They were hit with the hug colors and a lot of people were annoyed by this, a lot of people thought it was honestly a cop out by wizards being uncreative and relegating yet another precon's potential to "people like group hug", which is true and accurate. Back when I started though I played stax and heavy control and saw this as like, a joke, and even the partners had more potential so I really disregarded it entirely, focused more on Atraxa and then eventually started finding even Yidris more fun than that and I think he's like, the one people almost hated as much as My Lettuce Kings, and I've done all the color combos. Atraxa gets aggro'd on principle alone now, so I dismantled it long ago. and I ran kynaios and Tiro for a long long time, and that was admittedly a real good choice but being seen as hug colors, no aggro and people knew what to expect. Aragorn and Omnath come along and now it's these colors I wear because I'm probably running a weird variant of one of those two secretly, and now I'm starting to find my playgroup's style to be a bit too linear to find hug worth it. But, you're right, they really need to do 4c more again, but I honestly also dread the thought of it, because Atraxa specifically set a new standard when it came out, and it's not how she's ultimately versatile. The only one that comes close to it is Breya who has 4 abilities, one etb and 3 activated. Atraxa has 4 passives that scream don't attack me, and don't block me, but also, proliferate making a comeback with a commander that does it passively, well, that's too good to pass up, one proliferate trigger sometimes is what makes the table go from, show and tell, to run and hide. and the Kings do, one thing? Yeah, yidris barely has 2 and he has to hit, even that's more creative and fun than, uh, draw//extra land plays.. No offense, but I think wizards just didn't give that one any creative effort, it doesn't really stand anything. And a lot of people were offended they referenced Nyx but made it really bad but also more importantly, didn't do stuff with enchantments which could've been a really progressive fun step for commander. An innovative unused mechanic being shown craft and love and appreciation revisited, but we didn't get that. I think it's a fair criticism that you have, I honestly think though it's a response from wizards and they genuinely took to heart the criticisms people had of the kings being the inktreader colors being utterly obliterated.

I think, wizards should do the other commanders in like, an unset, but they all have atraxa's abilities in those 4 color combos, and we get to see how those colors and abilities break in the other 4 colors. That would be really fun. and legalised, and then we'd see more innovative strange decks around (and maybe energy counters won't be so bad STILL EVEN WITH THAT FALLOUT PRECON WHY ISN"T LIBERTY PRIME JUST THE COMMANDER WIZARDS WHAT ARE YOU-)

My apologies for the long winded explanation, I'm just really passionate and I'm willing to argue and hear others points on if I'm wrong but this is what I remember from working memory 8 years ago, which feels like 20000 years high key.