My main problems (2) with 4th Ed. are pretty simple: 1) Even the warrior classes have lots of special abilities with (what appears to a beginner to be) complicated rules governing their usage. In previous D&D, there was always a nice easy "starter" melee class - Fighter. All you had to do was focus on learning the basics of movement and combat. No flashy abilities (until later levels at least) and no worries about running out of energy, i.e. spells/day or stuff like that (*cough, cough* /per combat, /per day/ per adventure powers *cough, cough*) 4th Ed. is probably more balanced, but mainly just because all of the classes work very similarly, which while good and simple in some ways, is boring in others. 2) The Open Gaming License (at least on original release) was hugely nerfed from the 3rd and 3.5 edition OGL's, effectively shutting out 3rd-party publishers.
All that being said, there's lots of interesting stuff in 4th, just not enough for me to jump onboard yet.
D&D
1) Even the warrior classes have lots of special abilities with (what appears to a beginner to be) complicated rules governing their usage. In previous D&D, there was always a nice easy "starter" melee class - Fighter. All you had to do was focus on learning the basics of movement and combat. No flashy abilities (until later levels at least) and no worries about running out of energy, i.e. spells/day or stuff like that (*cough, cough* /per combat, /per day/ per adventure powers *cough, cough*)
4th Ed. is probably more balanced, but mainly just because all of the classes work very similarly, which while good and simple in some ways, is boring in others.
2) The Open Gaming License (at least on original release) was hugely nerfed from the 3rd and 3.5 edition OGL's, effectively shutting out 3rd-party publishers.
All that being said, there's lots of interesting stuff in 4th, just not enough for me to jump onboard yet.