It's a different degree, for better or worse.
Taking it back to MMO, World of Warcraft.
Unless you are extremely tryhard, I've never seen someone benched due to race choice.
Every character is expected to take the correct talents however.
At a table with floating if you have people who lean optimization, and some lean narrative, floating removes a basic point of contention, because now everybody can get the same primary 16 regardless.
Yes, I agree. But I think you've missed my point twice in a row now.
I used to raid very seriously in WoW. It was basically a requirement that you fully optimized. When race changes became possible I paid to change my forsaken rogue to an orc. (Then, admittedly, paid money to change back again when I stepped back from raiding. Am I powergamer or a roleplayer? According to some you can't be both.)
Ok, so here's what I'm talking about, in WoW terms:
Let's say my guild is willing to let me raid as an undead rogue. It's not optimal, but I like undead.
Then, in a new patch, suddenly I can
choose whether to take the Orc ability Blood Fury. I choose not to, because I prefer the undead racial.
And suddenly my guild is going to kick me out? Previously it was acceptable to make a sub-optimal choice, and now suddenly it's not?
It's not the existence of hard core players I'm questioning, it's the arbitrariness of that decision making. And while, in the huge population of gamers, it may exist, I'm saying that anecdotal evidence of irrationality* isn't grounds for judging whether or not a rule change makes sense.
*Again, just in case I'm still missing the target, I'm saying the irrationality is the sudden dramatic change in expectations, not the insistence upon optimization.
