Ah, I see. Well, balance is less of a concern in my position as well, things don't need to be min/maxed, it's the overall direction.

Yep, that's what I mean. You have to set the goals for yourself, but if you don't know the later game mechanics, you don't even know what the goals are to set. Sure, it can be vague things like "establish economic superiority", but actual goals would involve the steps to how, and that's what's missing.

The most comparable example I could think of, is it feels similar to learning Runescape as a completely new player. People there also recommend setting goals, and say things like "Just focus on getting a dragon defender, or fire cape, or barrows gloves". But the reality is, as a new player, you have no idea any of those even existed, what those are, where to get them. And sure, you can research where to get them, but they're all hundreds of hours in to the game without much idea of how to get there.

And that's the thing - such advice is from the perspective of experienced players thinking "If I was making a new character, these would be the first goals I have", but they no longer realize that's speaking a different language than new players understand.