The Tale of Two Players:
Once in the recent past I had two players meet at my house as my younger 5e players ended their game and left and my older 3.5E players were coming over for their evening game.
Ken: I've known Ken for years and years, and we have been gaming for all that time. Like me he started playing RPGs long, long ago. He bounced around some groups before joining my group, and we will likely game forever. Like me he is an Old School gamer.
Kyle: I've known Kyle for a little over a year now, but not well. He is just an acquaintance that I game with. He is much younger and got his start with RPGs by playing video games. He is now a player in my weekly 5E Spelljammer game. He is a Modern Gamer....though he is starting to crack a bit.
Ken and Kyle have plenty in common...so they go to talking about things, and then came around to talking about D&D. Both of them love to play "Rogue" type characters....in a vague sense. And listing to them talk about their rogue characters was fascinating.
Kyle will endlessly talk about how his 'rogue' is a front line pure combat Striker. He goes on and on about how the right combo of things can do more and more and more damage. He has had some number of characters, but they are all basically the same. Damage is king, and Kyle is ready with his Bucket'o'Dice to roll more and more damage. Kyle lives for combat, and endlessly using "sneak attack" and/or advantage to do more damage. Once in a while Kyle mentions hiding, but only as part of a combat move to.....do more damage. The only personal actions he will menton is his character in combat. Only when asked about anything other then combat, does Kyle mention that, sure, like once a game he sneaks past a guard or something. Often when a published adventure has a set "encounter" that requires stealth as part of the plot. And maybe once a game he remembers to pick a lock.
Ken will talk about each of his fairly distinct characters and how in decades of gaming, he has barley done any combat. In fact, he will tell how not only do his 'rogue' characters avoid combat, but how they run away from it. While his characters can't always avoid combat, it's very rare for Ken to have his character just jump into any combat. Often when getting in combat, Ken's only goal is to escape and get away from the attacker. The few times he feels his character must enter combat, maybe once every three or so game sessions, he often uses things like trip effects or bolas to entangle foes. Much more 'battle field control' then just doing damage". Kan can tell a tale or two of how his character would often move around a combat area doing battle field control. Closing doors, blocking hallways, entangling foes and more. He will take about being a duo with another character and doing such things as tossing a net on some foes so a spellcasting character can blast them. And more so then the above, Ken goes on endlessly about how his 'rogue' character is a thief and an adventurer. stealing anything he could, committing crimes and being a 'gray' type character at best. Though often crossing the line to 'near evil' often enough. And always jumping, climbing, and moving about an area to use all his skills all the time to get things done in the game play.
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