Azrael the cat
Agreed, and I actually wonder if that's also a consequence of keeping a 6-man party. Even in a game where there's a dozen classes, having such a large party means it appears totally sensible to have a collection of idiot savants that are finely honed, 20th century modernism style, to one or two specific functions. These party members are basically gears in a cog repeating the same rote but highly effective action again and again.
I understood why the D&D games did that, but I actually think party sizes beyond a certain number (usually 2-4) is asking for trouble, because then the player has exponentially more options available. I get a lot more enjoyment out of 3-4 man parties in IE games, POE, etc. because you are then forced to have party members diversify a little. That means you are sometimes giving up certain abilities altogether - or simply give them up in a given situation because you can't do everything at the same time. With a 6 person party, nobody has to really consider not bringing a thief along, or a cleric, or a mage - even though you can have some very interesting gameplay when you do that.
A good case is the POE mage. Obsidian wanted to build a mage class that can be built in at least a slightly larger variety of ways than the traditional wizard - i.e. not just Glass Cannon. Even at 1.00, this was the case: at the very least, you could have a blast-oriented mage focusing on non-spell attack power and even medium-range (not back-line) participation, at least up to mid-levels. Before the 1.05 buffs that made a melee wizard handily capable of Triple Crown. However, the vast majority of players simply minmaxed a typical Fireball Machine: you can see this by the amount of people who keep complaining about shades killing their mages, worrying about mage DPS and patches' impact, etc.
It's a pity, because the POE system already provides an impressive variety of possible builds within a class, and there is scope for extending this further.