Except at the end of the day your objectives are going to build down to a different set of metrics. They also aren't going to necessarily affect minmaxing in the way you want. Maybe slow and steady buds were never very good. Now you have to contend with the fact that even in thumper missions, the ability to quickly do damage and escape is outperforming someone trying to base their build around essentially being a turret. Where do you go from there? Rebalance all the enemies? Come up with an even MORE static and tank-focused objective solely so that faster builds suck at something? No matter what your metrics are, there will eventually be a best and worst build, just as there are always best and worst weapons in games without builds. The trick is that by adding a giant tweaking system you make build viability a far more complicated/convoluted affair, and that alone can and will sour people's perspective of the game. If the game is all about burst damage and high armor because the enemies hit too fast, frequently and hard to do anything else, then your lightly armored build is just going to give you intimate knowledge of the game's respawn process in every objective you can come up with that passes through enemy-owned territory. These things are on the extreme end of the scale, but that's where things go when you try to scale things or just make more challenging enemies. As you increase the difficulty of an encounter, the need for minmaxing increases as well
This may as well be directed
@Ronyn as well, now that I think about it.
If I am understanding you correctly, it sounds like you are essentially against seeing a so-called "classless" system in Ember due to your concerns that there will be too many possible combinations to balance to a good degree. You are welcome to that point of view. I won't seek to change your mind here. Playing games where you experience systems that work or don't work is a far more convincing argument than any words on a forum. Instead I will offer some thoughts to clear up a few common misconceptions on what makes the two systems different, and what makes them similar.
Role balance, in any system, will largely be based on the interactions between what the player can do and what the objective requires. The various factors (speed,resilience, damage output, crowd control) are more or less important based on those objectives. The greater variety of objective types the greater the variety of relevant class types or build directions. It's cause and effect. Whether using a class based system or a classless one, role variety is heavily dependent on objective variety.
As I expressed before, balance is an ongoing pursuit in any system. Any and everything in the game is in sight to be tweaked for the pursuit of balance. From weaponry, to enemy types, to terrain, to the objectives themselves. All of it. That is the nature of the beast.
In fact, the "giant tweaking system" is practically always there. The real question is how many of those dials the player has access to and how many of those dials the developers keep in house. Some players seek out systems where they have the option to personally fine tune things, some players seek out systems where they never have to or even have the option to.
As usual, what appeals to one person will push away another. No system will please every player nor should it be expected to.
It's true that, in a classless system, no matter what the metrics there will eventually be a builds that tend to prove better or worse for a majority of encounters. However it is not to say there would inherently be a smaller number of top tier builds in a classless system, then there would be the number of top tier classes in a class based system. In truth there are different schools of thought on what is easier to balance (some devs say free form builds make it easier to see which individual weapon or ability is off the curve), and different reasoning why some developers choose one or the other (some devs choose class based system primarily for readability in combat, not because of any balance concerns). That isn't the kind of thing where there is a true consensus among the professionals who make these games. So, of course, I would not expect to find a consensus among those who play them.
At the end of the day the real opinion comes after you get something in your hands. Hopefully we get the chance to follow the path we are on to truly make Ember....and you like it.
