That STILL makes no sense... Your argument, putting aside how realistic it is or not, doesn't tell me Feats are bad, it tells me the Fghter is sub par!
And a Fighter really isn't that bad until the very high levels. But it IS Bland if you can't add some extra spice with a Feat. Like, I can build a Battlemaster with high CHA and Rally, for exemple, but then my CHA is pretty uselss outside of Rally itself and maybe 1 or 2 skill rolls here or there. So, I look over to feats and see what I can pick that works with that character. Maybe I can pick up Skill Expertise, or maybe Actor, or maybe Linguist to use my skills on more people, or maybe I'll double down on the Temp HP and go for Inspiring Leader! Or maybe I'll pick up Magic Initiate Bard and pick the Entertainer Background and just have my character introduce himself as a Bard despite not being that class on my sheet. Then I can stay back and in one turn Insult an enemy to death while Praising an ally so they have some Temp HP (Okay now I kinda want to play that, drats!). Or maybe I'll ignore CHA and just grab Healer because nobody's playing a class with healing?
I'm not even thinking about what everybody else is doing, but rather trying to come up with more options I can pick from so I can approach more situations from different angles others than just 'I hit it with my sword'. I like Feats because it gives me things to chose when level up, but it's not as annoying as picking spells.
You want to talk about illusion of choice that end up all looking the same? Look at the Cleric spell list one of these days... Augh. 5e Clerics are SO BORING!
And can we stop this BS elitist judgy thing where people who enjoy rolling big numbers are looked down upon? YES I like to roll high and kick butt in combat. What of it?! My fun is just as valid as you, Mr. "Roleplay More To Make your Character Different"!