I've noticed a few things here I'd like to comment on.
Someone mentioned just doing away with the limit on healing surges. That won't work. The problem is that the vast majority of encounters can be overcome without using dailies. Sure, you may use an AP, but those are reasonably renewable and while they are VERY useful you can certainly get by on one every other encounter. If you just get rid of HS then every encounter which isn't highly dangerous is just a joke. The players will simply bull their way through it and build their characters with a high number of healing powers so they can be sure of getting through pretty much every combat with SOME hit points. Take a short rest, get your HP back, heck you can take on LIMITLESS numbers of easy to moderate encounters and still be at top power.
So there MUST be a way besides dailies to cut into the party's resources. Very low level characters aside (where pretty much every combat is dangerous) this has to exist. It could be recast from the current HS system as I've suggested earlier in this thread, or by other similar means, but it has to exist.
The problem with magic in ALL previous editions of D&D was twofold. First of all there were far too many "plot buster" powers, and they were available at much too low a level. The game would have been vastly improved had these sorts of powers at the very least been higher level. And I mean stuff as basic as Charm Person. Imagine what someone who could do that in the real world could do? It should be something accessible only to a very powerful character because used AT ALL competently it is a very powerful ability. Instead of dropping plot busters all over the low level spell lists in earlier editions and then giving wizards/M.U.s/whatever a tiny number of daily-only powers they should have given them more powers that were a lot less plot busting at low level. Basically this is what 4e did.
The second issue was the "logic of magic" which inevitably says that magic is something beyond what can be accomplished in the real world, and thus just by the very fact that it is magic it takes on too high a degree of versatility. Again, part of the answer is to limit that versatility. The most basic means of doing so is to make the effects of magic transitory. Again, this is what 4e did.
ALWAYS I see the people criticizing the 4e handling of magic just discounting rituals without actually discussing them. "Oh, my players just don't bother with that. Its too expensive." That isn't a valid criticism. Just because players are ignoring a part of the rules that would give them what they wanted if they just paid attention to it is not the fault of the game system. Its either the player's own fault or somehow they're being discouraged from using all their abilities.
Check out this thread
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...r-vale-emergent-features-keep-shadowfell.html and note how large a role ritual magic plays in this game. Its not specially pointed out, but there are dozens of examples of the PCs using rituals and doing so to great effect. Just do it. Encourage your players to do it. Talk to them about it, have NPCs do it and gain advantages from it. Have monsters do it and see how much it hurts when the party ignores it. And I'm sorry I just don't buy the cost argument. Sure, plot buster type ritual magic is expensive, but that's to discourage it from being used in every single situation where it might come in handy like it was in every earlier edition.
Lets look at the logic WRT flight. Overland flight, and even medium duration "tactical" flight is a bit of a plot buster. It inherently lets players bypass things or get into places in ways that are very difficult to thwart. It is in fact a PITA for the DM. Short duration tactical flight OTOH is just a nice thing to have and really is not much different from being able to teleport a short distance. Sure, the ceiling may be low, but then you don't use your flying in that encounter! In the next encounter it will come in handy, etc. Same for teleporting, sometimes its hugely useful, and sometimes its barely useful at all or even useless. Each one has slight advantages and disadvantages, but they pretty much balance out.
Another thing with 4e, and this I'm not saying is good or bad, is that it differentiates much more in the types of abilities that are available at different levels. Heroic tier characters just aren't intended in 4e to be spending all their time doing a lot of supermundane stuff. Its more reserved for paragon tier. And its not really fair to say "I could do X at level 9 in 3e but I can't do that till level 15 in 4e" because basically 9th level in 3.x is pretty similar to 15th level in 4e. Each level is a smaller increment of power and more quickly gained (especially the higher levels) than they were in older editions. In 2e it would take a 12th level PC dozens of significant encounters to make 13th level. 4e is designed to reward players more often but in slightly smaller increments. Look at the differences even between 1st and 3rd level in 4e, they just aren't THAT big, and that's the part of the game with the largest power increments per level. In 2e the gap between 1st and 3rd level is huge, and the same in 3e.
There are certainly many things that could be improved in 4e, like any system. I can relate to the observations about powers focusing a bit too much on damage for example. I do think though that a lot of complaints are based on a rather insufficient analysis of the game as a whole.
