Exactly. I was mainly "me too-ing" that "perfect symmetry" isn't a great ideal. "Close enough symmetry", to me, seems to be the best because it makes all of those choices matter - choices both in character creation and in combat. All of which break "perfect symmetry". Now how close is "close enough" probably varies by group, and in my limited experience so far, it does feel close enough for us.
I would be perfectly happy to eliminate
all variation in PC attack bonuses, with the exception of level. Let everyone's bonus with all attacks equal C + character level for some constant value C; no weapon proficiency bonus, no stat modifier, no enhancement bonus, no feat bonus.
(Before people jump all over how this would break X and Y and Z, I am aware that this could not be done in a vacuum and would require some tweaks to the rest of the system.)
I don't find it adds anything to the game to have so many factors going into calculating a simple integer value. All it does is make the designers' job harder and confuse the heck out of new players. I'd prefer to have character customization focus on qualitative rather than quantitative choices - decisions like "Would I rather speak three extra languages or be good at stealth?" as opposed to "Would I rather get +1 to hit or get my damage die upgraded to 1d10?"
Linguist is mechanically a crap feat, but it adds noticeable flavor to a character. (What languages do you speak? Where did you learn them? Are you a scholar versed in ancient tongues, or a traveler who's friends with the elves, drinking buddies with the dwarves, and wary business acquaintances with the goblins?) Weapon Expertise is mechanically an awesome feat, but I have never, ever seen a character made more interesting by getting +1 to hit.
But inevitably, edition after edition, the Linguist-type options lose out to the Expertise-type options because the latter are more predictably useful. There may be about one adventure in ten where you get to use your language skills (if the party wizard doesn't simply cast
comprehend language), maybe one in four or five if your DM works at it. But in a typical 4E game you'll get to swing your sword 10-20 times just about every session. So let's assume everybody took the boring Expertise-type feats already, and then give them an assortment of interesting Linguist-type feats to choose from.