With the announcements made about the rule alterations during the PfH and afterwards, I must say I've gotten quite skeptical.
Removing racial ability bonuses and instead allowing to freely distribute a +2 and a +1 to whatever you feel like basically makes an already shoddy system fall apart even more and takes away whatever nuance and complexity there used to be.
These changes were introduced in D&D 5e when Tasha's Cauldron of Everything was released in November of 2020. It's had 3 years of play-testing and the changes have been widely hailed as an improvement in D&D and adopted at most tables.
Half-elves too are now just worse elves
Half-Elves used to be an over-powered CHA race, now they aren't.
They trade weapon proficiencies and perception for the ability to grow facial hair.
Won't add to your power but you just sometimes want your elfin character to have a beard.
As for the multiclassing, it's again the balancing issue. I hope it was a misnomer and a misunderstanding, because the whole point of multiclassing is intentionally throttling the usual progression of a character to get advantages they otherwise don't get - again, a tradeoff that requires planning and thinking.
You can still raise your stats to 13 before you multi-class and only group with like-minded players.
When I'm recreating D&D characters that is exactly what I'll do.
Your solution at the end is having this as an option, it is still an option.
