The toughness of a 4e ogre exists "independently of the PCs". I even described it arleady - it's quite a bit tougher than a town guard (or a goblin or even a gnoll) but quite a bit less tough than Sir Lancelot (or a giant or a vrock demon).
The minion
functions grossly differently than a non-minion, though. The minionized creature (who cares what it is) hits fairly hard, if highly consistently, and dies with one hit. The non-minionized creature, by contrast, has some staying power and often takes one or two hits but doesn't have the threat.
Only if you don't understand the system, and so assume - contrary to the system design - that stats are an opponent-neutral description of a creature.
Right, opponent-neutral description is, I think, how the old game (and 5E) was written. 4E's design premises totally turned that around. I understand that's what the system was designed to do. I just don't like it and prefer opponent-neutral description both as a player and DM.
This is really the crux of it. Naturalism - Gygaxian or otherwise - is a property of fiction. Blade Runner has naturalism in a way that (say) the Princess Bride doesn't. It's not about mechanical methodologies.
Narrative fiction and an RPG aren't the same things and don't function exactly the same.
In an RPG, the game rules are a big part of what creates the secondary reality. In fiction, there isn't any such demand. Authors can do what they want, dramatically or based on a set out internal logic, or some mixture. In a sense, what I'm saying is that taking the manual stats as they are more or less base facts is how the game had always been. 4E turned that pretty much on its head. I don't know that I could articulate this before the discussion here but 4E's very player-facing/focus on the fiction presented to the player design is a lot of what I didn't like about it.
I'm not saying it was a
bad design in that it didn't accomplish what it set out to do, but it didn't do what I and obviously a lot of other people were looking for. It forced me into thinking in a way I did not like, similar to when Microsoft shifted around the design of Office to use the ribbon versus the traditional menus.
You do realise that the epic tier orcs in The Plane Above are Gruumsh's einheriar. They are not mortal orcs. That the paragon tier goblins in MM3 (I think) are drow goblin slaves, exposed to the radiations and travails of the Underdark. They are not ordinary goblins.
That's not true all the time, though, or if it is, a lot of time the reader is left to infer it.
The fiction of 4e, its tiers of play, the correlation between creature level, creature status (minion, standard, solo, swarm) and fiction, is all crystal clear. The books don't hide it, they trumpet it!
I didn't say 4E was hiding it, just that they pretty dramatically changed the basic premises of the game as it had existed for three decades. For you and others, that's a huge feature, not a bug.
If you ran or played in 4e games contrary to every express and implied precept found in the PHB, DMG and MM; where, at epic, your PCs fought levelled-up goblins living in steadings whose pallisades required DC 30 checks to climb, and still went back to a village to collect astral diamond bounties from the mayor (or other similarly heroic tier fiction), that's on you and your GM. If you play contrary to the game's precepts, instructions and advice, it's only to be expected that the experience will fall short of ideal.
I just love it when someone online says "you're doing it wrong and let
me tell you otherwise...."