Like in WoW, a mmorpg? I wouldn’t much mind it if I only think about PvP aspect. But that may result in D4 completely going towards MMO than an ARPG.
That has nothing to do with how many skills one can have at any given moment. Even less than 6 skills can achieve what you described, it all depends on how the gameplay mechanics are designed.
D3 lacks severely in the tactics department because the mechanics in that regard are just poorly designed. It wouldn’t matter if you could choose to have all skills available at all times. That would not make any difference in depth of tactics or combat.
So far no one has given a single valid reason why “only 6 skills” is bad.
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Honestly I’m not concerned with labels, there are a plethora of games with “weapon wheels” to immediately select a weapon, how do you do that ?, hold a button and use “arrows” if on console (or mouse-select if on PC), what’s the “utility” of that ?, simple = one button = whole menu, literally a whole menu functions with just one button assignment, blasphemous 
I personally don’t like wheel menus (or popups of any kind as a menu for that matter due to clogging the playfield), but there are implementations that have been tested time and time again (such as the wheel menu for ex.) and works
Again, it’s all in the implementation/s, I really don’t care about “labeling” or characterization, and tbh people are overly-obsessed (in general) with those
Yeah, because the actual action you are currently doing in D3 doesnt change.
You just change the activity you are doing for a different build, but in D2 you have to adapt in every instance/pack of enemies many times on the go while facing different enemies, which requires more tactical approach to different chain of reactions, which often require the use of more spells.
Im not saying many people did this, but experienced players did this very often.
I used as a Hammerdin different auras for example, with the standard aura being concentration.
When my resistances were low in Hell and i saw a pack with conviction aura, I would use salvation or resist certain elemental res (elemental attack of mob) if it was extra fast I would switch over to vigor to run away/kite if enemies had extra fast modifier, teleport with enigma and if i lost hp/mana use redemption using corpses as resources.
Count in Battle Orders, Battle Command and Heart of the oak buffs granted from itemization.
While facing ubers you dont have your res capped, you need to think rotate a lot of auras when trying to isolate uber meph and kill him alone because of his conviction aura.
Ill have to try this during a fight in D3, so far i remember you could not.
What i just described as a simple example used already more than 6 spells (add in holy shield because this buff is almost a must in the paladin), counting buffs from itemization.
Its a valid example and you are just searching for excuses without proper examples of gameplay since D2 isnt your strenght.
Edit: Ah, yes, i forgot cleansing to clear debuffs and poisoning DoT for yourself and your party as well, or use conviction so that your whole party deals more damage and remove immunities of enemies if you are playing 8 players.
Listing here all paladin auras that you could acess depending situations.
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/paladin-defense.shtml
http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/paladin-offense.shtml
This is true, but don’t think that the game should be designed in such a way that it’s mandatory to do so… I mean I get it it’s about doing the “peak” performance, but don’t think it’s necessary to go “overboard” with skill changes all the time in order to work… The problem of D3 is (again, largely) in lazy mob design rather tbh
PoE has a console version too.
And FF14 console has more buttons as well:
https://i.imgur.com/4zEkzzg.png
It is never about limited button layout but a design choice.
By the way…
D2R console version has 6 skill bars too 
https://i.imgur.com/sIOJpPX.jpg
Well said. Only one or 2 skills needed for the combat and the rests were just an almost everlasting buff that you only need to cast it for one time or 2 times in your game. 
You can surely switch your itemization skills to passives, just feels like lazier gameplay imho.
Does that mean that your summon from itemization should just pop up randomly when you want it to summon situationally to tank a certain boss or pack of mobs?
Theres no control of strategy in there
Limiting how many tools the player can bring can itself be a form of tactical choice.
Though since they’re apparently not going to give us enough points to fill out the tree anymore, I don’t see much of a reason to have a limit in the way of a skill bar.
There’s already a limit in how many points we have. At that point it’s just a matter of making investing more points into a skill have a significant impact and avoiding things like level 1 Teleport in Diablo 2 being all you really needed.
Not having such an abundance of +X to all skills would also help that immensely.
WD. It’s a skill spamming festival. Big Bad Voodoo. Go in, Soul Harvest, Spirit Walk, Horrify. Sprit Barrage. Dogs are running always.
Personally I don’t think “6 skills” (or any set number of skills for that manner) is bad. However, I think being able to hotkey skills so that you can swap between them interchangeably is far better as it gives players better adaptability in the midst of battle.
Using Diablo 2 as an example, one such build I play is wolf druid. My build made use of shapeshifting skills as well as summons. My summons used were the life spirit and wolverine spirit (for boost to attack rating), I swapped between the two depending on the situation, dire wolves or bear (which again I swapped between depending on the situation), and carrion vine. That alone would take 5 skill slots, while my shapeshifting skills were Werewolf (of course for transforming), feral rage, and fury, which makes 3 and brings the total used skills to 8. That’s not also counting other things like unsummon, townportal, warcries (via cta), etc.
Now regarding Diablo 4, I don’t really mind 6 skill slots since it doesn’t even look like there will be a lot of active skills in Diablo 4. On the other hand if they add around 10 or more active skills to each of the classes, then either more skill slots, a second skillbar, or hotkeys would definitely be something I would request.
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OR you can create just outright BETTER mob design where some can be significantly crippled by CC but hard to kill by AoE, or maybe near-immune/hard-resist against AoE/DoT but near one-shottable from a targetted hit or up close, OR maybe hurt like truck but their attacks preventable
“Skill” doesn’t just have to mean skill rotation “on the fly”, it can also mean use the right skill (at the right time ?) on the right mob, doubt anyone would feel like “this is too easy” if they are in a situation where they should “rotate” between 4-6 skill types in order to achieve their peak overall
Here are some ways to achieve those things:
1 - projectiles that do more damage than usual but are destructible
2 - destructible CC/obstacles (shackles instead of stun, rolling barrel instead of knockback per hit, destructible wall instead of a one that you have to wait inside for the whole duration)
3 - hard/buffs being channeled instead of cast (see that “shaman” in the back making everyone go berserk but has tons of HP ?, no problem, stun or do any kind of CC just to prevent the buff temporarily for ex.)
4 - “tag” system on mobs, do “skeletons launching a purple beam on the ground” look unintuitive ?, yes, does a purple-eye glowing skeleton with one arm deformed as a purple glowing raven feel weird to cast that purple beam on the ground ?, no… Does a skinny skeleton feel fight to “tank” your meteor ?, no, but does a skinny skeleton in a highly-magical armor/barrier feel right to tank your Meteor ?, yes… Also you gain extra depth this way, meaning NOT EVERY affix/danger comes from elites in exclusive fashion
Again, it’s more in the implementaiton, there’s a well-known concept of “curse of knowledge” or “tunnel vision” i.e. thinking difficulties/challenges/goals can be set in certain way and there being no other… 
So yes, when taken literally/too-concrete experience can be (and usually becomes) a double-edged sword 
When I first began playing Diablo 3 and discovered how the skill system worked, I knew it was a lesser game when compared to Diablo 2. The ability to change your loadout of 6 skills at any time, while not having any further customization over those skills other than which rune you choose, is Diablo 3’s biggest failing.
When you assigned a skill point (or an attribute point) in Diablo 2, you were investing in something. You were investing in your character. You were investing in a build. You were investing in your plan. You didn’t always know how successful the plan was going to be and that was exciting. It was even more exciting when the plan exceeded expectations.
Diablo 3 doesn’t have that investment. If you’ve played one Barbarian, you’ve played them all… or have the ability to - just change the loadout of your 6 skills. But in Diablo 2, every Barbarian I made was absolutely unique.
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6 is fine and standard for ARPGS, you don’t want 20+ meaningless bindings like an MMO.
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I don’t want to see that in aRPGs :
https://www.mmobomb.com/file/2014/02/HotBar-Banner-Thing-Of-The-Past-Article.jpg
ps. and RPGs in general…
Seems to me like the player should decide if they want to have a lot of abilities to use or not.
With trade-offs, of course.
You wont see that with any sane person even in World of Warcraft, the game that screenshot is from.
The person who set that bar up clearly stuck a bunch of non-combat things right in the middle of all their skills.
Things like 6 separate buttons for mounting, which is something that can’t be done in combat even if you try.
It limits combat quite a bit. It limit build potentials a bit. It limits how deep the game can be.
That said, if you allow people to have too many skills, the game might suffer in the exact same ways. Like, if you can max all skills, there are no builds.
So it is a balance.
6 just seems too low. Imo the optimal amount of skills would be 7-8.
Or maybe a slightly more open system; You need to spend skill points to unlock skill slots. First 6 slots cost 1 skill point each (or are simply free). Basically everyone will get those.
7th slot cost 5 skill points. 8th cost 7, 9th cost 10, 10th slot cost 15 points.
So getting those last few skills will reduce how many skill points you have to lvl your skills. Choices!
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It was always like that in WoW , don’t try to excuse it…
Skill Bloat is a thing in WoW , thats why they trying to fix it now…but its too late…every class can do basically everything… lul
Feels more like an Action-Adventure game than an RPG…thats why i prefer Classic WoW better. (and for some other things as well)
ps. 6 skills are fine and again if you wanna play the piano , go play WoW.
aRPG and RPGs in general was always like that , just play an MMORPG if you want more… (even tho some of them , try to fix the skill bloat as well)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/4349xe/action_bar_space/
Grim Dawn and PoE say otherwise, and i would argue those are the most popular ones right now.
Silly over exaggeration, nobody is asking something like that and D1 and D2 used already a spellbar and hotkeys to switch spells from with big icons and not that kind of joke piled small icons from your link.
It all depends on the gameflow, no need to complain. If D4 combat will be about adapting then button choices might narrow down, if they want to keep the action combat more emphasized then 6 button reaction stays. This can be explained by D2 favoring committance and D3 favoring reflex play. You can have both, you can have a cake and eat it too.
They can even mix and match styles. It’s in alpha, remember? Sorceror class can use some active skills as passives, similar thing might apply to an unrevealed class or a sub class/build of an existing one. You might end up with 4 passives clogging your action bar and you play the game mainly with mouse clicks and potion taps.
D2 had 2 buttons because you can quickly switch and have to adapt when versing against different enemies with debuffs. D3 changed to 6 because switching skills still sends extra server traffic and you only adapt by positioning.
You haven’t seen anything yet. Game is in alpha. It’s not a battle about which is more popular either. You don’t know which approach they might favor. Just sound your opinions.