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Do you think that Unreal Tournament would be better if characters levelled up and got more powerful the more they were played? Of course not. The game isn't designed around that. If I were to play against someone who had never played UT before, I would probably win, not because my character is better, but because I'm a better player than them from having more practice. Isn't that progression?
A classless system isn't supposed to be a single class system. The point of making a classless system is to increase flexibility, not decrease it. Reducing a game so that everyone's a fighter would probably be a bad thing. A classless system is saying 'we're not going to tell you what you can or cannot do, you have to decide that for yourself.' If you're going to make a classless system by reducing the player's choice to a single class, that's the fault of the designer.
Poor design aside, let's look at what (potentially) a good implementation of a classless system would be like:
New characters in the game are all identical, except for possibly racial modifiers. The player decides that they want to be a warrior kind of character. How do they do that? By grabbing a sword and shield and beating up some monsters. So, after a productive day of randomly attacking things in the forest, our protagonist gets injured, and wants to heal himself. A first level cleric could heal themselves no problem, so why shouldn't he? So he heads back, goes to the local church and after a bit of studying, learns how to cast some basic healing spells.
Now, he goes back out and meets his nemesis at the edge of town, who, incidently, had created a character at the same time as him. His opponant, however, has been focusing solely on fighting. They attack each other, but the hero is outmatched in swordplay - although he can still hold his own against most opponants, the time spent learning how to heal himself was time lost practicing melee combat. However, in his advantage, he can heal himself and the antagonist cannot.
So they fight. Who wins? If the hero doesn't use healing spells, more than likely his nemesis. If the hero plays his cards right though, and the system is well balanced, it should be a fairly even match.
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That's really it. A classless system isn't classless at all - it lets the player define their character as they go, and ideally creates a character for them that matches their playing style exactly. Obviously, there are problems (such as, how do you keep a character from maxing out all of their skills?) but like all problems, solutions can be created.
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