It hink that your post nicely demonstrates the problem being addressed by somewhat locking down backgrounds with mechanical weight of Concern in addition to why it was needed.It seems by your description of working with the GM you feel that it is a one way street, it is not. The new phb has some details about how to do so during chargen on page 33 I believe it was.That was just a tangent to that tangent. I've just finally gotten up to date with Dr. Stone and was quickly reminded of him. Still he had his follower from the background feature n_n.
Let me bring this in order. To me backgrounds in 5e are mostly if not entirely about roleplay and getting a stake in the fictional space. Yes, it has skills and tools/languages attached, but these can be swapped if not outright chosen by raw, so totally a non-factor for mechanics. To me background choice has always been entirely about the themes I want for my character. At most, the background feature is the only mechanical concern. I mostly care about the BIFT and having a justification for in-game importance or lack of it. And many times I felt free to mix or modify that. The only need for DM approval has been to homebrew features.
Now we have mechanical pressure on what used to be a choice entirely free from mechanical concerns. And these are rigid packages. I can no longer just go pick without a care in the world, nor do something like mashing together stuff into things like "mafia princess" (noble+criminal) Because all of that now requires explicit DM approval.
I've been to busy fighting to use the stuff in my character sheet as written or to resist the DMs wanting to dictate weapon choice and forcing me to max up certain scores to "demand" stuff. When I DM I let players do almost anything they want, accept homebrew, third party and optional stuff from obscure blogs, but as a player, the most I can hope is to be respected on RAW, and that is the best outcome. (BTW I lost both fights with DMs)
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