I think the main thing, stat-wise, that leads to un-fun is when there's imbalance within a party. It's dull to play a power fantasy game where the other players are significantly more powerful than you. Balance is the main concern.

Now, a good DM can house-rule around a lot of these things, but designing rules for balance is quite hard, as is learning new rules, which is why these systems are a thing in the first place, so ideally the rules should by default allow this kind of creativity and flexibility without creating large power imbalances, both between players and between players and monsters (also something that's more difficult than it looks, hence things like challenge ratings and pre-built adventures).

(I'd argue the fairly high variance of D&D combat also causes problems here, both for fun and balance, because it's no fun when a powerful character completely bricks in a fight against a lesser opponent because of cursed dice, and it also makes it harder for the DM to get useful feedback to balance encounters)

On one hand many people don't want to be dead weight when the dice start rolling. On the other hand it can be more fun to be the Half-Ork Wizard with 7 INT trying to role play a big dumb guy who's only love is setting things on fire with his mind and getting paid for it.

There's the age old role play vs. roll play argument. With a good DM it shouldn't matter but if you're running some prebuilt campaign then it might lead to unexpected struggles.

> On the other hand it can be more fun to be the Half-Ork Wizard with 7 INT trying to role play a big dumb guy who's only love is setting things on fire with his mind and getting paid for it.

At 7 int are you smart enough to even have learnt to cast cantrips?

I do think that there is a difference between playing a suboptimal combination and dumping your classes primary stats such that you're largely incapable of doing things...

There's a line between suboptimal and non-viable.

For example, a fighter which maxed charisma with appropriate feats for being admired/respected etc. Just a super stand up lovely guy. Super personable, gorgeous smile, good form, rarely seen him fight I admit - but he looks the part! But I do put some points in Str (Dex if finesse) and Con. Otherwise you probably can't actually be a fighter, you won't match the class descriptor (imo)

> Largely the same, I acknowledge it's not being done for me and definitely doesn't impact me. Shrug (or eyeroll if so inclined) and move on

Who is it being done “for” if not for the people who play this game? Don’t you have the same stake in changes to the game as anyone else?

> Who is it being done “for” if not for the people who play this game?

Many changes to media franchises and games are being made in an effort to attract a new audience, or with the belief that it increases appeal to the "modern audience". Emphasis because this is the buzzword phrase that gets used quite a lot to justify changes that are generating some amount of controversy or negative attention. The problem is that "modern audiences" may not actually exist

Not all changes are for the players. The changes to remove perceived racial biases may improve inclusion for some minority of players. It may be a serious issue for those players, the game designers, or some executive. Just like real world changes to improve inclusivity, most are unaffected and simply move on.

For the changes people care about, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) publishes "Unearthed Arcana" or pre-release versions of content (e.g., bastions, the Monk class, a new Druid subclass). People will playtest the new content and WotC surveys players to get feedback. Based on the feedback, they may make additional changes or even scrap some things entirely.

Do you play D&D? Have you ever? What was your experience of this like when you did?