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The bottom of the barrel is where patience & tolerance for stagnation ends. There is only so much patience that can be expected of people who notice crack in the 5e rules foundation over time or just find themselves bored with the level of mastery they've acquired over a very very simple ruleset that minimized tactical & resource management elements. What's more is that they are entering the d20 era of not d&d 5e versions of 5e spinning off away from wotc's stagnant d&d 5e. I can think of 3coming out in the next year
(stargatehoenix, levelup, anime5e) with two in the next month or so & all of them taking it in remarkably different directions with their own rules modifications that will continue to diverge from the core it started with just as paizo & pathfinder did.
TCoE probably did more harm than good wrt continuing a slow pace aiming for geologic timescales. People who were already scraping bottom or at a point where they could see bottom on the horizon heard it get talked up like the next unearthed arcana/phb2 with empty talk about new rules new variant mechanics etc. When it finally came out there was a reprint of some gm facing stuff, a handful of player facing options, and... and.... it's still basically the exact same game leaving everyone with expectations feeling like charlie brown watching lucy yank the football away even more dramatically than the last few times.