Holy smokes. How many times does it need to be said.
U have been given ur answer plenty of times in this thread.
Ur fishing for an answer u want to hear. Cuz u dont like the answers that have been given. Alot of times the best answers are the ones we DONT want to hear
Let’s say we can change your mastery, why stop there? Let’s let my falconer become a Paladin! It’s a slippery slope.
You claim my reasoning is circular because you refuse to see the piles of evidence that classes cannot be changed in ANY ARPG. Not even your favorite PoE. If you want to make a game where the player can change their class? Go for it. You do you.
Not to mention there’s all these posts above about why free respecs for skills and passives are bad for the game, even arguments for why being able to swap masteries would be terrible. But you keep focusing on “well Ascendency” and instead of having an actual counter point to my argument that Ascendency isn’t the same as Mastery, you attack my reasoning. You don’t have a defense against what I’m saying so you’re claiming that I’m using circular reasoning and being disingenuous.
At the end of the day, the developers of the game don’t want you to be able to respec your Mastery. They told you it cannot be undone and they’ve said multiple times that they consider it a class and want it to be a permanent choice. If you can’t accept that, then that’s on you.
At a certain point you have to realize that these people are missing the point on purpose.
It’s enough reason to remove a large portion of incentive to do it, which reduces the overall amount of it done, which makes it more likely for people to do a ‘one fits all’ build since the effort used to switch builds in that manner would be a net-negative for play-efficiency.
This makes it extremely rare that someone would even try it out in the first place.
And more importantly… it makes it not used by people which play for efficiency to then ‘optimize the fun out of the game’ which has been found out to be a major aspect of why people stop those games.
So it’s not ‘never’ but it’s ‘reduced enough to have a meaning’.
The world isn’t only black and white, you don’t need to make a perfect system, you need to make a system which is ‘good enough’.
PoE’s gem-switch method stays counter to your argument and has a lot more weight to it then an argument as we can see it actively happening.
Sure… which does absolutely remove the whole aspect of having a AoE focus first (to speed up the process) to the change to solo-target (which speeds of the process for high health targets) entirely though.
So, what upside does it bring? Sure you can do it. You can also play through the whole game without wearing a helmet… there’s a difference between incentive and removal of an incentive though.
What you described is not ‘hot swapping’…
Once again, PoE gem-swap techniques stand counter to your argument.
The effort involved to do it is so high that it’s not a viable option.
Hence it counts similar to ‘non existent’ for the human brain, very very few exceptions existing.
A system without those frictions (that’s why those systems are called… friction systems actually) though don’t have that effort involved, hence the amount of people which deem it a ‘option to do’ increases in number. Path of Exile has a decent chunk of people which have complained about this specific aspect actively over the years, saying it has ‘sucked the fun out of the game’ for them.
This is a general thing with ‘slightly bothersome mechanics which give you an upside to use though’ as they’re generally friction mechanics which reward you for using the type of friction to derive a outcome. This is a golden line of balancing as the amount of friction always leads to frustration and the dev’s goal is to handle the scale of those to make the positive reward based feeling outlast the quite strong accumulating negative feelings towards those topics.
It’s a darn complex topic to get into detail with and is a part of the game development industry by now. We don’t get games ‘out of the garage’ anymore, it’s a surprisingly sophisticated sector with tons of knowledge about human psychology.
Nah… nah… he really isn’t. You just don’t understand the follow-up results of such a decision in that case.
Exactly!
Which isn’t the case now. No racer uses that, should tell you enough about the situation.
Which wouldn’t be the case with your suggestion of handling it though, it would suddenly happen, that should also tell you enough 
That’s the difference.
Of course. You define class as something that cannot be changed. So, when confronted with something exactly like a class but that can be changed, you claim it’s not a class. That is incredibly, incredibly disingenuous.
It’s not really a point - your only reason as to why an ascendacy is not a class is because it can be changed. Which goes back to your circular reasoning that a class cannot be changed, so something exactly like a class but that can be changed is not a class.
It’s so strongly a circular reasoning that you are stuck in it yourself. You are just repeating your statements without adding anything new about them.
Let me repeat:
The flaw in your line of thought is equating “class” to “cannot be changed”.
Do you have any argument to defend your opinion that a class cannot be changed, or are you going to just continue repeating your opinion as if it were a fact?
I honestly don’t need to. I have shared nearly 10 examples of ARPGs where the class cannot be changed, you gave one example where a class feature could be changed and claimed that it’s a class.
If DND let you change from Oath of Vengeance to Oath of Conquest, would those be classes? I mean they have their own individual skill trees just like an Ascendency? Ascendency doesn’t add anything other than a few extra passives, just like DND Subclasses, so by your logic, DND Subclasses must be classes too. And since Ascendency can be changed, DND subclasses should be able to be changed. Why stop there, I’m bored of playing my Barbarian in D3, but I don’t want to level a Witch Doctor from scratch, D3 should let me class change into a Witch Doctor. It’s just a few skills, same as Ascendency, right?
You literally have no arguments as to why an Ascendency is a class, you just want to keep telling me that I’m wrong because it’s against what you want.
Edit: Actually, let’s go a step further. I really don’t care if Ascendency can be changed or not, let’s call it a class too. Hell, let’s call LE’s Mastery a subclass. Let’s create a hypothetical world where LE is the only ARPG in existence where picking your class is a permanent choice. Guess what? It changes nothing, because the devs don’t want you to be able to swap Masteries. End of story.
Can we 3 agree that it actually has no meaning if it is a class or not?
First of all, it’s up to the developer to call it so or not, we can only discuss the semantics about it and if it’s ‘rightfully’ called one.
Which doesn’t change that the devs decided to act ‘as if’ it is one mechanically, not wanting the choice to change it hence.
I tried saying that multiple times, but for some reason he’s stuck on semantics.
To be fair to Erasculio, most D&D RPGs like Baldur’s Gate let you respec your class. It doesn’t mean that fighter/wizard/etc aren’t classes.
Letting you respec classes is a design choice that is widely used in RPGs and rarely used in ARPGs. But that doesn’t make them any less classes.
PoE’s ascendancy and LE’s mastery do share many common aspects to the point where you might be excused for equating them.
But to me the most important distinction between then isn’t whether or not they can be respecced but the fact that LE’s mastery brings choices with it, as I pointed out before: you get a new skill+passive, you’re locked out of a few skills and you’re locked out of 2 half passive trees.
That makes LE’s mastery choice more meaningful and impactful.
But the fact remains that the choice to respec them is a design choice and doesn’t change their fundamental nature.
If EHG decided to let you respec mastery and class, Sentinel would still be a class. You just could respec it like you can do on normal RPGs.
IMO, it might be the concussion, but “class” being unchangeable (base class + mastery in LE, class but not ascendancy in PoE) works for me.
Interesting, the only CRPG I’ve played was Pillars of Eternity and it locked you into your class. I am aware that other games let you change classes (it’s really common), so my point was never “classes can’t be changed, if it can be changed it’s not a class.” otherwise what would that make FFXIV where you can play every single class/job on one character? This all started with me saying that using Ascendency for PoE in a discussion about how similar Grim Dawn and Last Epoch’s systems are is an apples to oranges comparison.
From what I’ve seen, Ascendency is much closer to a subclass in DND than to the Mastery in Last Epoch. You’re given multiple choices, that add a handful of passives in PoE, same as DND. In LE, as you’ve said, you’re given an exclusive skill, a few exclusive class features, and an entire talent tree + two halves of other trees.
Edit: Hell, the only reason the discussion reached this point was because Erasculio misquoted me to make it fit his narrative.
I find this amusing (in an non-ironic way) because I usually equate LE’s masteries to D&D’s subclasses and one of the main reasons you can’t respec. 
BTW, while some subclasses only give you a passive, many give you a skill/spell as well.
D&D doesn’t have anything that can be equivalent to passive trees, so that part doesn’t apply.
That is really funny. I don’t have much experience with dnd, I started playing in my 30s and have only done two short campaigns as a player and a couple sessions as a DM with my brother and his kids.
If you meant conclusion I understand it fully.
If it’s because of a concussion… then I’m sorry you’ve hit your head and it’s interesting that the outcome is that it works for you. Nonetheless I recommend a visit to a doctor 
Yeah, the older the CRPG the more likely they’ve locked classes. It was also a fairly integral part of the older AD&D rulebooks, but with game-design developers went along to ease that up a bit so people aren’t getting stuck in their games. Unlike Pen&Paper you’re after all working in a fixed framework and that means there can be detrimental choices overall instead of everything allowing a different style of play simply.
No, I meant concussion, as in falling off a bike & having concussion/amnesia.
Spent most of yesterday afternoon through to this morning in hospital.
I do, remember this?
Last Epoch: I pick Sentinel. I’m a Sentinel till I reach The End of Time, then I pick Forge Guard. That’s my new class, Forge Guard.
Path of Exile: I pick Witch. I’m a Witch till I do the Lord’s Labyrinth, then I pick an ascendancy and become a Necromancer. That’s my new class, Necromancer.
You said the above is invalid, while pointing that the difference is that masteries cannot be changed while ascendancies can.
Irrelevant. Saying that something cannot be changed because that’s how it is goes against the entire point of having a feedback forum.
Claiming that an ascendancy is not a class, therefore there are no action RPGs in which we can change a character’s class, is the entirety of Scipo’s point. He does not have much basis to his claims other than that.
Not really - otherwise, I could say you have misquoted me any time in which you didn’t quote my entire post.
Not really, no.
In Path of Exile, ascendacies are the only source of unique traits to a class. You can pick a Witch and a Templar and use the same passive tree layout, ending with basically the exact same stats - the “base” class does not give you anything unique.
The ascendancies, in other hand, are unique. The only way to get the Primal Aegis skill is if you are a Witch who has chosen the Elementalist ascendancy. A Templar cannot get that ability (and neither can a Witch using other ascendancy).
In other words, ascendancies grant you a few exclusive class features and an entire passive tree. While LE’s masteries grant you a few exclusive class features and an entire passive tree.
Kinda. If we go waaaaaaaaay back, in Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, the most powerful characters could only be accomplished by changing your characters’ classes. It was a bit annoying, too.
I wish you a safe recovery!
I thikn the most important difference is that playing Pen & Paper or Tabletop, you have a DM that can advise you on your choices.
Whereas in a PC game you don’t. So there’s nothing to stop you from being a thief 1/bard 1/cleric 1/etc, and ending up with a very crappy character.
In fact, in BG3 there’s even an achievement for having all level 1 subclasses (which everyone just uses a companion to achieve, anyway).
Besides the points I’ve said, there is also one major difference between ascendancies and masteries:
Ascendancies require “special points” that you use on a mini separate mastery.
Whereas masteries just open up passive trees and you keep leveling the exact same way as before.
So in LE ascendancies are a totally separate portion of the leveling experience, whereas in LE it’s an integral part of it.
Right, this is where you misquoted me.
Again, my original quote was:
You take my quote, cut off the end of it, and it fits your narrative that Ascendency and Mastery are similar enough that Mastery shouldn’t be locked. In reply to a comment talking about how Grim Dawn’s “dual class” system is similar to Last Epoch’s Mastery system.
THAT’S why you misquoted me, not because you snipped parts of my entire comment.
I’m not saying “that’s how it is, it can’t be changed”. I’m saying “the developers design choice is to lock you into your Mastery. They’ve confirmed this multiple times.”
We’ve already changed systems in the game through feedback, again Dynamic Damage Reduction (DDR) was a huge one. Guess what? The design intent stayed the same. DDR was designed to prevent bosses from being one-shot but felt bad, people complained, and the system was changed to Boss Ward. Which… Still prevents bosses from being one-shot.
So tell me, what is your suggestion to unlock masteries while still filling the developers design intent of making masteries a permanent choice?
Yeah, first of all… not what he intended to say as much as I could read out of it, second of all, if that were true I’m 100% on your side with it, third, it still would have no meaning anyway.
Yeah, or adjust the story to not let you walk right towards your doom. That’ll stay the same until we have AI led games… and the first ones of those will be utterly hilarious rather then functional 