Arch does tend to keep packages as close to upstream as possible, which can be both a good and bad thing. Sway not binding to graphical-session.target by default is a little strange for example. Other distros also save a first-time user a great deal of configuration for things they probably don’t care about as well. Going through Fedora’s install and finding out that disk encryption and SELinux were configured OOTB was very nice to see personally. On the other hand Arch’s installation (w/o archinstall) has you choosing a bootloader, audio server, display manager, etc. Nothing arduous and I like it, but definitely not for everyone

This is all eliminated by spinoffs of course, but even there users have the option to run random scripts/AUR packages without vetting them. Also doesn’t help that the most popular Arch-based distro for a while (Manjaro) was pretty flaky and generally incompatible with the AUR (despite saying otherwise), leading to many people saying “that’s just Arch” and swearing off the parent project as well