I find it strange that people are comparing S3 to S4 when S4 seems to be borrowing a lot of points from S2.
It's like s3 to me for a few reasons:
1) Team Arrow is still overloaded; there are just far too many caped crusaders running around for my tastes. Would be nice to get some focus on 2-3 characters. Because there are so many characters/vigilantes now it feels like everyone is underdeveloped--characters got powered up incredibly fast off-screen and now all they really do is throw and take punches, keep secrets for no reason, or complain about something minor for some cheap Soap drama... just nothing interesting going on character development wise.
2) No mystery about the big bad (we immediately know him), and his intentions and methods thus far seem incredibly stupid (much like Ras). I NEED TO DESTROY THIS CITY... why? Because it needs to be like reborn or renewed or some shit idk man. Yeah like we haven't been down this road already...
3) Ollie is still super unlikable to me in this season thus far. This obviously varies from person to person, but I liked cold, calculating, determined sociopath Ollie from season 1. Not whiny, hypocritical, suburban Gordon Ramsay Ollie from s4.
4) The episodes these days just lack substance/purpose to me so far. Every episode is incredibly formulaic with about 20-30 minutes of an action scene we've seen 100 times with the same thugs we've seen 100 times involving the same squad we've seen 100 times. Arrow just needs a big boom/reboot/shakeup somewhere imo (I was hoping for this last season); hopefully the season death is a catalyst for this. Perhaps get out of star city for a season or something. And as much as I love the flashbacks, it's painfully obvious they have completely run out of ideas for them, and are just stringing flashback Ollie along because they feel obligated to maintain the formula? S3 flashbacks were the weakest by far and I'm not expecting much for S4 flashbacks--which is a shame, because I love the personality of flashback Ollie as he's the closest thing to s1 Ollie!.
Just not feeling it so far, but like others have said... I loved this show in s1 (and s2), so I'm still hoping we get some sort of shakeup idk.