Minn - I totally get what your're saying....so many people in this hobby make it a lot harder than it is. You're provably right, it might not be harder than 2stroke - they are just making it harder!
before i got into the hobby 3 months ago, everyone at the local park was making it seem like everything was so hard, and three months later I find that with the help that I get here and just making things simple, this is not hard at all. SO I will get my 4stroke and not listen to those that make it seem like it's SOO hard
everyone told me "oh if you don't get an instructor you're never going to learn. Well, my very first flight was without instructor (other than the sim) and it was fine. since then I've had one hard crash...that's all. I think it's not so bad for a person that had never flown an rc plane. I said the same thing in a different thread the other day and people went at me with knifes "oh how can you say that instructors are not good" -when I NEVER said that, they just assumed I said that because I said that I didn't use one.

thanks for the good advice Minn