablo at the time (ironically, Diablo had a supplement book for AD&D).
So when 4e was released, it was accused of the same "crime", and on top of that, it was the 3.5 that had a Warcraft sourcebook.

this

4e also stopped publishing 8 years ago and WotC has a new edition that is doing extremely well, and has nothing to do with the conversation about how essentials more accurately didn't save 4e instead of killing 4e.

Curiosity, how long it took from the last 4th book and the first 5th book?

That's certainly true of the 4e launch.

I think that the resemblances of 4th and wow are superficial, but you are mixing things up.
Is not a matter of settings. Does not matter if there was a diablo or wow sourcebooks.
3.5 was "diablo" for the talent trees and similar shit, and 4th was "wow" because of AEDU vs cooldowns in wow.
I don't agree but is idiotic use the setting as an argument.

If you count the D&D Next playtest, about a two years. Otherwise about 4 years.

4 years before selling the next manual is huge.
Fuck.

I wish 5e was more like Divinity: Original Sin.

I don't know.
I think that the designers could have liked some aspect of wow, see the blood elves/eladrin but then again those are established tropes I guess.
I don't even find inherently wrong many wow concepts - like the wow rogue inherently associated with shadows (without CdP) and the warrior that can reflect spells with his shield. I like that shit.