I'm sure several of these points have been brought up, but I just have to say:
1) The extreme cookie-cutterness of the characters. Every character seems to be plotted out in advance. You get 4 powers a level, each one similar, and two builds. This leads to an extreme lack of flexibility. Wanna play a ranger with a greatsword? Wanna play a fighter (not a ranger, because that is inevitably nature-themed) who specializes in archery? Wanna play a character who can stand toe to toe with his enemies and fight with two weapons? Want to play a cleric whose deity doesn't shoot Holy Laserz of P3nage? Well, just wait for some more $30 books...
No,
our definition of "Ranger"
has implied nature-based... 4e's definition is actually looser, not more cookie-cutter. From Ranger, I can make a military archer, a swashbuckler, a berserker, or even a rougish archer like the main character in the Thief series from the Ranger class, as well as the nature-based scout, among other things. I'd say that until Martial Power comes out, the nature aspect is actually underplayed in 4e and the Ranger class actually implies a couple different styles of fighting for a wide variety of characters rather than implying nature.
It's not so much that the classes are cookie-cutter by design. You're putting your own cookie-cutter to the dough they provide. I regularly make 4e Ranger characters for which nature is either not an aspect of the character or it's an afterthought once all other skills I want are taken care of. With just the core books, I could probably go off right now and make five different flavors of Ranger only half-trying. With just the core books for 3rd, all of my Rangers would have an animal companion. So which one is more cookie-cutter? In 4e, the majority of my Rangers have been ones tied more to civilization, and it really isn't that hard to do. It's almost the default assumption. You don't even have to choose Nature as a skill.
And while I
did mention a splatbook above, it was in the context of how one could be more nature-oriented, which is the "cookie-cutter" version you state the Ranger has to be. So, let me get this straight: you're complaining that you can't make an archery fighter in 4e because that would be a Ranger, but in your mind all rangers have to be inevitably nature-themed, and in order to do more you'll have to wait and buy some $30 splatbook, when in reality what we've seen previewed of the $30 splatbook so far are actually are options to
make the Ranger nature-themed? It sounds like you're creating your own limitations here.
It's less that 4e is forcing all warriors to be melee sword-and-board characters and more that you're limiting yourself to one class to find the archetypal warrior. In 4e, classes are not so much what you do as how you do it. This does require a bit of a paradigm shift, but in my opinion no flexibility was lost on the part of the game. The flexibility is lacking on the side of legacy D&D players from older editions.
The classes aren't quite cookie-cutter, we've just been conditioned by older editions to expect certain things from a class, and apply the cookie cutter to their dough.