When I opened up D&D 4e, just reading the book was enjoyable to me and the way it was laid out was fresh. Up until that point, every tabletop book I've read had pointless obfuscation, bad page layouts, and a severe lack of templating.
Unfortunately, the backlash to 4e seems to have prevented a focus on clarity and gameplay from becoming a trend. While there is nothing wrong with criticizing games, it seemed to me that there was an older legacy of gamers that saw improvement as a threat. Sort of like what happens when people that have a "back in my day, things sucked, and it was BETTER!" attitude and then go vote on policies that make life more difficult for people in a new age long after they are dead of old age.
Are there any other tabletop RPG books that have decided to go against the backlash by writing and designing in a style that uses templates, layouts, and mechanics to be as clear and playable as possible?
Ultimately I got tired of 4e just because the way powers were implemented had memory issues. It was clearly designed to require power cards or a character builder, and it saddens me that trying to play the game by the book involved an excessive amount of page-flipping. I'm looking into other systems and trying to find a game that adheres to some of the positive principles in 4e, including clarity, balance, and a focus on gameplay.