You are viewing character building separately from the core game. Which is idiotic, you can't just randomly pick parts of a game and declare them as unrelated.
Oh I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about computer role-playing games. You know, the tabletop game where the DM takes your character into account.
You claim that you don't want a "push to win" button - but builds that always work out are exactly that, automatically winning at character building.
That's the problem with your line of thinking. You think "character building" is a game in itself. It isn't. It is the first step before actually
playing the game. And that's why you go and say retarded shit like
What you want has exactly 0 difference from requesting a "story mode", or an auto-win for combat.
when I never,
ever, implied anything like it. And then you go on an elaborate with retarded stuff like
"With a shitty combat strategy, you are guaranteed to fail, and you won't be able to do anything about it other than restarting the entire encounter. That's bad game design."
and then put it in my mouth
That's an obviously retarded statement, and exactly what you are saying
like so. No, those aren't my words, those are yours. Own up to the retarded shit you are saying (or better yet, stop posting altogether because you seem unable to actually use my own words and thus resort to uncalled for and shitty analogies). I'm talking about character building,
not combat,
not quests. The only challenge that should even be remotely considered for character building is "what do I ACTUALLY want to play as?". That's it. That's all the challenge that is needed: the challenge of deciding what do you want to play as for the next 10-30 hours.
Why would ever want to design a game where you hand out character creation to the player and think "make the right decision... or die, muahahaha"? It's stupid, and it doesn't make you look smart: it makes your game look like ass, the worst kind of lack of balance ever, enough to make Josh Sawyer cut his arms open in shame. If I were to make a game, you could create any kind of character you wanted, and it is by my skill as a game developer that I will succeed or fail (no push to win button here, sadly) in making my game as complex as possible to tailor to every possible combination the player can think of. You won't be able to do every quest, but it doesn't matter as long as you have enough content available to you as to make you go "this developer
did think of everything", as opposed to unironic, generic push to win button games like Skyrim where you can do everything with any character because the developer didn't bother to think of anything: they just made the game too easy so anyone could complete it.
You don't agree with me? That's fine, just say so and move on. But insisting on "push to win button" (as you are) is retarded, as you are the only one in this conversation who is remotely asking for a button of sorts: the "push to lose" button that are gimmicky builds. Of
Vault Dweller I expected no different since he actually went with poor design and made a whole game out of it, and of course a forum that can't tell good design from bad design praises his game, so he has a reason to hold his ground: at least he makes money out of his misguided idea of what good game design is.