the only people that want this to be closer to 5e are people that havent played 5e
I want this to be closer because I've played a lot of cRPGs and 5e.
We're mostly all open to quality changes from 5e. But if I see something that isn't a quality change, I'm going to write about it.
Take 'dip' for example. Very few people are complaining about it because Wizard normally scales better than fighter, ranger, and rogue into the late-game. Dip only seems ridiculous because we're playing at level 1-4, so we're mostly being open-minded about dip.
If dip become a feat would players take it over +2 to strength or dexterity?
Larian has implemented changes to make life better for fighter, ranger, and rogue. Some of these changes most of us don't like because they are over-tuned. Some of them we are unsure about because we're all focused on spell scrolls, shove, higher ground, etc. at the moment.
Now onto higher ground, a lot of players agree that the advantage/disadvantage change should go.
Too many fights become a race for the high ground. We all expected to play turn-based combat, not spend the first few turns moving your character to higher ground. (Or reload to start more of your party at higher ground so you can actually start with some turn-based combat). Even if this game wasn't based off of 5e, I would be annoyed with higher ground advantage/disadvantage.
Combat in 5e is just more fun by not giving advantage/disadvantage everywhere and letting you have a party of five to six. For those of us who have played 5e, we all understand that there are other ways to buff a party of four besides making advantage available almost everywhere.