If 56 'classes' are just animation skins combined with buffs to the same ol'stuff, it will be tragic

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Actually, this is really explanatory and helpful.

Depending on just how sweet the dough used for the donut in question is?

If I ordered a pizza and I got a whole box of donuts with mozzarella, tomato sauce, and pepperoni... I don't actually feel like I'd have grounds to complain. Honestly, I might like that better. No worrying about slicing, no worrying about the crust section...

Similar for the pasta. That's called 'ravioli'. Or 'tortellini' sometimes'. I order this all the time.

I'm not saying you wouldn't be justified in saying 'that's not what I expected'. But I can't say you'd be justified in saying 'that isn't pizza' or 'that isn't pasta' unless the dough was way too sweet or way too thick.

But now I can poke at where I agree with you entirely. I don't know what they can possibly mean by 'we're balancing by how Archetype Abilities work'. If not every ability can be taken, and not every ability can be Augmented (I'll find the quote for this somewhere but idk if this is still under consideration) then the only way to successfully 'balance' these is to 'build what they consider the best one', or to write a Scenario Simulation Neural Network (and I have strong reason to believe that they don't already have any of these) and run it for literally months.

Or maybe they meant 'we'll balance things properly after 6 months when we have all the data from people playing the game'.

But it shouldn't be as simple as 'we're going to limit augments on abilities so we know the balance works' other than by the numbers method because... you can't know what abilities someone will take. A High Priest doesn't currently have to unlock any damage skills. Whereas a 'Templar' could take almost all damage skills. If they face 'whatever archetype Cleric is considered to counter' (or even what archetype each of these two is considered to separately counter) what does 'balance' mean?

What about people who do the 'obvious' thing and take half and half of each? Will these people also be 'balanced' correctly? It's hard to imagine a situation where a High Priest and a 'full DPS Templar' both manage to 'balance out' in a group combat situation if they are the only Cleric, based on 'Balancing around their Active Skills'.

In a way, Intrepid terminologies are 'fighting it out' against each other . 'Balance', 'class', 'lack of endgame', 'anti-meta'. It's not impossible to believe in these things exactly as the words mean, but it can be difficult to believe in all of them at the same time . The difference between us is that you believe that they mean it when they say they will aim for balance, but don't believe that they will aim for real classes, and I believe they will aim for real classes, but not for real balance.

Hopefully we're both wrong and they're geniuses so we get it all.

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I believe the answer was actually given though?

"Doesn't make sense in my worldview because they're irrelevant."

This isn't worth pursuing. 'Mechanical' players all know why Dygz' perspective is wrong. People who don't know how to make builds for themselves will also all conclude that Dygz is wrong. Then they will say the same things Dygz says, and there will be a concept, correct or otherwise, of a meta.

By virtue of Dygz' own Bartle score which we know directly from Dygz, it's not productive to have a discussion about this with Dygz.

Someone who has nearly no head-to-head competitive instinct isn't going to understand why 'Tiers' are a thing.

Please please please move on before the water gets muddied again.

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Yeah see that whole 'even a noob could understand how to do X'?

That.