It wasn't all that hard though to make a pretty much Striker fighter. Ironically it is actually, in most cases, a BETTER defender than ever! I mean, what's better than "punish the bad guys even harder", eh? Past a certain point they will, of course, simply never provoke, but that's some pretty awesome lockdown! I mean, there IS a point where your defense is neglected enough that you might go down too fast, but Rogues and Rangers cope with that too... At least you have defender hit points/surges! GW fighter, go for a low accuracy weapon, pump STR and WIS, dig up every multi-attack you can, or go crit fishing. Yes, a fully optimized Rogue/Ranger/Warlock will be ahead of you some, but you last longer and are STILL a really solid defender without even trying.
So, while I had a few people that made fighters early on that had somewhat odd builds, and there were obviously less feats to game, who seemed a bit unimpressed with their damage output, it all got figured out pretty fast. It is mostly just hitting that 'groove' where you're still tempting people to provoke, and then making sure you have all the "my CC will really hurt you!" feats, the one that adds WIS bonus damage being the most obvious candidate.