So, as time passes between first publication and transition to the next edition, the rules change -- that's your beef?
Well guess what? The same thing can (and does) happen with classes, paragon paths, epic destinies, weapons (superior), armor (masterwork) and magic items. Back in 3.x, it happened with prestige classes AND with skills -- by merging skills, some became more useful.
Feats are the best thing about 4e. The first set, published in 4e, was kind of lame, but they have been improved greatly. Yay for WotC!
Did I say that I had a beef with rules change? Nope. I only have a beef with the newer material as an edition matures having more power and utility than the older material.
What is so wonderful about most feats? Many of them are just plain meh, but players more or less feel required to take some of them anyway.
Players of spell casters often take Leather Armor or Unarmored Agility. They don't do it because the feat is cool and "the best thing about 4E". They take it because they feel that it is required for PC survival. The game designers put together a game system with a rough delta of 6 or 30% (hit 35% of the time to hit 65% of the time) between good AC and bad AC, so the player feels required to minimize that major PC weakness.
Ditto for feats like Weapon Focus. Players of many melee PCs for years now have taken it. Now that there are some better damage feats, the more "in the know" players are starting to shift away from it a bit.
But, Weapon Focus isn't cool.
It's just a game damage option. Nothing really that cool about it.
The Expertise feats are the same way. A little bit more cool now that Essentials has come out, but nothing more than just another to hit option.
Yawn.
And, there are over 3000 feats now. Most of them are crap or meh at best because feats are a major part of the "PC vs. NPC arms race" (feats and items are a major reason why monster damage had to be increased). Players do not have time to search through 3000 feats. It's overkill and the point I was making earlier. Once you open Pandora's box, it becomes a nightmare to use and control and balance.
People even have an extremely hard time creating a 4E PC without using Character Builder. It would be very difficult if a given player did not have CB (either offline or online) to list his options.
A major issue with feats is that they are not always well balanced. The reason we have errata on feats is because the designers don't have a set of "meta-rules" on what should and should not be put into a feat.
For the last year and a half plus, the push has been for feats that give a (sometimes conditional) bonus on "to hit".
When 4E first came out, the designers said that they weren't going to create bonus to hit feats because to hit bonuses are one of the things that led to uberness in 3E. A few years later, we are back in the same "bigger, better, badder" to hit feat trap that 3.5 had.
In Essentials, some first level PCs now hit on a 4. Sorry, but that's ridiculous. Bigger, badder, better has swamped some aspects of Essentials options.
And, you are correct. The same thing happens with powers (over 7500 now), classes, and items (almost 9000). The design team doesn't have good meta-rules or guidelines on certain game mechanics to stay away from. So, we get re-roll features and to hit bonuses based on ability modifiers (instead of a set +1 or +2) and the game becomes unbalanced when the optimizers get ahold of it. And with the Internet, everyone is now a decent optimizer because all of the best tricks are there for everyone to find.
So yeah, Essentials feats are in some cases cleaner or cooler, but a lot of them are just more powerful.
The same thing happened with some original feats. Wintertouch and Lasting Frost have no real nice in game explanations, they are just a way to rig the game mechanics to throw out more damage than many other options. They shouldn't even exist in the feat list. Why exactly is the Frost Giant now vulnerable to cold? Oh yeah, because the Frost Weapon is colder in this PC's hands than it is in some other PC's hands. Err, ok. Whatever you say. Ignore the man behind the curtain.
Personally, I enjoy feats like Vistani Heritage a lot more than Expertise or Weapon Focus.
3E at least has some feat chains where the player had to dedicate some feats (of which he had fewer) to get the really powerful stuff.
Now with Essentials, the really powerful stuff is handed out at real low level with virtually no requirements. Any PC can have the potent stuff because all players are entitled to it. So yeah, getting back to the OP's question, many Essentials feats are too powerful and the trend to have potent feats without any requirements is in my opinion, a game design flaw.
Note: I understand the complaint that having a feat requirement means that some players feel the need to plan their PC out to the nth degree, but I find that complain to be disingenous. Low Dex PCs shouldn't be able to juggle their weapons in cool dextrous ways IMO. If you pick a low Dex PC, there should be feats outside of your ability to gain, etc.
). Also, humans have feats that give bonuses to stunned and dazed pre-essentials.
