tl;dr: Races in D&D (essentially different species/aliens) should be distinct.
Another important question to ask is "How does the presence (or lack of) racial ASIs affect worldbuilding and race-feel?" Removing racial ASIs serves to homogenize all the classes, bringing them closer to "humans with some special powers" than distinct races (read as "species" or "aliens") with entirely different physical and mental characteristics and ways of interacting with the world.
You (@TomReneth) touch on this with your comment on how "biological traits should be represented as abilities: e.g., all orcs should have Powerful Build," but by extension, this has to be true for all races in order to make up for the disappearance of racial ASIs. And a big issue is that WotC is not, in my opinion, adding sufficient/distinct enough traits to races.
E.g.,
Ardlings have flight, spells, and DR, none of which really distinguish them physically or mentally from humans with a few special powers. E.g., Cat legacy Ardlings are incredibly similar to Elephant legacy Ardlings - both can shove, attack, jump, stealth, etc equally well - which just feels wrong/boring.
Dragonborn have their limited use breath weapon and DR. Again, this is very similar to humans with some extra powers.
Dwarves have Toughness and resistance to poisons. This is good; they are as a race, physically more hardy than humans
Elves get the Fey Ancestry and Perception proficiency (plus spells, ugh). This is okay...good that elves in general are more perceptive than humans/other races, but perception proficiency is so easy to pick up that in practice this will have little compared to other player races. Expertise would be better imo.
Gnomes...get advantage on mental STs. This is...okay. Still pretty close to humans, but more resistant to mental effects. It feels too reactive to really be a defining Gnome trait.
Halflings get Nimbleness, Brave, and Naturally Stealthy. Distinct physical traits and skills their race excels at. Good.
Orcs get Powerful Build and Relentless Endurance. Good. (although it feels silly that Powerful Build doesn't affect things like shove and grapple)
Tieflings get resistance to a damage type and a spell, which is boring. Basically humans with magic.
I worry that WotC will continue the trend of Ardlings and Tieflings, where the major difference between races (and between subraces) is whether they get darkvision, DR to one damage type, and what spells they get at 1st, 3rd, and 5th level. That will make for an incredibly boring world and put even more work on the DM to come up with any distinctions in races - culture, values, physical differences, etc.
