I think I understood you correctly. I believe what you mean is that it doesn’t have as much versatility out of the box, but you can add a lot of stuff to it (supliments:nitrous, lead bricks:off brand over powered supliments ala Green Ronin stuff) and it wont break the “car” down by halling it. Basically I took this as not as much out of hte box versatility but more versatility in the long run without breaking the system.
As long as I’m close to what you meant, I disagree with that. Personally I think 4e will be easier to break with supliments and is too simplified out of the box. I think people will think it is over simplified and find ways to add more rules which will likely serve to over complicate things and actually make it worse than it started out. A lot of the things that people will miss from 3e will try to be shoehorned into 4e and it wont work right. Like multiclassing or at the very least prestige classes that serve to mix two classes (like arcane trixter or eldrich knight). It just wont work with the 4e mechanic, but people will miss that from 3e and try to make it work but it will be over-complicated and break the system (not necessarily in an over-powered way, though possibly - more likely in a “it just don’t work” way).
I guess if I were to make another analogy I would say that 4e would be like a F150 with a Pinto engine, rusted out bed lining and shocks made to only support 100lbs. It has all the trapings of a truck but when you try to put stuff in it’s bed it doesn’t take much to bog it down to the point it is undrivable.
All just my opinion, of course.
Oh, and honestly I was never a gnome fan but nonetheless am sad to see the little buggers gone from the core races. They have become staple and canon.
