I think too often people focus on very specific types of restrictions and desires. Does it really matter all that much if you can't play a Tabaxi? I had fun with a certain PC that my or may not have been, shall we say, heavily influenced by Puss-in-Boots. But if the DM didn't care for anthropomorphic characters, I could just have easily played a human with the same (badly copied) accent and attitude. I didn't have to be a cat person to have a cat person personality.
In the same way, I run very open campaigns with a variety of styles and directions I work with my players to determine. But I also have an established world with existing lore, races, restrictions. I don't want to play a game with evil characters whether I'm running the game or playing so that's limited.
But what's more important? That the players get to play a loxodon or that they get to decide whether this campaign will, at least initially, start out as a privateer campaign, a dungeon crawl, searching for a lost city, city based or edge of the wilderness, a fair amount of political intrigue or just kicking bad guy posterior? That at a certain point they can choose to engage with eldritch horror, gothic horror or something else entirely?
I'd rather have restrictions on mechanical bits and have an open world to explore than play a module with their inherent linear path. Obviously that's just my preference, but any time we join a D&D group there are going to be some restrictions on what we do. We aren't going to sit down at a D&D table and play Superman, we always have to choose what restrictions we're okay with.