What went wrong?

>
The first adventure module for it was a railroady, poorly-designed piece of garbage that put a blemish on it from the start.
To be fair, it's because the system wasn't finished as the adventure was being finished. It's why your party can encounter both an adult white dragon and a full vampire in the same dungeon.

Unless you are running AL games there is plenty of WotC materials and quality 3rd party stuff. I'm glad the first party published goods are focused on adventures and DM centric books.

They went back to magic supremacy and haven't even made a token effort to balance the classes
Also, the people that made it obviously can't do math: Some "balanced" encounters will TPK and others will be stupidly easy.

Nothing went wrong. They made a streamlined version of 3rd edition which appealed to a lot of people. The only thing that I can say went wrong is that they released it about sixteen years to late for me to care about it personally.

This

I really want Critical Role to go the fuck away.

OP I'm going to give you the straight scoop.

They tried to pander to grognards.

This is a mistake because grognards are all playing AD&D and don't give a fuck about new editions.

Fighter and rogue are still underpowered as fuck, monk and ranger are total shit, and the game lacks flexibility.

The ability score caps mixed with all races getting a +2 to different abilities plus getting a +2 every four levels means you are effectively standing on a stepstool under a low ceiling and jumping. Repeatedly.

Bounded accuracy is fucking shit. It's a good idea but they took it way too far.

The adventure modules are kike crap except for Curse of Strahd which is actually really good.

It is only successful because it is "safe" and watching all these spergs literally praise a game just for not trying anything new and thus not being TOTAL SHIT, just goes to show why D&D is a broken game that is going down in flames.

If you play D&D, kill yourself. You're a cancer on the gaming community. Play games like Dungeon World that are far better designed and promote small indie devs like Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel.

>REEEE WHY DOES NO ONE PLAY MY HIPSTER INDIE-SHIT SYSTEM. FUCKING NORMIES the post
Here's your (You) spend it on some deodorant and to wash that retarded pink dye out of your hair and unkempt beard.

This. They didn't slaughter nearly enough sacred cows. At least Vancian casting isn't as terrible as it used to be, but at the same time, the magic/melee divide still exists and no real effort was put into fixing.

Also seconding the CRs being fucking weird, with some CR 1 creatures doing enough damage to one-shot level 3-4 characters, and some CR 3 creatures being easy enough that a party of level 1s could take them on.

I'm an asshole in that I don't let my players use homebrew shit they found on the internet. The only 5e compatible third party stuff I've seen that doesn't appear to be total garbage is the bestiary and spell book put out by Frog God. I'm certainly open to suggestions, though.
I don't know if I'd call a handful of new races and archetypes "plenty" but to each their own.

>Also seconding the CRs being fucking weird, with some CR 1 creatures doing enough damage to one-shot level 3-4 characters, and some CR 3 creatures being easy enough that a party of level 1s could take them on.

[citation needed]

He was right about them pandering to Grogs and failing, but otherwise he's just another whining hipster.

I don't have any specific examples but the CR balancing does seem wonky. I've yet to have an encounter that challenges my players instead of it outright killing them or being a cakewalk.

>It is . . . successful
>D&D is a broken game that is going down in flames.
You really should try harder than not at all, Virt.

Your mother didn't abort you.

>Play games like Dungeon World
I didn't need to fully read the whole thing to know it was Virt. A quick skim is all you need.

>The only 5e compatible third party stuff I've seen that doesn't appear to be total garbage is the bestiary and spell book put out by Frog God
Those are some of the most garbage 3rd party stuff out there, though.

besides what everyone else has said already?

Biggest, most glaring design flaw of 5e is NOT the lack of options, but the lack of synergy between options. Don't get me wrong, everything here is an issue, but the main problems is how little each option interacts with others. I can't think of a single combination of class/archetype/feat/magic-item that both improve the same thing without countering each-other (except for the pitiful statboost some feats come with).
You will never, for example, see that you have an archetype that lets you add CON to AC, and decided to take a feat that lets you use CON for will-saves. Even the most rudimentary synergy that's found in every other RPG on the market is almost nowhere in 53.

High-level play is fucking retarded. High-end boss monsters have stupidly broken Lair Abilities that, instead of buffing the monster like a good mechanic would, instead nerf the party significantly (especially if you're a spellcaster).

The pandering is unbelievable. Trying to market it to the nostalgic adult who hasn't played in years and to the hipster who thinks DnD is the new thing to do to seem unique.

The only good thing they added was rerolls.

Basically, it's about as shit as all other DnD editions, but the actual meat and substance of the game is too boring to distract you from this fact.
Next time you want to play DnD, just use Mutants and Masterminds as the system instead of whatever bullshit WotC is pushing this decade.

>I'm open to suggestions

>You will never, for example, see that you have an archetype that lets you add CON to AC, and decided to take a feat that lets you use CON for will-saves.

I'll tell you why, though, and it's pretty simple. Besides the obvious fact that straight up, they're not publishing player options period, I mean.

The reason is because they don't care about this thing that 3.5 invented called "builds". They don't care about having a way to make Fighter A mechanically different from Fighter B. To Wizards, that's all stuff you should be doing without the use of mechanics.

Not to mention holy FUCK is every list so limited. I play a lot of 5E with different characters every time, and every time I play a spellcaster, I just end up sitting there bored because I have so few spell slots and fucking nothing worth using.

And let's never forget that the game is 50% 3.5 crunch, and 50% rules-like "the DM should make it up", not because anyone on the team thought that was good design, but because halfway through their development process of NEXT, someone said "Hey, Dungeon World and it's clones are real popular now. Let's just fill every blank space with a line about how the DM should make it up, and call it finished. Print it!"

It's not even that there are so few options. Even the options they do have don't interact together. I've seen more synergy in games like Savage Worlds than I have in 5e.
They were afraid of making another powergamer's system like 3.5, and avoided this by gutting any meaningful synergy. They threw the baby, bathtub, floor, sink, and tiles out with the bathwater.

5e is what happens when you take a rules-heavy system and strip away as much as you can until it's "rules lite."

Except that 5E isn't rules-lite. It's crunchy as hell. There's a TON of rules, but there's no actual logical parallel between which rules they kept and which ones they through out, as there really wasn't any design that went into it.

This is how 5E design went:
>Ok, so we've got D&D. That means D20 rolls, classes, levels, magic items, skill checks, feats and some other stuff.
>That all has to stay in, because if we remove it, it won't be D&D anymore.
>Ok, what else can we remove?

And the result is you have a game that half wants to be rules-lite, and half wants to be "legacy D&D", because those are sacred cows they can't remove.

So now you have a system that is crunchy in places that make no sense, non-crunchy in places that make no sense, and doesn't mesh with itself in any way that makes any sense.

>The reason is because they don't care about this thing that 3.5 invented called "builds". They don't care about having a way to make Fighter A mechanically different from Fighter B. To Wizards, that's all stuff you should be doing without the use of mechanics.
A thousand fucking times this.
When I looked at 5e, what really got to me me was the fact that everything looked so fucking samey it hurt. I mean, when I first went to Fighter, I looked at the five pages dedicated to what the Fighter could do, and I thought,
>"That's it? All of it?"
>"Where's the rest of it? There has to be more."
>"More feats, more options, more paths, more ANYTHING."
The fact that the God damned Soldier in SW Saga Edition has more options than the 5e Fighter AND uses a whole page less is a fucking crime against humanity.

>ITT Butthurt because mechanical options are "not available" or "limited".

I need muh options and muh modifiers and muh codified shizzle or it's a bad game design. Waaah.

I thought Virt hated Dungeon World? When did this change?

It doesn't have to be GURPS-tier splatbooks for everything, but come the fuck on, are you serious?
If you're supposed to make shit up as you go along like you do with Cortex Plus or FATE, then do that. But they didn't do that, because status effects and levels and hit points and modifiers and detailed spell descriptions still exist, meaning the game still lies within the limitations of the mechanics and what you can do is ACTUALLY and not figuratively limited to what the mechanics say you can.
If you're supposed to make a specialized build and generate a character where fluff and crunch mesh, then the game should provide options to do this, like GURPS and other point-buy systems do.
So it doesn't let you have the freedom of light game mechanics and it doesn't let you have the versatility or power of heavy game mechanics.
It lies in a painfully generic and mediocre middle ground where rushing your 20 STR/WIS/DEX and Great Weapon Master is more important than anything about how your character came from a lineage of warriors (which doesn't, in fact, affect the game worth a damn unless your DM stretches the power of backgrounds, awards Inspiration extensively, or flat-out ignores the rules) or studied the Black Wolf Style (which costs your character at least three levels in Barbarian and his Fighter Capstone to emulate in any meaningful way).

>remove Strength and a half for two handing a weapon
>add the Versatile trait that lets has you rolling one die above the normal roll
>i.e. two-handing increases damage by an average of one point
>putting Knowledge Religion, or whatever the equivalent name is, into Int
>stripping out mounts to the point that the rules for Mounted Combat are mostly about mounting and dismounting rather than changed AC, targeting, etc.

Only major gripes off the top of my head. I think the lack of shields is well enough known.

You'd better not look at any D&D book published prior to 1989 or so. You'd have a goddamn heart attack.

I completely understand if you don't give two shits about mechanics/customization. Personally, these aspects are among the most important in a system, but I'm not gonna sit here and claim my personal preference is superior to yours.

That being said, there's a large population of people who consider this very important - for whom a lot of the fun of an RPG comes in rolling up a new character in a class they've never played before.
It is EXTREMELY bad game design to create a system that is so crunch-oriented yet completely lacking in good mechanics. These are the kinds of people who actually play these games, and if you can't provide crunch and mechanical depth, these people aren't gonna play your game.
The fact that pathfinder still exists is testament to this fact.

Okay, let's put that into context. The game of the year for 1989 by Gamist awards was fucking Tetris.
If you're going to polish Tetris, maybe two mechanics in the modern day and expect me to buy it for anything more than a buck or so, you're delusional.
Attempting to remake the original Dungeons and Dragons with a new sheen of paint and calling it the next big thing and a breakthrough of the gaming industry won't cut it. It just won't, beside the niche of 'the rules don't really matter and are just guidelines, homebrew every other thing', which is the only thing I've found 5e good for, and if you'll notice, that type of play has ignoring or rewriting the rules hard-written into it.
When Rule Zero is the rule you call on the most to run a game, it's poorly designed. It functions because a good DM runs it, not because it runs on a good ruleset. Like a good video game designer can make a good game for an inefficient and weak system.

Its because one 5e edition figther can do more things easily than a pathfinder one.
You dont need 3 feats to fight efectively with a rapier
You dont need a guide to make a switch hitter is something that a figther can do naturally.
You dont need tons of feats to have manouvers and styles.
In my opinion 5e and AD&D figthers are the best of D&D.

user saga,D&D 3º 3.5, and pathfinder dont give options they chop the figther as they like and then they give options to fill the gaps with feats and archetypes.

3rd ed. for tards

>The game of the year for 1989 by Gamist awards was fucking Tetris.
That's because Gamist is shit.
Games released in '89 include such things as Super Mario Land, Castlevania 3, and Phantasy Star 2.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1989_video_games

I'll give you feat taxes, but I'm not inclined to agree with you when what I see is
>get 40% of your useful features at 3rd level
>get slightly better at everything every level afterwards
>get extra ASIs, so basically what 3.5 did but less so?
The two things 5e did right were proficiency bonuses and (dis)advantage.
Having played 5e since before it was released (did some NEXT playtesting at my LGS), I'm more disappointed than anything.
Goddammit, when did I turn into a grognard?
Now let me rot in peace as I dream up a fantasy heartbreaker that will never exist in published form and play systems I can't invest enough time into to improve.

DM Guild is limited to Forgotten Realms material only so people who might make quality stuff that deviates wildly from that setting are forced to navigate the nightmare that is the OGL.

2+ years of life always the same classes
Ranger is terrible
SCAG is the worst manual ever realesd
After 10 lv the game sucks hard

The halfling artwork.

I'm glad that feat stacking 'build' bullshit is gone. Nothing worse than being unable to drop interesting or plot relevant gear and items because the spergs at the table don't want to lose their cool combos. Also, the more a system allows players to focus on stacking one stat, the worse it gets. I've never seen a system where this wasn't the case.

Too much room for optimization and broken synergy is bad, obviously, but this is only after a point. every RPG needs at least some room for mechanical character variance (or else you might as well be playing Lord of the Dice).

5e is severely lacking in this department, and suffers for it.

Marketing, mostly. The D&DNext thing was a bit awkward and caused them to make too much of the idea of "pulling from all previous editions" and "modularity" which cost them the opportunity to make a strong, clear case for themselves off the bat.

I'd have teased it with add/billboards/signboards that said "2 + 3 = 5" with the WotC logo at the bottom to build up a little bit of hype. Then arrange for a presentation at pretty much any major con and announce that 5th edition is coming, that will combine 2's creativity with a more streamlined version of 3's rules, that the basic rules will be free, and that play will be designed for the "Big 3" books + a single sourcebook with an optional "organized play" guide in the works.

WotC probably would have never gone with it given how committed some of the marketers were to pushing it as "the edition made for everybody everywhere" but I think 2+3=5 would have done better in the long run by giving everybody a clear idea what to expect and helping the people who would actually like 5e's style of play find it much faster.

Sure, I'd love a second book of expanded archetypes and feats, but especially with how few you get I'd rather they be package deals. If you want to master swords, there should be one feat for that, not a 5 step feat chain over the course of the character.

Also, the point at which it becomes that is closer than most think. Variant human is rated extremely high for martial builds, for example, simply because it gets a feat out the gate. That alone should caution people on feat synergy.

Why not have a feat that gets better as your proficiency modifier goes up?
Like, instead of one feat requiring two others, one feat 'improves' into another, and can 'improve' into two different feats at a later level.
It would be a start, I guess.

It's open to Ravenloft now, too.
The general impression is that as they introduce (or rather reintroduce) new settings they'll add them as a supported setting for the service.

They're taking their time, which is irksome, but on the whole it's pretty fair I say. Can't fault them with wanting to establish tone and direction for their settings.

It's also worth noting that Forgotten Realms also includes Kara-Tur, Maztica, and Zakhara, so there's carte blanch for writing and selling adventures and general content to those ends, as well as them allowing setting-agnostic stuff like multiplanar adventures using the shared cosmology.
And, given that Sigil's straight-up in the DMG and is a canonical part of that shared multiverse, you can also do Planescape stuff.

>Forgotten Realms also includes Kara-Tur, Maztica, and Zakhara
If you want to get really technical about things, Forgotten Realms includes all pic related and Realmspace, so there's even more room for bullshitting something up.

It's not that they have to be chains. It's just that they have to interact. Even a little.

Lets take your example of a sword-master fighter. Obviously we're gonna want to play a fighter, and we're gonna want to use a fighter archetype that gives us bonuses for specifically using swords... except there is none.

Well that's OK, we'll just use one of these good, general archetypes that work with swords (and everything else). So, we have our class, our archetype, our first feat; we're ready to go adventuring.

So we go adventuring until we hit level 8, and, oh look, we get our second feat. Well, we already have our sword-master feat, so maybe we'll take a feat that combo's well with our sword-mastery. Maybe we'll take something like Power Attack, so we hit harder with our greatsword. Or, we could get something like Improved Critical to tear people to bits with our scimitars... except there are no feats like that.

That's fine, we'll just get Improved Athletics, since it gives a very marginal boost to strength. What an interesting, worthwhile, memorable upgrade. Truly 'build' defining. But that's OK, we keep adventuring until we raid this massive dungeon. filled with all sorts of loot - and hey, look, its one of those magic headband thingys that gave +4 strength in previous editions... Except now it just locks your strength at 19. It was already at 18. The headband - your most prized and potent magic item - does nothing for you.

Are you starting to see why I don't like 5e's character customization?

Are we talking about the Whatever of X Strength? I thought those had always set your STR to a given number.

Nope. They gave flat bonuses to stats in previous editions.

Obviously you wouldn't see that in 5e, though. That could maybe bring your stat to above 20, of all things. Disgusting! Stats higher than 20 are unnatural witchraft.
If the gods wanted us to have more than a +11 to melee at max level, we wouldn't be playing 5e.

But that's besides the point.

>They gave flat bonuses to stats in previous editions.
Only 3.X and 4e, prior to that they were set strength numbers, with the exact strength determined by random roll.

It's funny that people are so butthurt about the stat caps. In 2nd Edition, PCs couldn't have a natural attribute above 19, and nothing at all could have more than a 25 in any attribute.

Suddenly, they are the worst thing ever.

...not really. I mean, not to pick apart your item example, but there are magic belts that put your STR past the attainable cap, which will always be amazing for melee characters. The gauntlets are for the rogue and cleric if they want to moonlight.

As to your feat example, I would love a feat that gives more techniques like whirlwind, power attack etc, but it's not like that is specifically linked to swords. Besides, there IS power attack, it's called Great Weapon Master.

Basically I'm okay with improved athletics being your secondary choice, or even something else like Actor to round out the character. If there are 9 feats for 'optimal' sword mastery people feel obligated to take them.

Oh really? OK. 2e was before my time, and I've never really looked at it much (except for its weird/cool art).

The operative word being "natural" attribute. This is not a natural attribute. This is an attribute enhanced by rare and potent magics, giving me the strength of ten men.
There is no reason why it should be capped at an arbitrary level, especially if monsters and other NPCs are not similarly capped.

every belt of giant strength variant pushes your srtength above 20, as does the barb capstone. So while rare, it's already been included in the game and probably will again in the future.

That always kind of bugged me anyways. I mean, why optimize a stat if a magic item is going to end up replacing it anyways? You'd be better off taking all 14s or whatever and deal with the 10% accuracy penalty until it eventually gets fixed.

Not the guy you're talking to, but...

>a fighter archetype that gives us bonuses for specifically using swords...except there is none.
Well now, that depends: better how? More accurate? Have tried-and-true tricks up your sleeve? Let's start with the concept. What are you envisioning when you say you want a swordmaster?

>So we go adventuring until we hit level 8, and, oh look, we get our second feat
Fighters also get an ASI at 6; they're designed so you can experiment more with feats than other classes and so get more ability score increases with which to swap out, or just throw those points around for more expertise or versatility as the case may be.
It also means they suffer much less for multiclassing.

>sword-master feat
Do you mean the Blade Mastery feat from that recent Unearthed Arcana?

>Power Attack
Great Weapon Mastery, if you aren't offended by holding a longsword in two hands.
It also nets you some cleave ability on crit or kill.

>That's fine, we'll just get Improved Athletics, since it gives a very marginal boost to strength.
If you want to boost your Str. just put 2 points in Str instead of getting a feat.

>The headband - your most prized and potent magic item
...the one you just got? Got attached to that pretty quick.

>Are you starting to see why I don't like 5e's character customization?
Frankly, I understand it less than I did before.

I can not stand stat caps because they remind me of 2e, which houses a majority of the terrible campaigns and game groups I was in during that time.

I honestly believe a lot of shit that turned people off of dnd were the dms that finally had to start branching out for players since their pool of players dried up then went back to how they were doing things before they trapped new victims.

It's sadly a two-way street. Flat +'s to stats encourage stacking nothing but those, and they are unambiguously for the local fighter/barb/pally/whatever. Stat setting items are better in situations I described earlier, where someone who might like some str but doesn't want to invest heavily in it uses them. Ultimately, all of those belts are super rare, so unless your DM is very willing to pander then leaving your stats low is a fool's errand imo. The optimization you gain from a hypothetical best case scenario isn't worth risking having the worst case scenario.

It's the best D&D edition.

But still a very mediocre RPG game.

Why is he so active lately?

Any system that does not mow my lawn, suck my dick and do my taxes for me as I play is shit and all your games in these inferior systems are pathetic stabs in the dark at true roleplaying. You should feel like shit for playing them and move on with your sad, pathetic life. Real men love curves, bacon, hoo-rah.

>Matthew Mercer's homebrew is of questionable quality but has dominated the DMs Guild's "most-purchased products" section since the site's inception, for little reason besides him being a celebrity of sorts.

It could be because people actually like his work, which - if you had ever visited a 5e thread - would know people do.

>There is no reason why it should be capped at an arbitrary level, especially if monsters and other NPCs are not similarly capped.
They have a different cap. Not no cap. Besides, D&D has always had NPCs play by different rules. Before recent games had action points, healing surges and other shit that NPCs don't have, older editions had class levels and morale rolls for NPCs.

I like the caps both for thematic reasons, and because if they didn't exist people would just pump their attack stat and little else.

>It could be because people actually like his work, which - if you had ever visited a 5e thread - would know people do.
He already had a following for his voice acting and for Critical Role. He also got his Gunslinger and Blood Hunter or whatever on there as basically the first DMs Guild products, that were purposely pimped by Wizards to get people to use the site.

Some people like his stuff, certainty, but exposure and a pre-existing following are certainly the better part of their success, same with basically any product anywhere.

Sure.

...I don't see the problem.

You can't be arguing that WotC don't put the spotlight on other work in the DM's Guild, because they do.

I think you need to calm down user.
5e isn't your mother. I'm sure there's a black dick 5e hasn't sucked yet.

That's not a hipster you dumb shit, it's just virt false flagging. And you fell for it.

He still hates it, he's just false flagging.

It's design is pretty conservative. It's a fixed, streamlined 3.5. Which, unless you preferred 4e, makes it the best version of AD&D. There's nothing objectively wrong with it, but it doesn't do anything new. It fixes the worst flaws of 3.5 but doesn't do anything to improve the game that isn't just fixing flaws. It doesn't advance the mechanics.

D&d 5ed is 3.5 + aD&D + 4th ed. for retardeds

>What went wrong?

I don't know what went wrong, please tell me user. I play in 5e campaigns twice a week and there's a growing circle of 14 friends all clamouring to get in on campaigns.

Nothing went wrong. It's a great game. Saging as usual.

What a weird-looking cat. I've never seen that colouring in a real animal.

Paranoia thy name is user.

I like how virt went from "namefag" to "guy who shitposts about certain topic" to "literally every post I don't like is virt, even stuff that contradicts things virt has said in the past, because it's all a massive virt conspiracy."

I never thought I'd regret seeing that asshole banned, but nine months later people are still accusing everyone else of being virt.

Being a shitty DM in the single most home brew friendly edition of D&D will result in disappointment. What's different approving 3rd party stuff from customizing sourcebooks for your campaign anyways?

Or are you the kitchen sink not-Europe with kitsune type?

>Pathfinder exists yet 5e has easily overtaken it, but there are not enough players to target with a system like 5e

Ever heard of ban evasion?
And it doesn't matter if it's actually virt, it's still someone acting exactly like him.

>someone acting exactly like him

What, someone making bad, overly wordy arguments? Welcome to Veeky Forums- next to Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums, we're the most pretentious fucks in this shithole. Doesn't mean everyone is your boogeyman.

They forgot to make it fun.

You lose a massive amount of authority over your own character and it's hard to make anything interesting. It's like going from Lego to Duplo, except with considerably less room to be creative or unique.

Pretty sure 4e fighter is the best it has ever been and ever will be.

>dat spear shield pushing
>dat polearm reach and control
>dat flail sliding
>dat hammer dazing

nothing went wrong you shit lord it's the best edition with the best storytelling tools rather than shitty combat calculator simulator.

I don't like the concept of the adventurer's league though. same with the pathfinder society. fucking 0 story and roleplaying. if I want to play a turn based combat I would play a game on my pc rather than calculating shit at a table with fat neckbeards on my free time.

>inb4 if you need mechanics to make your characters unique you can't roleplay

>le Virt boogeyman

>What are you envisioning when you say you want a swordmaster?
Ask the other guy. He mentioned sword-mastery, and I ran with the concept. I'd imagine, though, that it would be an archeytpe that has a number passive or active abilities concerning swords and their use. It could, for example, give you advantage on X attack rolls with a sword per short rest.

>Fighters also get an ASI at 6
The specific level was not what was being argued.

>Do you mean the Blade Mastery feat
No. I did not know this feat existed, and was referring to the hypothetical feat the other user mentioned.

>Great Weapon Mastery
Excuse my ignorance, I only own the PHB for 5e. Again, I was just thinking of a well known feat in a hypothetical sense to make an example.

>just put 2 points in Str
What an interesting, worthwhile, memorable upgrade.

>got attached to that pretty quick
It's the most powerful magic item you own, obtained from the first major dungeon you cleared. You know, the kinds of dungeons with powerful liches and sleeping dragons, not whatever cave the local Ogre warlord is sleeping in.

>Frankly, I understand it less than I did before
Let me give you some real world examples, then, instead of all hypotheticals. In my current game of Shadowrun, I'm playing a street shaman focussed on summoning. The core of this specialization is a benefit which gives me +2 to summoning, but I've also decided to augment this by taking a mentor spirit that makes summoning water spirits easier.
Do you see how two mostly unrelated options work together, and allow my character to play to his strengths? It is my argument that 5e's feats/options cannot do this, and that they don't interact with each-other nearly as well as the feats/options in every other RPG on the market.

1) I never said they were a majority, just that they were a significant population.
2) Judging by roll20 stats, if you look at pathfinder and 3.5 combined, it's almost neck-and-neck with 5e in terms of popularity.

No, it's just fun to make a creative character as well. The abilities they impose on you are so strange and specific that they intrude on the flavor, especially with Ranger and Druid. All those abilities should have been options among many instead of a forced default.

It's not a zero-sum game. While roleplay is what makes one character unique, it's the actual mechanics that make your character FEEL unique. If there's little to no mechanical difference between "grizzled old knight veteren" and "traveling samurai duelist," people are less inclined to play the traveling duelist, since they've already played the grizzled old vet. If you do play the traveling duelist, gameplay becomes samey and boring.
This isn't a problem in games like World of Darkness or Dark Heresy, which are more focussed on politics and story-telling rather than DnD's combat-focussed dungeon crawling (ironically, both these rpgs have various options available to the player and flourish because of it).

If you want the only differences between characters to be skin deep instead of actual mechanical difference, just play pdf related. God knows, it's easy enough to transfer roleplay elements from one system to another.

>Great Weapon Mastery
>Excuse my ignorance, I only own the PHB for 5e
Great weapon master is in the PHB

>feats don't interact
Sentinel + polearm master would like a word

It's really boring.

Dart fighter builds were a thing in 2e

And yet the marketing machine ran on full gear when it came out. You can sell nerds anything as awesome.

You had me up until shilling Dungeon World.