Point being, that 3.5 or its implements can support the things you said. Explosive Spell metamagic feat was not core, but spread around people hit by a fireball. Bullrush push people. Shield feats in pathfinder make S&B awesome AND make you fighter push and smash people.
Simply put, 3.5/Pathfinder design seem to put , maybe slightly, more emphasis on the way this happens in the gameworld. I Push people with my shield because I perform an action similar to spartans in phalanx, say.
Of course you can roleplay powers in 4th, but sometimes happpens that powers seems first conceived mechanically, then "fluffed". This, for someone, is a problem. And let me say that this could be a problem bigger for newcomers, because, IMO, "regain" immersion with a good RP of a power is more a thing of a seasoned player. I'm not sure this strictly gamist approach is so good to make or keep new players interested.
I'm not sure that is an accurate view of things, though. It is, in fact, directly counter to how the designers have spoken of class and power design - concept and fluff come first, mechanics second.
Seriously, pretty much every power in 4E that pushes does so to represent either a solid hit that sends someone backword, or a spell with explosive force, or has some other solid rational behind it. I don't see anywhere that it was just tossed into things without reason.
The more relevant issue is that rather than someone describing how they hit someone with their shield and send them flying, they'll just say that they are using "Solar Dragon Shield Slam" and roll some dice. But again - that is, at heart, a problem with player mentality more than the system. It is certainly something I wish WotC did more to discourage - or at least, presented more guidance for players and DMs on getting around it - but I don't think it is because shoving someone with your shield is more or less reasonable in either game.
Another thing: 4th edition simply refutes to support mechanics slightly out of push, damage or some utility. This is great or lame, basing on your gamestyle. Let me make an example.
In 3.5 and Pathfinder, Efreet can gran Wish to mortals. I see that many people see this as a great risk of gamebreaking. In fact, they see it as a potential abuse of the spell planar binding. What happened in 4th edition? At least in MMI (don't know others) Efreet are apparently far more cool in combat, with all their flames and whirling, flying scimitars. But designers removed the wish feature, because things like that are unthinkable in 4th edition.
I think your use of the term
'slightly' might be inaccurate - 4E supports a lot of different mechanics (often in rituals or utility powers), but something like Wish is in a completely different ballpark. We're talking about a magic that fundamentally rewrites the reality of the game - that's dangerous territory, and always has been. Equating WotC removing the most divisive spell in the game, with them removing all flavor from their monsters or mechanics, is a bit unreasonable to me.
Of course, the monster is very balanced, but, instatnly, any root with legends an arabian nights, any possible RP implication about desperate heroes, crazy summoners and twisted wishes is gone.
In any case, 4E Efreeti - if you can bind them and demand a favor of them - still grant Wishes. They just don't do so by casting spells, they do so by having access to wealth and influence beyond a mortal's possible imagining!
Which is to say, part of the 4E approach is to take truly game-changing elements and relocate them to the domain of the DM. Stuff that is tied to plot and DM judgement calls now falls firmly into it, rather than having mechanical restrictions.
Which I admit - I'm not entirely a fan of. I'd like something a bit between the two, or simply more guidance on what certain enemies may be capable of outside of combat. And... sometimes WotC delivers. Not with every monster, but enough that I don't think 'avoiding flavorful concepts and mechanics' is
'unthinkable'.
Moreover, in 3.5/PF, if you advance the efreet with fighter, sorcerer, eldricht knight levels, you come up with a far more cool monster (IMO, this is debatable because of monster creation guidelines).
I don't entirely think it fair to compare an advanced and customized creature to one right out of the book. You can customize creatures in 4E too. (And I find it a better process, in fact - I have never found monster advancement in 3.5 to actually work with the CR guidelines, though Pathfinder may have fixed that.)
If you want another example, just take a look to 4th edition Phane, and D&D 3.5 Phane. This one is not a case of mechanics divorced from game reality, or of "nerf" due to balance: is a case of a monsters that really seems to play with time in 3.5, and now.. well..
Of course, 4th edition phane is far more easy to use in play - but, for some people (like me) is completely unappealing. Again, I'm not even sure 4th edition could support one modeled more on the 3.5 version, because it would need some awful, broken, clumsy, AWESOMENESS.
I've actually done just that.
I admit - I looked at the 4E Phane and found it dull and uninspired. That's the case for several of the abominations in the MM1 - I found the MM1 did a fantastic job with heroic and paragon level threats, in fact, and gave excellent mechanics and flavor to hordes of goblins and orcs... but fell down on the job with some of the epic foes. Certain monsters they did ok with (dragons), but yeah - the Phane is a shadow of its former glory. I don't think that's inherent to 4E, though - MM2 and MM3 have done a fantastic job with monsters on the same level.
In any case, when my PCs found themselves sent back in time to the Dawn War, and confronted by a Phane intent on absorbing their temporal inconsistency to rewrite history for itself, I went ahead and gave it an overhaul.
Upgraded it to a solo and gave it various abilities to reflect the former glory of the Phane. The ability to leech time from PCs - as it slowed and aged them, it got faster in every way, and could burn some of that stolen speed for extra move actions. It could unleash a time vortex that hurled everyone in and out of time - cutting short durations, for example. And it could even unleash it's classic time stasis, at least temporarily freezing PCs in time. And finally, the ability to summon evil duplicates of PCs from alternate timelines - which one PC (an Archlich Master of Undeath) used to take control of his own alternate self to further his own schemes.
And all of that worked just fine, while still being balanced, without having any one effect that simply took PCs out of the fight or aged them irrecoverably. Not that such things are inherently bad - but they are the type of play that 4E avoids. The thing to understand is that avoiding doing so doesn't mean avoiding the flavor of such powers.
A 3.5 Phane wasn't cool because of the specific mechanics of how its powers work, but because of what they represent. The ability to move in and out of the time-stream, the ability to age PCs or steal their speed, or freeze them in time - you can absolutely capture all that 'Awesomeness' without needing it to be 'awful, broken, clumsy'. Maybe not some abilities - I didn't want to even try to figure out how to model a power that rewinds time back to the start of combat. But is that specific mechanic fundamental to a Phane? Not really. Is it even worth preserving, given the headaches it cause? Not to me.
Maybe that's a gamechanger for some people. For myself, as long as the monsters are flavorful in concept and capability, and exciting to see in action, that's a win.
