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The chooseable options are the basics; if you want something special you have to roll for it and may or may not get it...this time. I do it this way for various elements of character creation, not just class. This allows rare-in-theory to be and remain rare-in-practice.

This tangentially raises another point: with point buy or standard array something I like to do becomes impossible: that being to gate certain classes etc. behind high rolls in order to make them less commonly seen in play and a little bit special if-when they do arise.

I have a hard time believing this, provided the rolls were done honestly and witnessed. I once watched in awe as a player of mine legitimately rolled 18-18-17-17-15-15 (in whatever order). Then it hit the field and the combat dice took over; thanks to a critical hit from a Giant that character...

If 4e was all that was out there and I was brand new to RPGing, I wouldn't have much of a choice. :) Similar to when (with a few niche exceptions) B/X and 1e was all there was; and anyone brand new to RPGing ended up for the most part accepting the kind of gameplay those games offered. Since...

"Wipe them out. All of them." - Palpatine/Sidious.

The question then becomes one of whether they should cater to that player psychology or try to incrementally change it such that a "miss" streak is simply accepted as part of the game rather than bemoaned.

So you're not a fan of dynastic teams, then. Fair enough. Except that in the situation where the PCs are intended to be reflective of a bit of a cross-section of their respective populations... ...then certain characters ARE born with a certain size, brain power, etc. (personality too but...

Because getting the character into play gives it a chance to work out OK despite its stats (believe me, some do!). If it doesn't, retiring it serves to make the campaign setting* just that little bit broader and deeper in the long run. * - irrelevant if the DM is running a hard-line AP with no...

Sure, I'm fine with that. There's ways of doing it that aren't too obvious. :)

Thing is, disparity is not a bad thing. Right now Alphonso Davies is a far better football player (when he's not injured!) than most of the other pro players out there; ditto Connor McDavid when it comes to hockey. Do those disparities make football or hockey worse games? No. Why not...

They still kept linear bonuses for 5e, though, which is an inexplicable design choice when using a bell-curve generation method.

And IME that guy hiding in the back being ineffective ain't always the one with the bad stats. Quite the opposite, in fact: bad-stats guy is often the one front and centre trying to prove himself.

Perhaps, but if generally higher scores are desired the DM can always set the point-buy value higher.

I'm more "what goes around, comes around" when it comes to this. And, IME (even including 3e) I've had great stats on characters who didn't get out of their third session and relatively awful stats on characters who lasted for years. Further, if a character just isn't working - be it due to...

At cost of losing the player who only wants to roll? Why does the point-buy-only player get priority over the roll-only player here, is my question?

Expected lethality does have a lot to say here. I'm used to games that are - or very much can be - fairly lethal at low level, kind of like a very slow-motion DCC funnel; meaning the cream in theory will rise to the top over time. Note that I say "in theory", as in practice the initial stats...

We all hope to play the character for years but that doesn't mean that's what's going to happen. :)

So one player who doesn't want to roll stats is enough to prevent the whole table from rolling? Seems a bit much. Flip side: if one player doesn't want to use any other method than rolling, should that be enough to force everyone to roll?

They don't have to be equal IME but they have to have the chance of being equal. If the chance doesn't pay off this time, so be it: there's always next time. :)

A cutline at average 8.0 is pretty low. 15-14-13-12-11-3 crushes that cutline (the average is 11.3). Hell, even 10-9-9-9-9-3 beats it (average is 8.2). It doesn't take all that much to counterbalance a single 3.