I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment, Stalker. The powers system is the biggest hangup I have with
4e and is the main reason I recently quit DMing it. One of the other guys in my group has decided to try DMing
4e instead, and I've agreed to play, but already I'm finding that I'm not liking it any more as a player than I did as a DM and I'm still only in the character creation stage!
I much prefer the SWSE talent/feat system, and while I acknowledge that it does not necessarily lend itself to "heroic fantasy" as well as traditional D&D games, I wish that
WotC had gone with the SWSE system or something similarly open-ended and customizable for
4e. The latter's classes and multiclassing system really do feel like straight jackets in comparison to SWSE's. What makes it worse, as you've already pointed out, is that most classes have powers that are simply better than others. When I was first making a character, I decided I would try making a swordmage, but it quickly became apparent that there's only one set of class abilities/powers/feats that are good and the rest are all sub-optimal. Talk about lack of options.
Furthermore, as a powergamer, I'd much prefer to take a talent that lets me reroll as many stealth checks as I want each day than a power that only lets me do it once per encounter.
SWSE's talent system is infinitely more simple, elegant, and streamlined than
4e's power system ... and what's ironic is that SWSE came out of the
4e development process! They came up with something that was really great and they abandoned it in favor of a more restrictive, clunky, artificial system. VERY disappointing!
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