first off and most importantly, welcome home!!!
to continue, and these are my thoughts and opinions only (and does not reflect anyone else's opinions at all):
being a player of both a ped and a hatchie, i find the game to be a totally different game for both. i am not one of those peeps who seek 'balance' - really, what is balance? each person has their own definition of what balance is, so can any game truly BE balanced? - because i am not into the techniques or being super uber.
peds have their pluses and minuses - a multitude of skewls may seem like a plus, but so many choices can make it hard to decide how to 'best play' your character.
draggys have their pluses and minuses - having only one 'path', as it were, to level is easy and being able to fly and change into ped form are convenient, but draggys, however old and powerful, can never get an overall rating higher than 100.
everyone has quests and items and areas they can get to that the other race can. the idea is to have draggys and peds work together against our common enemy, not be envious of what the other races have or can do.
you want immersion, its quite like real life, don'tcha think?