Noctem
Explorer
I say: yes, in some places we need it. 4e, as much good ideas there were, and many retained in 5e, did not work out in the long run... If the rules text is written in code words, and every power, no matter how similar they may be, has its own text, all you remember and speak about in a game session is fiddly bits. Now I know how a fireball works, and if a creature casts it, I know exactly what to expect. In 4e even swallow whole was different for each creature. Another thing is reflavouring. In 4e people used it to let a goblin look like a kobold and players could never guess from the look, how dangerous something is. In 5e we also have reskinning, but if I use the scout, I add flavour by adding racial traits (which could be done in 4e too, btw). If a creature is a solo (legendary) creature, I can guess by the look of it. I really believe, the designers of 4e had similar goals in their mind as 5e people, but when more and more people designed for 4e, we got solo goblins and such creatures, and in the end, everything in the world was just a texture over a mechanical balanced world. Choices and advancement of players were nihilated by the world growing with them.
I do still believe 4e was a good edition for a while and I do believe, if "essentials" came first we would still have it around. But this was too little, too late, and noone left (except me) who could be pleased with that.
Each power in 4e had its own flavor text, even things everyone had by default like Melee basic Attack and Ranged Basic Attack. The flavor text simply wasn't mixed in with the rules text to avoid people using flavor text as rules. Which is a very common problem for other editions, even 5e. IE: Crossbow Expert states that it needs a loaded crossbow for the bonus action attack, this was said to be flavor text and not an actual requirement. People used this flavor / fluff text as rules text until that was made clear and I bet some still do. Clear separation of flavor / fluff text and rules text is not a bad thing at all.
Players talking only about the "fiddly bits" is on them, not the edition.
Swallow Whole was only different for each creature depending on what the creature was. A dragon doing swallow whole should be different than a gelatinous cube. As in, the Gelatinous Cube would do acid damage over time to a target it swallowed vs the dragon might not. I don't see this as a negative.
Being able to guess how dangerous something is from how it looks is completely up to DM fiat. The DM describes the creature and gives cues as to if the creature is dangerous or not. That has nothing to do with how 4e was designed or how 5e is designed. If the DM doesn't give you enough information to make intelligent decisions in the game, it's not the game's fault that you get killed.
I've never experienced what you describe as a loss of choices and being nihilated in 4e...
Essentials content was some of the worst content released for 4e because it contained extremely basic classes (except for the mage for example) that basically revolved around basic attack spam and temporary buffs. And even then, they just poached from existing classes for their level ups. These were classes designed to try and get the people playing the older editions to jump over to 4e imo. that's all it was.
What harmed 4e more than anything else is the perpetuating notion (even today) that it was the MMO edition, the gamer edition, the power gamer edition. People trash talked 4e without ever giving it a real go because of bad press which honestly wasn't deserved. I'll take 4e powers over basic attack spam any day. 5e is popular now because it appealed to all the old players as an edition they could move to easily, that wasn't strange and different. You got your basic attack spam back gents, congratulations...