I am going to teach you how to enjoy rogues: don't play them straight.

You either take another class, and use feats or races or whatever to get expertise in the sneaky skills, or you use another class as a "chassis" to get extra attack or magic or whatnot, and then multiclass rogue.

Want to be a big brute with good skills and the ability to throw things around, physically? Barb 5-6 / rogue 3+. Be a beast barbarian soulknife for a kind of psychic wolverine. Be a nobleman duelist who can't control their temper with zealot / swashbuckler. Main benefit here is grappling; you can grapple or shove an enemy and then use your second hit to sneak attack. An enemy who is grappled and prone is basically fucked, unable to get up without breaking the grapple, and forced to attack with disadvantage while you and your friends attack with advantage.

Or say you want to be an arcane trickster... But not an arcane trickster? Bladesinger 6 / swashbuckler 3+. It has booming blade, it has an extra attack, it has awesome AC and spellcasting to the third level, which is the best level (maybe take a 7th wizard level eventually for polymorph and such). Moreover, this build auto-disengages from enemies you've attacked, and can then dash as a bonus action - can't get hit if they can't get close to you.

Or say you want to be a druid, but a damage dealer, and you don't want to force your DM to deal with spells that conjure 32 wolves. Be a scout rogue, dip 3 levels of druid. Wildfire druid to be specific. For this build you'll want 20 wisdom and 14 to 16 dexterity. So you can use a sling to sneak attack, but if you cast magic stone you can use the sling with your wisdom modifier instead - and since you're using a ranged weapon, you may still sneak attack. You can also use your bonus action to conjure a wildfire companion which can teleport your friends - and there is a lot of versatility in this feature! If your squishy friends are too close, bamf them somewhere safer. If your tanky friends are too far, tell your companion to move between them and their target and hold its action to teleport them closer. You can even flip their positions, if they don't mind taking a little bit of fire damage. This build is admittedly not as good a damage dealer, but it makes up for that with crowd control. Once you've got 5 rogue levels and 3 druid levels, you can pretty much go by feel - need more damage, take more rogue levels. Need more spell slots, take more druid levels. A split of roughly 2 rogue : 1 druid is best imo.