Sure you can turn shocking grasp into a ranged spell but how is it functionally different to Witch Bolt?
It stops your enemy from taking reactions ... as i said. :-/
Also, its only possibility ... no one ever said that you need to spend your Sorcery points to make Shocking Grasp ranged ...
As a Sorcerer, you are totally able to use Witch Bolt ...
But unlike Wizzard, you are also totally able in the same turn to ... blind your enemy ... make another enemy asleep ... create a water surface (asuming you have the staff) so your Witch Bolt is stronger ... or strike your enemy down with thunderbolt ...
Any of that and many more thigs Wizzard can only dream off.
Gameplay styles should be different. To expand on the example I gave above, you could have DoT vs Burst Damage dealing. That offers the two roles very different gameplay experiences.
How would you like to play DoT damage dealing in turn-based game? O_o
Also you are totally able to play them both differently, aswell as play them both almost the same ... this game is giving you options ... its up to you how clever you decide to use them.
After all, you can also drag a ton of Barells with you and blow figuratively whole map up, and then it would not matter what class you have at all.
//edit:
Wouldn't it be better for Larian to focus on releasing the full game rather than risking feature creep?
Eh ... no, certainly not.
For one, you can never create proper mod for Sorcerer, since not all things around sorcerer are implemented ... i dont say that moder didnt do good job (nor i dont say he did, since i didnt try) ... but taking it over and over, all he can do is using the things that are allready ingame.
For two, and that is also quite important reason ... Larian allready promissed all base races, classes and subclasses in final release ... and it would certainly not help their reputation at all, if they fail to deliver.
And finaly for three ... once we start to cut out things that are allready in the game reachable from different source ... we should more like cut out Wizzard, bcs he is the one who is taking hings from all the other casters.
Not other way around. :P
[irony]
But once we start with this ... soon we figure out that we actualy dont need Barbarian, since we allready have Fighter and they both just swing theyr weapons after all ... and that would mean we also dont need Paladin ... also who need monk, when there allready is rogue ... etc. etc ... until we find yout that whole game has ben reduced to three classes: Fighter, Archer and Caster.
But we can still continue, since if there is no reason for nuanced classes ... there is no reason for another races aswell ... they only look different and dont provide different playstyle at all ... so our three classes can all be only and just humans, bcs why bother with others?
And since all our enemies are suplement to same rules, we will simply kill only goblins ... from start to end of game ...
And finaly, the surrounding textures are also unimportant, after all they never changed game anyhow, fighting in cave is just the same as in forest ... so we stay in map of Act 1.
[/irony]
