Emphasis Mine: I think you're wrong... for a player whose concept for his fighter is archer... it is an objectively better class...
It sucks pretty hard for the players whose concept of his fighter is stealthy knife-fighter who sneaks up and stabbs people in the back, or a bearded old man in a robe who casts spells, too.
Classes can often fit multiple concepts, but a class that does one set of closely related concepts well isn't a bad class, nor is a class that throws in a few more unrelated concepts and does the whole lot less well a better one.
'Class' in D&D, like Role, didn't have a really clear concept early on. But, unlike role, each class was formalized, even as the idea of what a class was meant to represent wasn't. So, in D&D, you've had classes based on what the class can accomplish, how the class accomplishes things, or even how it feels about what it's accomplishing - and, of course, classes specific to a culture.
A Barbarian, for instance, might seem like a great class, if you think cultural differences merit a separate class. Or, it might be seen as redundant in a game that already has the Fighter.
Until you settle on what a class is supposed to represent, it's hard to judge how good a job its doing. 4e /seemed/ to settle on class being a combination of Role and Source, though it didn't stick to it post-Essentials. Other editions didn't settle on anything. The 5e fighter stands in for just about every martial class conceived in the history of the game - Fighter, archer-ranger, duelist, knight, tempest, TWF ranger, gladiator, defender, warlord, slayer, not to mention myriad PrCs - everything but the thief & assassin, prettymuch. OTOH, the magic-user of the classic game has been divided up into 8 school wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, arcane tricksters, eldritch knights, and even bards.
and for many it wasn't less focused but more versatile
since nothing prevented you from choosing to create a meatshield if that's how you wanted to play... of course at that point role is no longer bound to class...
And nothing prevented you from creating or playing an archer, either, since the Fighter wasn't the sole martial class in the game.
But none of his powers did which means he was less effective both damage wise and in versatility. With the way 4e was designed being restricted in combat to basic attacks was in fact being ineffective... at least compared to everyone else whose using powers.
Nod. Ranged-oriented characters could fall back on melee basics, melee-oriented ones had ways of getting off ranged basic attacks, or a few oddball range powers. But that was in a single character. The 2e fighter who was a great archer was less great at melee, the 3.x fighter had to sink a lot of feats into one thing to be really good at it, so wasn't great elsewhere. A 5e STR-based heavy-armor 'tank' fighter is not going to compare to an archer at range. So, really, it's not something that has changed over the editions. It's just what class you take if you want to be a dedicated archer that hasn't been perfectly consistent.
You specifically call out 5e so I'm going to again have to disagree. For the first time in D&D the fighter has the same amount of skills as every class and through his background (and if applicable race) can choose nearly any skill he really wants
You mis-read me, there. I was back to the old-school fighter at that point.
Backgrounds are nice idea, very like backgrounds and themes in 4e (you probably weren't aware of 4e Backgrounds, or you wouldn't have said 5e was the 'first' time you could get access to any skill through a backtround) or Kits in 2e (not quite so versatile nor as consistent in what the represented, but similar ideas to 4e & 5e backgrounds and 4e themes or even 3.5 PrCs). And, Backgrounds have loosened up the problems 3.x and earlier had with balancing some classes' combat power vs others out-of-combat skill capability (most evident with Fighter vs Rogue/Thief - clearly looking for a balance between combat power on the fighter side and out of combat usefulness on the Rogue side, while missing that neither, nor, indeed, both combined, could at all compete with casters in or out of combat, once you got out of the level 'sweat spot').
Backgrounds in 5e make skills largely a non-issue for comparing classes.
As to his defensive capabilities... have you looked at the battle master?
Yes. Garbage. The battlemaster is to 4e martial classes as a class with nothing but Cantrips would be to classic, 3.x & 5e casters.
The thing that isn't happening is the Fighter class being synonymous with a single role like it was in pre-essentials 4e.
The fighter /is/ synonymous with the tank role, always has been. In 5e, you can pull in hints at secondary roles - through backgrounds or archeytpes - but the fighter is tough and does damage (especially does damage). That's consistent with what it was in old-school, and with the informal role that's always implied.
the ranger and fighter had different proficiencies, skills, important attributes, etc. so picking a ranger wasn't just picking an archer... and having the ranger as the only competent archer was in fact a restriction.
The ranger wasn't the only competent archer. Any class with a fair selection of Ranged Weapon powers that didn't somehow exclude bows could be pretty darn good at archery.
However, the Ranger was the only real choice for an all-MARTIAL Longbow-wielding dedicated archer. All the ranger's traditional woodsiness, though, was optional at that point. A ranger wasn't even obliged to take Nature, cast no nature-oriented spells (no spells at all, in fact), didn't automatically get an animal companion and, while it had a slightly different (better) skill list than the fighter, could pick the same skills as fighter probably would pretty easily - using a Background if you really wanted Intimidate or Streetwise for some reason.
So not that restrictive. Still more restrictive than it needed to be, though: 4e could have benefited from putting more emphasis on Backgrounds for determining skills, as 5e did, or possibly even taken Backgrounds as far as having formalized non-combat roles. But, while how 4e might have been made better is a pleasant topic of conversation, it has little to do with classes and roles. The fact is, if you wanted a non-spell-casting archer in 4e, you could have one, and he'd be /very/ good at it, with not just high-damage multi-attacking, but the variety offered by encounter & daily exploits (manuevers), as well.
Ironically, critics of 5e relative to 4e, often make the same flawed comparison with the Ranger. Just as you find fault in having an excellent all-martial archer not having the name 'fighter' on the sheet, they find fault with an excellent 5e all-martial woodsy type not having the name 'ranger' on the sheet, complaining that the Ranger is 'forced' to cast spells, when all they have to do is play a Fighter with the Outland background and get everything they have any right to expect from a non-casting, all-martial Ranger (well, except for the versatility and peak power of encounter and daily maneuvers, of course).
