Lycra Suit
Prophet
MLMarkland we did a nice circle but this post :
Puts it very well.
It's not that. When Josh started he threw around ideas like regenerating health, which became regenerating stamina in PoE and got thrown out in PoE2. Or "balancing" skills/classes so that all of them were "failsafe". He talked about how players were playing the game wrong and how it was his duty to stop "degenerate" play. Also, clearly, he has an inferiority complex for the Fighter archetype. He invented mechanic like engagement for benefitting fighters, etc.
All of these were terrible ideas, and guess what most of them are out in PoE2.
The real problem is that he lacks both creativity and clearly does not understand what makes D&D fun. What did PoE accomplish? A D&D lite game with a mechanic that is too boring to play and a setting which offers Tolkienesque, overdoneElves, Dwarf, "orlan", Human world.
The issues that Sawyer should have concentrated on were encounter design, tactical gameplay restricted by resources that fit in the game world (something that now exists in PoE2) and a novel setting.
Puts it very well.