I feel the forum is the most negative of all places I've seen the game discussed. To the point that some positive things, can't be discussed here for fear of provoking the discourse and standard arguments.
All of this. There's some toxicity in here that's on the level of the 4th Ed edition wars and the Pathfinder 2 Open Playtest forums. Reddit generally is a lot more light hearted, although I did get called a fascist there for stating my opinion, so that was nice.
Skimmed the article and I kinda doubt they took a big enough sample size of opinions to represent the fan response. Looks like they scanned the Steam reviews and offered up a summary, which, given the nature of the article, fair enough.
From what I've seen there's a strong movemement for a pure 5E or more true to 5E approach to the rules. Some of those people are very sensible and some are outright loons who insist on virtual screamfests and, yes, accusations of fascism. I'd say there's a smaller group of people interested in diverting from the rules, but they're far more diverse in opinion, ranging from peeps like me who would prefer a rebalance of the ruleset that colors inside the lines to people out in Never Never land calling for WoW style mechanics.
As far as I can see the Purist movement have done a better job of stating their case. They've definitely convinced me that adding more of the book 5E features is a good idea, and I've come around enough that I think at least having a "More Book DnD" mode is in the best interests of the community. I mean some of them aren't going to be happy unless BG3 becomes a Solasta clone, which I doubt is ever gonna happen.
