Basically, most groups pretty much play D&D "their" preferred way, and reject any change to the system that implies that "their" way is old & busted compared to the "new hotness" of whatever the current edition is.
During the AD&D years, the game was pretty much the Wild West of gaming. Groups picked and chose which rules to use and which to ignore, injecting their own variant rules to flavor, and focusing on whatever elements they preferred.
It's to the point that many debates I've been in have people insisting "this is how AD&D was played!" and when I produce actual copied sections from the rulebooks that contradict those statements, they get especially irate about it!
As an example, I've been in a lot of discussions about the AD&D Thief, with people insisting it's an awesome class that sneaks around invisibly and backstabs all the things into oblivion. Then I post the actual rules, and all the prohibitions limiting the "awesome" (heh) power of the Thief class, to demonstrate how what they're saying simply isn't possible by the rules as written, and the sparks really fly, because how dare I disparage their memories of the fun they had, damn what the rulebooks say!
It's to the point that it's sometimes hard to believe people like any edition, really- when what they really like is their version of it. It's like this discussion I had the other day with my friends, and one said something to the effect of this:
"3.5 is a great game! You just have to ignore these splatbooks, limit people to one prestige class, not allow Divine Metamagic, nerf all the spells, and give Fighters a bonus Feat at each level! And no Tome of Battle or Psionics cheese!"
They didn't phrase it like that, of course. It wasn't until I boiled down the essence of what they were saying, that the game was only great for them with about 10 pages of house rules (mostly revolving around re-balancing a good 20 spells) and deliberately ignoring a bunch of supplements. And they didn't even touch some of the bigger problems, like Druids, because they had no memory of anyone ever playing a Druid in their games and being good- while they were talking about how amazing their Monk was "because of all their special abilities, they didn't even need magic items"!
It's a combination of wearing blinders and rose colored glasses simultaneously.
Or another debate I had with someone about how they would scale back casters by making them work more like "martials" with classes having defined roles...and I blithely commented "oh, so like 4e then?" and I swear they were about to fly over the table at me, dual-wielding rulebooks to smite me for my temerity!
See I was active on the Wizard forums towards the tail end of 3.5, and a lot of complaints being made there, about balance between classes, getting rid of caster dominance, and switching to an encounter-based paradigm to combat 5 minute work days were constant. 4e solved all of those problems, but the reaction was immediately "no, not like that!"
Because what they really wanted was all those fixes without any other changes to the game they were playing at the moment! They didn't want to invalidate their game play, their favorite character builds, and definitely not their current collection of rulebooks!
It reminds me of the Legend of Zelda's fandom- where the fans want each game to be innovative, break new ground, and re-invigorate the franchise- while also being exactly like their favorite older game! I believe it's considered a classic now, but when Wind Waker came out, fans were freaking out- "Link looks like a little baby! I hate this art style! This game is stupid, Ocarina/Majora's was better, you should have made another game like that!"
(While older fans like me were quietly asking for another Link to the Past...lol).
It's become quite apparent that nobody plays the games as they are written, because they have their own preferences/conceits- and I'm not condemning that! I was recently asked to run a Pathfinder 1e game again, and I had to laugh at myself when the first thing I did was type up a four page document of rules modifications!
But it goes beyond just rules, there's also playstyle. I was involved in a debate over 5e's Dispel Evil and Good where a lot of DM's felt the spell "needs" an attack roll to dispel possession, because it makes it too easy to negate a dangerous situation/potential major plot point if players can just line up a "magic bullet" spell to solve any problem- when the D&D magic system has been pretty much like that forever. Or people who gripe about how magic ruins the exploration tier with spells like goodberry, create food and water, etc. etc.- almost all of which existed in 1e, but nobody was using them because if were stuck in the unenviable role of playing a divine caster, your entire spell list was probably various flavors of healing magic, lol.
You have DM's who refuse to let Insight detect if someone is lying to you, or scoff at social rolls, because it reduces "role play" to "roll play", and apparently would love for Charisma to go back to being merely a metric for how many hirelings you can tote around!
I've never played with any DM, btw, who actually uses NPC reaction rules as written- they know how their NPC's will react to the player's shenanigans, and don't need no random rolls to tell them how to run them, thank you very much! I think this is what got 3.5 Diplomancers so much hate, because you had these character concepts based around rules that nobody really wanted to use in the first place, lol.
Anyways, I'm rambling. People absolutely should play the game they want. I just wish that they just did that instead of griping about every other way to play (or worse insisting that somehow, their way is the only "correct" way to play!).
