[POE2] Ascendancies - Don't discourage players from experimentation

In a recent interview Jonathan said that the devs want to make the choice of Ascendancy matter so that's why we aren't able to change between them, at least for now

I genuinely understand this line of thought, but imposing something like that, especially when your initial goal is to finish the campaign discourages player experimentation, why can we respec passives with gold but not our Ascendancy??

So here's my proposal to try to make both ends happy:

1 - Make Ascendancies extremely easy to swap until you finish the campaign
2 - After you reach endgame, make players re-do the trials if they want to change their Ascendancy again
3 - At level 90 or 100 make players unable to change their Ascendancy or make it so it costs a lot to do it

This is just my humble opinion on the matter so let me hear what you think

this is a very divisive subject.

on one hand i like the idea of being able to respec

but on another i see the value of some character permanency.

permanency came from an ancient philosophy of living with your choices.

back in d2, everything was deliberate. before synergies were a thing, if you put all your points into early skills, you would have an easy time leveling but harder time at later levels as the better skills could be lower leveled or you would have less points to spend on meaningful end game skills.

if you wanted to min max, you lived and died with your skill/attribute allocation. if you were unhappy you can ONLY reroll.

but the reward was your build was YOURS. you leveled it. you got it up to where it is now.

respeccing takes away all sense of permanency as well as identity. but i do appreciate the fact that we can respec now. if we couldnt respec, i d be so damn pissed that some of my passives are allocated wrongly or in less efficient clusters.

respeccing is a wonderfully modern invention.

as for ascendencies. imho, we SHOULD allow changing our ascendencies. BUT with a caveat that its expensive.

POE1 allows for an ascendency change and i find it fair, we unallocate all ascendency points and rerun a trial. its enough effort to not trivialize our ascendency choice as players need to put actual work to change their ascendency.

If it's for diversity as an argument it could also be other way around: For example not respecing allows it improvise and try new ways of doing things differently cuz u have no choice but try something else if you are stuck.Personaly, I found that respecing only complicate things: When I respect - usually break something else & the whole build doesn't work & then I can't fix it anymore cuz I got no idea what is wrong. However, it would be silly not be able to respec couple of nodes from misclick. Since, u talking about poe2 you are already locked in with your choices even more so that's more messy to fix. Now, that I think of it, it would be more useful to perhaps mix and match or stack ascendencies rather that respec them.

I would like to point out Diablo 2 did add respec and every d2 mod added respec. Locking ascendancies is one of the most unfriendly things ggg could do to the players. I understand we all enjoy different things, but I can not wrap my head around how removing this choice benefits anyone. Players will play less when they realize they could try this other cool build but would need to do an entire new character to do it instead of adding a rare ascendancy respec currency or something.

Respec being too cheap or things like having multiple atlas trees i feel detracts from the value of the game, its about making choices and creating a unique outcome.

It's important to have a balance between the two, On one hand if its too restrictive then people might not be willing to make that (next character) or might rage quit if they cant make a correction.

Mistakes happen, i've made so many comical mistakes in my time in PoE and some pretty amazing ones too but there was always some kind of limitation like when the atlas released there was only one and i was heavily against the added trees because i felt it would make it too easy to dominate too much of the economy but at the same time it did make the game better for a lot of people.

respec for ascendency needs to be accessible but you should have to pay a high cost.

4 divines to the hooded ID guy for full respec would work.

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DragonSound#7740 wrote:

I would like to point out Diablo 2 did add respec and every d2 mod added respec. Locking ascendancies is one of the most unfriendly things ggg could do to the players. I understand we all enjoy different things, but I can not wrap my head around how removing this choice benefits anyone. Players will play less when they realize they could try this other cool build but would need to do an entire new character to do it instead of adding a rare ascendancy respec currency or something.

yeah they did but it took them many years before they actually did.

it definitely is a very tricky situation where i understand both povs.

personally speaking, back in "those days" whenever i had a new idea of a build, i would be hyped to roll a new character to try it out and see if it works out.

the exploration aspect and the idea that "oh i m gonna have a tough time early but when the build works its gonna be awesome" can bring a lot of pride and accomplishment.

sometimes we fail and realize, oh shit this build sucks ass, we'd go back to the drawing board and be hyped to try again.

there is enjoyment in this experimentation.

but modern gaming in a way has destroyed this enjoyment as players time is much more valuable now. we have 1001 different forms of entertainment vying for our attention now. "why should i restart a new character? why cant i respec" becomes the current mindset for modern gamers. and its perfectly normal to have that mindset.

tho i do find it ironic that modern gamers tend to prefer temp leagues where they have to start from scratch and farm everything all over again.

theres no clear cut answer and both have their own merits

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exsea#1724 wrote:

permanency came from an ancient philosophy of living with your choices.

You describe it as ancient? It is a cornerstone of the rpg genre. If you didn't ever have to "live with your choices", there would be no role. It would be a sandbox, which is sort of the exact opposite of an rpg. There's nothing "ancient" about it.

The idea that ascendancies are "permanent" encourages players to create new characters. D3 did the entire genre nasty by making it so you only ever needed to create ONE barbarian...forever. D4 follows in the exact same vein. But these are BAD examples of rpgs.

This game is designed for years of play, not a few weeks. If you can't be bothered to make a new character fairly often, frankly that is your own hangup, not the game. That same person is also likely the one that will stop playing the game after maybe 3 leagues. Or quit after 2 weeks every single league.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

This game is designed for years of play, not a few weeks. If you can't be bothered to make a new character fairly often, frankly that is your own hangup, not the game. That same person is also likely the one that will stop playing the game after maybe 3 leagues. Or quit after 2 weeks every single league.

that was the original intent. the game was designed to be played forever. but intents usually change and evolve over time.

once upon a time we were mostly d2 fans that grew up with a single "permanent/standard league" in all diablo clones.

temp leagues were originally designed as a way for GGG to test new mechanics to add into the core/standard.

but look at where we are now? temp leagues are now the main league most players choose to engage with POE.

i agree its a cornerstone feature but cornerstone or not it is ancient. 10 years is a long time ago. the original diablo was released in 1997. thats over a quarter of a century.

as for creating a new character fairly often. i've done that countless times over 10 years. i m really not keen into rerolling a new character again next league and have even suggested that temp league content be released onto standard as how LE is doing it.

people change. trends change. permanency was a way to prolong a games life. fucked your build? reroll. you had no choice and the devs loved it as you were force to reroll and spend more time in the game.

for sure i m very experienced now and getting a new character to maps takes 1-3 days for me. but for other players who are less dedicated. they might just feel so demotivated that they just quit.

is it on them that they quit? one can argue "POE is not for them" if they're so easily disheartened, but on the flipside, retaining newer players means more potential revenue for GGG.

so what can GGG do? i can tell you, whether or not GGG disables ascendancy changes do NOT affect players like you or me. i m pretty sure we'll just roll with it and reroll. but for newer players? they might be disheartened enough they might just up and quit.

oh and just so you know. gaming trends have changed a huge lot. piratesoftware (streamer) revealed that at a game convention, most youngsters dont even know how to use a gamepad controller. theyre more accustomed to touch screen.

they definitely arent the target market for GGG but it just goes to illustrate. times are changing whether we like it or not

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exsea#1724 wrote:

temp leagues were originally designed as a way for GGG to test new mechanics to add into the core/standard.

but look at where we are now? temp leagues are now the main league most players choose to engage with POE.

A tired....and wildly incorrect statement. They were never designed to be "tests", except within the beta. This is a simple untruth spouted by standard-lovers to try and defend standard. However, the reality is that standard is and always was the dumping ground for the "main" game which was the leagues.