As I’ve already said, I agree that gameplay needs to be balanced. What I meant by that sentence wasn’t “it’s all useless, let’s do nothing” but that the problem you describe is so rooted in the foundations of the game that it will never be fully solved.
This doesn’t mean gameplay shouldn’t be balanced, but the problem is that when a game increases build variety, the variety among player experiences also increases (also because this is partly the goal, it adds replayability and attracts more player types). However, this is at the expense of a shared experience of the game and partly at the expense of balance.
Giving players a shared difficulty experience is a secondary goal of the game, and if it’s prioritized over the current goals, it would make the game fundamentally different from what it is now. It would be like Elden Ring becoming Sekiro.
While I like Sekiro more, it’s still not a choice that makes sense, since NRFTW plans to become the best version of itself, and that version includes different classes with different experiences.
Having different classes with the same experience is not only impossible, but it would be stupid because people play one class over another just to have a different experience. I have 500+ hours on this very game, so I’ve experimented with these options. But obviously, a similar experience of difficulty remains a secondary objective, but since it depends on the classes and variety, it will always be partially compromised.
All this without considering that each player, as an individual, always has a different experience of difficulty, even in a game like Sekiro, given that each person has a different skill level and way of perceiving the world.
And if it wasn’t clear, I want changes to improve the experience and the game’s balance is part of these changes, one of my topics (Runes heve a balancing poblem: They are not based on motion values) talks about how I would like all weapons to follow well-classified balancing criteria with a system of values that takes everything into account (attack speed, stamina consumption, damage, range, focus regeneration, AOE, charged attacks, etc.) since at the moment there are simply stronger weapons and weaker weapons, and I have another topic (The RNG Problem, Enchantment System Vs Gem System (Major Edits)) where I essentially rework the enchantment system, to make it more usable but also easier to balance.
And I also wrote two topics (Difficulty and Accessibility & Game Accessibility and Difficulty, Unsolved and New Problems (Breach Refind)) that talk about difficulty options and difficulty in general.
Most of the topics I’ve written talk about balancing in one way or another and possible solutions.