The argument has been made to me that it's more about the STORY but how is it MORE interesting for the story if you're just a completely standard "CLASS" with one or two little quirks that BARELY affect how you work?

Any RACE CLASS is going to be the same as any other RACE CLASS mechanically and probably even equipment wise for an extremely long time. In 3.x you could START OFF as something unique. Actually make the character YOUR OWN in actual play.

I won't argue that 3.x is easier to do for beginners, because that's just untrue. But you can't tell me that 5e is BETTER than 3.x.

Except for casters, I'm totally onboard with giving casters the ability to actually DO something if they used up all their bigger spells for the day.