Okay, explain it to me. How does an option you will never use or be encouraged to use or have a reason to use affect your experience?
Zanos didn’t provide an answer to that so that is still a mystery.
Okay, I'll try. The key reason is that by making something an option, you send a message. This is especially true if you deliver that option via an npc in a story-rich game. "Have you devoted your life to Shar and having second thoughts? Has the sight of Halsin's bulging muscles made you green with envy and wishing you'd spent all those years honing your physique for battle instead of praying? Worry not, because we at <Spoiler_name> inc. have you covered! For the low low price of 100 gold you can change your life in an instant and become the adventurer of your dreams! What's that? Fighters train for ages to be as good as they are? Oh please, that's downer talk! We don't do that here. We have already notified your loyal friends and mortal enemies of your unexpected transformation and in the spirit of politeness requested that they refrain from commenting on you suddenly swinging swords instead of spells. Oh and don't worry, we won't tell a word to Shar - you'll still be her favourite errand girl!"
I am exaggerating for comedic effect so please don't look too much into it, but see my point please - allowing anyone to simply change their mind about something as integral as their class communicates that the above example is something normal that can happen in the world and isn't even worth noting by its inhabitants. Making classes changeable mid-run removes nearly all commitment and renders that choice casual for both the player and the writer. I no longer have to carefully consider what class I want my character to be and all the unique class dialogue and reactivity may as well refer to my clothes. Is this something you can relate to at all, or are we of completely different minds?
Yup, just going to have to agree to disagree. I don’t get it at all. Every game has elements that are purely gameplay- for convenience or fun or whatever. I don’t look at Skyrim and say “we have fast travel, what’s the point of walking anywhere? Walking doesn’t mean anything in this world, why doesn’t the story reflect instantaneous, risk free trade among polities as you move goods through warp space?” That’s weird. We all know it’s a gameplay feature, not a canon part of the world, and if we don’t want to use it, we walk because that’s where the fun of the game is found.
I also don’t see how the option to change my mind about my character matters at all. I’m not going to change anything fundamental about the characters I build because I care about their consistency. Committing to choices is where the fun is found, and knowing that I can change them doesn’t diminish that at all, because I know that’s just a gameplay feature. Nothing is being communicated about the world by its inclusion.
To be honest, knowing how easy it is to just ignore this feature but requesting it’s removal despite knowing others are excited about it, strikes me as a bit petty. Not trying to insult you, that’s how it comes off to me. But as I said, we can just agree to disagree.
One thing I did like about Owlcat's games was the many customization options you could select at the onset of the game. It really felt like you were having a little bit of a dialogue with a DM and deciding what was what. I think the expectation for those folks that wanted to adhere closer to the ruleset, have/not have respec, have differentiated races, and multiclassing restrictions was that there would be some kind of toggle that would allow a degree of the same customization. That sort of dialogue with the omnipresent authority figure detailing how you want your game to play out. So, it could have been a toggle, respec for companions or respec only for the MC, multiclassing restrictions or free form, original differentiated racial attributes or egalitarianism. I would have been perfectly ok with that kind of framework, as it would ultimately allow the player to dictate how they wanted their game to unfold, but, echoing Llengrath's comedic analogy, I think what is essentially being told is that it is only one way and it is up to the player to decide within the game to do so. So it feels a lot less like 'this is the contract and conditions being selected for your unique experience' and more like 'yeah, you can pretty much do whatever you want, break narrative, break immersion, but it is ultimately up to you to decide if you are going to do it'. The situations are, for all intents and purposes, effectively the same--options, but the approach feels significantly different, at least to me.
