Yes and no. They do try and cover three or four different archetypes with each class so at first glance it can appear to be bloated but when you are leveling up from first level then it is usually pretty straightforward. Choose a level 1 feat from a list of four, then choose a level 4 feat from a list of four adds upto around ten pages to cover 20 levels.
Now the real problem starts when you want to find where a particular rule is within the book. Honestly I dont know who their editor was but it makes the ADnD Dungeon Master Guide look well organised in comparison.
Yeah, I went back to glance at the classes and can see what you mean. The archetypes add extra padding to the class descriptions, plus each class seems to have their own unique feats with entries right in the class descriptions, which extends things considerably per class section. And the book's organization, with more than 600 freaking pages and no detailed table of contents (just start of chapter page, and that's it!) doesn't help.
But even then, I would say that classes are too "bloated" for my preference. Each class seems to get multiple special features, often on the same level--much more than 5e--and I already consider 5e to be too bloated for me. Though, I can see how from a player point of view just selecting one feat here or there per level might not be too much, but from a more macro level--specially from a GM point of view--when it comes to tracking and remembering what each class gets, and what each of its seemingly endless list of specialized feats does, it's too much.
I remember back in the day playing 2e, things were so simple I could remember what each class got without even looking at the books. If I wanted to improvise an encounter with class levels I could do it at the drop of a hat. Now every class comes packed with minor, seemingly random features at odd level intervals that are hard to keep track of.
I compare them to old D&D, with its simpler and more straightforward class structure, and easy to remember features, and wish I just had old school classes, but with periodic extra feats for customization, rather than every single level packed with odd features that break the rules in minor ways, provide some innocuous conditional benefit, or even stuff I would normally consider just standard combat options available to anyone, like a lot of the 5e Fighter/Battlemaster's "maneuvers" (disarm, trip, etc.).
One of the problems with these sorts of discussions is that some people just want something that isnt D&D with the D&D label slapped on. 4e out the gate was pretty much that.
Yeah, but the thread title ask what does YOUR perfect edition of D&D look like, not "limit yourself to some fixed preconception of what D&D is". So the topic already opens itself to flights of fancy, and it's not like WotC is gonna scout this thread for the next edition of D&D. Plus like I mentioned in my first post, I'm not sure what "D&D" even is anymore, given how much it's changed between editions. What is even the standard if we were just gonna limit ourselves to just "pure" D&D?
Like what? Kick down!
I haven't gotten too deep yet, but some of the stuff I liked was adding multiple ranks to Proficiencies (trained, expert, master or legendary), allowing you to improve your skills, and all ability scores starting at 10 by default, then improving in increments of 2 throughout character creation based on your Ancestry (race), Background, and Class selections, as well as a handful of extra improvements of your choice at the end (rolling scores is optional).
All Ancestries and Classes are also packed with specialized Feats, which are a bit too much for my tastes, like I mentioned above, but I can see the appeal for them and some of them can be interesting nonetheless. You also get extra Ancestry feats at fixed level intervals (every 5 levels IIRC) so you can also customize and improve your character based on their race. Characters also get Skill specific feats at certain levels to ensure skill development, so you can make some skill improvements without sacrificing your regular feats, which you could use for class abilities or other benefits instead.
And there's probably more stuff hidden in this gigantic 642 page tome I haven't gone through yet.