I think was what I was trying to get at was that there is no "right" way to handle the problem, no perfect solution, because it all comes down to what each individual group and DM defines what "role-playing" means to them.
Every DM and player has their own ideas of how to immerse in a role-playing game, has their own ideas on what constitutes role-playing, and it's one of the aspects of D&D Next that I fear is likely to be problematic. It's one of the reasons that we have so many D&D gamers spread across 5 editions of the game, and every one of them feels that they are playing the version that makes sense to them. For some non-weapon proficiencies are all they need for a skill system, while others look at SRD/d20 skills and feats as the ultimate achievement. And for still others, none of those systems make sense, and they maintain that OD&D/AD&D with no skill system had it right from the start.
So you can try and create theme and class descriptors instead of skills and feats, and that will make sense to some players and enhance their role-playing experience. But for every one of those folks that system makes sense to, there could be one or five or even a hundred D&D players out there looking for skills and feat mechanics to help them define the sort of character they are portraying, because that makes sense to them.
And on a personal note, I think the process of creating D&D Next, with its endless polls and secretive community playtesting, has had a tendency to point out more and more of the divisiveness between D&D playstyles, and underscore just how different the gamers of each edition are from each other. So in actuality, I fear that D&D Next has as much lower chance of uniting the D&D community than it does of creating yet another edition schism and edition war.