Unlike some of the prior editions, 5E does mechanically reward stereotypes. Dwarves make great warriors and clerics. Elves are good at magic and archery. Halflings are awesome thieves. Half Elf Bard is good instead of bad. Gnomes are excellent wizards. You get the idea.
However, ability scores are not the end all/be all of the race. I've seen a dwarf wizard in 5E, because they got medium armor and battle axe proficiency (to use Green Flame Blade). Finesse weapons with light armor make Elves and Halflings good front line options, even thought they aren't the stereotypical front line warriors. While I'll agree that most characters are going to line up somewhat with the stereotypes, I feel there are enough viable options to create significant variety.
To have written something this completely wrong, I can only assume that you have never actually played any other edition of D&D in your life and are just making up
up.
Every edition had attribute bonuses. Every single one. They also had attribute penalties which the current edition does not have. The current edition also has attribute caps which previous editions did not. That means it is both easier and more feasible to play against type than it has been in ANY previous edition of D&D.
Furthermore, a lot of the abilities on the race don't enhance their "favored class" so much as simply give you some ability from that class if you are playing a different one.
The Dwarf granting proficiency in axes or medium armor means NOTHING to someone who is playing a Fighter or Paladin-- because every single Fighter and Paladin in the game automatically gains those profieincies regardless whether they are a Dwarf or not. The only way those proficiencies are actually used is if one is playing a class that doesn't automatically get them.
The Elf granting a Cantrip is kind of nice for classes that already get 4. But a 5th Cantrip on such a class isn't nearly as nice as getting a Cantrip on a class that otherwise would never be granted access to one. And the same can be said for the Tiefling granting spells.
Probably the only race in the whole PHB that wasn't built in this way but unfortunately grants only bonuses towards playing a small handful of particular classes is the Half-Orc. Aside from that singular example, none of the races are built in a way that encourages a person towards any particular class-- certainly not to the extent that AD&D did by literally placing bans on races getting to take most classes and strictly limiting their levels or 3rd edition smacking the player with an attribute penalty that ensured they would never remotely be feasible in a ton of classes. Especially since there was no attribute limit cap, so even if one gained attribute points, the race that started +4 points above the other was always going to be +4 points higher which meant a +2 on all abilities.
In fact, when it comes to Wizards, AD&D and 3rd edition both had bonus spells and maximum spell levels which made the Intelligence attribute so much more important to boost as high as possible. Such things do not exist within 5E.
And not just Wizards, because 3rd edition also had attribute limits on all of the feats which meant unless you already had super high attributes in your class's chosen attributes-- something that just could not happen if you started at a penalty-- you would be forbidden from taking the important feats making you far, FAR worse than the race that got a bonus there.
No matter how you cut it, 5E allows for a far greater range of race/class combinations to be viable.
Anyone who says otherwise has literally never picked up and looked through the books of any other edition.
Either that or they are out-and-out trolling or-- as I initially suggested-- this is some Mandella Effect thing and they dropped in from some parallel universe where everything is exactly backwards.
And if people were playing with a group that were intentionally playing dysfunctional or rulebook-violating things 20 years ago and now they are playing with people play exclusively the most standard stereotypes-- that has everything to do with the people they are playing with and not the rules themselves. Because the rules themselves have progressively moved ever further towards allowing the possibility of matching just about any race with any class and getting some benefit from it.
