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There's a lot of bitching back and forth about how this incarnation should have just left 3e alone instead of beating a dead horse. I agree insofar as I haven't seen many concepts from 4e (as I understand it) in the playtest matarial, so I was curious:

If DDN was going to be using ONLY 4e matarial to produce a revised verison of the rules, what would you scrap? What would you change and why?

If DDN would have to be based on 4E I would suggest doing it like my current admittedly quite mutilated version of houseruled 4E.

I have divided up the mechanics of the combat roles to all be about various types of advantage.

Your class gives you Power Attacks as you level up, these are on par with Encounter powers in strenght, however, you can use them any number of times per encounter.

Instead of limiting them on the encounter/daliy uses way, they are limited by certain types of advantages.

Some striker abilities, like the rogue's attacks, can only be used on combat advantage.
Some striker abilities can only be used when you dont move at all, or when you charge more than a certain distance.
The defender power attacks can be used whenever someone violates a mark or provokes an attack of opportunity.

This makes combat more tactical as everyone is trying to maneuver into position to do their Power Attacks while trying to not let the enemies get theirs off.

This especially works great with defender enemies as player really think twice before violating a mark or provoking opportunity attacks from something that deals a lot more damage and applies conditions when you do. It is also ewarding to be able to do stuff again when you manage to get the same tactical advantage.

I also allow multiple overlapping marks on the same creature.

Here is an NPC that illustrates the idea a bit.

Tarvollen High Guard - Swordsman    Level 4 Soldier Medium Natural Humanoid   XP 175
Initiative +6 Senses Perception +7
HP 55; Bloodied 27
AC 22; Fortitude 18, Reflex 16, Will 16
Speed 5
M Longsword (Standard; at-will) ♦ Weapon
+ 12 vs AC; 1d10+4 damage Effect: The target is marked until the end of next turn.
M Shield Bash (Standard; at-will) ♦ Weapon
+10 vs Fortitude; 4 damage and the target is pushed 1 square. Effekt: Target is marked until end of next turn.
m Longsword Advance (Immediate Interrupt; at-will) ♦ Weapon
Trigger: A marked enemy violates the mark. May shift 1 before the attack. +12 vs AC; 3d8 + 4 damage Effect: Target is marked
m Shield Advance (Immediate Interrupt; at-will) ♦ Weapon
Trigger: A marked enemy violates the mark. May shift 1 before the attack. +10 vs Fort; 1d6 + 4 damage and the target is pushed 2 squares and knocked prone. Effect: Target is marked
Phalanx Soldier
The Guard gains a +2 bonus to AC while adjacent to at least one guard ally.
Alignment Unaligned Languages Taran
Skills Insight +7, Intimidate +9, Streetwise +9
Str 16 (+5) Dex 13 (+3) Wis 11 (+2) Con 16 (+5) Int 10 (+2) Cha 14 (+4)
Equipment Banded mail, longsword, large shield

I'm a huge fan of 4e.  I like it at a structural level, and by that I mean I like the fundamental design choices of the edition.  The priority towards balance, the unified progression (in itself an extension of the balance goal), the keyword-based design, etc.

I also like it at a stylistic, tonal level.  I like that the mechanics emphasize high heroics, and cinematic action.  I like that the "world" as presented is ideal for adventuring, and not overly concerned with metaphysical explanations for things.  For example, the cosmology is focused on having planes that evoke the tropes of fantasy, rather than planes that codify structure and exist only to explain game elements ("Good" exists because there is a Plane of Good, and "Fire" exists because there is a Plane of Fire, etc).

In short, I like that the rules are codified and clear (for ease of play) and the world is loose and free (for ease of storytelling).  These are my preferences, and I make no claim to the superiority or objectivity of them.

That being said, there is much I would change.

1) Get rid of what I call "number porn", or numbers increasing arbitrarily.  PC's attacks and defenses increase in order to keep pace with monsters defenses and attack, which increase in order to keep pace with the ever-increasing attacks and defenses of PC's.  It gets a bit silly, when you think about it.

2) The Christmas Tree Effect.  While less obscene than it was in 3e, the Christmas Tree Effect was still present, and still annoying.  Partly (or entirely) due to the persistent need to keep up with a steadily rising monster stats, PCs had to have a A) a weapon, B) an armor, and C) a neck-slot item, and had to regularly upgrade them, if they wanted to be able to reasonably interact with the challenges of adventuring.  This was solved partway with Inherent Bonuses, but that was only a band-aid.  Inherent Bonuses still fed into the Number Porn from issue #1.

Thankfully, DDN is embracing Bounded Accuracy, which goes a looooooong way to solving both of these "problems".  Bounded Accuracy keeps both monsters and PCs from needlessly increasing their numbers to keep pace with each other, and allows magic items to truly be a bonus, one that can remain relevant for the entire career of the PC.  My fighter can now truly keep his Grandfather's Sword, that symbol of his family's honor, and not be crippled against the [insert crazy-ass monster] several levels later.

3) Too many conditions.  This is a two-way street.  I actually like that 4e had a much more constrained conditions list.  3e, from what I remember (I no longer have my 3e books) had a much longer list of possible conditions.  That said, there are far too many ways in 4e to add what conditions were present.  Between wizards and other controllers stacking condition after condition on a single target, locking it down to the point of uselessness, to reams of conditions, all with their own timing and tracking needs...it just became too much.

Rather than having powers/abilities/spells apply conditions, I think I'd prefer not having any conditions at all as we know them (prone, paralyzed, stunned, dazed, asleep, etc).  Instead, I'd like to see something much simpler, like "lose a turn" or "lose an action", and let the players and DM narrate in what form these penalties come, in accordance to their needs and narrative.  "Oh, this ability knocks someone over?  Then that someone loses an action as they get back up" or even the reverse like "This ability causes my target to lose an action.  I'll describe it as knocking the guy on his butt."  Fewer rules with broader applications.

4) Too many off-turn actions.  This, for me, is the single largest contributor to combat length bloat.  While some degree of off-turn actions are welcome to enhance tactical play and serve to break up the monotony of round-robin, you-go-I-go combat, when you have too many of them, it slows everything down.  Having actions taken out-of-turn "cost" you your next action is a fine compromise.

5) Feat bloat.  There are couple of reasons for feat bloat, and all of them need to be addressed in separate fashions.  One of the first reasons is simply bad design.  When you have lots of feats that offer small bonuses in narrow circumstances, you have lots of feats that simply won't be picked because they won't come into play often enough to warrant selection.  All they accomplish is add to the bloat.  Far better to have fewer feats that offer significant changes to the PC.

Second reason is feat patches.  If some game element isn't working as intended (due to design oversight or whatnot), far better to errata and update rather than release yet another feat.  Not only does that create an otherwise unneeded feat that adds to bloat, but it "costs" the player a valuable character design resource that could be better spent elsewhere. 

Third reason is several feats that are similar in form and function, but different in only a small way.  There are a series of feats in 4e, for example, that provide bonuses to energy-type attacks.  Astral Fire, Burning Blizzard, Dark Fury, etc, are all feats that do the same basic thing (bonus to attacks with specific energy-type), and have very similar requirements (13 in certain stats).  Probably better to have just one feat that says something like "Gain X bonus in energy type(s) of your choice.  Requires a 13 in 2 of the following: Int, Wis, Cha."  Yeah, it is less specific, but it cuts down on lots of needless distinction.

6) Power bloat.  One of the downsides to the established design of 4e is that every class had its own powers, from levels 1-30.  When two classes are similar and need similar tools (like two battlefield controlling defender classes both needing a way to knock enemies down, or away), the designers had to make separate powers for each of them.  I think having powers from a common pool that anyone can pick up, or at least anyone of a particular power source (like Martial, or Divine) or particular role (like Defender, or Striker) would cut down on a lot of bloat.

No need to have 3 separate powers do more or less the same thing in slightly different ways.  Better to have one power that is modified in execution based on class features.

7) Daily Powers as "Dailies".  There are three sorts of time-keeping in an RPG.  There's real-world time, as in the hours the group spends at the table; game-time, as in the time that the characters experience; and there are sequence-timers, like turns and rounds, that are not inherently connected to any time construct at all, and exist only as a game mechanic, though many do get an associated "game-time" like a "round" lasting approximately 6 seconds.

In 4e, at-wills and encounter powers are tied to game constructs.  The at-will power is tied to a turn.  If it is your turn, you can perform this action.  There is not a specific time frame for this action.  Maybe it takes 1 second.  Maybe it takes 10.  6 seconds is a common association.   The rules don't care.  As far as the rules are concerned, it takes a turn, however long a turn happens to be.  The encounter power is tied to the similarly nebulous encounter.  Maybe an encounter takes 1 round, or 5, or even 10.  Maybe those rounds equal 5 minutes, or maybe half an hour.  Generally, the advice is that an encounter is about 5 minutes long (just as a turn/round is about 6 seconds).  But ultimately, an encounter power can be re-used at the next encounter, however long that is.  Furthermore, I would rename "encounter" as "scene", to established narrative connection.

Yet daily powers aren't tied to a nebulous game mechanic.  They are tied to an in-world game-time, a "day" that exists as 24 hours in the world of the campaign.  If I were to change things, I'd tie the "daily" powers to something more of a game construct, like "the adventure", or (to reference something already existent in 4e) "the milestone".

The alternative is to tie everything into actual game-time.  Every 6 seconds, every 5 minutes, every day, but I think that would be overly tedious to track fiddly numbers.  The abstract measurements of rounds, scenes, and adventures is far suitable.

*******

So those are my primary changes.  I can think up more, but most anything more is tied to one of those 5 issues at their core.  Change those 7 things, and I imagine 99% of my other issues with 4e vanish.