Where is my logic flawed?
A few places.
They indicated in Tasha's that all the information in that book was optional. Then, only a couple months after release, they announced in UA that they were moving forward with the Tasha's race changes as the standard,
Note: Tasha's rules ARE optional, for the Player's Handbook and Volo's guide and most of the material that came BEFORE Tasha's. I say most, because Tasha's floating ability scores actually do not apply to humans, because they already had floating ability scores.
NEW races were using floating ability scores, yes, but Tasha's was never promised to be optional for races designed with floating ability scores, it was promised to be optional for races previously designed with static ability scores. And it is, and still will be. Tasha's was also never a promise that new designs would never be made.
and have continued with that, cumulating in 2024 with the reprinted core books that will also follow the new style and rules. Two months is not enough time for them to have gotten any usable feedback, so it seems clear to me that they intended to use the Tasha's race changes as standard from the start, which makes their claims that it was optional...dubious.
Yes it is. If I get a million survey results showing that people love something, but it has only been a week do I just assume my data is invalid, because a week isn't enough time to get real results? No. You look at the quantity of data, not the time period, unless you are measuring something over time.
You are just assuming that they couldn't possibly have gotten enough data to disprove you. Or, say, that they might have had an Alpha tester group who was working on this BEFORE Tashas, and so the two months after Tasha's released isn't the actual timeline, but perhaps it was as far back as six months before Tasha's. Is 8 months enough time for you to believe them? And you can't tell me that they didn't have an alpha tester pool working on this idea for months before it became public, because you don't have access to the company's internal documents.
regardless of why they decided to enact these changes (and you may be right about them wanting to do them for some time, it doesn't really matter anymore), portraying them as optional when they didn't intend them to be is disingenuous. Most of the race and monsters outside core officially follow that design now, and nearly all the rest will follow in a couple years.
As variants. It has already been stated that if you, for example, own Volo's on D&D Beyond or Fantasy Grounds and you buy Monster's of the Multiverse that your old material is not rewritten and destroyed, but is an option for you to use. It is, to coin a phrase, OPTIONAL. Just because an official option exists that you can choose to use, in a new book, doesn't mean it isn't an option. This would be like arguing that the ONLY elves that exist are Shadar-Kai, Sea Elves and Eladrin, because they were the last printed options. Or that you can't play a PHB beastmaster Ranger because Tasha's offered alternative class features and Fizban's released the drakewarden. It is nonsensical.
And this book is 100% old material modified to the new designs. First time they're ever published a book with no new content. It would be financially idiotic to replace all the old stuff in DDB with the new stuff, because there would literally be no reason to buy the book. Eventually, after the old books go out of print and the new style has been around for a while, I expect people will get used to it, and the company can pretend like its always been this way. Maybe by 2024.
Again, where is my logic flawed?
Dolphin Delighter is new. So, there is some new content. Probably is more than just that.
And, you know that the Orc statblock was published like... three times right? And two of them were altered from the first. So, this isn't the second new orc we are getting, but the FOURTH.
But, mostly, your logic is flawed because you are starting from the premise that they lied. You have chosen to view the world such that you have been wronged, because WoTC didn't do what you expected, and so you are taking the things we know, and extropalting them beyond their limits, making baseless assumptions, all to prove a foregone conclusion. You will never take the evidence and wonder if it shows a different outcome, because you don't want a different outcome, you want to conclude that WoTC lied. That is where your logic is flawed.
I have an answer for that, but you won't buy it and ultimately it doesn't matter. They can do what they want, and I don't need any more stuff from them anymore.
Case in point. Someone has presented evidence that challenges your conclusion. You refuse to consider it, because it challenges your conclusion, therefore it must be wrong.
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you got the problem right away though... how common the problem is.
How common the DESIGN is isn't really a problem though. Because it isn't an inherently problematic design. Your worst case scenario is that two DMs might rule differently. And if that is a problematic design, then we have far bigger problems than this book.
I have over the years know a few (normally problem)players who would complain at the drop of a hat for a single encounter or two that didn't fit what they wanted... but every occurrance adds up. I am pretty sure (and a 3.5 rouge in a campaign where 9/10 of the enemies are immune to sneak attack comes to mind) over time even the most level headed player will feel siggnled out.
This is not a design problem. Nothing in any book can do anything about this. If you are complaining about the new monster write-ups because you know people who will complain because not every encounter fit their expectations... then no DnD book will ever be good enough or without problems.
a new format that is the assumed defualt going forward.
The assumed default for the options that use it.
Seriously, this is like talking to people about CGI. Yes, films that use CGI are going to contain CGI, and more new films will have CGI instead of hand-drawn animation. This doesn't mean hand-drawn doesn't exist. It doesn't mean no new hand-drawn movies will be made, and just because it is new doesn't mean it is bad.
In fact, to take a rather firm stance, I LOVE the new monster statblocks. Why? Because I don't need to either
A) Make notecards detailing the spell effects of each of the monsters spells
B) Interrupt the flow of the game by pulling out my PHB and looking up and reading the spells at the tables.
The "issue" of whether or not it is a spell that can be counter-spelled is barely on the horizon to me compared to these wonderful benefits right in front of me. And, since these are so clearly just spells with a few minor tweaks, then reverse engineering them is easy.
