This post from earlier in the thread jumped out at me, and I'm a bit surprised it didn't get more attention. (A note, this is not me wanting to get into an argument Max). This post was in response to Oofta who was talking about Strahd's alignment over the editions, with a comment to the effect of "it is easy, you just use the current edition"
I think this highlights one of the biggest issues with this discussion. Every defender of alignment that I have ever seen started in 3.X, 2e or earlier. It is almost universally something that people who have been playing with alignment for decades support.
However, many of us who are not for alignment are looking toward how it is implemented in 5e. And, it seems clear in this post (and Oofta I believe liked the post, so I will assume they agreed) that even people on the other side recognize that there is a barrier here for new players.
It is much much easier for someone to use alignment if they have been using it for decades and is intimately familiar with the lore that they are using. It is much harder to simply jump in with no knowledge of alignment or the monsters, and try and make it work.
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@Hexmage-EN I like that idea a lot. PErsonally, I've never really found medusa super interesting in DnD (Eberron is the exception) but the 5e write up gives me so much that I've been trying to find a way to fit a proto-medusa into the game for ages.
Minotaurs who are these blood-soaked monsters that were once human is far more terrifying to me than if they were just born flesh-eating monsters. And I love your idea for trolls, very cool.
And I also agree that it solves the "hundreds of sentient races in the world" problem very well.