DMZ2112
Chaotic Looseleaf
Was it a bare bones kind of chart with little "instruction" on all the different ways it could be applied or used? Sure. But for what it was there for (just giving DMs a good basis for an average attack roll or damage by level) it more than served its purpose.
With the caveat that what follows is a dissenting opinion and nothing more: it was one page. In previous editions, entire hardback books had been written on /fractions/ of the ruleset that Page 42 replaces wholesale.
It's obvious why there is such bile over this small point -- some people value having multiple hardbacks full of detailed crunch, and others think it gets in the way. Both opinions are legitimate, and dammit, each of us is always right!
The only reason I brought it up was to defend /D&D5/ against accusations of incompleteness. D&D5 has rules covering a myriad of situations but these rules are open to interpretation. D&D4 required you to adjudicate most non-standard situations using a provided hard-coded table of numbers. There's nothing inherently wrong about either of these designs, but in my opinion D&D5 is more complete as a result. Which is why I brought it up as a point of comparison.
So much so that we had complaints here on the boards that a similar breakdown of "expected attacks and damage" for 5E was not in the MM because it would have helped folks design their own monsters and such.
It might surprise you to know that I agree that the table is conspicuously missing from D&D5. I suspect that the designers thought that the much smaller range of d20 and damage rolls in D&D5 makes it much easier to suss out than it was in D&D4, but the table would still be a welcome addition.