the Jester
Legend
If you want D&D to be a good game you have to put everything on the table and be willing to ask yourself "does this make game better?" instead of "is this D&D?" The standardization between mechanical options and presentation in 4e was an excellent step forward that allowed people to examine exactly what effects certain pieces of the game were having in much more detail than before when class abilities where haphazard jumble and almost entirely rule-of-thumb.
I think a good example of how 4e went too far in this direction is something like green slime.
In the old days, green slime couldn't be killed by normal weapons. Straight up, they were inappropriate tools for the job and wouldn't take care of it.
4e discards entirely the notion that some monsters cannot be beaten with certain approaches, excepting a very, very narrow range of "immune to poison and disease" type stuff. But basically, if it's in a 4e monster book, you can hack it to death, electrify it to death, kill it with psychic, force, fire, radiant or whatever. Very few monsters have total immunity to anything or only a single weakness, even when they probably should (again, green slime, I'm looking at you).
Now, it's easy to argue that the green slime being sword-fodder makes D&D "better" in some respect or for some players; the poor rogue and fighter finally get to shine against oozes in 4e! But I think that takes away some of the magic and mystery of green slime, some of what makes green slime such an infamous part of D&D.
Obviously, YMMV.