It's a relevant example -- I actually think Sawyer's decision to incorporate 4th ed mechanics was part of the reason PoE failed. He was quick to embrace a system that most D&D fans rejected. PoE combat was tiresome and "never miss" aspect was a large part of that.
If I could have the PoE plot and visuals with ToEE combat that would be perfection itself. It's just sad that Troika never put any energy into story telling because their rule implementation was perfect.
The first PoE sold better than the rest of the "classic" RTwP RPGs. The PoE2 fell because in the first one they tried too much to sell the game based on the sentiment from the IE era in first PoE. And as it turned out, it was such a serious mistake that in PoE2 they modernized a large part of the project. They changed the system from "per rest" to "per fight" and practically removed the rest restriction. Unfortunately, as it turned out, they did it too late and many players, disappointed with PoE, did not even buy PoE2 (which is definitely a better game). As it turned out, relying on fans of old RPGs is not a very good idea if you want to use a fairly large budget.
