About permanent Ascendancies

Hello, friends at GGG

I became aware of the information that I would not be able to change my ascendancy after picking my ascendancy. I don't really care about not being able to change it, but there wasn't any indication that it was a permanent choice in act2. I was looking between the nodes of the Bloodwitch and the Infernalist, and I knew I still needed to fight the act2 final boss, and didn't want to deal with the trouble of managing the additional HP costs of the first 2 nodes of Bloodwitch, so I put the points into the demon form to see if it was any fun, with the intention of swapping back to the Bloodwitch when I did the next trial, which would provide me with the much needed recovery nodes.

So what I ask is that there be some kind of indication that the choice is now permanent for people who are accustomed to the system, but not as in the loop about these changes. I assumed that, as it was so easy to respec points with gold, there would be no change to the system, and that I would just need to an additional trial, in addition, I immediately got an additional attempt (the coin item) immediately after completing it, which could have been RNG, but felt a little scripted, as it was literally the first monster. It honestly felt like an invitation and confirmation that I would be able to respec my ascendency without worries.

I am very disappointed by the lack of communication, the infernal witch does not align with my planned build and I just wanted to try out that demon form thing. I fully intended to play the Bloodwitch, and if it was communicated to me, I would not have chosen the former just for a quick peak at what I was missing choosing the other path.

Perhaps, there might be a way to mitigate the costs of the first two nodes to discourage users from doing the same thing as I did, or just a confirmation box with a timer on the OK so the user is forced to read that the choice cannot be changed. (If there was a warning on the confirmation, I clicked through it reflexively and do not remember at all).

Lastly, I understand wanting players to stick to their choices, but perhaps a one time chance to change an ascendancy per character later on would be nice, I'm happy enough to run around without any ascendency points spec'd even if it means I have to wait until something in maps. I was fully prepared to spend all my gold on unspecing my points (which I did within 5 minutes of choosing). Unfortunately, I failed my attempt at the second sanctum due to honor loss during the boss, so I wasn't even able to confirm that I wouldn't be able to respec my ascendency, and I was "informed" by other players that I was mistaken on my assumption to begin with afterwards, one random player in chat, and I asked my brother who has been keeping up with the game news more than myself to confirm.

I've sort of laid out all my misgivings, but to summarize, I had assumed I would be able to respec my ascendency, so chose a path out of light interest since I wasn't willing to take the cost of the path I did intend to take at the next trial, there was no strong indication that the choice was permanent in the screen, and I had assumed based on the ease of respecing, that the system would be the same as it was before, the fact that the choice must be made at the end of the trial makes it difficult to walk away without choosing anything, knowing it will be blocked till you complete another trial. The initial cost of the first points of bloodwitch is too high, even though I knew that the next trial would make it worthwhile, and the appeal of the neat form change of the infernalist made it seem like it might be fun to try it out even though it meant there would be a cost. I have now paid the cost to unspec, the cost of attempting and failing the trial again, the cost of having not having the ascendancy I wanted to use, and the cost of time to write out my grievances, and my potential solutions.



Thank you whichever GGG employee reads this, I don't really want to reroll before finishing the story just because of a bad choice, so I'll go back to my campaign run for now. Please, at the very least, make the information that it will be a permanent choice impossible to miss.

EDIT: I would like to clarify, that I believe it's a failure of design to not at least inform the user, especially at such an early point in the game. I'm accustom to being able to change my choices though convoluted means, but change them non-the-less. Final choices must be well communicated if that is truly the intention. Even the NPC could have said "Choose wisely, you won't get another chance." or something slightly more in-character.

When you want to inform someone of a final choice, you MUST do it more than once, the npc should say it, the UI should say it, and there should be a delayed confirmation, and as far as I could tell, it was not done at all, because I tried to look for more information while choosing.

EDIT 2: I don't want to keep piling on edits, but I just keep thinking about it more, the poe1 ascension trials were more convoluted, but the build up really helped sell what you were actually doing, the act2 trial in poe2 kind of feels like bonus content, and not something with lasting consequences, but Ascendancies (especially permanent ones) are a very important part of the game, and the alter at the end of the trial looked innocuous, even pedestrian. It was just placed to the side, there wasn't even some kind of obstacle, like a vault door to really sell the permeance or treasure-esc value, if I didn't know EXACTLY what I was looking for, I may have even missed it.

This is so insanely polite for a response to something that should never have gone live. The devs are delusional if they think permanent ascendancy choices is a good idea especially with how absurdly tedious getting to that point is.

delusional?

you know that most games force you to pick a class at character creation, like 99.9% of all RPG style games in history its a permanent choice you can never undo.

Are they delusional or is someone being completely unfair and also not particularity knowledgeable about how these games usually work?

I would argue that the mistake GGG made was EVER letting players re-spec their class choice in POE1 thus setting up an expectation that just made the first games choices less impactful, and when corrected made for some player confusion.

Its just one of those things I think some people feel entitled to that no one older even thinks is a problem because its not usually possible. Permanent class choice is the norm.

Make a new character, I promise you its not that big of a deal, some of us even enjoy it. Stop letting the illusion that you're "falling behind" or "not doing endgame where the game matters" ruin your fun. Trying stuff is why you have more than one character slot. Exalts and most important currency can drop while you're leveling, and alt is not a hardship. Gameplay is fun from lvl 1 to infinity. Only your own value judgements alter that and try to make it less fun because you assign a false meaning or importance to later progress.

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delusional?

you know that most games force you to pick a class at character creation, like 99.9% of all RPG style games in history its a permanent choice you can never undo.

Are they delusional or is someone being completely unfair and also not particularity knowledgeable about how these games usually work?

I would argue that the mistake GGG made was EVER letting players re-spec their class choice in POE1 thus setting up an expectation that just made the first games choices less impactful, and when corrected made for some player confusion.

Its just one of those things I think some people feel entitled to that no one older even thinks is a problem because its not usually possible. Permanent class choice is the norm.

Make a new character, I promise you its not that big of a deal, some of us even enjoy it. Stop letting the illusion that you're "falling behind" or "not doing endgame where the game matters" ruin your fun. Trying stuff is why you have more than one character slot. Exalts and most important currency can drop while you're leveling, and alt is not a hardship. Gameplay is fun from lvl 1 to infinity. Only your own value judgements alter that and try to make it less fun because you assign a false meaning or importance to later progress.

man, you're in a peth of exile forum talking about path of exile and you want to act like the very well liked precedent from their previous game was a mistake?

This crap is why I stopped playing last epoch without finishing it.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

delusional?

you know that most games force you to pick a class at character creation, like 99.9% of all RPG style games in history its a permanent choice you can never undo.

Are they delusional or is someone being completely unfair and also not particularity knowledgeable about how these games usually work?

I would argue that the mistake GGG made was EVER letting players re-spec their class choice in POE1 thus setting up an expectation that just made the first games choices less impactful, and when corrected made for some player confusion.

Its just one of those things I think some people feel entitled to that no one older even thinks is a problem because its not usually possible. Permanent class choice is the norm.

Make a new character, I promise you its not that big of a deal, some of us even enjoy it. Stop letting the illusion that you're "falling behind" or "not doing endgame where the game matters" ruin your fun. Trying stuff is why you have more than one character slot. Exalts and most important currency can drop while you're leveling, and alt is not a hardship. Gameplay is fun from lvl 1 to infinity. Only your own value judgements alter that and try to make it less fun because you assign a false meaning or importance to later progress.

I appreciate that it's partly my own fault for assuming that it would be something I could change, as I've said in my post. But given how much the designers have focused on communicating through the environment, the first ascendency is an absolute failure of design, as it does not make you FEEL the gravity of the choice. It's not delusional to ask the game devs to add a simple button with a delay to accept the choice, as it cannot be changed.

Delusional, would be me expecting them to revert the system to one which allows respecing just because I wrote a strongly worded post. My other suggestions, asking them to change the narrative and environmental design, to enhance the importance of the choice is also not delusional, even though these changes could cost a significant amount of money compared to adding a button, or just allowing the user to respec, but they are worthwhile changes to the overall polish of the system if the intention is to make the choice permanent. The rest of PoE2 does this very well for bosses, or even just the kinds of enemies you will encounter in sub-zones.

Futhermore, I did address rerolling in my post, I'm not opposed to it, I just don't want to uppend my story progress for the sake of something that happened 17h into my playtime, when the story will only be 30-40h total. I would much rather spend my first reroll trying out a new class, like the monk.

I don't think strongly worded posts should be dismissed. It took years of the community railing against pointless restrictions to get POE1 to a great place.

Is it different on PC? On PS5 there was a giant notification popup with giant letters informing you that the choice of ascendancy was permanent.

I also don't see the issue here. You can't change from a sorceress to a ranger with a respec. Why should you be able to change your ascendancy class? You're picking your class, just like when you made your character.

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irwaffel#6302 wrote:

I appreciate that it's partly my own fault for assuming that it would be something I could change, as I've said in my post. But given how much the designers have focused on communicating through the environment, the first ascendency is an absolute failure of design, as it does not make you FEEL the gravity of the choice. It's not delusional to ask the game devs to add a simple button with a delay to accept the choice, as it cannot be changed.

Delusional, would be me expecting them to revert the system to one which allows respecing just because I wrote a strongly worded post. My other suggestions, asking them to change the narrative and environmental design, to enhance the importance of the choice is also not delusional, even though these changes could cost a significant amount of money compared to adding a button, or just allowing the user to respec, but they are worthwhile changes to the overall polish of the system if the intention is to make the choice permanent. The rest of PoE2 does this very well for bosses, or even just the kinds of enemies you will encounter in sub-zones.

Futhermore, I did address rerolling in my post, I'm not opposed to it, I just don't want to uppend my story progress for the sake of something that happened 17h into my playtime, when the story will only be 30-40h total.

Hey appologies that "delusional" was aimed at the other person not you, I should have quoted them but this forum sometimes does this thing where you click the Q to quote someone two or three times and the quote never shows up.

I sympathize I don't blame you for having an expectation or learned behavior from POE1. Thats GGG's fault for doing it weird in the first game (anyone else getting tired of typing POE1 and POE2?)

I just think the guy who replied to you went a little ham on his wording considering it works this way in literally almost every RPG ever made.

If it helps any Infernalist has some pretty sexy defensive stuff with the Hellhound damage reduction plus damage deferal (20% of phys, cold and Lightning as Fire) stack those two up and some max fire, maybe that armour to fire damage node if you can figure out a path down there... its what I'm doing right now.

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MoonJT9#9663 wrote:

Is it different on PC? On PS5 there was a giant notification popup with giant letters informing you that the choice of ascendancy was permanent.

I also don't see the issue here. You can't change from a sorceress to a ranger with a respec. Why should you be able to change your ascendancy class? You're picking your class, just like when you made your character.

If there was a warning, I reflexively accepted the dialog before I even really saw it, which is why I asked for a button with a delay to accept it. I'm used to confirming the choice, so I didn't think about it too much. I did address this in my post. The UI for choosing looked exactly like PoE1, and for PS5 they would have had to remake it, so adding the warning would make sense. But if there was a warning, I never even saw it, which was why I'm stressing the need to make it impossible to miss. It might seem like a small change for people who don't even know you could change them in poe1, it might even be a little annoying to have to wait 5(s) every time you choose your ascendency the first time, but I know I'm not the only person who would appreciate it, as it would save head-aches from other players, new and old alike.

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Terzian#6850 wrote:

man, you're in a peth of exile forum talking about path of exile and you want to act like the very well liked precedent from their previous game was a mistake?

This crap is why I stopped playing last epoch without finishing it.

It was a mistake, don't believe me? Ask why they corrected it in POE2... All design choices have knock on effects. Easy respec of entire class = no need to level alts, case in point: the OP. It also means your choice at the altar is less important... Case in point: the OP thinking it still worked the same as POE1 didn't take it seriously.

The OP's post proves why its bad to allow players to fully explore classes without investment.

Why? Because human nature: we do not value things that come easily the same way we value things that required more effort.

Easy almost no cost respec in Diablo 4 allowed me to try literally every "build" and every configuration of the skill twig in just a few hours. Get bored and log out of D4 with like 30-40 hours total time played. Some of thats the loot system, some is the shallow puddle of "builds" and some of that is the dejected feeling of having completely explored an entire class in a couple of hours. Its not just how fast I explored every Druid skill, its knowing that people at Blizzard making important choices: aren't good at game design.

I'll never play that game again.

Meanwhile I have over 20k hours in POE1 and who knows maybe I top that in 2. All because important weighty choices feel better to make than shallow easy choices.