Quote from: jadrax;550065To be clear, I am not saying no-one cares about the rules. I am saying the more the rules are front and centre the more people that will piss off to the point of not buying anything. The trick is to appease as many people as possible by being broad and bland.

Realistically, however, the rules are front-and-center. It takes fairly experienced players to significantly push them out of the limelight. And even then the rules actually tend to have large impacts on the actual game experience that a lot of players simply don't acknowledge.

If you look at the complaints surrounding 4E, for example, they tend to boil down to:

1) Some variety of "I don't like change"
2) Dissociated mechanics
3) Pacing

Dissociated mechanics will be a problem for people regardless of whether or not the rules are "meh". (And, in reality, probably more of a problem if they're mechanically "meh".)

Pacing is the big one, though. It has both indirect and tack-on effects that, IMO, were detrimental to the game. And, again, it has basically nothing to do with the "meh"-ness of the rules.