I skipped 4e, with the exception of 2 or 3 games. I don't recall anything about reskinning being cool for 3, but that is not to say it isn't somewhere in the books, it just wasn't used in any of the groups I ever played with.
I'm surprised, it was fairly prominent in 3e, even if it did apply only to appearance & gear. The whole katana/bastard-sword thing was predicated on it, really.
I was including DMs in the group of some people that like official crunch for balance. Making up unbalanced things for enemies is easily remedied, but allowing homebrew player options can open a can of worms. Am I being biased towards person X? Am I overcompensating for my desire to not seem biased towards person X? Did I not properly anticipate the interactions of Y? Official player crunch alleviates a lot of these concerns.
Official crunch in 5e would still only be as balanced as the DM makes it. I certainly understand wanting more material, though, and, yes, especially crunch. Not so much because I can count on it being balanced or expect RAW to be adhered to, but because it puts us all on the same page, as a starting point, when it comes to the many things that 5e hasn't covered yet.
Is it possible you're succumbing to various biases, including confirmation bias and negativity bias?
With a name like 'Corpsetaker?'
As someone who loathes bloat, I prefer the slow release schedule. I think the core books were done well enough that there's no need for splat books any time soon. Adventures and campaign guides, in my opinion. I don't want to see 5E go down the path of Pathfinder (no pun intended) of having a million different books of crunch.
Mostly in agreement, though there are a couple of obvious omissions, like the psion & warlord, and some previously-supported styles that aren't as well-covered as they should be, even with DMG options. Two splats in two years could probably take care of it.
I honestly don't see how people can run out of entertainment so fast with what's available.
If everything available is to your taste, that'd be hard. If you're excited to explore all the different caster classes, for instance, you'll be at it for years...
I felt like I never got to play all the character concepts 3.x sparked for me, and I could play 4e for decades (in part, because 1-30 campaigns actually work, and take a long, long time - currently over 4 years into a campaign, and they're just hitting 18th), there are even 1e character's I like to go back and reprise once in a while. For the most extreme example, I could never run out of things to do with the 1989 version of Hero System, and that required only the one (really big) book.
So I can agree that the 'need' for constant supplementation is overblown.
People seemed to be so spoiled and want instant gratification
It's just my personal experience, but I've literally been hearing that my whole life. And not just from contemporary sources. Older generations have been saying that sort of thing about younger generations for a long time.
and give off the impression that they're actually offended by a "lack of" things given to them by WOTC.
Yeah, there's a little history to that sort of reaction. I don't know if you can still find Mearl's 'Gnome Effect' editorial, that gives a fairly gentle explanation of it.
If bloat and endless seas of crunch and numbers and calculus is what you want, there's a game for you already. It's called Pathfinder.
That's another side of the same phenomenon. 5e was supposed to be a more 'inclusive' edition, indeed, it was one way the rev-roll was justified, so, anytime someone decides (or is told) to go play another edition, that's an existential failure for 5e.
