Actually, there could be made an argument that power creep is already killing 5e: it seems monsters and NPCs can't cope with character equipped with feats, magic items and multiclassing.
Two out of three of which anyone that plays D&D is going to expect to see, and one of which has been around (as you note) since 2000 and exist in prototype forms in Dragon Magazine (trading WP's for maneuvers for example) for far longer than that.
The argument "all that's optional, don't use it if your players break the game" is nonsense. Feats and multiclassing has been part of the game since 2000. If the game gives you options you can't use, those options are worthless.
Agreed.
(And for the love of Vecna, if your trigger response is "I don't have any problem with the MM" you don't have to purchase this product)
I'm pretty much devoted to 3e for the foreseeable future because I'm not going to rip out a rules system in the middle of a campaign, least of all if I've been tweaking the rulesystem this extensively. But while I was impressed by elements of the 5e design, the monster manual was a complete non-starter. It was like a reverse 4e to me. In 4e, the monster manual was about the only rulebook I thought was well done. You don't have to go to the extent of 4e to create a tactical grid based skirmish game, but even in 1e or 3e, unique powers for a monster was what made it really interesting. More to the point, the 5e team stripped out all the non-combat interest in the monster as NPCs capable of intrigue and plots. I suppose DMs were just supposed to assume out of combat NPCs could have power of plot. Plus, I was really disappointed to find that we had yet another edition that had meaningless number inflation. And it would appear from the complaints that they'll need another half-edition with number inflation to let the monsters catch up.
As far as your other complaints go, they are largely in one of two forms:
a) Better balance. I mentioned earlier that it doesn't matter how many classes (or dials) your system has in character creation. It only matters how many of them or of a competitive tier. It sounds like that part of your problem is that you are immediately discarding all classes or archetypes that don't offer the same oomph. Better balance, which is what the majority of your complaints address, is an addressable problem - and you don't necessarily have to use an half-edition with errata to do it if the problems are fairly small. You can fix this with the dials by providing new options on the dial (most likely feats) that support weak archetypes. You can also provide strictly better versions of the same archetype. You could even reuse the name, forming a sort of official errata.
b) "I really like system mastery" Part of me wants to be really unsympathetic to this just because it isn't my thing, and as I tried to point out earlier, the most important character variation I care about is background and narrative. Two mechanically similar characters can have very different stories and experiences. Mechanical variation to me only exists to serve that end. But, being a DM whose has and has had many different players with many different aesthetic goals, I know that there are a lot of players like you for which the CharGen mini-game is one of the most engrossing parts of playing an RPG. I have a player now that is all the time building future characters out of my system and trying to break it. It's what he does. And I've got rather bad news for you here. There isn't room. The designers have already implemented 'something new at every level' for their classes. They've got an elegant but fragile design, which as you point out is being stretched even by the few dials that they provide you with (naturally, you used them all which I would have absolutely expected; so would I, but for different reasons).
One of the things about 3e is that the disparity in classes left lots of space for depth of complexity. It was a flaw that could be leveraged as a strength. Wizards already had tons of depth of complexity just choosing and acquiring spells, where as the fighter had too little because they hadn't been nearly aggressive enough in providing bonus feats and had been overly conservative regarding feat chains (meaning, the more feats a feat has as a prerequisite, the more outlandishly powerful it needs to be). So they had plenty of room to play with the dials right from the start, and plenty of dials to choose from. This ultimately meant as system where everything was broken so nothing was, and a system which depended on social contracts to be playable (as in, I won't break the system beyond this degree, as a social contract). And ultimately I think that really harmed the game in the long run or I think we'd all still be playing some sort of 3e either literally or in a slightly refined form. But it was certainly the high water mark for depth of complexity.
But be very clear about what you are asking for. You are asking to break a system that you are already complaining isn't able to keep up with your power gaming and needs more number inflation in order to cope.
