I never let the players decide on their items. Either I give them specific intended pieces, or I have them draw from a hand of pieces I've chosen. (We use index cards for treasure.) I do agree with the criticism that 4e gives out too much magical loot, but it's not a huge problem, IMO.
When I got started with 4e, all the stat effects were hard to keep track of. Now we use rubber bands of different colors and it's fairly easy, but I still agree it's a valid criticism.
What I like about 4e is that when you want to offer a tough combat as a sort of puzzle, you can -- the game's features strongly accomodate that. (I particularly like the grid and the significance of movement.) But when you want to do something else, you can do that too, with a little house-ruling -- we haven't had a fight in the last two sessions, although half of one of them was taken up by a sort of custom skill challenge (save x civilians before y die kind of thing).
I find it easy to make adjustments to accomodate less combat-intensive play, but it is hard to take a game lacking the tactical challenge and modify it to really include it -- those kinds of changes need a lot of playtesting. So, for me, 4e is a pretty good base.
When I got started with 4e, all the stat effects were hard to keep track of. Now we use rubber bands of different colors and it's fairly easy, but I still agree it's a valid criticism.
What I like about 4e is that when you want to offer a tough combat as a sort of puzzle, you can -- the game's features strongly accomodate that. (I particularly like the grid and the significance of movement.) But when you want to do something else, you can do that too, with a little house-ruling -- we haven't had a fight in the last two sessions, although half of one of them was taken up by a sort of custom skill challenge (save x civilians before y die kind of thing).
I find it easy to make adjustments to accomodate less combat-intensive play, but it is hard to take a game lacking the tactical challenge and modify it to really include it -- those kinds of changes need a lot of playtesting. So, for me, 4e is a pretty good base.
