Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I find myself wondering how much of that "samey-ness" is really down to Point Buy (or standard array), and how much is down to the ability to place the six scores as desired. Because when you roll much of the time you're going to get an array that isn't all that far off something you could buy anyway (after all, that's why the array/point buy was constructed the way it was). So you're not necessarily going to get something wildly different anyway.
I wonder, therefore, if the antidote to the "samey-ness" isn't rather to allow the player to assign, say, the top 2 scores to their chosen attributes, but then randomize the placement of the others. That would mean the player could always play their chosen class without issue, but one Fighter might be intelligent but not dextrous with another is wise but not charismatic.
Just a thought.
Yeah in general when there's choice rather than RNG you're going to get similar results. So at one extreme is roll-in-order (random numbers and random locations), somewhere toward the middle is roll-then-assign (random number, selected locations), and at the other extreme is Point Buy and Standard Array (choose everything).