S
Sacred_Path
Guest
This is bad decision and I am surprised that experienced RPG developer thinks that way. It would make more sense in one-hero RPGs (usually class-less), but not in party RPGs where you need to have all classes generally more unique in order to give each of them some purpose. Some people already wrote that here.
Right now, classes are very distinct in PoE because they're mostly defined by their class abilities. There's not much use for making an archer from any other class than Ranger. If this is a downside is another matter.
As I have said before, to me playing an RPG is like taking a journey in a world defined by someone else. As such, all their intended imbalances I can take in stride. If a game presents me with the choice between playing a fighter or a mage, and the mage is flat out more powerful because that's how this particular fantasy world works, that's alright with me. As long as the fighter is playable and plays out differently from the mage, I will usually try to play both.
Of course, once you enter the realm of unintended imbalance - bugs, glitches, or simply flawed math - things get a bit different/ ugly. Still, if it's not too inhibiting in the choices I have, I can tolerate some of that too (hint: no RPG will ever ship without some of this).
Sawyer is mostly right about trash options - there's really no point in giving the player choices that they'd either be a) dumb to make (because they could have figured it out by RTFM) or b) naive to make (because there's no way you could have told beforehand that your sneaky thief will end up being useless halfway through the game). So, out with the trash. Of course, if you take "trash" to mean "every choice that's not quite as good as some other choice"... weeeeell.....but that's for another day.