Miss 4e D&D

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I've recently been getting into Lancer, which borrows a surprising amount from 4e--particularly when it comes to presentation. And I have to say, even with ~15 years of gaming obsession experience, there was something kind of jarring about running into "range: 5 spaces" and "size 2 obstacle" and suchlike again. I wouldn't go so far as to call it video-game-y, but it was kind of board-game-y. My friend Sam tried to run a game, and despite being one of the best and most-experienced GMs I know, the way she ran combat encounters turned into exactly the sort of rule-bound tactical wargaming that you generally don't want out of an ttRPG.

I think that's part of the sell for Lancer. As someone I know put it:

Lancer is ultimately a mecha wargame that understands its core audience wants to tell stories about why these fights matter rather than just play BattleTech

In my experience, this mentality shows up in 4e communities as well. Lancer, PF2, 4e, the Gloomhaven RPG, the MCDM RPG, they all have this same grounding design philosophy: They are tactical wargames with rules-heavy combat, paired with a simple system that bridges between those combats.