How shit is the 5th edition? I assume this is what this game is going to use? I know jack about what happened to D&D after the 3rd edition except that they made everything worse.
Its great compared to prior editions. Its still D&D and thus carries the baggage that goes along with it, like high hps at higher levels, but its the best edition of D&D till date. One of the main reasons is the fact that magic items are no longer assumed in a PCs progression, i.e. the game math does not assume every PC will have magic weapons/armor/items by a certain level. This results in a low powered feel and its much easier now to have low magic campaigns. There are also no longer any monsters that require magic weapons to be hit; monsters do have resistances, such as werewolves are resistant to non silver weapons meaning they take half damage from them, which is fine IMO.
The magic system was also improved, making mages more fun to play, though the overall power of spells has been reduced making magic users and clerics less dominating. For instance, its now impossible to stack buff spells; each buff type spell (like bulls strength) remains only until the caster concentrates, and a caster can only concentrate on one spell at a time. So no more spamming bulls strength, bears endurance, etc before a fight.
Stats no longer go above 20 now, including with racial mods or even magic items.
The 'bounded accuracy' design principle makes it easier to hit things and also to get hit in turn, this also means things like normal armor is more important than before, as there are very few other ways to raise your AC.
The skill system appears to have been 'dumbed down' but honestly the way the skills worked in 3E and PF each class only ever specialized in their core skills as it didn't make sense not to and you didn't have points left over to spend on other things (unless you were a pure rogue) so in some ways 5e's simplicity in this regard is appreciated. Its still not good though and could have been far improved.
On the other hand the game is in some ways less complex and thus less satisfying than say Pathfinder; I actually prefer PF's base system which was much improved over 3E, especially the plethora of character choices at each level, but that game has too much baggage, like carrying over the assumption that PCs will be loaded with magic items by level 4+ and this is built into the games math and the monster math.
D&D 5e is basically AD&D 3e, or what a straight evolution of AD&D2e would have been.
