D&D 3.5 Gestalt- How do people view it?
I remember when Gestalt was the Big New Thing and people were jumping all over it because it was just more of what 3.5 was already good at-- more powerful, certainly, but what I think got people's attention was that it allowed more complicated characters-- and then, yeah, it was a super high-powered variant and people started noticing that, with tier zero and triple-nine casters and other shenanigans.
I don't remember Gestalt ever being as big with the Pathfinder crowd-- whether it was because of the direction that PF went with traits and archetypes, or simply the Paizo fandom turning up their noses at anything published by WotC-- but I simply never saw half as many Pathfinder Gestalt games as I saw 3.5 Gestalt games, even after most of the 3.5 playerbase moved on to either 4e or PF1.
It's about the only way I'll play either rulseset anymore, though I'm not terribly interested even then. I have issues with the 3.X/5e multiclassing rules that Gestalt mostly addresses, but I mostly prefer TSR/OSR D&D-- with all of its modern 3pp support-- to anything supported by the Big Two.
I've only run a little bit of 5e since it came out, and... I'm concerned with the way that 5e is balanced, compared to 3.5, the Gestalt would break it in half. The way Extra Attack doesn't stack in standard multiclassing is a mirror image of how Gestalt would allow a Fighter or a Ranger 11 to stack their extra attacks with Paladin's improvide divine smite. Compare any of the Charisma Mafia combos now... to when they're not giving up their higher-level spells for their... well, Charisma Mafia tricks.