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.
Very well put, thank you for taking the time.
I can definitely see where you are coming from, and agree in parts, though I believe we differ slightly in how we view games which is obviously subjective and therefore understandable.
While I do believe that there is naturally interplay between the game and the player, setting the level of challenge and therefore to some extent how you wish to interact with the game relies on the player in most games, which is typically reflected in difficulty selection, or other optional settings that can be enabled. This is obviously not a universal truth, as I would not think the same of a Soulslike game, however it tends to apply to CRPGs almost universally, at least based on the ones I've played.
Though I will say for the purposes of testing balance, as in the Early Access period we have here for BG3 having Point Buy makes sense as it allows for the developers to create a baseline experience that they can then adjust into difficulties for release; I would just like to have more options available when release happens. For Solasta I can't speak too much, I bought it because of all the talk here but haven't had time to really try it past the tutorial, but it seems less logical that they would not have some kind of restriction considering they are still in early access to find that balance.
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
I won't outright dispute this, as I believe this comes down to the individual player, and I do believe that most people want to be more powerful. Personally my issue with point buy is that you have to pay closer attention to Race/Class combinations to get decent stats. A +2 to your STR on a Fighter is pretty important to disregard if you are limited with the point buy system, but I like to roll characters without worrying about what the optimal combination would be. If I get the chance to roll a 16+ and can dump that into STR it doesn't matter if my race doesn't give me a good ability for it, I'll still be effective in that role. I think this opens up more possibilities for fun characters without suffering too much disadvantage for it. That's really what I look for, the ability to create freely so that I don't have to worry about being punished for not being completely optimal.
Additionally I feel like having slightly better stats (I'm not talking straight 18s) actually makes me want to play with feats more, with point buy I almost never end up getting a feat as ability scores seem to be more universally important, so not having to worry about my stats as much opens up more possibilities for me. I think having some negative stats can add interest to your character though, as long as you have a decent primary stat that's all I really care about.
I personally feel like it's better for the onus to fall on the player, particularly when we aren't talking a PvP game where everything must be equal, as long as a baseline difficulty is already set for each encounter. I don't feel like being able to roll your stats will create the chaos that you seem to envision, it just serves to give people the choice of how they wish to play, but again that's perfectly fine.
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.
This again to me comes down to the idea of difficulty and expectation. As someone who typically plays games to have fun and for a bit of escapism, and who doesn't typically play games above "Normal" difficulty, I prefer not to find too much opposition from my games. Everyone has something different that they want out of games though, which is why I oppose the idea of limiting these options; by imposing more limitations you start to narrow the scope of appeal away from a broader audience.
Personally I'm hoping that we end up with a robust selection of difficulties, which I believe Larian will have based on DoS2, so that as many people as possible can play how they want.
