I’m on the fence for most of this. As both DM and player, I find 5e incredibly bland and boring. But that’s personal taste really. Adding an additional feat for first level characters would help with the blandness and start to have differences between characters at first level.

But it’s hard to argue with the success 5e has had with attracting new players. I think there’s a good argument to be made that part of this success is due to the simplifications made in the game as a whole and particularly character creation.

I do really like D&D doing the work of bringing new players to the hobby, so I hope it keeps that as a priority.

Reminds me of the time I googled Orc jokes at the Pathfinder table and as I was reading them out it began to dawn on us that these were jokes from 70 years ago, but with the N word replaced with Orc… 😬