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Role Playing:
The first requirement here is that a role can be defined, and it implies choice. Paladins and Overwatch are game in which I play different roles depending on the map, but we do not consider these RPGs.
In Paladins we can make choices of 'passives' and slots. They look like the current Ashes ones. Technically Paladins has more passives than Ashes right now, and they're better tuned. This is still not 'an RPG'.
Persistence is the first part. The second part is 'being able to choose how to play your role'. There is some benefit to your role being somewhat divorced from your physical skill at something, for these. This is debatable in terms of if it 'makes a game less of an RPG', but there is a benefit. I've seen arguments in this thread that the 'game shouldn't be catered to players who can't all be good'. This is obvious, but misleading. A 'Ten Word Answer. You can't just 'make things so hard that only 1% of people can do them', either. Or rather, if you do, expect a strange world.
The overall difference between Paladins and Ashes is that Paladins can entirely gate your ability to fulfill your role behind mechanical skill
that is directly opposed by the mechanical skill of your opponent
, and RPGs as they have been generally defined until now, do not require this. You can decide 'that definition is not suitable', but the thing is that we have other 'names' for those games. MOBA, Fighting Game, Space Combat Simulator, Action (Hunting), etc.
Ashes is foremost a Fantasy MMORPG.
The games that have generally made the player's role dependent on their mechanical skill and minimized the effects of stats, have reduced the 'role' aspect heavily to the point where some people might be tempted to say 'enough is enough, draw the line, stop calling these games MMORPGs to trick me into buying them'. (I don't have a better way of wording this, if you nitpick on this I will ignore it as a bad faith argument).
The player still plays a role, but because everyone else's choices directly impact their ability to fulfill that role (unlike a single Player RPG), and the choice made can entirely 'gate' the choices the player makes into uselessness, your 'role' can be outright deleted. This is why metas in MMOs exist. This is why builds, even decent ones, get sidelined. Other players have decided, either through direct opposition, or ostracism, that 'you are not allowed to fulfill that role' or 'you are not allowed to fulfill that role in that way'. Single player RPGs can do this much less.
I consider Paladins good. I consider Elite Dangerous good. I consider Guilty Gear games good, I consider Monster Hunter games good. I love all these games, the challenge, the skill of maneuvering, etc.
And I don't consider any of these games RPGs. And I definitely don't consider any of them to be good as RPGs.
But right now (in this stage of development specifically, not saying anything about the design concept) they are all unfortunately better RPGs than Ashes, if we open up that definition.
I can 'choose my build', choose my stats, choose how I will focus on interacting with my opponent and my teammates, and then apply mechanical skill against my opponents, and with the exception of Guilty Gear (yet sorta not, which is dependent on grinding out combos, the equivalent of 'gear') I can do all this better than I can in Ashes because the main RPG systems aren't in yet.
If Ashes builds such that Action Combat can bypass 'build stats' or pigeonhole people into specific enough builds, then those games, particularly Paladins, will
continue
to be 'better RPGs than Ashes', if you reject the above definition. Because the persistence aspect will mean that not only are the less practiced players relegated mostly the 'role' of 'serf fodder to amuse the warlords', they will end up
persistently so
.