WoTR is the prime example of how having too many options can be bad for casual gamers, there are too many many classes and subclasses, too many spells, the party is too large. Pathfinder is good for hardcore nerds, but for me it is too confusing and boring.
Yeah... This didn't land as well as it sounded in your head, probably.
Also, demonstrably false. An embarrassingly large amount of options at character creation is precisely that type of "paralyzing choice" that even casual players tend to love. You could go pretty much anywhere on the internet and read truckloads of comments from people expressing pure glee and joking on the amount of time they spent on character creation.
And I've basically never seen anyone complaining that the party is too large. Which makes sense, given that even if someone was in that fringe minority that prefer to play with a smaller party, there would be nothing stopping them from doing it. In fact, there are people doing solo runs.
No need to get defensive here, I'm just stating facts. Too many option is often as bad as having too few and the developer has to find balance when making a game. Analysis paralysis is a real thing and it's bad especially for casual gamers. Complex games with lots of options tend to have cult following, but they are still very niche and don't do well in sales as much simpler and streamlined games, for example Stellaris is much more successful than Distant Worlds or any other more complex space strategy that has more options, Witcher where you can only play as Geralt is one of the most successful RPGs even though you can only play as Geralt, there are literally no choices in creating your own character, Dragon Age and Original Sin series are much more popular than Pillars of Eternity, even with just 3 classes in DA and 4 person party in both. Actually, Pillars of Eternity 1 was a success mostly because of nostalgia that weared off and the second one flopped hard.
You don't see people complaining, because a vast majority of casual gamers don't bother writing reviews or complaining, they either just buy the game, dlcs, sequels if they like it or they don't and the game flops. There are many games who are considered good by their fans but failed in the market which led to their developers going bankrupt. Are they objectevly good games? No, they are good NICHE games, which means they are only good if you are the party of their niche fanbase.
