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Since it is D&D, we are going to have classes.  As much as I wish we wouldn't, we will.  That said, please be aware that what many people see as faults in various rules boil down not to problems with the rules they state, but with poor class design that forces people into incompatibilities between what they want to do and what one of the designers thinks they should be doing.

To sidestep into a brief example to help illustrate that last statement, lets compare PnP roleplaying games to something like a computer game, say the original Neverwinter Nights.  While you could move your character around however you wanted, could fight however you wanted, the inherent limitation of the medium meant that you could really only do what the game designers could anticipate you doing.  For example, if you had a character with insanely high strength you couldn't just kick through a wall to get where you wanted to do, you had to find the proper door.  If the writing for the game as poor, you as the player might be presented with two options to choose from while as a player you immediately see an obvious third option that would solve everything, but the writer didn't think of it, so you can't do it.  The advantage to pen and paper roleplaying games is that we have so much more flexibility, that we aren't given as many arbitrary "No, you can't do that because I didn't think you would ever think to try it" moments.

However, class design is one of those areas.  Some classes are broadly defined and people generally have no problems with them.  Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, the oldschool stuff mostly.  These are great classes because they do not carry much if any baggage as to what they should or should not be.  The Fighter is just as good with a 2h sword as they are sword and board or with a bow.  You could have a big strong tank of a character, or you could have a lightly armored nimble fighter with a rapier.  The class is presented as being an empty framework, and that made it strong.  Same with the Rogue.  It wasn't pidgeonholed as a thief, it was given a broad toolbox and could be a catburgler, a professional dungeoneer, or even a master craftsman.  Broad concepts lead to strong class design that doesn't stand in the way of what people want to play, it gives them the tools to make whatever they want.

Poor class design relies on stereotypes and limited scopes.  The Paladin falls into this, as does the Barbarian, the Bard, the Monk, pretty much most of the newer classes.  Why is this a bad thing?  Because to differentiate these classes from the broad class bases (after all, the Barbarian and Monk concepts can both be fully realized with just a Fighter class and some creative descriptions, and the Cleric can already wear full plate and cary a sword and shield, so they already fit the role of the generic holy warrior) they are given unique abilities that generally can't be found anywhere else.  However, because the class is based on a narrowly defined stereotype, it comes with restrictions that mean it can only be applied to that stereotype.  If you want to use the mechanics they offer, then many times you have no choice but to adopt the stereotype.

Granted, there is a good reason stereotype classes exist.  Many players are limited in their ability to make something from scratch.  It is easier to take a stereotype, change one or two minor details, and then run with that than it is to take broad concepts and really define everything yourself.  That leads the broad classes to look boring because they don't hand you everything on a silver platter ready to play.  One of my old sayings was "If you can't make an interesting human fighter, then you aren't ready to play anything else yet" to mock that particular mindset.

It would also greatly decrease, IMO, the noise surrounding other mechanics that work just fine in their own right, but cause problems when combined with restrictive class stereotypes.  Alignment is a prime example of this.  Dig up any thread about why alignment is horrible and you will invariably find talk of Paladins, Monks, Barbarians, Warlocks, etc.  The problem isn't with alignment, it works fine.  The problem is that you have given special abilities to one of these stereotype classes that you can't get any other way, and people are railing against the restriction, whatever it may be.

Now granted, a competant DM can and should wave stereotype restrictions when the mechanics are being used in a non-stereotypical way, but to quote the Oberroni Falacy (is that still something people on the boards here recognize?), "Just because Rule 0 can fix it doesn't mean it wasn't a problem to begin with".  Using 3e as an example, what if I wanted to play a Dragonball Z style character?  We had the rules to cover that, you could replicate just about all of it with a Monk/Warlock.  The super powered characters from DBZ were just Gestalt Monk//Warlocks.  Oh but wait, both of those were narrowly defined stereotypes with conflicting flavors and unique abilities that couldn't be otherwise replicated.  Namely alignment restrictions again.  Apparently the ability to punch someone really, really hard is something that only Lawfully minded characters could do, because it was based on the incredibly narrow scope of the old kung fu movie shaolin monks.  And the Warlock had no choice but to make deals with devils or chaotic entities to be able to shoot energy out of his hands?

If those stereotype classes had been better designed up front to give us the tools to make what we wanted out of them, and not been so restrictive in what boils down to nothing but one person's idea of appropriate flavor text, then there would have been no concerns, and everything would have run smoothly.  Instead, we get issues where people bash alignment as being broken because a designer decided to use what amounts to the same restrictions as PrC for a base class.  The "You must play this character in the preset way we said you could" is damaging to the game (and not to start anything, but I think its one of the biggest problems 4e had, so many fewer choices meant much less room for personal design and creativity).

Please, keep class design broad and generic.  Make a Rogue, not a catburgler or a pickpocket.  Make a Fighter, not a swordsman, a Wizard, not a Pyromancer.  Classes should be tools to help you get the mechanics for a character you want to play down in a useable form.  Classes should not already be the character and you just pick which color eyes they have.  Thats what computer RPGs are for, and this is not a CRPG.

I'd prefer all classes to be a generic as possible/reasonable.  And then let pre-built builds be published (possibly in the same rulebook) and given flavorful names and descriptions to help people select certain styles of characters.

D&D is overall a class, not skill based system, that has been what at least up until 4e made it different from other competing systems.

Why would you want to make D&D something that it isn't, rather than playing something that fists your need?  Lots of other games have 'broad' classes.

Take the cleric for instance, who up until 4e, could turn undead, and ONLY the cleric could turn undead.  That was a skill in the domain of the cleric.  Now people want that to not be the case.

If D&D didn't have its archetypes and locks, it would just be another generic RPG is the sea of them that exist.  Its class-based play makes it truly unique against its peers.