Fixing D&D: YOUR WAY

[Ignimortis]

Actually, I've been ruminating on this for a long time and had asked friends and acquaintances on how they would fix D&D, and based on how much I see this on the forums and in people's answers...

Not sure if this merits a separate thread, and I want to ask - why so many people wish for D&D to be a gritty low magic fantasy game? It hasn't been that for ages, and there are literally dozens of those on the market, as far as I'm aware, and they have been designed as such from the start. I've heard lots of good things (bad things too, though) about LotFP, some good remarks on Shadow of the Demon Lord or something like that, etc. Most heartbreakers of older D&D versions also attempt to skew the board towards "gritty realism".

Meanwhile, my project of remaking D&D only exists because there is no game I know of in the genre of "superpowered fantasy heroes" aside from Exalted similar in tone to what I want to play and DM, and Exalted's mechanics are kinda bad and would require much more work to redo properly, while higher-level D&D would work quite well for that with a full progression in 20 levels from mortal to demigod.