I'm always a bit curious with reactions like this. Why would that make you lose interest? Not trying to sound dismissive I'm just curious.
It demonstrates a certain disposition that makes for bad games overall.
This is fundamentally a balance issue. There is an an interplay between the game and the player. In the most basic sense a game is an objective and a set of rules. This is what distinguishes it from other kinds of amusements. The game guides the player by telling it what it needs to do and what it is allowed to do, and the player works towards accomplishing this, and that effort is the playing of the game. Any game, from the most simple to the most complex, fundamentally comes down to this basic principle.
Some surely will attempt to dispute this, let us examine deeper. Why do people at level 4 take their primary attribute bonus or, in some cases, a key feat? Why dont they take something absolutely useless to their build instead? Its because they do not randomly act on whims, but rather follow a reason, a logic, and that logic is 'what makes me stronger?' which is dictated by the mechanics and the objective. Some people might alter this to a slight degree - They might decide to do something slightly less optimal because they want to try something new or they like the resulting character idea. This is not evidence to the contrary of my assertion however because fundamentally this is always balanced against that pressure towards optimal. Its always 'is this too much of a sacrifice or can i get away with doing this'? Indeed how far it deviates from what the player assumes is optimal is the first part of consideration. The orientation towards optimal is ever present in the mind, it is inescapable and even those who seek to defy it are playing by its rules. If it is mere vanity they want to take suboptimal then whether its too big a price is the concern, if its the question of exploring new potential, then analyzing future possibilities starts with assessing what you have lost from the accepted standard. You can not escape the relationship.
People will use this simple interplay between the game and the player, the objective and the rules, as part of their decision making even when they do not consider themselves optimizers. It is inseparable from game playing.
So then when people say "why not just ignore it", there is no end to this reasoning, it is no different from saying 'if a certain powerful item breaks the game, just dont use it' or 'why not attack allies instead of enemies'? Its all chaos! If a point of balance doesnt matter then no point of balance matters because it has shifted the responsibility away from the game, and towards the player, and now you have the player setting the rules and you have lost what makes a game a game, no longer are you framing your perspective along the objective and the rules and wandering the maze of possibilities the game provides, a thing those who even seek to defy the optimal are forced to give them something to react against. You enter an entirely unstructured nongame where there is nothing but aimlessness
The game should oppose the player, the player should oppose the game. Never should anything depend on them cooperating because the motion of experience of playing the game, its harmonious concord, is created from this discord.
