D&D: 3.5 vs 4.0

I know, volatile subject for some.

I know there are people who loathe 4.0, and people who would MUCH rather play it than 3.5.

My opinion? I like 4.0.  Perhaps because 4.0 is (in my opinion) more streamlined.  I absolutely hate having to "check the rulebook" and waiting to figure out how to work a skill or discovering that a relatively simple sounding task is even more complicated than the last simple sounding task that I had to look up was.  Bottom line:

3.5 is great for people who love skills.  It's wonderful for the type of gamer who likes to manipulate their character to be totally broken, to destroy the crap out of monsters and NPCs and move  to the next task, collecting experience along the way.  There are tons of abilities, skills, spells and other things that you can make or break a scene with although sometimes it can get a little convoluted.

4.0 is great for the group who loves storytelling.  If you've got a great DM(dungeon master) and a creative collective of PCs, you will have a great time.  From my experiences, 4.0 is less about beating the shit out of NPCs and more about roleplaying and storytelling.  Again, this is all my own experiences.

I used to hate...absolutely loathe...D&D and many forms of tabletop because it always came down to arguments.  Whether it was over alignments, skill usage, or rules queries, my gameplay was always stifled by out of game disputes and discrepancies.  No matter how many times the ultimate "DM's call" rule was quoted, someone always thought it was unfair, or biased, or uneducated.  More often than not in the last case, a player would feel it their divine job to educate this DM on the "right" judgement call.  I have yet to have an issue with this particular problem in 4.0.  I feel that the game is soo streamlined, that DM's call -has- to be the word and law, because the 4.0 system seems to be written for the storyteller to do just that, tell a story.  Rather than getting bogged down by "in this circumstance" or "because this is in effect" the storyteller can go about his or her business, get their players completely wrapped up in the story.  This is the optimal Role Playing game, because then no body cares to argue.  The story teller focuses on plot and details and setting instead of combat, stats and scenarios.  The player focuses more on development, personality and relationship instead of skills, alignment and defeat.  This makes for a much more enjoyable session, and also makes it alot easier to bear the re-telling of what happened at your friends last game.

Because I'm always more entertained by "and then we answered the riddles and tricked the troll into attacking his ally" rather than "I rolled a 26 with  my bonuses and he only rolled a 10, so ...."