One of the things that won me over to playing 4e, as I was very comfortable playing 3.5 with all the books I had amassed- sure the game had lots of warts, but enough options existed that I could cobble together something remotely balanced and fun out of it- and it was a game I knew well, unlike this strange new game that seemed half-baked, was it's public play.
D&D Encounters was a blast, and got me out of the house every Wednesday to head to my local game store. And it was a gateway to Living Forgotten Realms, which represented the majority of my ttrpg gaming for a few years.
Why do I bring this up? Because 5e is atrociously bad for public play. The game is impossible to run "as written", and, if each individual table has it's own rulings to follow (or worse, in the case of my FLGS, tries to use RAW and developer tweets as rules over any kind of common sense, lol), it quickly becomes a headache.
Does my character work the same way at table A or table B? I only occasionally had to worry about that in 4e, but man oh man, is it a pain in 5e. After a year, I was done. IMO, 5e can only be played in a home game successfully, which is sad, since I like meeting and playing with other gamers often.