Rigid Ascendancy Restrictions in PoE 2: A Barrier to Player Freedom and Retention

Usually, choices should matter. Otherwise, what ends up happening is players get bored of the game and never come back. This game has one of its core elements being character customisation, and they want the choices you make to customise your character to feel impactful.

If you enable ascendancy respec again, it actually disincentivises people to customise & experiment with their builds, because they are saving all their gold for ascendancy respecs (or enough for a potential respec, 'just in case' they need it) that will have to cost a lot more than refunding normal passive points. It also means that you have to farm on a character you don't actually like playing in order to unlock the different ascendancy, and completely change your gems/skill setups to accommodate the ascendancy change (because ascendancies have their own socketable skills).

The amount of player friction involved in this process is probably too high, especially considering the demographic of people that require an ascendancy respec consider themselves 'time poor'. Also, once you complete the change and you don't like it, you have to re-grind the gold to change back - which may be too grindy for these types of players and not actually be fun for them, meaning they would quit anyway if they ever do a 'failed' respec.
Last edited by Metronomy#6891 on Dec 2, 2024, 8:11:06 PM
#4 is really the strongest argument. I think it should work in such a way that you can unlock multiple ascendencies and then switch between them either at will or at a cost of some kind.
Dunno. I kinda like the thrill of no respecs. It's like jumping off a cliff an not knowing if you'll hit the sweet spot or go splat.

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info