there are a couple things I see differently here. Making respeccing easier makes those choices have less meaning since you can change them so easily. This further diminishes the idea of "leveling" and "building" characters because without making those character-defining choices as you level, what is there to "build" when "building a character?". leveling also then becomes an arbitrary barrier that serves to just lock content behind. Which makes me wonder why we are okay with leveling if it's yet another time waster for content?

and I find it interesting that you don't like being locked into a role in a "roleplaying game." This is I think another thing where there just are two different perspectives. I'm building. a specific character who excels at certain things that others of my kind do not. I feel like the RPG portion of ARPG is getting lost in the genre.

yes you say we in real life can learn to do new things, but I don't think you can argue that we can do all things, even in a given "field" or "class.". and even if you did do all things, can you say you'd do them all well? I just don't agree that it's a reflection of real life that you can drop all of your learned skills to master another. it can often take decades to master a particular practice.

I'm the complete opposite. If the game and skills were perfectly balanced, I'd be fine with brutal requirements for changing skills. However they are not, so there needs to be a way to switch an non viable choice into a better one or to adjust to patches.

And in my opinion switching talents around is already super easy and cheap (whereas the cost and work required for switching aspects is a step too annoying and prohibitive in my opinion - especially considering how build defining they can be).

If switching stuff around gets too easy (like a load out system) the identity of characters vanishes. Which for me is an important part of a character.

it’s a pointless waste of time having to start a brand new character just because you want to experiment with everything the game has to offer.

But how else can they get you to spend more time in-game and increase the chance that you might just wander on over to the MTX shop and give them money? /s

I've been enjoying the game, but I'm already starting to feel like some of these time consuming processes have been put in just for this reason. Why would you buy horse armor if you're not riding around all that much?