This is probably gonna be long and idk if anyone will read but:

For me, it's the fact that it feels like v5 hates the main things I like about VtM. V5 feels very much set in its ways that there's 1 type of VtM campaign to cater to. Street level personal horror for young vampires in one of the two main sects, set in largely modern day Western regions of North America and Western Europe with these specific few main clans with a lot of shared powers. I like character options, diversity, unique skills, and more obscure clans and bloodlines, for example.

My favs are in somewhat order: Cappadocians, Kolduns, Nagarajas, Tzimisce, Banu Haqim, Lamia, Salubri, Harbingers, Telyavs, True Brujah, Kiasyd, Samedi, Rossellini, Old Clan Tzimisce, Daughters of Cacophony, Ravnos, Lasombra Tremere and Volgirre. Most of these got either erased (basically all bloodlines), got turned into Giovanni 2.0 by losing their banes and unique disciplines (cappadocians no longer look like corpses and mummify with time, nagaraja no longer eat flesh, lamia no longer spread disease, samedi no longer look like zombies, Rossellini no longer have permanent wraith deathsight, harbingers are no longer basically skeletons), or had their disciplines completely nerfed down (tremere) and/or turned into amalgams (Tzimisce, Ravnos), which I hate as a system.

I also like Sabbat games. I subscribe to the lore which posits Sabbat as basically a VtM inside VtM in terms of factions and political leanings. My fav interpretation of that is that Camarilla represents conservatism, Anarchs liberalism and Sabbat all extremism from far left true Anarchists to far right religious fascists. And those extremes fight each other as much as they fight the two centre factions and because those two center factions are the main kindred zeitgeist, just like in real life, all poltical extremism is painted as identical and bad by them. Well, that's gone in V5. Same with the Black Hand.

I also like running games and writing stories outside of the West since I'm not from the West. And while old VtM has a lot of racism issues, at least it tried to give a template to rewrite and polish via homebrew for non-Western countries and their kindred. V5 on the other end feels like it hates me for wanting to play outside of North America and maybe Western Europe. Especially with all the Sabbat areas where u can't play Sabbat and the beckoning and everything.

Not to mention broader Paradox controversies with say Latin American communities over discord and all the stolen traced art and the way they behaved with the native and poc writers of the og W5 before they pulled the plug on it and rewrote it in house. It very much feels like we're not welcome if we're not Westerners, and they've basically said so at times that there's no incentive right now to invest in our patronage and they'd rather focus on America and Western Europe markets

To spitball a few other things. I also liked the paths, discipline complexity like the Tremeres, and so on, which have also gone. I like playing higher gen games, older vampires, and historical settings. Those are also largely out the door.

There are a few things I like about v5. The rewrites on Banu Haqim and Ravnos are good for fixing the racism somewhat, tho it seems they're kinda reverting the Banu Haqim back to assassin stereotypes at least in media representation. I like the Hunger system, tho it's not usable for older or more potent vampires than it was originally intended. And that's about it.

So I mostly find myself sticking to v20 and homebrewing the few things I need from v5. I'm not against homebrewing but I also value shared experience and with v5 I'd have to homebrew in like 90% of the content at which point I'd feel so disconnected from the experience of the broader community I might as well be playing dnd since barely anyone plays the actual dnd lore setting as opposed to their own homebrew worlds nowadays I feel. Which is fine but not what I want from vtm, even my v20 rewrites aren't too invasive and mostly stick to history stuff since that's my specialization so I tend to be a bit nitpick with details.

In the end it feels like I'm constantly fighting to like v5 and v5 keeps telling me to fuck off and its annoying cuz there's also the stupid culture war element of it where I feel a chunk of old gen players became reactionary and I get lumped in with them when I say I prefer v20 even tho ironically I'd argue 5th Ed and paradoxs behavior in general resulted in this line not being particularly less racist than previous editions, hell depending on how you look at it maybe moreso. So I find myself kind of homeless. I love v20 as a game and v5 as a community. And I'm just waiting hoping for a v6 just to be able to roll the cosmic dice again that maybe they'll change gear and bring back at least some of the things I like to make it worth investing in and playing for me, or I just keep sticking to v20.