It’s like someone forgot that they released Planescape last year. I understand that this is a simplified wording for the spell, but its as thought the developer thought DMs couldn’t figure out if a creature is native or not.

Prettty wild that they wanted to nerf this in the playtest, but in the final book, it got buffed.

That is not a buff, its not a hard nerf, 30 ft feels like they just wanted to say they did something, but undead creatures native to the shadowfell for example are now unaffected but its big effect. Pending DM's decision of course but in that case what is the point of changing anything with the spell at all.

I think it’s actually nice to set it to a creature type for the sake of clarity. It prevents any friction between the player and DM’s interpretation of a “native”.

Glad this made it through to the new rules without getting massively nerfed. The UA version required a non-native creature to fail 10 rounds in a row to stay fully banished, which was pretty unlikely to ever actually happen.

Players can no longer use this on themselves to escape being trapped on other planes, such as one created by their own casting of Demiplane. That's a pretty massive utility nerf.

One interesting effect of this change is that, before, a non-native was not incapacitated while banished, and so they could use their "time-out" to buff themselves up, in case they made it out of the "penalty box" and back into the fight. With this version, they are incapacitated regardless.

It is unfortunate that this spell can no longer help you with undead denizens of the Shadowfell, or certain nasty planes-hopping liches, nor beasts, plants, or humanoids from other planes which are much more common for those playing in M:tG style settings.

Is the spell really that much easier to understand with the specific list of creature types rather than stating a native to the plane, or is it intentional to reduce it's usefulness?

I really liked the creativity required and flavor of having the component be something distasteful to the target. Just using a pentacle is so much more boring. 

That's true and fair but that was a relatively niche exploit, and I think faaaiiiirly clearly not was intended by the spell? But either way you're right that yeah that helpful ability is gone 

Just use Nystul's Magic Aura to appear as a different creature type.

While I understand the need to put a creature type list, that list does not specify that it is the list for the prime material plane. That means you can, for instance, banish a demon while you are in the abyss

I’m not sure the designers of 2024 understand their own game. Not all aberrations are extra-planar and including them on the “permanently sent to another plane” list is a strange choice.

Quote from Torvax >>

Players can no longer use this on themselves to escape being trapped on other planes, such as one created by their own casting of Demiplane. That's a pretty massive utility nerf.

 They couldn't in the first place, as Incapacitated drops concentration

Quote from Scienceboy1 >>

Quote from Torvax >>

Players can no longer use this on themselves to escape being trapped on other planes, such as one created by their own casting of Demiplane. That's a pretty massive utility nerf.

 They couldn't in the first place, as Incapacitated drops concentration

True, but the old version only applied the Incapacitated condition if the target was native to the plane it was on at the time. If the target was native to a different plane (as in Torvax's example of a player character being trapped in an artificial demiplane) it wasn't Incapacitated. In the new version, it is.

Quote from wagnarokkr >>

Quote from Scienceboy1 >>

Quote from Torvax >>

Players can no longer use this on themselves to escape being trapped on other planes, such as one created by their own casting of Demiplane. That's a pretty massive utility nerf.

 They couldn't in the first place, as Incapacitated drops concentration

True, but the old version only applied the Incapacitated condition if the target was native to the plane it was on at the time. If the target was native to a different plane (as in Torvax's example of a player character being trapped in an artificial demiplane) it wasn't Incapacitated. In the new version, it is.

 That makes sense