Blaming 5 other people for not understanding to play around 21 other wildly different heroes isn't flexibility in game design. Your are asking 5 other people to play a fundamentally different game than the one they have learned.
You couldn't "individually experiment" because fundamentally you needed team experimentation; you can't play Reinhardt in isolation, and subjecting your team to experimentation on your own whims leads to toxicity.
I think many people who go down the "I should be able to play what I want and people should adapt to me" don't realize they are being selfish in play style in a game like Overwatch.
I mean, it sounds like they were just bad at the game that Overwatch was. I learned to adapt around them, after all. I won't deny it was hard. But it was also very fun and rewarding.
Overwatch is a different, less flexible game now, closer to what I think most people thought Overwatch was, and apparently wanted. It is what it is.
You couldn't "individually experiment" because fundamentally you needed team experimentation; you can't play Reinhardt in isolation, and subjecting your team to experimentation on your own whims leads to toxicity.
I think many people who go down the "I should be able to play what I want and people should adapt to me" don't realize they are being selfish in play style in a game like Overwatch.