AD&D 2e Player's Options. When that came out, it basically did that for races and classes. And was received poorly by the community as a whole, largely because it created min/max nightmares.
2e Player's Option had a mixed response, I wouldn't say it was received poorly by the community as a whole.
In the late 90's, when I was first starting to play, almost every group I played with used Player's Option rules.
There were definitely groups that didn't, and some people who felt very strong about it, but those rules were definitely not rejected widely.
In fact, a lot of 3e could see its roots in the 2e player's option materials. 3e's combat system has its roots in the 2e Player's Option: Combat and Tactics. Feats trace to a number of NWP's from High Level Campaigns, Combat and Tactics, and Spells and Magic that did more than simply giving a normal "skill" like other NWP's did.
Yes, they could be min-maxed like crazy, but 2e could be just plain brutal with DM's on the other side as well, and more than once I saw a DM just flat out say No to an ridiculous powergaming build (the most obvious one I saw get hit with a DM veto was to take a Cleric, trade in most of the spell spheres for fighter weapons and THAC0 and various other abilities, and get a character that could still heal and have some spells like a Cleric, but could do everything a Fighter could do and some stuff from other classes too maybe, like Wizard Evocation spells for attack magic like Fireball and Lightning Bolt). Gonzo powergaming, ludicrous min-maxing, and petty rules lawyering and negotiation by both players and DM's seemed a hallmark of AD&D 2e that thankfully was greatly reduced in the 3.x era (certainly not abolished, but the min-maxing and rules lawyering I saw in 3.x was small potatoes compared to 2e min-maxing I saw happening only a few years before).
