It feels simplistic to the point of the naive when an experienced designer like that says "you want feats, we'll give you feats" with absolutely no discussion WHAT KIND of feats wanted or given...
They should certainly poll for that too! My guess is that an UA article or two from now will have a small bunch of draft feats (4 to 6), of different kind, and the following poll will be used to gather opinions about them. The latest poll just asked in broad strokes if we wanted more classes, races, spells, or feats.
I too wonder what kind of feats people would like to have... someone in this thread mentioned combat feats, but for instance I would prefer something else.
I really liked feats in 3e (but
not the sheer amount of them, with thousands of unimaginative re-hash of previous ideas) because IMHO they were almost the only way in the game to:
(1) shift your character focus towards a different pillar
(2) dial the complexity of your character
If you wanted more combat prowess, you would look among the combat feats, which themselves contained offensive, defensive, specialized, generalistic, or highly tactical options, as well as mere passive bumps. But you then had feats for spellcasters, for exploration, for interaction and even for downtime activities.
At the same time, some feats were highly complex while others were passive bonuses that you'd just add to your character sheet and forget.
If you notice, 5e essentially kept the same idea (2), because you can choose feats to generally increase complexity (and within feats we already have a large range from simple to complex) or you can choose ASI to keep your PC simple. It's almost the same as the 3e feats system, which could have been easily turned into the 5e feats system by adding... an ASI feat!
I don't know why many people hated that 3e feats idea of mashing together combat and non-combat stuff. IMO many of those people were just pissed off by the inability to compare the 2 types mechanically. But I don't care, I would rather be pissed off if the feat system had only combat feats and thus forced everyone to just invest in combat.
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That said... the 3e feats system certainly had problems.
First of all, too many combat feats which could be combined to awful consequences. This can still happen in 5e if they don't design them carefully.
Second, the whole concept of feats prerequisites didn't turn out well in practice. In 5e we generally have
less feats per PC, so it would make a lot more sense to ditch prerequisites altogether, except when having a feat that strictly improves a previous feat.
Third, the sheer amount of 3e feats inevitably implied lots of broken or at least annoying feats, especially those that were simple +s to rolls. But 5e bounded accuracy generally forbids to design such feats. Bad feats like those could be easily spotted.
Last but not least, a real problem were those feats which really removed one key limitation of a class feature, such as "casting in wildshape". That kind of limitation lifting should better be a
subclass benefit (if at all), otherwise it turns such feat into something that everyone takes, and feels more like a tax.
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So what feats would
I like to see added? I don't know yet, but I don't want too many more combat feats for sure, I want stuff for PCs who aren't in need to more combat buffs. I would like new feats to add something
really new, something you just can't do or even try. A good example was that
Arcane Archer feat we had in the playtest: it gave you an ability that you just could not simply ask your DM "I want to
try doing this" because it's just not even conceivable by the narrative, unless you have it as a special ability. And at the same time, it's not something that can be seen as a must-have.
