The changes to casters are exactly the opposite of what I wanted to see. For years people have been talking about how casters get plenty of options (multiple spells per level on top of class features) while martial types are one-trick ponies with constrained builds and need more versatility. For weeks we've been talking about how the maneuvers fighters (and now rogues) get are nowhere near an entire level's worth of class features and they're too rigidly packaged by default. And the WotC solution to this problem is to...take the versatility away from the casters and leave the blah noncasters alone?

What really needs to happen is more customizability and more options, not less and fewer. The "hard core" players who want to tweak their characters and who can handle a ton of options are just fine with the complexity of high levels, and likely play at those levels for precisely that reason. The high number of epic level, gestalt, all-sources, high wealth, etc. PbP recruitment threads on this forum is ample evidence for that. The "casual" players who WotC thinks can't handle more than a dozen options at 20th level likely aren't the type to start the game off at the mid-high levels anyway, and if they do it's because they want to try something different and get out of their comfort zone.

And don't get me started on the "high levels are basically the same as low levels" comment. No they're not, and the (mis)understanding that they're just the same low-level stuff repackaged with bigger pluses is exactly why WotC can't write high-level adventures and material to save their collective life!

This is just repeating the same mistakes over and over--if the people who don't like 4e who you're trying to win over to 5e say they don't like classes having the same power structure with not enough options (a bunch of frontloaded class features and then one thing per level therafter) and don't like the "bonus treadmill" (attack bonus and AC scale in lockstep), don't give every 5e class the same power structure with not enough options and put the fighter on the bonus treadmill! This shouldn't be rocket science!