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'Cawl just wants to make the Flesh Tearers red Ultramarines!'
...
'Lol lets upgrade the whole Chapter to Primaris'

The fluff at the start of 8th was basically rushed fanfic to justify the new model range, and they have been trying to tone it back ever since.
Having some chapter refuse the new stuff / reject gullimans rule would make perfect sense in universe, but the sales team would never allow it.
Primaris marines need a downside. Something as simple as oh, they age and die after a hundred years unlike true marines. This leads them to being used more like cannon fodder by some chapters.
The fact that some of the new models are terrible doesn't help. Does anyone actually like the new landspeeders or the mario cart?
And stop putting stubbers on everything!

On the bigger models thing, haven't 4-6th era models already been released upscaled compared to the others prior? I've got a few older models and some (thinking old perks and an old grey knight, old cadians) look quite tinier to me than the bulk of my armies, but I can't say whether that's down to individual models or is actually the case.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
On the bigger models thing, haven't 4-6th era models already been released upscaled compared to the others prior? I've got a few older models and some (thinking old perks and an old grey knight, old cadians) look quite tinier to me than the bulk of my armies, but I can't say whether that's down to individual models or is actually the case.

Scale creep? That old myth!

Yes, a late generation firstborn towers over a RTB01 just as much as a primaris does over firstborn.

I’ve got a bunch of examples scattered around my gallery, but not all in one place. There are reference pics out there on the internet.

 Haighus wrote:


This feels like you missed their point, which is that a lot of the potentially interesting plot hooks and statements about Primaris early on turned out to be cover stories for a lack of model support, and were then reversed when Gw revealed appropriate models years later.

Definitely possible, but I'm not sure I missed the point.

My post quoted three people; Wyldhunt, Lord Damocles and NOLA Chris, but I think the line I was most responding to was Lord Damocles, who wrote "The early Primaris plot threads were so blatantly there to cover for the lack of model support" - which did sound to me like his impression was that the lore was bad from the beginning, rather than that it had potential that was lost.

Wyldhunt, however, wrote "Who seemed like they might be over all those pesky geneseed flaws but (fortunately for us) weren't"... and that's the place where I might have missed something- especially after reading subsequent post- clearly Wyldhunt did see the same potential in Primaris and has seen that potential forgotten or ignored- and I'll return to this line specifically a bit later on, becaus my response to it dovetails nicely with another part of your post:

 Haighus wrote:

It isn't about whether the lore was good- some of those plot hooks had the most potential at the time of the initial Primaris roll out. It is that much of the potentially interesting lore just got binned in favour of rehashed models, rather than trying something new. Clearly GW thinks, for example, that Primarisified Death Company is a safer commercial option than something new or maintaining a division between Firstborn and Primaris, but it definitely closes off an interesting lore angle and source of conflict for Blood Angels. What if the Dark Angels suffered a schism between those who trust the Primaris and those who don't? Nah it's all good now.

This is where Gert took the keys right from under fingers when he wrote:

"Almost like there was massive nerd rage because things changed so GW went back to playing it safe and basically just keeping everything the same but with Primaris instead of Firstborn."

See, I think that the point was for US to tell the story of Primaris integration on our own tables. Because if you played BA, and loved them, and you HATED Primaris, you aren't going to want to read the story of their peaceful assimilation... You're going to tell a different story in the fabled time when "40k was still a setting and not a story." The Torchbearer rules gave us the tools to do it.

But of course, because 40k DOES have an ongoing story, they have moved on since then, and of course some of their decisions about how the galaxy has progressed isn't going to match what we've done on our tables. Some of us take steps to prevent the narrative from influencing our narratives; others lean in- I only used named characters when my head canon intersects with the lore; they tend to be brief and infrequent episodic moments in time- I don't even bother adding them to my roster.

My Sister Jahalla Athebraxis is starting as a Novitiate, but there is a path that may or may not unfold before her which leads her to the upper echelons of the Order of Our Martyred Lady- she might become a Living Saint, but she might also end up becoming Canoness Superior, which would mean Junith had to die. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, because at my glacial pace it's going to take years to get there.

And this is were we return to Wyldhunt's thoughts about getting past geneseed, and your point about Primarisified Death Company. When Primaris showed up, people complained that the galaxy was getting "brighter" - losing its Grimdark. But the thing is, Grimdark can only exist in contrast to light. Knowing that the Red Thirst is forever isn't Grimdark: having occasional moments of hope and watching them get crushed again, and again is Grimdark. If I remember correctly, I'm not the first to point this out.

 Haighus wrote:

Plus, every single named character surviving the allegedly low chance of being converted to Primaris is a meme at this point. How many original Primaris named characters are there? None come to mind, they are very generic (or not original, like Tor Garadon).

And here, I'm in a agreement. It's hard to keep telling us it's a threat when it never actually seems to hurt anyone. I don't know how that do it with alienating people who include these characters in their armies... But it does need to be done if you want the Rubicon to be threatening.

 Haighus wrote:

There has definitely been some good lore since the Primaris introduction, but it is getting less frequent IMO and GW is increasingly rolling back interesting developments that came before in favour of serving "safe"* model rehashes and bending the lore to fit.

And this may be true too. The truth is, I don't read a lot of BL, and while I love all Chambers Militant of the Inquisition, I'm not a huge fan of Marines of any other type. Like how some complain about certain songs being overplayed on the radio, I find the ubiquity of Marines in 40k to render them kinda dull. When I started this game, I loved them and created lore for a custom chapter which was similar to Deathwatch in that the marines were members of other chapters, but rather than being drawn together because of their expertise at fighting aliens, they were drawn together because they were all considered to have been killed in battle and somehow survived- many were regarded by their brethren with suspicion, whereas others would have been venerated as heroes and saints.

This was at the tag end of Rogue Trader when I still thought that factions in the game might develop simultaneously... But once it became obvious that there where going to be three times as many Marine kits as any other faction, that in several editions other factions would lack meaningful subfactions in away that Marines never would, that 80% of all comic books, movies, novels and videogames would be marines and that there would be an entire game that was (mostly) Marine vs Marine?

Well, yeah, I lost interest really quickly, especially when so much of it was pure bolter porn. Good thing the depth and intrigue of the Inquisition kept some Marines viable enough that I have a use for the damn minis that GW insists in putting into EVERY starter set. And perhaps, similar to GK and DW, Primaris and their associated Torchbearer armies sat so well with me compared to others is that I do loathe the ubiquity of Marines, and at least Primaris shook it up.

Anyway, all of that is unsubstantiated opinion of course- I can't speculate about all of the motives behind GW's decision making- certainly profit is part of any decision they make because it has to be, but I think that there are other factors at work at least some of the time.