maybe the component system's main purpose is to present a very flexible editor, where artists and non-professional or even non-programmers can assemble complex objects easily, do a lot of simple game logic, e.g. door openings, character control, and other stuff like a complete unique sky and weather system, or trigger started effects by the new Kismet called Blueprint. it makes life really easier and game development faster, not only a toy, and can be combined with C++ classes. unfortunately the C++ programming part is not really well documented currently, only a few starter tutorials are available. so I'm just discovering it very slowly, not leaving my 3dgs stuff behind...