it may very well be that my assessment regarding 4E is off. It was attmitedly limited, and much of it came second hand once we abandoned the edition for Pathfinder.
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I'm much more familiar with Pathfinder, and I do think that the crunch bloat was much more of an issue for my group in that game. We enjoyed it for a few years...but then eventually, it just started getting out of hand, and issues started coming up.
Pathfinder added all kinds of crazy content as they went along....but their old modules and adventure paths were not designed or playtested with the later options in mind. So it becomes very hard to predict the impact all the new options may have on any older material. I found that to be a particular problem in Pathfinder with classes like the Alchemist and Summoner and Gunslinger. All cool concepts, but really drastically different in design from the core classes.
My own experience of 4e is that it mostly avoided this issue, because even later classes are built out of common elements, and on a common template, put in place at the start of the game. (I guess this is the so-called "samey-ness" of 4e - though that's not how I would describe it myself.)
The main exceptions to the above would be (i) Essentials classes that replace dailies with static bonuses, but all accounts suggest that this is a weakening, not a strengthening, and that is consistent with my experience experience of how the game plays; and (ii) psionic classes with "encounter" powers that can be spammed via power points. (The non-spammability of most 4e powers is an important balancing tool.) I have just started a Dark Sun game with a Battlemind PC and so am expecting to encounter issue (ii). I'm hoping it won't break the game.
One thing that seemed to be big in the 4e community, but that I never really got on board with, is that a class is "weak" or "underdone" simply because not much supplemental material is published for it. This was true for some classes (eg STR paladins, as I mentioned), but generally if the original material is properly designed and balanced then that should be sufficient for a viable class, even if it reduces replay value. But because my group tends to run
long campaigns, replay value is not such a big deal. In our 8th year of playing 4e we've just started a new game, and so the issue of "doubling up" on old builds hasn't arisen at all, and doesn't depend on a wide range of splat to avoid it. So in that sense the splat is just options, not
necessary for enjoying the game.
But anyway, as I posted above, preferences about all this stuff are just that - preferences. They can be fun to talk about, but I don't think they're any sort of basis for ranting or complaining.
