I do want to clap back on one issue that I feel misrepresents the position of the more player-centric players. Someone upthread cited yuan-ti as a race they like to play that is relatively uncommon, so I’ll use it as an example.
Player: I’d love to play a yuan-ti.
DM; Ugh, I hate snakes, their skin is icky and their eyes freak me out.
Player: How about if her bottom half is a scorpion and she can speak with arthropods instead?
DM: Sure, why not?
Player: I’d love to play a yuan-ti.
DM: Are you kidding? Poison immunity, innate spellcasting AND magic resistance? No way!
Player: How about I get rid of magic resistance and downgrade poison immunity to resistance.
DM: Sure, seems balanced.
As described by some posters, the situations described above constitute DMs being “forced” to accept changes demanded by the players. Except that’s not what happened. Both sides compromised.
In the first example, the player went with an arthropod rather than a yuan-ti. In the second, they accepted a weaker version of yuan-tis.