Seeing both the latest UA and Spelljammer, it seems that it is undeniable that the new standard is going to be that the backgrounds are going to be accompanied by a feat. Which I think is a success since it makes the background something that really matters in the character's design. However, I think WoTC should put out a document that either updates the old backgrounds (at least the ones in the PHB) to give them a feat, or lists a series of "general" feats that can be chosen when a background doesn't give you a feat. Otherwise, due to optimization, there are backgrounds that no one is going to choose.

Right now I am preparing a campaign in Spelljammer and all my players have taken one of the two backgrounds that come there. That annoys me a bit, since it takes variety away from the game due to the power creep. So I'm going to let them pick a "free" feat if their background doesn't give it to them, as long as it's justified within their background. For example, if someone has the Sailor background, they might choose a feat that has something to do with the sea or that would be justified for a Sailor (such as Chef if he was the ship's cook, or Linguist for having traveled a lot, or Tough for hard work ​​conditions, etc...). But I wouldn't let her take magic initiate since I don't see what direct relationship it can have with being a Sailor.

How are you doing it? Do you give backgrounds a feat without it, do you give a list of general feats, do you let them choose what they want, or do you touch nothing? Do you think WoTC should fix that via FAQ or similar document, or is it okay to wait for the new PHB to come out in 2024?

The UA Wonders of the Multiverse has this text:

BONUS FEATS
If the DM decides to allow any of the backgrounds in this section, all characters in the campaign gain access to a bonus feat. If you select one of these backgrounds, you gain the bonus feat specified in that background. If the background you choose doesn’t provide a feat, you gain a bonus feat of your choice from the following list (a parenthesis tells you where to find the feat):
• Scion of Elemental Air (presented later in this document)
• Scion of Elemental Earth (presented later in this document)
• Scion of Elemental Fire (presented later in this document)
• Scion of Elemental Water (presented later in this document)
• Skilled (Player’s Handbook)
• Tough (Player’s Handbook)

This means, no matter which background a player choses, they get a bonus feat.

Our table has traditionally allowed players to select any feat they liked at level 1, with the understanding that Big Fighty feats like Cheesebow Expert, Polearm Muenster, and the like were considered bad form.  We useed to have more rules and restrictions on it, but these days it's simply "take ASIs whenever your class gives you a (normal) ASI, then take a feat at character level 1, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19, provided you ever get that far."

Feats being baked into backgrounds would likely get us to stop doing that of course, and it'd lead to less overall diversity of options at our table, but that's a reasonable price to pay for backgrounds actually being cool and useful instead of just flavor.  And the custom background system will likely be evolved to allow selection from a small list of relatively innocuous/generic feats such as the aforementioned Skilled and Tough.  We also tend to allow free access to species-locked feats like Infernal Constitution or Dragon Hide at this stage, since those are much harder to justify as regular feats ("I went to sleep last night and woke up today with completely altered physiology!") and also tend to be fun.  Athlete and Keen Mind have been popular go-tos for Starter Freats as well; Athlete because it's surprisingly helpful and very apt for a lot of backgrounds (eg. Sailor does very well with Athlete, which we've refluffed as 'Hoist the Rigging!' for a couple of sailors now), and Keen Mind, ironically, is popular for low Intelligence characters that want their low Intelligence to reflect a lack of book training and formal learning rather than "Me no brain so good".

Depending on how your table feels, you can assign a feat to a character or let them take a non-Big Fighty feat that feels right to them.  Our Eberron DM did the former, actually - we set up characters in the run-up to the game, then during our official Session Zero he assigned a background feat and a pair of starter magic items to each character based on what he'd been told.  It was rather a neat take and a fun moment for the DM, even if "just assign one fun/interesting/non-Big Fighty feat you like yourself" is less work.

The Star Wars 5E project has an interesting approach, where each background has a list of feats you can pick from. Many are centered around skills or tools or things like alert. Then the more potent feats generally require level 4, so they can't be taken at level 1 the way a variant human can start with whatever feat they want. So no coming out at level 1 with OP feats. I wouldn't mind seeing something like this worked back into D&D 5E. 

I can't help feeling like this is missing what's cool about backgrounds. You know... The story?

But sure. It works, I guess. You could just as easily tie it to race (like the variant human does) or class, it really doesn't matter. This design centered on making the narratives make some degree of sense is nice, but it won't last. I expect by the time the new core books release, you'll have things like a sailor background being able to give you magic initiate, or a noble background being able to give you dungeon delver. And at that point the facade slips. These aren't background feats. They're just level 1 feats.

Excuse me, how is Astral Drifter not a fantastic story?  Most level 1 characters are lucky if they can make boots other characters might want to buy; this Astral Drifter guy has met a god and been given both a God Secret and a tiny drop of divine power.  What secret?  Why did the god give enough of a shit to bless this particular low-level, do-nothing mortal with a boon of knowledge and power?  That background is bursting with Plot Coupons, far more so than "Oh look, another rogue with the Criminal background.  Wooooo."

Backgrounds are only ever as story-rich as the individual player cares to make them.  The original backgrounds can be absolutely meaningless bags of proficiencies just as much as these new ones are, and someone can be inspired to create an unforgettable narrative by the seed ideas in one of these new-model backgrounds.

Free for all background feats would be too much I agree, but if they keep the options background appropriate similar to SW5E and restrict certain feats to level 4+ I think it would work just fine. Or alternatively just expand on background features that already exist, keeping them background specific but more impactful, instead of RP fluff that may or may not be useful depending on the campaign. 

I also hope the rework does something more interesting with human. Basic human is boring. Variant human is good but giving them a choice of any feat was also kind of a cop out. This is another thing SW5E did well in my opinion with their human. The get a once per short or long rest ability to add a d4 to an attack, save or ability check, one tool prof, one skill prof, and one weapon prof of their choice. Still keeping the versatility of humans in a way that is more interesting to me than basic D&D human and feels like less of a 'idk we give up' than throwing them a choice of feat at level 1. 

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Our table has traditionally allowed players to select any feat they liked at level 1, with the understanding that Big Fighty feats like Cheesebow Expert, Polearm Muenster, and the like were considered bad form.  We useed to have more rules and restrictions on it, but these days it's simply "take ASIs whenever your class gives you a (normal) ASI, then take a feat at character level 1, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19, provided you ever get that far."

 Out of interest, how has this affected your power levels? Have the encounters had to have their difficulty levels altered much? I'm interested because I've been thinking about doing something similar.

I think a lot of the products released over the next year or so will show us elements of the edition revamp scheduled for 2024. I'm guessing at that point the old backgrounds will be updated to do the feat thing, but in the meantime we're going to be in this awkward transitional phase.

Quote from Linklite >>

 Out of interest, how has this affected your power levels? Have the encounters had to have their difficulty levels altered much? I'm interested because I've been thinking about doing something similar. 

I haven't DM'd since we started doing this regularly, but honestly?  Admittedly from a player perspective, I don't think it's affected power levels at all.  Low-level characters are still made of spun glass, and the more we do it the more people take the opportunity to do Weird Things with their feats that fit the character or the story rather than reaching for every last drop of power they can simply because the opportunities to do so are so few and far between?  I mean heck, my drow paladin in our Eberron game took Skulker at 4th level for her feat.  Skulker.  Skulker.  When was the last time you saw anybody take Skulker for anything?

What it generally means is that characters in our games have a broader range of talents, more things that they can do, rather than being better at things they do.  That aforementioned drow dingdong of mine has three feats at level 5 - Skulker, Drow High Magic (which was the feat the DM assigned her), and Healer due to another nigh-universal houserule in our games where anyone with Medicine proficiency geats the Healer feat along with it because **** off not knowing how to use a first aid kit when you're TRAINED IN MEDICINE.  She also got to use her fourth-level ASI as an ASI to plug some holes in her numbers.  Many DMs would scream at such an "overloaded" character, but what do those feats actually give her? 

She can cast Detect Magic at will, which is fantastic as a Plot Coupon but mostly useless in encounters.  She gets one chance oper day to Dispel enemy spells or Levitate things, both of which are combat applicable, but mostly they're cool one-off moments (or, historically, total wastes of her action as I don't think she's landed a Levitate attempt on an enemy yet or ever cast her Dispel).  She gets to hide in light obscurement...if she uses her action to do it because dingdong, not rowg.  She gets to see better in the dark, which I mean come on she's a drow.  She gets to stay hidden if she misses an unaware target with a ranged attack - though the DM has, wisely, ruled that the target is still aware that something tried to attack it, it just doesn't know where the attacker is.  And she gets to bandage people up once per person per rest using mundane techniques and supplies.

None of that is generally going to swing a fight, outside of desperation ploys where the table cheers if somebody uses an unconventional ability granted by a rarely-seen feat to do something cool and pull the party out of a jam.  A more diverse options pool has generally only enriched our play and allowed more characters to participate in a wider variety of scenes due to having relevant abilities, rather than the awful and annoying Rotating Spotlight gameplay of a band of narrowly focused characters where only one person gets to play D&D at a time. 

If you can trust your players not to go apeshit gonzo with Big Fighty feats, I highly, highly recommend it.  We call it Enhanced Standard Progression:

• Start with Standard Array or by-the-book point buy.
• Apply level 1 background/species feat.  Avoid Big Fighty feats or other feats that tend to make DMs squinty-eye.
• All "universal" ASIs from class must be taken as ASIs (no double-dipping on feats).
• The 'bonus' ASIs from the Roguee and Fighter classes are exempt - those work like normal and can be either a feat or an ASI at player discretion.
• Characters may allocate a new feat at character levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19.

The character-level feats make multiclassing less punitive while still leaving you with reduced attribute progression on multiclassed builds, and we find that the game works better if players start with lower numbers and raise them over time rather than starting with numbers high enough that you don't feel the need to turn every single ASI into an ASI and can take funky feats instead, i.e. Heroic Array rolled stats.  We played with Heroic Arrays for a while, and frankly ESP is better for encounter balancing than Heroic Arrays.  Extra feats are not nearly so impactful on combat and encounter balancing as ten to fifteen extra points of stats, so if you can handle designing encounters for a partyful of Heroic Array PCs, ESP won't slow you down at all.

Thanks Yurei, appreciated!

Now we know how WotC thinks it should work in the PHB, and I happen to be a fan.

Quote from Golaryn >>

Now we know how WotC thinks it should work in the PHB, and I happen to be a fan.

 Idk if "how it should work" is quite accurate. They're testing it to see if it's good.

Conceptually, I like the level-gates on feats, hate the idea of prerequisite feats (feat stacks), and lament the loss of explicit story powers.

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

Quote from Golaryn >>

Now we know how WotC thinks it should work in the PHB, and I happen to be a fan.

 Idk if "how it should work" is quite accurate. They're testing it to see if it's good.

Conceptually, I like the level-gates on feats, hate the idea of prerequisite feats (feat stacks), and lament the loss of explicit story powers.

 If they didn't think they should work that way, we wouldn't already have backgrounds with feats in two existing books, another book (Dragonlance) with more backgrounds with feats coming soon, and "playtest material" for even more.  

What's an "Explicit Story Power"?  Do you mean the current Background Feature things?  If so, I'm not sure I've ever seen a background feature used outside of our very first campaign.  A big one, to me, has always been Entertainer.  Your super special Background Feature is...you can sing for your supper, and the suppers of your friends.
.
..
...okay.  So nobody else with a music/Performance proficiency can try to convince an innkeeper to give them a discount with a stirring night of musical revelry?  Not even bards?  You HAVE to be an Entertainer, and Entertainers can just do it as an incidental?

It's kinda ridiculous and has always annoyed me; half of the 'Background Features' different backgrounds get is just shit the DM should allow people to try and do regardless if they have the proficiencies for it, and the other half are weird, esoteric, and often very unfair.  Inheritor's another good example - as an Inheritor you get a Super Awesome Cool Secret Thing.  Great.  What do the other players get?  The ability to sing for their supper, the ability to talk to other soldiers like a soldier, and the ability to look at scrolls and not faint.  Why?  It's lopsided and weird, and in so many cases stuff like that could just as easily be something a DM works out with a specific player without needing the prompt.  To say nothing of some players taking Inheritor and then demanding the DM give them something Plot Worthy even when the DM maybe doesn't want to do that sort of thing for a given game, ne?

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

Quote from Golaryn >>

Now we know how WotC thinks it should work in the PHB, and I happen to be a fan.

 Idk if "how it should work" is quite accurate. They're testing it to see if it's good.

Conceptually, I like the level-gates on feats, hate the idea of prerequisite feats (feat stacks), and lament the loss of explicit story powers.

 Could be they'll keep the story powers and just didn't include that in the playtest material.

That said, I like the story powers, but they rarely came up in my campaigns. I realize this is table dependent, but most of the time in my games, we kind of forgot they existed.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

What's an "Explicit Story Power"?  Do you mean the current Background Feature things?  If so, I'm not sure I've ever seen a background feature used outside of our very first campaign.  A big one, to me, has always been Entertainer.  Your super special Background Feature is...you can sing for your supper, and the suppers of your friends.
.
..
...okay.  So nobody else with a music/Performance proficiency can try to convince an innkeeper to give them a discount with a stirring night of musical revelry?  Not even bards?  You HAVE to be an Entertainer, and Entertainers can just do it as an incidental?

It's kinda ridiculous and has always annoyed me; half of the 'Background Features' different backgrounds get is just shit the DM should allow people to try and do regardless if they have the proficiencies for it, and the other half are weird, esoteric, and often very unfair.  Inheritor's another good example - as an Inheritor you get a Super Awesome Cool Secret Thing.  Great.  What do the other players get?  The ability to sing for their supper, the ability to talk to other soldiers like a soldier, and the ability to look at scrolls and not faint.  Why?  It's lopsided and weird, and in so many cases stuff like that could just as easily be something a DM works out with a specific player without needing the prompt.  To say nothing of some players taking Inheritor and then demanding the DM give them something Plot Worthy even when the DM maybe doesn't want to do that sort of thing for a given game, ne?

 Well, that's why I said conceptually. What I would've liked was to see them developed further, not erased.

Re: removal of story features from backgrounds - my plan is to homebrew a bunch of 1st-level feats that include some sort of story/social feature, seeing as Crafter already sets the precedent.

We should've had more features like the Feylost's, Shipwright's, or Knight's, and less of the "you can find modest accommodations with this type of group" or the aforementioned "getting paid to do your day job."

I hate Feats. If you take the "wrong" ones for your class you are scorned for being less optimal. Which Feat is best? Now which Background do I have to take in order to get the correct associated Feat for my character?