This is true and also not a terrible thing IMHO.
Hyper specialization leads to a kind of repetition that gets old fast.
Yes Dave the fighter is a holy terror with his 2H sword of destruction but what about situations that make the use of that sword nearly impossible. Due to overspecialization Dave has one answer to any problem-his sword.
The mechanical advantage provided by this specialty make success at other approaches look more like anti-options. If Dave could do other things just a well then his sword skill wouldn't stand out. He would be stepping on some else's specialty. The DM needs to scale the challenges to the specialists or else the adventure is a cakewalk.
On the other hand we have Bob the fighter. Bob is proficient with a bunch of weapons but has no vast mechanical advantage when using any particular one of them. Bob can engage in ranged combat or other activities at about the same level of effectiveness. Other fighting men in the party have favorite fighting styles, as does Bob, but they can all contribute more or less equally in a variety of situations.
The boredom factor:
Both Dave and Bob could become boring to play after a time for various reasons.
What if Dave had to spend at least half of the campaign outside his specialty. The party uses a lot of diplomacy and ranged attacks and fights quite a bit against opponents that cannot be engaged in melee. Dave is now functioning in his element as a fighter about half the time. Depending on the likes of the player, this could be boring.
Bob plays through the same campaign. While not nearly as impressive in close fighting, he meaningfully contributes combat skills to every conflict. Depending on the likes of the player, the lack of super effective niche could be boring.
I'm going to have to disagree here. Firstly, I'm not talking about hyper-specialization as in being the best trippy chain fighter.
The problem with the super simplistic fighter is that he only has 2 tricks. Swing sword or shoot bow. And other than variance in the die type, nothing differentiates him from Mr. Swing Axe or Throw Axe. Not really anyway. If my PC died, yours could pick up my stuff and do the exact same thing.
With no extra rules, the figher is BORING. This is why folks move on to play Wizards. They get more rules and more OPTIONS.
This is why each subsequent edition has added more stuff to the fighter. To add some variance between REALLY different things my fighter does, compared to yours.
Because of the way the basic fighter worked, if I missed a session, you could play my fighter exactly the same way you played yours. And it wouldn't matter.
With the extra options like feats, it encourages playing my fighter differently than yours, to take advantage of the feats I have, that yours doesn't.
Basically, the rules gives options to define a PC, and then sets a play pattern for that PC.
I'd hate to call it a "restriction" but part of the challenge of roleplaying is to define a role which has limits to how it acts (choosing a Good alignment versus evil) and then solving the game's problems with those choices made.
To sum up, I like having enough complexity to differentiate my fighter from yours, and not just through the funny accent I use and the stupid weapon choice I chose during equipment buying.
I do however tend to just play core-rules. The extra add-ons do slow down setup, by spreading out the material and making too many choices available.
And as a DM, a more simplified set of rules would be nice, it would take less work to setup. Heck, back in my 2e days, I'd write DMing utils for my group. One of those tools was a monster encounter generator (it would print out the stats and HP blocks needed for an encounter). A monster needed about 7 simple lines of text (as in "HP: 5"). Nowadays, you need a whole stat block.
But this gets to where the DM needs a different set of rules than the players.
The players can easily track their own PC's complexity. A DM is running a number of short-lived NPCs, they don't need all those rules because they won't get to use them all in the 6 rounds they exist during combat.
)
