And yet the changes you want would deny us playing the game the way we want to play it. Curious.
The good old false equivalency between freedom and oppression.
In one way you are free to play every race as you feel them better. You can play ten half orcs and give to each and all of them +2STR and +1CON because you feel it right. You can give +2 STR and +1CON also to that scrunny half orc that has lived all his life in slavery without ever handling a weapon, malnourished, anorexic, who have kept all his friends up and positive telling them stories about old legends and feasty heroes. That half orc who discovers just at the last moment that he have dragon blood running in his veins and he can cast magic with the same imagination he used in his stories. And it would be perfect, because the only this that matter, and I truly mean this, is that you have fun. So if for you it's fun to give a character like this 10STR and 9COS, that's great because I want you to have fun.
On the other hand, you can force every single existing player, people you never met and will never talk to, to play with the stats you decided, because it's the only right way to play. And if those people, who you'll never even meet, will goes as far as trying to create and interesting and unique character, in that case they are totally ruining your own game even if they are not even playing at your same table.
Freedom and constrictions are not the same thing.
yes, I think it's perfectly okay that elves can be better at magic at the end of the day, despite all the struggles of that orc mage.
Elves are a better wizard than orcs because they have a free cantrip (and something more IIRC), not because they have a better chance to hit with their spells. The former is an interesting feature that define elves as innate magicians, the second one does nothing but creating a miserable experience for the orc's player, because he will fail more than anyone else and, while a failure roleplaying can be interesting, a failure in fight is just "you missed, who's next?".
All of these are exciting opportunities for roleplay that we just couldn't have if all the races could just have the exact same stats
That's not true. Even with floating stats a orc still have its coulture, still have to betray it, still have to live a life in a foreign and possibly unforgiving environment. The background is still there without changing a single word.
they largely have the same stats anyways, we're literally talking about a +1 modifier at most
A +1 in bounded accuracy is the difference between night and day. Even legendary weapons goes only as far as giving just +3. +1 is a huge difference.
