It was bland then too, it’s just getting even more bland as the little points of differentiation are gradually disappearing.
They’re structurally more different now (though they are seemingly getting more structurally similar to each other in this playtest), but the way they play is far more similar. That’s the thing, 4e had a unified power structure but the things it did with that structure were diverse (and they did eventually break that structure). 5e is practically the opposite - diverse structures with homogenous gameplay, and they may eventually erase that structural diversity.
Eh, the gameplay is hardly homogenous. less diverse than 4e sure, but I think you're badly overstating the case, here.
Hunter’s Mark was a cool change. The ranger has otherwise only lost features, even compared to Tasha’s, and gained nothing in exchange but more spells.
What features did they lose, at least compared to the Tasha's Ranger? They swapped the tasha's deft explorer for expertise, which is a win, but still got the Roving stuff. I guess they know fewer languages. They have a new version of tireless, but that's hardly a loss. Nature's Veil is kinda dumb IMO but it's filling a spot that has always been some sort of "go stealth mode" feature that comes online vastly too late to matter. It's also a waste of a spell slot, even a first level one, IMO. I'm hoping they change that to the ability to hide the
party, and I'll strongly recomend that in the survey, but even as is it's the same sort of mediocre feature they had before.
Feral Senses is good, and not even described as really magical. I'd rather just get advantage of checks that rely on hearing or smell, like a wolf or other predatory beast, but I can't call it a loss. Foe Slayer is made marginally better by being lower level, so it's no worse than it was.
So they lost Hide in Plain Sight? Good, it was one of their worst features. The only actual loss I can see is Land's Stride. I guess you could call Primal Awareness being missing a loss. It's not a good feature, but it added some flavor, I guess.
That’s a problem. It also seems like they’re move towards unifying the spell preparation structure across classes, which is also a problem. Also, 5e’s tendency to render every discrete power as a spell is (still) a problem.
I guess i just don't understand the mindset of that last part. They could render step of the wind as a spell unique to monks, and I'd not care. Why would it matter? it's a limited ability that makes the monk play differently from other classes. Great!
Between that and the idea of structural differences being important to preserve, we just have too different a mindset, I guess.