In the past few months, I've grown more nostalgic for 4e. I hadn't played a real life game since Encounters switched to Next - but then I got in a game at Origins - and I loved it! I started with AD&D at the beginning of 2nd edition and played every edition pretty extensively (admittedly less in 4e because it was out less time).
I'm running three games of 5e and I keep running into the same issues: poorly balanced, boring combats; monsters that are sacks of hit points; weak and option-less low level play. While I am spending a lot of time trying to homebrew 5e to address these issues, 4e was ready to go out of the box. The monsters were inspired, and the character abilities scaled nicely regardless of the class or level.
The "gamist language" and design of the 4e rules makes it great to play on FG. Having tried both 4e and 5e, I can say that the default 4e system with little programming works so much better. I can code powers in there, whereas the officially purchased module for 5e has basically no mechanics in it.
So, yeah, I'm now a 4e defender.
