He's talking about extremes, sure. But there is still a lot of space in between that is _still_ problematic. If you come up with someone with some strength enhancing item, a weak magic weapon, and a little more strength like a 16 after having rolled only a 14 and picking Half-Orc for exampe), you can still get half of that value, and that is still higher than what your d20 can roll.
I'm fine with comparing an optimized character to an unoptimized one, but I don't see the point of comparing an optimized character to one that has no feats or equipment. Perhaps for comparison, we can look at a 4e character with no weapon talents or powers using a normal weapon versus an optimized character with powers and a magical weapon. 3e invites the logical possibility of nerfing your character, but there is only so much you can not do with a bunch of fighter feats unless you simply don't take them. I am reluctant to use this phrase because it is so often overused or misued, but nonetheless this is a classic strawman argument. I won't belabor why it's annoying and offensive to misrepresent things in discussion, because I feel that should be obvious.
Going back to 4e marketing... without 4e, would the Wizards staff have stopped playing D&D? If so, I think they forfeit the prerogative of being fan-creators. While I can understand the business reality that WotC owns the brand their staff can do with it as they please, I don't like the idea of non-fans taking control of a product I like and pushing it in other directions. If they would not have stopped playing D&D... then the marketing campaign suggests the D&D staff were making false comparisons. While I would not suggest they were being deceptive, they would in that scenario seem to be Kool-Aid drinkers. I don't think a little hyperbole is going to hurt anyone, but things can get out of hand.
So to draw a line between the dots... I feel that when fans compared Joe the Poor, nonexistent, possibly rules-breaking fighter with no feats or decent gear, with Sir Max of Blingland, optimized fighter with an expense budget, I feel a similar slip of logic has occured to that which infected a lot of the 4e marketing. It's certainly true that Joe does a fraction of Max's damage, but so what? It's the wrong comparison. There's also a huge realm of difference between dashing out stats for a 7th level goblin warrior versus agonizing over Nancy the Baker's feats, yet the commentary focused on the latter while ignoring how essentially similar a mid-level warrior is to a 4e creature with a handful of simple powers. 4e's multiclassing rules solved a number of problems, but to many many 3e fans, the problems were relatively minor while the loss of functionality in 4e was nearly fatal. Et cetera.
The extent to which you would notice and react to this distortion relates to the degree to which you agree with the less distorted versions of the same ideas.
If you say, "Bob is evil," and I don't like Bob, I may not agree, but, hey, I don't like Bob, so what's it to me?
If you say, "Bob is evil," and Bob is my best friend and roommate, that may get my hackles up. If you can't come up with a reasonable argument for why you think Bob is evil, I am going to conclude that to some degree, we don't live in the same reality.
"4e multiclassing totally rules compared to 3e multiclassing, which was terrible and broken" produces less cognitive dissonance in someone who prefers the 4e system than in one who prefers the 3e system. But the statement is, nonetheless, wrong. You can choose to believe it, you can muster arguments why it's true, but at the end of the day, many, many people found the 3e rules workable and the 4e rules dissatisfying. So the opinion becomes one of stated preference. If the 4e developers and the 4e cans claim the matter is one of general consensus, it turns out they are wrong. Their preference is only shared with some, perhaps even a majority of players, but certainly not everyone or even most everyone. And, perhaps, not even a majority. I think many 4e fans would say they tolerate the quirks of the 4e system because the system works within a class framework they otherwise prefer.
