Why are people so against having a diverse mage class?

I loved the addition of passives. But when they gave you only eight slots I believe they realized they would have to trim down the abilities. This meant that we're left with very few and they had to go with the basic primal/elementals because that's really what the core of all magic is, isn't it? I've never seen a game with magic that didn't have elemental magic. But the other stuff made it fun and unique.
 

I had my mage have fire and ice and one shock because you have to cover enemies who are resistant to the other since those are the only choices. After that, there just isn't much to do. You can spec into a specific ability with those trees but even then: ice mine, fire mine - how exciting. Wall of ice, wall of fire - oh that's just so fun!

The only reason I even thought of KE was because I thought after the sheer boredom of dishing out the same spells in nearly all situations I would get some amusement out of whacking stuff with a giant spirit blade or playing an almost healing running about throwing barriers on everyone which was rather fun because Dorian loves to get beat down. (Bad AI doesn't move when attacked!) But after killing 6 dragons (I didn't solo them because that was boring. Instead I designated myself a mix of attack and support where I wanted to see my team survive the dragons rather than me kill it while they died). It was interesting but not too fun. I had Dorian, Cole and Solas - finally some more unique and amusing banter though I really haven't heard much and I was switching it up to see but it seems like I got the same lines over and over - alas I digress. It was fun to try to keep barriers on them. I had to switch characters at times. It was fun doing the pseudo healer thing then using spirit blade and different elementals. That changed it up but honestly, there just wasn't any variety. It was not that different from button mashing just now you wait for cooldowns and have a bit different strategy but ultimately, I got bored with it very fast where I played so many different type mages in DAO who had different roles - crowd controllers, healers, aggressive storm busters - just to name a few where I did not have any, I repeat ANY of those options here. In fact, due to the limiting of the abilities we could use as well as the low levels which meant you would have to pick and choose which spells to get with lots of passives on the way I had even less variety. Oh I can be a fire mine specialist. Or a wall of ice specialist. Pfffft. It really got boring very fast. And the thing is that combat has to feel fun and interesting. It just has to. For some maybe it is but as someone who had a variety of spells in DAO where I could do so many different things with each character I made, this seemed quite limited. I suspect the majority of people won't care or notice it or even know it was different as DAO had smaller sales. But for me, it was a huge change and right off the bat limited how many times and how long I would play a mage. There's only so much you can do now so multiple mage runs becomes less likely. Variety is gone and so replaying was limited as it just wasn't really that fun. I hit my mage limit well before I ever finished the game. I wasn't underpowered. I was bored with shooting off the same spells. The whole idea behind magic in games is fun! It's not of this world and therefore it should be interesting and feel like you are doing something different, something entertaining. It didn't. That's the issue I had with it. Far too boring very fast. Playing time drastically reduced.

And to be clear, I actually think I might have had more fun when I was weaker because as I got more levels I got more power and so I could wreck stuff with fire mines. But that gets dull very fast. I could trash stuff with wall of ice. Great times against templars. But after that initial novelty wears off, there was nothing else to fall back on to spice it up. Now, as comparison, I remember for skyrim people would go crazy looking for spell books. Some just wanted more powerful spells but many wanted them for variety. And they didn't have the kind of variety DAO had but still... variety. I'm wondering if mainstream just doesn't care about variety. After all, many play shooters endlessly. I can't think of a more dull way to pass the time, but there it is. Shooting over and over, day in and day out - that's entertainment.