Being able to brick things is hardly some terrible reality of the system. Further it's relationship to nostalgia is a best tenuous. It was possible to hack gear in 3rd, but it was never done, at any table i was at. The action economy on was terrible, the most common decking builds from third i was used was a datajack bearing mage, who also was a great decker. Bring back Deckers after the complete destruction of the archetype in 4th is perfectly reasonable thing to do. In a very real sense, Deckers were at the heart of Shadowrun sense first. Essentially all supplements have been written with perspective of a group of wise cracking deckers. It get hard to justify that when there are no more deckers. So I would call the restoration of the Archetype more along the lines of Common sense, then some sort of twisted Nostalgia based emotional silliness. Giving decker the ability to disable basically any unprotected tech also fits within their bailiwick. I don't think it makes them overly strong, and how many times have you seen stuff bricked in 5th? It's still just not the en vogue method of hacking.
Let me break down my thoughts on it.
First, the nostalgia train of going back to something like the old Matrix (because its only crashed twice, causing untold devastation each time, so what could possibly go wrong with going back to that model?) had ripple effects throughout all the matrix-users. The de facto class separation of riggers and deckers, making it impossible for anyone to make a hybrid style or do both was intentional, and a seriously craptacular idea at the same time. When the average group is 4-5 people, with only one of them being a Matrix type, that leaves gaping holes in your squad if someone can't at least sing a few bars on the other side of that duality. And because of the resources required for decks/RCCs and the return of the godawful Priority system, it is essentially impossible for anyone else to sideline as a decker/rigger to cover those roles.
Second, the fact that you're basically getting locked in to one of a few play styles bugs the everloving fuck out of me. In 4e, you could still be the 'old style' combat hacker, going in with the group and getting the intel off a standalone system and then helping with the gun battles as you got out of dodge. You could also be the man in the van, running overwatch, editing cameras on the fly, opening doors, suppressing alarms, and generally making life as easy as possible for the rest of the group. Or you could do a hybrid of these, kicking back in the van while you have a drone presence going with the group, either as an additional gun, or to tap into standalone systems for you, and so on.
Third, the reason that no one hacked gear in 3rd was because most gear worth hacking was secured unless you got a direct connection. Hell, in 4th it was pretty much the same, unless you managed to hack into someone's PAN. But even then, it was still a situation where if you'd gotten to that point there were probably better things you could be doing to the enemy than bricking their guns. But when they fucked matrix players over and took away the option for hackers to be anything but deckers or technomancers (and the absolute assraping TMs got is another topic entirely), they decided to fuck everyone else over as well by making ALL gear hackable unless you deliberately removed functionality, and made it nigh impossible for someone who wasn't a decker to properly secure their gear (while TMs can't secure their own CLOTHES), so that everyone got that trickle down fucking.
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That's one perspective. But my experience with 4e is very different, as well as that old "nostalgia train" as you put it.
But first, some perspective of where I am coming from. I have played SR since 1e, and have played it alot; averaging a least on game a week since forever. While I was overseas working, It was more like 3 or 4 games a week. (Simply because your entertainment options are limited when leaving the building is deadly, you don't speak the language or share the culture) My player base was around 30 players and about 6 different GMs at the high end of playing, so not just a limited couple of players playing all the time. (although I do have the same group of friends, that I still play with, playing some of our most original characters in to this day; basically a continuous 30 year campaign..)
Editions 1 through 3 where steady improvements in the "floating target number" system of SR, with totally different mechanics and attributes than what we are used to in 4e/5e. They are much more complex, and came with their own hosts of problems for game play.
Some of the problems, in a general sense I will lay out here.
1: Initiative System was a "Top Down" mechanic. Which meant you were forced to build EVERY character for the highest initiative posssible - no exceptions, or you never did a single thing. Ever.
2: Combat system system and mechanics favored front loading of attacks along with dual wielding for the most effective damage output possible, which enabled combat to be finished by the as little as the 2nd character, negating the actions of the other 2-3 players entirely.
3: Vehicle movement. So no real change there
4: Rigging, Rigging combat. These were just bonkers! going from "why would anyone ever rig?" to "why would any ever NOT rig?!?" and back again through the editions.
5: Magic. I loved it. I hated it. I stilled played a mage while hitting myself in the face repeatedly with the rulebook...
So yea, Editions come and go, some of these problems got better as the mechanics got changed, some problems got worse. But 2 problems remained the same almost universally.
1: team disconnect.
2: The mini games.
The Team disconnect came from Riggers. At their hayday, a Rigger's only limitation was the range of the drone. People talk about "the Rigger in the van" Well, Fuck that! Why take an expensive vehicle to a run, that you
know the shit is going to hit the fan, when you can safely send your drones in from the barrens. Let those neck-beard, lead farting, bullet sponges walk or bring their own transport!
Generally speaking what happened was the Rigger would set up at one spot, then the team would go in with a dummy vehicle, or if the Rigger was nice a remote droned vehicle (as the Rigger didn't need to be in the car to rig it!). The Rigger would then operate his drones from his original spot, thus never placing himself in direct danger.
This also created a time sink, as by the mechanics of the day, every drone on "AI" still required operator rolls every round, for each drone. This would lead to the Rigger spending large amounts of time rolling multiple dice for multiple drones, and generally slowed down game play to a crawl if the Rigger used more then 2 or 3 drones.
Given the mechanics of the game, and the way various elements came together, this made many players very resentful of Riggers... (and the arguments that would erupt over, "compensation" that would go on...)
2: The "Mini games", Or as put by the rules, Decking, was a cluster-fuck. No two ways about it. While the idea was pretty cool, and more closely followed the engineering principles of an actual circuit, the actual practice of hacking is where it broke down. From the Decking side, to open the door to get the team into the facility sounds like a simple task. You jack in, you browse to the correct door file, edit file, jack out. Simple and done right? NOPE. To jack in required up to 4 tests. Then you had to scan the node (test), then you had to navigate to the next node (up to 4 tests), Scan the node (test), then move to the next node.... And so on and so until you got to the correct node, which could be 3 to 30 node jumps away!!
And, while you were doing that, the Matrix was looking for you! (which required tests by the GM, and invoked counter tests by the Decker!). All said, on an easy designed system, that simple job of just opening the first door to start the run could take upwards of 20 table minutes to complete. 20 minutes that the rest of the team is standing there. Forget hacking the network to get the paydata, the GM and the Decker will do that an other time, as that could take up to 4 hours!
Something had to change.
With 4e, we saw a total revamp of the mechanics and foundation of SR. Other than the name, nothing stayed the same.
Target numbers were static, but the dice now changed. Dice pools of the first 3 editions where totally gone, replaced by Edge. (which was also a mechanic in 1 to 3e known as Good Karma - just more costly to use) Attributes were expanded with the inclusion of an additional mental stat, on top of Edge. The mechanics behind how everything worked was rewritten and reworked. Mostly for the better.
The 2 biggest changes however were to Rigging and Decking. So much so, Decking wasn't even a thing anymore. It was Hacking. And they introduced Technomancers......(Which was just slang for a Decker, before Decker got picked up! Don't get me started.) The elements that had made Rigging and Decking separate specializations had been reworked with the rules and formed into what was essentially one element. For better or worse.
However, by far, the most damaging change that I saw introduced was "Agents". From what I have seen and experienced, Agents killed BOTH archtypes in 4e. Thanks to the way they had designed the matrix for 4e, and then later introduced other elements, they allowed for the Agent to come in, and through exploits in the rules, subvert both archtypes. Very shortly after the introduction of Agent programs, Actual "Rigger" characters, and even "Hacker" Character became a thing of the past, as a simple Agent program could do the same job without the investment of karma into skills that a Rigger or Decker would need.
For fuck sakes, there posts on this very forum about Agent "Gun Drones" - NOT drones with guns.... but GUNs with Agent software in them and why they should be able to target and shoot people without an operator!
With the inclusion the of a buy for cash ready made hacker/rigger, they broke the matrix
And don't get me started on the Technomancer problem. Because it really was a problem in 4e. And I really think that by the end, the writters realized they had opened Pandora's box....
And here we are now in 5e, with everything getting a reboot again. Some things got a huge change, some things got a minor change. And, of course, some things are still broken, and some people are still not happy.
But at least we have Samurai, Mages, adepts, deckers, technomancers and Riggers instead of Samurai, Mages, Adepts, technomancers and Agent programs.