Neonchameleon
Legend
I believe even in 4e the choices really are set. 98% of the time you lead with the same combination of powers. So I'm not sure the choice is as much as you realize.
The game survived for 30 so years before it had the kinds of choices you prefer. It's not really though until 4e in the tradition of D&D. I'm not sure how I'd classify it. We'd probably both be happier with two separate games. I doubt 5e will make you happy because it sounds like you want encounter/dailies for everyone period.
In 4e whether the choices are set or not depends a lot on your class and build. I get more variety out of Essentials classes than most people do out of regular ones (that said, I'll never play a Slayer or Knight and a Scout is pretty unlikely). Three illustrative characters are below.
[sblock]My wizard-from-hell regularly finished combats with one or both of his encounter powers unused. But they were options that did other things than his at wills and whatever he chose to use (other than Unravelling Dart while he had it - he found he never needed single target damage) was going to give the monsters a very bad day in a way the DM didn't anticipate.
The question with my monk wasn't so much what attacks he'd use, but where the hell he'd be to use them. He had a wire-fu fly, a free move action at the start of his turn 1/encounter, an encounter teleport, and an insane turn of speed. The attacks he used were almost always determined by the shape of the enemy (vs fort or vs ref) but where he'd be from round to round even I couldn't tell you.
And my Warlord had five distinct at wills all allowing him to do very different actions (Commander's Strike, Direct the Strike, Brash Assault, a risky charge attack that either slammed the enemy over or granted combat advantage, then let him bounce off (feat + boots of adept charging), and his MBA for when he actually needed to square up to someone and tank) and the DM's hatred, mostly for the Powerful Warning encounter power although Brash Assault ran it a close second.[/sblock]
And it simply isn't true that pre-4e D&D didn't have what I wanted for immersion. There's never been a problem with casters other than being overpowered (I know the 3.5 bard pretty well partly because of this). And 1e and oD&D are not about immersion. Gygaxian D&D has the player in pawn stance and trying to solve a ruthless meatgrinder. I have no problem with that - Immersion is a Johnny-come-lately, mostly of interest from 2e onwards. (I don't think it was even a goal of anything published pre-Dragonlance). On the other hand the Book of 9 Swords was the very first time I actually saw a fighter I wanted to play in D&D in its own right (as opposed to because I had a concept that fitted or because it made for an excellent pawn).
As for wanting encounters/dailies for everyone, period. No I don't. I want most if not all classes to have the option of limited use powers. I certainly don't want to force you to take them if you don't want to.