Hey, our backgrounds are actually pretty similar! I got started with 3e, took a break during 4th, and came back with 5th, pretty happy with how it turned out.

…but I soured on it after DMing it a lot. Yes, the DM can make things up to fill in the gaps. I did that a lot! …But that’s true of any game, and sometimes feels like an excuse for when the system breaks down—and in my experience, it just plain breaks down too often for my liking. With the ship-based example, I didn’t need nitty gritty naval combat rules, but some indication of what skills to use, and maybe a paragraph of guidance. If there was, we couldn’t find it quickly, and just gave up for the sake of moving things along. I just figured it was probably a vehicle proficiency, but that wouldn’t work, so I made something up where players could contribute different things to the operation of the ship, which would give bonuses to a series of rolls to navigate with the ship. It worked great, but that had nothing to do with D&D, it had to do with me being an experienced DM, with knowledge of a bunch of other systems. I think that’s a bad position to be in for newer players, and even in my case, I’d prefer something that’s either more flexible, or crunchier but has its bases covered better.

Again, all personal preference, but for me, D&D is actually a worse experience to run, because it FREQUENTLY relies on the DM to fill in the gaps and fix things that break, and is actually pretty heavy for a system that demands that kind of improvisation. I bring it up mostly because I had a similar impression of Pathfinder 2e that a lot of people have at first blush, but found it very different in practice. That won’t be the case for everyone, of course!