Ascendency lock: contradicting GGG's own philosophies?

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I personally feel GGG missed the mark with ascendency lock; not by a little but by A LOT.

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GGG's Internal Motivation
- We don't know for sure what the internal motivation(s) for the lock is, other than Jonathan mentioning that some desginers "feel strongly" about it
- I imagine it's in part inspired by Last Epoch's similar decision do lock you into your "ascending" choice
- The argument likely used to defend this phiosophy is "meaningful choice" (WoW's Covenant Lock comes to mind, which was removed once reality set in)

Contradicting their own design pillar
- "Deep Character Customization" is their 5th pillar. When locking us into 1 (out of eventually 3) you're likely locking us out from an equal percentage of choices/time we could have taken on that class (and in some cases maybe more).
Scenario: someone picked an ascendency, either due to the fantasy or because they want to build around (or saw a build with) specific skill(s). They give it a fair shot, progressing and gearing through maps and at level 90 eventually come to the conclusion that this was not for them. If they now wanted to explore that charachter's other ascendencies, GGG seems to believe the right thing to do is start over instead, which seems absurd on the face of it.
- I'm sure we could come up with tons more scenarios, as to why this is not going to be generally welcome (just like it wasn't in Last Epoch), but it'll settle for this scenario as it accurately describes the weirdness of this decision to me (but feel free to add more below).

Suggestions
- If you want us to "experience" the ascendency fully before allowing us to change it, then let us change ascendency only when we've unlocked all 8 ascendency points
- If you want it to be "meaningful" to change ascendency, then force us to do the hardest version of a trial in order to change ascendency (or maybe something even harder?)
- If you want us to pay a high price for changing ascendancy, then make it require vast amounts of ingame currency/gold/whatever.
- But please DON'T make us level duplicate characters.
- and please DON'T fool yourselfs into thinking we'll now "itdentify" with the character because we can't change it
- and please DON'T take away options from players that wants to explore and build around whatever they drop

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Outro:
Above is of course subjective to me, and I'm curious to see how it resonates (or doesn't) with all of you other PoE gamers out there.
For me it just looks like some designer(s) have chosen a weird hill to die on, that isn't in line with general GGG philosophy.

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Good summarization; well, maybe except that part about vast amount of being expensive. Requirement of hard trial to change ascendancy sounds fine.

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MasterBLB#3551 wrote:

Good summarization; well, maybe except that part about vast amount of being expensive. Requirement of hard trial to change ascendancy sounds fine.

Thank you and I agree with your exception.

I don't necessarily agree wholeheartedly with my own suggestions, but I'm trying to be constructive and find a middle ground that isn't perma ascendency lock.

Whatever gets the GGG designer(s) down from that hill! :D

Or send us on a quest to kill 6 bosses, say the final boss of each act and then do any trial to speak to an npc to ‘beg their favour’ as a method.
This radical change to a decade of tradition (just like my anti one portal thread) is a slap in the face or lore and players enjoying the world that GGG have created for us.
If they said it’s only for EA and full release would not have it I’d be somewhat comfortable with that, it’s just dragging out the longevity of retention in EA. But in final game this has no place.

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Timbo Zero#8289 wrote:

Or send us on a quest to kill 6 bosses, say the final boss of each act and then do any trial to speak to an npc to ‘beg their favour’ as a method.
This radical change to a decade of tradition (just like my anti one portal thread) is a slap in the face or lore and players enjoying the world that GGG have created for us.
If they said it’s only for EA and full release would not have it I’d be somewhat comfortable with that, it’s just dragging out the longevity of retention in EA. But in final game this has no place.

I like the idea of the quest as a solution. Well, anything that doesn't hard lock it I'm ok with.

And I suppose that's actually a good point on EA purpose: if they want the campaing tested a lot, this is a way to force it repeated. I suppose I get that, albeit I'm not a fan of it in the slightest.

But I also concur that this has no place in the 1.0 release.

L take to go backwards on current (poe 1) design. If it's something that hasn't been finalized design wise, like some special "quest" or something to do it, fine sure. Let us do it at the respec vendor until then. Being locked period is just absolutely asinine, just like it was in LE.

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Gungniir#6674 wrote:

L take to go backwards on current (poe 1) design. If it's something that hasn't been finalized design wise, like some special "quest" or something to do it, fine sure. Let us do it at the respec vendor until then. Being locked period is just absolutely asinine, just like it was in LE.

Yeah, I'm also ok with this being something they're testing in order to get some information. It's EA afterall and they should be allowed a lot of benefit of the doubt to experiment (just as much as we'd like to experiment with builds and ascendencies).

But for the actual launch (and to quote myself):
- please DON'T make us level duplicate characters.
- please DON'T fool yourselfs into thinking we'll now "itdentify" with the character because we can't change it
- please DON'T take away options from players that wants to explore and build around whatever they drop

in reality, players always want their chars being able to use the latest exploit builds some streamer posted on the internet.

it's ok, that players want that, but games shouldn't allow them to easily hop on the hype train, at least not in masses.

choo choo!

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FalkenRaiding#1068 wrote:

They give it a fair shot, progressing and gearing through maps and at level 90 eventually come to the conclusion that this was not for them. If they now wanted to explore that charachter's other ascendencies, GGG seems to believe the right thing to do is start over instead, which seems absurd on the face of it.
- But please DON'T make us level duplicate characters.
- and please DON'T fool yourselfs into thinking we'll now "itdentify" with the character because we can't change it
- and please DON'T take away options from players that wants to explore and build around whatever they drop

How is it absurd to be made to start over? It's the foundation of this game. Have YOU been playing 1 single duelist for your entire PoE career? Has anyone?

"Please DON'T make us level duplicate characters": it is NOT a duplicate character, it is an entirely new character. A totally new experience from the beginning until the end. Just because it shares the same base class doesn't make it a "duplicate" in any sense of the word. And for all we know, GGG might also be making the replay of the story more interesting for characters 2+....we just don't know yet.

Leveling only one single character of every class, and then being able to endlessly futz around with the build and choices is a total game killer. It absolutely obliterates a foundational aspect of the genre: replayability. If its so much trouble for you to make a new character....you have either never played PoE or you simply don't want to actually play this kind of game.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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FalkenRaiding#1068 wrote:

They give it a fair shot, progressing and gearing through maps and at level 90 eventually come to the conclusion that this was not for them. If they now wanted to explore that charachter's other ascendencies, GGG seems to believe the right thing to do is start over instead, which seems absurd on the face of it.
- But please DON'T make us level duplicate characters.
- and please DON'T fool yourselfs into thinking we'll now "itdentify" with the character because we can't change it
- and please DON'T take away options from players that wants to explore and build around whatever they drop

How is it absurd to be made to start over? It's the foundation of this game. Have YOU been playing 1 single duelist for your entire PoE career? Has anyone?

"Please DON'T make us level duplicate characters": it is NOT a duplicate character, it is an entirely new character. A totally new experience from the beginning until the end. Just because it shares the same base class doesn't make it a "duplicate" in any sense of the word. And for all we know, GGG might also be making the replay of the story more interesting for characters 2+....we just don't know yet.

Leveling only one single character of every class, and then being able to endlessly futz around with the build and choices is a total game killer. It absolutely obliterates a foundational aspect of the genre: replayability. If its so much trouble for you to make a new character....you have either never played PoE or you simply don't want to actually play this kind of game.

Not sure how to reply to someone like you. You seem to be polar opposite of me, and little sympathetic to opposing viewpoints.

How my message in your eyes translates into me never having played the game, nor the game not being for me I will never know.

So I'll just leave you with this; I started and ended my initial post saying this is my PoV, and that I'd be curious to see if it resonates. Apparently it didn't with you, which is fair, but you seem to think that only YOUR "truth" is correct which is just incredibly narrowminded.

In any case, you're of course welcome to your feedback.
Even if I think it would be difficult to have a worse take than the one you just provided.

Best of luck on Friday.