I think you may be hitting what p sense as the Elf-skew.It's obvious that we look at this problem in a very different manner. I think we agree that there is a fairly sweet spot where there is a mixture of player agency and choice with character simulation of abilities, where the character's abilities are informing the player's choice and no one's choices in character creation are being invalidated and conversely no one is able to get away with purely gaming the system by, for example, as you suggested dumping charisma and trying to treat all social situations as a matter of pure player skill.
But while we seem to agree over the sweet spot, we both are doing exactly the opposite in the pure cases - #1 and #2 - and yet we state that we have basically the same reasoning behind our opposite approaches. So either something is screwy about what we mean by pure player challenge and pure character challenge, or we have a hugely different perspective on what invalidates play.
I understand that you don't want to see the chargen mini-game invalidated, but while I understand that, the risk incurred by invalidating player agency by taking their choices out of the equation seems to be vastly greater.
Let's return to my hypothetical "Choose Your Own Adventure Book". In it I defined two cases, one of which, pure player choice involves no reference to character ability, and the other pure resolution by character ability, involves no player choice. Of the two, which book do to you think makes a better game to play, the one where all the problems are of pure player choice (your #1) or all the problems are of pure resolution by character ability (your #2)?
#2 is not at all "no player choice" - not harfly.
In #2 the player choices are involved in two ways, one direct, one indirect.
Indirect- the player choices made before - in chargen and after - directly setup the "stats" called for the resolution. Some of those may be absolutes (nor proficiency or no tools) but most they are modifiers to the odds. The Joe has +8" is an indirect result of a choice made long ago. So might "several NPCs dhow up to help" as a response to prior good faith acts that might have been totally non-stat (#1 provides boost.)
Directly, the choices made right then and there impact not only the outcome but the odds. Did you use dome crowbar to gain advantage? Did the guy who is best at it go first or not? Does someone have feather fall prepped irl known in case there is a fall? Is there a rope tied to you as safety? Does anyone use enhance ability or guidance or bardic dice?
These and hundreds more can directly impact the odds - even moving it to an auto-success in some cases where skill plus these choices meet the criteria. They can also constrain and influence the outcome on a failure. This is imo vital in a game where "some progress with setback" is part of the basic core options for what a failure on a skill check is resolved as.
Your "just roll a die with no choice" is **not** my #2. Its not close.
That's in DnD terms like maybe getting forced to draw from deck of many things. Even saves reflect back to chargrn choices and options in the moment that can apply.