Massively disappointed in playable characters and Ascendancies.

This entire thread so far has been mostly wanting, a company that lives of ‘donations’ (admittedly pretty well) and is small by the big companies standards, to do things that take a hell of a lot of work and time and hence money. And the game isn’t even out on early access yet let alone full release when pressure for them will be less and ‘luxuries’ like this thread might be viable but don’t hold your breath.

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Timbo Zero#8289 wrote:

This entire thread so far has been mostly wanting, a company that lives of ‘donations’ (admittedly pretty well) and is small by the big companies standards, to do things that take a hell of a lot of work and time and hence money. And the game isn’t even out on early access yet let alone full release when pressure for them will be less and ‘luxuries’ like this thread might be viable but don’t hold your breath.

I don't understand why you talk about cost and work, they spent time and money making the new characters, making ones that represented the different in-game cultures and had the opposite gender ratio would have been the same amount of work.

I'm not making demands on what they should do, I'm expressing disappointment in what they have done.

We're getting 18 new ascendancies, plus 18 out of POE1's 19 ascendancies, but all completely revamped for a mechanically much different game, with a whole bunch of new mechanics we've never had in POE before. Plenty of mechanical variation.

We're also getting what appears to be lawful/educated/formal and chaotic/intuitive/informal theming for every starting position: sorceress versus witch, monk versus shadow, mercenary versus ranger, duelist versus huntress, soldier versus warrior, and templar versus druid. That seems like plenty of thematic variation to me.



It seems like your issue isn't so much with the thematic or mechanical diversity though, more with cultural and gender diversity of the PCs, so let's address that.

There are only a handful of still living peoples/cultures established in the area where the gameplay takes place: Karui, Ezomyte, Maraketh, Eternal, and Kalguuran.

The Azmeri and Vaal no longer exist culturally and their peoples were absorbed into the Eternals; the Caaltu also no longer exist, at least culturally, though perhaps their people were likewise absorbed by another people. The Kalguurans are from another continent, and can't use virtue gems, so they can't be playable characters. That means the only peoples the playable characters can come from are the Karui, the Ezomytes, the Maraketh, and the Eternals, and it turns out that the PCs we know about are Karui/Ezomyte, Maraketh, and Eternal. Eternals are also the least likely to have bad reactions to virtue gems compared to the others, so are the most likely to be able to wield them to good effect as PCs, plus they have no remaining homeland, another factor making them more likely to be PCs, hence their overrepresentation.

As for women being represented, you've got the Huntress for hitting things, the Ranger for shooting things, the Sorceress for all things magical that don't involve necrophilia, and the Witch for all things magical that do involve necrophilia; three of those are in the early access, making them fully half of what's available in early access. We also don't know for certain that the Soldier, Templar-equivalent, Shadow-equivalent, or Duelist-equivalent aren't using female character models. For all we know at this point, we might be running around looking more like Cassia than an old man with no pants when we play a Templar in POE2.

Im sad that Templar and Duelist are not on the list at start I dont really wanna start Warrior or Monk but I guess im gonna have to.

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I cant get Witch Ascendancies. They are both casters and not summoners. Isnt Witch a class about massive armies anymore? For now it looks like Sorca is normal mage and Witch is weirdo mage.

Yeah, not happy with another trial for ascendancy system. The labyrinth is the worst mechanic in PoE, and they just do it again.

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AxiomOfAnarchy#7408 wrote:

We're getting 18 new ascendancies, plus 18 out of POE1's 19 ascendancies, but all completely revamped for a mechanically much different game, with a whole bunch of new mechanics we've never had in POE before. Plenty of mechanical variation.

We're also getting what appears to be lawful/educated/formal and chaotic/intuitive/informal theming for every starting position: sorceress versus witch, monk versus shadow, mercenary versus ranger, duelist versus huntress, soldier versus warrior, and templar versus druid. That seems like plenty of thematic variation to me.

Having more boxes to be put in does not change us being put in boxes, even if there were 100 ascendancies if 1 was by far the best for Cast on Crit 90%+ of CoC builds would use it, if they are locked to a character then themes and class fantasies are locked too, if they don't rotate between leagues we will have that same situation for years until they do a rework.

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It seems like your issue isn't so much with the thematic or mechanical diversity though, more with cultural and gender diversity of the PCs, so let's address that.

You deciding what my issue is does not actually change what my complaints are about. I want thematic and class fantasy freedom which does include a wider spread of gender and culture choices but is certainly not exclusively focused on that. Having both a female Ranger and a Huntress is redundant, I would have much preferred to have, say, a Karui Hunter instead.

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There are only a handful of still living peoples/cultures established in the area where the gameplay takes place: Karui, Ezomyte, Maraketh, Eternal, and Kalguuran.

The Azmeri and Vaal no longer exist culturally and their peoples were absorbed into the Eternals; the Caaltu also no longer exist, at least culturally, though perhaps their people were likewise absorbed by another people. The Kalguurans are from another continent, and can't use virtue gems, so they can't be playable characters.

The Azmeri do still exist even if their numbers were small during PoE 1, Yeena, Greust and Silk were Azmeri, there could have been more groups that coalesced after the events of PoE 1 and there you go.

The Kalguurans not being able to use virtue gems isn't entirely true since "Vorana, Medved, and Olroth were eventually able to use the power of the virtue gems" while fighting "nightbreeds" while they fell to corruption, so has a great many people who used gems throughout PoE history. It's been twenty years of far greater contact between the cultures, things can have changed a great deal.

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geddim#3705 wrote:

I cant get Witch Ascendancies. They are both casters and not summoners. Isnt Witch a class about massive armies anymore? For now it looks like Sorca is normal mage and Witch is weirdo mage.

I guess 3rd ascendancy is minion based,I just dont get why they kept going on and on about minions during showcase and then not even put minion ascendancy out.I have no interest really in playing non minion builds...

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Neuropain#6925 wrote:

And for the Ascendancies you seem to have doubled down on locking playstyles down to certain classes, which goes against everything else in the game and just really sucks.

I agree this kinda sucks but they've been pushing that direction for a long time now. Ever since they added Ascendancy classes really. They've kinda proven (to me at least) they cannot balance a class-less system reasonably so it's a whatever situation.

I'd rather have classes that can compete than entirely dead archetypes.