Many games offer focused, simple experiences. Other games, like CCGs, miniatures games, fighting games, RPGs, mobas and more tend to offer a diverse menu of playstyles. This is one of their strengths, as lots of different players can enjoy the same game together. They can also provide variety for players, offering the option to change playstyles if things start to feel repetitive.  We’ll call games with these features “customizable games”.

One of the biggest signs of a missed opportunity in a customizable game is if a single player likes all the options. Very few players enjoy all possible playstyles equally. If a good portion of players seem to enjoy all the playstyle options in your game, that’s usually a sign that you aren’t taking full advantage of the diverse options you could be providing.

This can make listening to feedback an easy trap. Some of your Barbarian character too straightforward and dumb, while others will call your Rogue character too complicated and boring (stealth often involves some waiting). This is exactly what you want. If the same people like all your characters, the playstyles are probably too similar. This means you should expect all playstyles to get criticism from various playtesters. This doesn’t mean that there’s necesarily something wrong with that content. It might just mean that content is meaningfully different enough that they won’t enjoy it. But that’s fine, as long as there’s other content in the game that caters to them.