First post. Just throwing in my two cents that I also really don’t like these changes. For the opposing side talking about freedom of choice and just not to use these options if you don’t want to, I understand how that makes sense to a degree, but I still don’t agree that these options should exist especially in the higher difficulty levels. The idea about just not using an option if you don’t like it could be used to justify so many things that I think the majority of people wouldn’t want.
“We changed it so you start with 9th level spells at the very beginning of the game!” “Well, that seems unbalanced. I don’t like that.” “Just don’t use them then! It’s freedom of choice!”
Or
“You now have infinite actions every round, but of course don’t use them if it feels imbalanced! Also, every fight has a button you can press to win it automatically with no resource expenditure!”
Now to be absolutely clear, I am not saying the power level of infinite free respecs is equivalent to these examples, what I’m saying is that the exact same argument can be used to justify both. Therefore I think the argument is flawed.