I definitly agree with you as far as graphic issues are concerned but programming C4 is an other matter
It is not a defect just a characteristic
If an engine is very flexible than it is also hard to program and viceversa
However I must confess that I dont have so much experience with C4 the reason being that it supports Collada file format only
Thre are not so many good exporters for Collada
For example my XSI 5.1 Collada exporter can export to C4 static files only
now it seems that you can export also animated files via an FBX converter