yeah. With 4th ed, there's no point in thinking about your character class or choice, because they are all basically identical.
Want to play a tank? okay, you must take choice of any threat ability that works the same, any armor that is as good as you can use, any kind of weapon that does the same damage, and any damaging power that uses your weapon damage plus your ability score. Once you've picked these initial things, every single future thing you get ever can be determined automatically, because each new thing has a special bonus that only applies if you took the matching base ability, so anything else is clearly a waste of time.
And it's like that for every single class. For any given ability, it's 90% identical to all the other options available to every class in your archetype, with a tiny bit of variation, and each of those classes gets the same number of abilities.
It's simple, it's fair, it's straightforward. It also requires no thought at all. You only get about three or four actual choices throughout your characters entire career - everything else could be picked automatically by a computer program.
With 3.0/3.5/pathfinder, there's a BIG difference between a Fighter with a greatsword, a Fighter with a shield and longsword, and a Fighter with a spiked chain. They'll all pick full plate, but so does everyone who can use it, and they'll all get certain really nice feats like toughness and weapon focus. But everything else, their gear, their enchantments, their feat and skill selection, and their ideal ability scores, will be completely different.
Greatsword guy wants high str and con, and feats that do MOAR damage. Sword and Shield wants 13 str (for power attack) and decent con, with most focus on dex, and goes two-weapon fighting and shield bash. chain fighter wants high str, but needs good dex and int, and focuses on combat maneuvers.
They all do different things, too. Greatsword guy charges in head on, chasing after anything shiny;Sword and Shield puts himself in the center of a big clump and swings away happily; spiked chain darts in and out, disabling the big threats and creating opportunities for other characters.
They play differently. Pathfinder lets you build many distinctly different Fighters, while 4th ed lets you build exactly one kind of protector out of 4-5 classes - there's so little variation its funny.
Of course, it's easy to screw up and make something that doesn't do anything well, but that's part of the fun - choices have risk. If everything was equally good all the time, there'd be no risk, and no reward.
With pathfinder, you actually have to think.
EDIT: and wow, that turned into a big 4th edition rant. I never did like 4th edition.
