(Reminds me of a flap around the attribute system early in the P1 beta. Originally, the origin was set to zero with every point in an attribute giving you a bonus. So e.g. INT 3 would give a bonus of 6% to duration. People howled, so Josh just set the zero point to 10, so INT 3 would give malus of -14% instead... but raised the "base" duration accordingly, so it ended up in exactly the same place. People cheered.)
Booo
Ehh, I'm not keen on zero-sum point buy in any case, but i guess at least this way you get to dip into negative values, so I can see there being some value to plus or minus 9 (or 10 in this case) be it purely psychological or no. It's kinda silly but i enjoy the aesthetic of the more arbitrary systems. Makes it feel more like
your character when your 17 strength score doesn't automatically cause a 7 charisma dip, unless you're one of those kensai/mage playing types that can't help power-gaming.
Not that it ever caused me to dislike a game i would have otherwise enjoyed. At least with PoE they eschewed the 'only even numbers matter,' abomination that 3rd edition came up with. Although i can't help feeling like if the system was less based on multipliers there would be more room for growth into epic levels.
It's like Lacrymas pointed out, even by level 10 you're so powerful that the balancing measure taken on potd is to try and perma-stun you; I can't imagine how broken it would be to extend the same thing to level 30 or 40, you'd have to be
super conservative with item based bonuses.
I also think I prefer no-scaling, even if it lets you bend the system a little bit. It allows you to pick your own challenge, for one thing, and just because there's an optimal route, doesn't mean you would choose to follow it. I was reading some codexers lp of baldurs gate 2 where he had to clear the planar sphere early and it was pretty entertaining reading about how those vicious little hobbit bastards tore him a new one; shame all the pictures were broken though. ... It allows for peaks and valleys in difficulty, too; where being able to gib some kobold fuckers that traumatized you by peppering you with arrows in the nashkel mines is a
preeetty good feeling. Which also avoids the feeling that everything is the same, but slightly different. Once you've demoralized the player with kobold archer rape, then later restored their faith with power-constrasting kobold mooks, you further get to puzzle the player when they meet a bunch of kobolds who are each individually named, and one is curiously wearing a robe, like a wizard, almost.
But conservative scaling is okay too, i guess. If you assume the game wouldn't pose a reasonable challenge without it. That kinda calls into question the rate of power-growth in the game if the developer can't curate challenging encounters in the order the player is expected to come across them, to me. At least they are offering each option, rather than forcing any particular one on you.
I guess it's like how game developer philosophy has changed over the years, where player inconvenience is seen as absolutely bad. An older game would expect you to want to explore the game world fully and adjust the difficulty of the critical path in accordance, rather than balance for the lowest amount of exploration and then adjust from there because a streamer or game reviewer only has 8 hours before they have to move on to the next game.