Respeccing is painful, punishes new players for not knowing what to pick early on

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46

This thread has taken an interesting turn since I last posted an update.

It stragne how most people are so determined in their view of respecing that they have forgot that the game is in Beta.

I was left with the impresion that we are discussing how respec should work in Beta, not during live.

Why wloud you want restrictive systems on a product that You have paid to test. It’s like you are a lumberjack that chooses an axe instead of a chainsaw I mean wtf guys.

The idea of a beta is to twst the product so it can be polished for lunch, it is nornal to have systems tuned into your favour for testing purposes.

And let me make a comparison with D3 every time the open a PTR the systems are in the favour of the tester/player when the devs have gathered the required info the PTR server goes down until something new needs testing. The same logic applies here as well.

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47

Gotta second this comment, i thought we were discussing whether the beta should allow for easier respec with the intention of getting more things thoroughly tested before the game goes to 1.0.
As per my understanding, the current system doesn’t leave much flexibility in respeccing without investing a huge amount of resources.

As for how respec should work in 1.0 i have no opinion on right now

48

It’s the same principle. By building a cheat-engine you make finding loot “worthless”. By making respecs unlimited and free, you make builds “worthless”. So the argument is the same, only for loot and respecs.

For the beta though, as I said, I’m all for easier/cheaper respecs of pässives. Skills level fast enough that they don’t need a change IMHO.

49

I don’t mind it if someone wants to play with cheats in offline mode. Also it is something that community could figure out for themselves. Most games use 3rd party cheats.

50

And I’m sure noone has a Problem with free respecs in offline mode either :wink:

I had free respecs in D3 (well you never really had a “build” there anyway), and it just makes the characters so… unattached imho. Like you don’t care what you pick, you can always Pop up a guide and go with the current FOTM build anyway.
Oh, you used an obviously overpowered build to farm stuff and it got nerfed? Who cares, respec to the next best Thing, done. (This is btw a slight equivalent of the “cheat-engine” I mentioned earlier)

With respecs being impossible (as D2 did), you always had that wonky Meelee-Sorc hanging around in your char Screen, you’d get an item for her here and there with useful chars, and tried her out once and again for fun. And you felt that it was “Your Melee Sorc”, not a copied build from somewhere, and even if it was copied, you played with it for hours, you hung in there.
At the same time I, too, had a couple of chars where some lag or misclick left me with a skill I didn’t Need, and no Chance to get it back, and I “had” to reroll that char. That felt bad, but oh well.

So, I don’t want respecs to be impossible, but they should cost you enough that you think twice. Kinda like they do at the Moment, with smaller “Rollbacks” of your most recent choices being relatively cheap, but a complete overhaul is rather costly, so that you have to decide “Do I farm the Money for the respec? Or do I Speedlevel a second char during that time instead?”. And IMHO that’s a fair middle-ground isn’t it?

PS: And leveling a twink will be rather easy and quick with nice equip you’ll have by then.

Or maybe, alternative Idea: Respecs are more expensive, but you get one “Free Respec Point” around lvl 20 or something. You can use it to reset all your passives for free once, you can use it directly, or at lvl 100, or anywhere inbetween.
To alleviate the Problem of a newbie skilling useless nodes for him in the beginning.

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51

I’ll say it again as I have.

There are so many variants of 1 build, and there are many many many many builds.

The ability to change 1 point in your current build should not cost 100ks of gold, just because it’s farther away.

ARPGs should be able experimenting and testing out things. Just because you personally like making 1 character and playing it till death, doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t love trying out all the cool builds they can.

At it’s current pace, I cannot see LE being relevant for long, because players will spend weeks leveling 1 build, and basically being pidgeon-holed into playing that spec forever, or at least spending their entire bank re-specing, and spending a week re-leveling spells. People will quote POE or D2, but those games are largely figured out, and I bet money that a lot of players just follow the herd, the pros, the streamers, and pick the most optimal builds. But what if I want to make my own optimal build? I can’t, because I don’t have 10 hours a day to spend re-rolling characters and re-specing. I want to be able to test out all the passives and spells in the game, but that’s impossible. How can restricting access to try out all the different builds being behind a “free time to play” wall be a good thing? That’s like Dota have all heroes unlocked for anyone, no P2W, even playing field. VS League of Legends where you’re at a disadvantaged state on day 1.

Giving players an even playing field (but high ceiling) on what they can do is critical for any game.

How do I know if passive A is better than B? Well it sort of reads better I guess? Or big streamer told me to use it. So I pick it. Can I test out the difference? Nope, because for some reason you don’t want me to, so I blindly choose.

There is no real choice, because you cannot test anything in the game. Also you cannot experiment because once you decide it’s almost over in terms of choice. Just changing re-specing during beta will be an advantage for beta players, new players will never be able to test anything, so that’s not a good solution.

Choice is always better than no choice. To make an informed choice, you need to be able to look, test, and feel all the options. Blindly choosing things and then being stuck with uninformed decisions later is not a good game model.

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The thing is once you give the players something its hard to take it away. If they give easy respecs for beta I guarantee the playerbase will pitch a fit when they tried to take it away for release. So they should just find a good middle ground and stick with it.

''Choice is always better than no choice.** To make an informed choice, you need to be able to look, test, and feel all the options. **Blindly choosing things and then being stuck with uninformed decisions later is not a good game model."

But at the same time choice doesn’t really matter if you can change that choice every 5 minutes. Damn forum quote isn’t working.

53

Which brings me back to my cheat engine.
“How can I test which legendary works best for my build if I have to find it first? That gives Players with more time an Advantage and isn’t a Level playing field. So we all should get all Items, choosable as we wish.”

Yes, Players with more time have an Advantage. That’s always the case in an RPG.
Pagan Online goes a more MOBAish route if you want it more arcade-like.

Only when you make finding a cool build a challenge, you’ll have the satisfaction when it works out. See for example Soulslike games, which are created to frustrate the Players, up to a Point. Because that is the only way of getting the satisfaction of having overcome that obstacle.
With free respecs I only ever Need to Level 5 chars, one of each class, and I’m done, you won’t be a “Lightning Pet Shaman” or a “Strengh Melee Beastmaster”…you’ll just be a primalist like everyone else. That’s why I want to take choice away when it Comes to free respecs.

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54

It depends. If builds progress rather differently then it could make sense. If it is like in PoE where are a few good leveling strategies then it is just a time sink.
After all leveling supposed to give feeling of progression not regression and repetition.

Also more player will choose to follow guides instead of trying to build something by themselves.

55

The issue is less the price of the current respec system as it is how rigid it is. You pay to unspec the last X amount of passives which is absolutely trash if you screwed up early on (the time you’re most likely to mess up) in your build.

You should be paying X gold to get X amount of respec points and the ability to choose which points to refund (similar to orb of regrets in POE). They could even increase the cost of each individual respec point to balance out the extra flexibility. This gives you the option to fix that point you placed at level 5 that you realize is useless at lv50 without redoing every single point.

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56

Correct. And with expensive respecs, you are inclined to Level the new char in your new build you want, different from your other builds. Thus, you use other Skills during leveling, have a different experience. With free respecs, you just take the “Fastlevel Build”, and Change at lvl 60 or whatever…though you never even Need to re-level since you can just Change your spec anyway :smiley:

Yeah, I can see that. But that could be exploited unless you carefully restrict which Points you can remove. (Or you could just remove the low nodes, and move them up, when you have enough Points spent anyway)
Or, as I mentioned, give a char one free respec. Or three in total, one at lvl 20, one for completing the campaign, and one for reaching Arena Level 100 or whatever :thinking:

Just no limitless, cheap-enough-they-might-aswell-be-free respecs whereever, whenever please.

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57

It could be a good thing if leveling for any build within given archetype is more or less the same. D3 Armoury comes to mind.

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Hopefully, leveling will be fun enough to not wanting to get it over with ASAP :smiley:

Also…D3 has an all around free System… how many People do you see in Public Games, that don’t follow a build-guide? It isn’t the free respecs that make People Experiment, it’s the Feeling, that This could be good, or that, or maybe Frost-Only…
With free respecs, this Exploration takes 5 minutes “Nope, nope, nope, oh Frost-Only works. Done”, while you’ll have a few half-decent chars with expensive respecs until you finally get the frost-only char right, and you rock the Arena and it feels great. Because you went through hardships to get there.

59

I agree respeccing should be limited and maybe a bit on the expensive side. I do like that characters have their identity.

That being said, this is a beta. And should promote trying out new stuff. While not “punishing” the player that wants to by requiring a new toon everytime.

And you shouldnt need to respec 30 points in one subclass just to get to the 5 points you used first in another subclass.

TLDR; Should be well accessible during beta to respec points and try out different builds.

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60

And after release, I think if there are some BIG changes, like changing how a skill works completely, or removing life leech completely or something, I’m all for a free respec for everyone. Small balancing Patches are fine, but big gameplay changes should give the Players a Chance to adapt to them afterwards.
(And before someone Comes with: “But then you also Change the identity of your char!”…yes, but it’s not your own fault in this case :wink: )

61

1 suggestion I have for allowing for respec without make the game Diablo 3 easy is to allow 1 respec point at the EXACT SAME TIME you earn AND use a new specialization point. You level up to 30, you gain 1 specialization point and 1 despecialization point. Once you spend your spec point and save it, you are asked if you want to use your despec point and if you say no, that point is gone forever.

62

Making it difficult simply to make it difficult or to create that magical experience is absurd. You can easily impose limitations upon yourself to get the experience that you want without peeing in everybody else’s koolaid. Nothing of value is lost by letting the player respec easily and often, and only serves to enhance the players experience with the game. The leveling experience is “neat” the first time or two, and after that its a chore to be completed to get to the actual content. After leveling a few characters, the idea of doing another just because it is the lesser of two evils makes pulling finger nails with pliers sounds like a reasonable alternative. At the end of the day, if you want your precious clump of pixels to “mean” something to you, by all means roll a new toon every time you wanna play a new build. you have that luxury, but why limit the freedom for those who are not opposed to seeing the sun once in a while?

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63

Now I’m gonna nail you down, and expect a direct answer from you:
“At the end of the day, if you want your precious loot to “mean” something to you, by all means go grind for loot every day. You have that luxury, but why Limit the freedom for those who are not opposed to just getting every item for free whenever they want?”

64

A build, spec, setup etc. is a means to the end, the loot is the end. The difference is the game is the grind for loot, character power, progression, and/or advancement in some other meaningful way. The build should be your foundation, your starting point, and the gear should augment and enhance the character. Giving away free loot is defeating the entire purpose of a dungeon crawler/looter style game, where as giving away free/easy respecs allows for the game to be played without taxing the players time behind an artificial penalty of leveling. You can theory craft until you are blue in the face, but nothing beats first hand experience. XYZ build may sounds like a great idea, but maybe the way its implemented in this game doesn’t quite do it for you for what ever reason, just wasted 5-10 hours of leveling to find out you hate it. Conversely, what if we were required to permanently select a piece of gear for each slot? You are forced to pick at max level your gloves that you are going to use, and if you ever take them off they are destroyed and you have to start over.

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65

I’d like to differ. In my opinion, reaching Level 100 is as much a Progression as gaining better gear. Both increases your power, both has to be weighed against each other and complement each other. Both have to grow naturally to feel meaningful, and giving you one half of your Progression for free sucks half the Soul out of the game.

So, by following your logic, you should also be against the whole leveling process, and everyone should start at lvl 100, right? Since that’s the starting Point?

“taxing the Players time behind an artificial Penalty of finding the item” Are you really telling me that leveling is not a purpose of an ARPG?

Well, if you take them off you’re probably doing that because you found better ones, FOUND, you earned your replacement. Would it matter if the glove gets destroyed if I can just get it back for free? Why bother?

And yes, items in Last Epoch are very much like this. You craft an item, make it better and better. And then, boom. It’s fractured, you can’t improve it anymore, leaving it slightly weaker than your current item. It’s basically useless, “destroyed”. What you want is the equivalent of being able to craft your item as often as you want, with no risk involved.