100 Tons of Steel Wool

 The inclusion of re-spec's has been the single greatest improvement in modern RPGs.

I downloaded a free copy of MechWarrior 4 recently and had a go at tinkering in the old MechLab. I fondly remember the MechWarrior video game series because I spent hours at a time in there, tweaking my load outs to match my conception of an ideal war machine. There is no best way to deal with the barrage of options presented by chassis selection, weapon load-out, armour and engine tonnage - it is a matter of preference, strategy, and the demands of the mission.

Many games, especially RPGs, seek to provide a similar range of customization, the goal of which is to give the player freedom to overcome the obstacles in the game as they see fit by creating a character unique to them. Ironically, this is typically achieved by actually restricting the player's freedom. In an RPG, one often has to pick a character class, which pigeonholes the player into a specific style of play for the rest of the game. This isn't often bothersome to the player, who perceives the act of self-restriction as an expression of free choice.

In a game devoid of customization the player is given constant access to all of the possible play strategies (exempli gratia, the different guns of Half-Life) that they have acquired so far, and is never required to pick specialization. This makes the player much more free in how they wish to approach obstacles without ever requiring them to make an irreversible choice. Hypothetically, this is the same net effect as having a class system, but without the need for a player to replay the entire game in order to try new strategies.

However, requiring the player to make a self-restricting choice can cause them to become invested in the choice that they make. Having to pick one or a smaller selection of abilities to the exclusion of all others forces the player to think about the strengths and weaknesses of their build, making them strategize and making the decision of one method over another more meaningful.

The best customization occurs in games like MechWarrior, where there is a massive breadth and depth unmatched by the options of a customization-free title, and where your choices are never irreversible (as is often the case with RPGs). You can pick your BattleMech and it's load-out before every mission, meaning that if you want to change things up, it's easy to do so - but your choice remains ever-important to how the mission will proceed.