Fair point. My background is D&D/Pathfinder, so for me "Bard" carries a certain connotation. In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi: "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." :-) Though even some newer D&D editions have started to make "party support" a legit "role" and in those cases the D&D Bard might indeed be thought of as a specialist.

Putting aside class names and expectations, my main point was simply that I typically don't use generalists (WHATEVER those generalists might be called) unless I have a sufficiently large party which is primarily composed of specialists.

I think this is one tactic we can all agree upon, regardless of the game system. :-) If the party size is sufficiently large to allow for multiple healers/revivers without critically gimping your offense -- DO IT. There's nothing worse than a lucky shot taking down your one healer/reviver and then having no recourse except to shout out "Game over, man! Game over!" as the rest of your party gets methodically picked off one-by-one.

If there's a party, i prefer specialized characters. If not, a jack of all trades is usually what i strive for, although i usually give an edge to combat skills.

As with all of your questions about game design: Depends on the game you want to make. If you have a single character RPG like TES or a Piranha Bytes game, you need to have a reasonable access to a diverse set of skills that allow you to see a good chunk of the game. There should be at most 1 or 2 replays necessary to experience everything the game has to offer.
If you have a party based RPG, then you should have a team of specialist, that covers all your needs in terms of skill and ability versatility. For flavor you can have multiclassing, that allows for mix and matching specialist roles, at the cost of mastery. At most something between D&Ds dual/multi-classing and FFTA2 job and skills mixing.

Depends. If the game has multiple paths for different ability sets, then focused abilities will increase replayability. I like Fallout like this, because there are several ways to accomplish most tasks in the game. The sheer number of options is almost overwhelming. There's almost no (legit) way to build a character that can do more than 2 or 3 things well enough to pass all the checks.

Build to multirole; IE such as what Freelancers eventually become in Final Fantasy IV. Need Time Magic, Chemistry, and Dancing on one hero? You can do that.

Or use a revive item, which aren't always common, and doesn't even exist in some games.

In many Dragon Quest games (starting with DQ2, as DQ1 only has one playable character), there's a place to get a revive item, but only if you don't already have one. If you use it up, no more revive item use until you take another trip to get another. (DQ2's endgame is brutal, and you are going to want this item to tilt the odds somewhat in your favor. The endgame enemies are strong enough that getting from the final save to the entrance of the final dungeon without a death (or even getting there *at all*) is not a given. (At least the US version improved one thing: In the original JP version, the person at the save point would not revive you, so you had to make your way back to town to revive, and that was quite a pain (and may not be possible if you've been relying on the Open spell).))

Final Fantasy 1 has no revive item. (White Mage (only one who can revive at that point) die in the Ice Cave? (or don't have one and somebody dies?) Well, you're out that character for the rest of the dungeon, which has some nasty instant-death enemies in it (including a potential "Enemies Win First" situation in the PSX version).) FF3's Phoenix Downs are limited in supply (no place to buy them, though in the remake there's a rare early-game enemy you can steal them from, I believe). FF5's Phoenix Downs are a little expensive, particularly early on. (This is in contrast to FF4 where they're ridiculously cheap.)

Then again, the situation where you have to wait as your characters get picked off one-by-one is when enemies hit your entire party with sleep and paralyze, and there's nothing you can do. Even if your defense is high enough to take only 1 damage, you can still end up with defeat from what should have been an easy battle this way.

By the way, I am sometimes actually willing to significantly gimp my offense to have that second healer; I tend to prioritize healing more than most players, I think. (I saw a post from an FF3 player who actually uses a Red Mage as the only healer; I actually used it in addition to the White Mage/Devout.)

It sounds like your memory is a bit off here.

* Final Fantasy 4 does not have Freelancers, Time Magic, Chemistry, or Dancing. It is the only (single-player) game in the series to allow 5 person parties (not counting SaGa 2/3 as FF games here), but you don't control your party composition at all; rather, characters come and go as the game progresses, and the game essentially dictates your party composition at each point rather than the other way around.
* Assuming you actually mean Final Fantasy 5, the setup you describe doesn't work, as Freelancers don't have enough ability slots (assuming you want Dance as a command and not just the Dancing Dagger's 50% Dance chance). You can, however, use that one secret job you can get late in the game for this that gets 3 ability slots (at the expense of not having Fight and Item as standard).

Depends to me, but maybe a bit of both e.e

I like having versatile characters, but there are situations where I absolutely need a focused character

But, if I can get my characters overpowered, I'm going that way. I love steamrolling fights

Balanced. The more options the better. If focused, I prefer spellcasters over fighters, at least they have a range of different spells. Nothing blander than a character who can only ever react to all challenges in the same way.

(Of course, that only applies to single player characters. A varied party of focused characters is totally fine.)

Pardon. I meant V. But late night typing.

Party based: Same as all the others above.

Single character: I still prefer focused, but the game must be developed around multiple ways of approach. Like stealth vs magic/tech vs brute force. Or even a honey-tongued, lying, cheating "diplomat" build. Like someone wrote above, the character's weakness are just as defining as their strengths.
I do think though, that the game should offer ways to compensate for some of the weaknesses, like special use items for emergencies (which traditionally stay in the backpack until the end of the game because "I could need them more urgently later" ;-))

Even if you have a character whose specialty is using those items effectively? (I'm thinking something like Final Fantasy 5's Chemist, who can mix two consumable items to produce another effect, like reviving a character with full HP and MP, making a character immune to attacks like Gravity and Death Claw, and even a powerful HP draining attack.)

(There's also the approach that Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark uses, where items are a per-map resource; you get a certain number of each item per battle, and any you save don't carry over to the next, so it encourages more use of the items.)

Would probably depend on the game, and my statement contained a certain amount of irony (hence the ";-)"). I know from my own experience and the tales of others that many players are hoarders, and instead of using one of those 38 Potions of Minor Healing in their backpack, they rather backtrack for several minutes to that "Fountain of Restoration".

Or, as a melee fighter, instead of simply using that (limited charges) Wand that can Shoot Stuff, wait patiently in behind a pillar until those pesky flying things come looking and get in sword range.

I think that one function of limited inventory slots is to coerce the player into actually using the stuff the game gives you before it becomes totally obsolete.

It's probably a bit different with stuff you can craft yourself. Speaking for myself - for instance if alchemy is an option and I can make my own potions I'll be quicker to actually use them than when there is a limited supply to be found or bought.

What if you can reliably farm the item from some enemy?

For example, in Final Fantasy 5 there's a couple turtle enemies that will *always* drop Turtle Shells, which are usable with the Mix command for things like restoring MP and that powerful HP drain attack I mentioned. There's also some enemies semi-early that you can reliably steal Ethers (which restore MP) from. (Note that this game follows JRPG logic when it comes to stealing; if you steal from an enemy, you get an item that would not have been dropped when you kill the enemy. May not make sense, but that's the JRPG stealing mechanic as established in FF3 and refined in FF5.)

Also, sometimes you can't replace items with other things. In my current Final Fantasy 3 remake playthrough, I ended up using 2 Phoenix Downs (which can't be bought in FF3) during a boss fight. as the boss killed my Geomancer, the only one who could reliably do decent damage to that boss.