I haven’t attempted respeccing passive tree points, but what I would suggest for that is to use a variant of the current system (if my proposed idea IS the current system, then I have no complaints). Essentially, you still pay gold to respec one point, with the gold cost scaling up every time you respec a point up to a cap (let’s just say 5,000 gold as an arbitrary potentially-reasonable number). When you remove a point from the passive tree, it reduces the overall level of your tree until you put the point back in. If you reduce the level below the point where you have skill points invested in a node, those skill points stay invested but you gain no benefit from the invested nodes until you put your points back in and your passive tree level reaches them again. If you want to remove points from a node that acts as a pre-requisite for another node that you have put points into, the points stay in the other node, but you lose access to all of that node’s benefits until you put enough points into the base node that you meet the pre-requisites for that other node.
This version of the system would allow for minute changes to the passive tree at any level, while still making it difficult to significantly alter your tree. If you realized that your core build concept was fine but you’d misplaced 10-15 points in bad places here and there, this system would allow you to correct that regardless of where those points ended up being. However, ideally the system would also be prohibitively expensive for trying to completely change from one build concept to another, in order to suggest rerolling as an alternative to respeccing, while still ultimately allowing it for players who really hate rerolling and who are fine with painstakingly grinding out enough money/resources to eventually buy a full respec.
+1…
I understand the cost of the refunding, but it should be less, or free. (Perhaps 15-25k for a full reset, or something) Especially how many passive skill nodes there are.
This is a BETA, I would like to do more “testing”.
Tempted to make a new character which can be quicker than saving up the gold, and that’s just a worse concept. Valid if making a new/different build, but not for testing…
I agree that you should not be able to respec the whole character or at least it should be really costly to do so (maybe with specific non tradable items that are really hard to come by). I also like the idea to have the freedom to reallocate your last 20 points or so at any time.
However in the Beta phase I think that this is unnecessary, the idea is to test the game in a more easy way so we can explore potential bugs more easy. I think that during the Beta phase we should be able to reallocate passive points and Skill points freely at any given time.
Furthermore we still don’t have a complete KB of the mechanics of the game or a Character Calculator, this also should be taken under consideration and further emphysema on the need of more freedom during Beta.
Adding on, a full respec is prohibitively expensive if you try to do it more than once or twice. I don’t think this makes sense, giving how many options there are in the game.
First off, I love this game so far. Next on the agenda, I understand poeple’s concerns with “free” on the fly respecs, but this is still a beta for testing and I feel that we should have more freedom to play with our points. I can see spending about 30k every time you “full respec” to limit how much you respec but having it inflate in cost during the beta is a little much. We don’t have guides or sims for this game yet, so fine tuning is a challenge for some of us. I’d rather be able to fine tune then spend all my time leveling the same class try tweaking it a little.
ARPGs encourage making new characters. Want to respec your melee beastmaster into a caster shaman? Make a new character.
It’s also not that expensive anyway…I full respecced from 70 to fix some early passives and still have plenty of gold left. If I had to do it again I probably would run out of gold, but shouldn’t I have fixed the mistakes the first time?
Grim Dawn’s respec is a joke. The cost is so low it might as well be free. Respeccing is a must in that game though because early skills do not scale as well into late game typically.
I have not found the need to respec much here after playing almost constantly since beta launch. I’ve de-specialized skills plenty of times…but the passive tree is not that complicated especially the first 20 points.
Agree with the respec cost. It should not be negligible. I appreciate the concept that respeccing should also cost some time. From an more RP perspective this fits as your character is learning a new skill which will take some time, so I’m all for some form of respeccing that costs some non-negligible amount of time.
Reading all the responses here baffles me. There are many different kinds of players in this beta, and subsequently interested in the game, that range from this being their first foray into the genre to seasoned veterans. Everyone is going to have a different view on just about any issue that comes up, such is the nature of the beast when sharing a passion with such a diverse community. The thing that bothers me is that I see many people that campaign for one thing, mainly in support for painful respec, because its the way it has always been, or character identity or it makes choices meaningful, etc, with no regard as to how it effects the player base as a whole.
What I don’t get is how it makes sense to punish everybody for the desires of a minority. Let’s say the devs make respecing easier by allowing full respecs for a set price or item, or hell even free. There is nothing stopping anyone anywhere from not using them, and rolling a new character in order to preserve that characters identity. I guess what I am getting at is nothing is lost to the “hard-core” crowd by allowing easy respec because they are not forced to use it. But to the new guy trying to figure everything out, the idea of rerolling for the “n” time could literally just make him or her walk away. Not everybody has the time to go through the slog one more time because a new build just emerged that looks like a lot of fun, but that means they need to spend another 5, 10, 20 hours to even try it out to see if its something they like.
It makes sense to be more inclusive than less. LE is looking to claim the attention from gamers with several great choices to choose from in a genre that is known for sucking away endless hours from peoples lives (a good thing). Maybe something like Diablo 3 is a little too easy for what the devs have in mind, but the suggestions that it should be painful to respec is a horrible idea that only serves as a barrier to entry for new players, and with out new players games tend to die quickly. The market place is crowded, and becoming ever more so as we ride this wave of resurgence in the ARPG genre, it can only help to improve quality of life. If you don’t like it, don’t use it, but don’t punish everyone because they can’t no-life it.
i think respec is a good thing , sometime you want to try your own build and not just copy stuff, its not allways going to work in the first try , so yeah its kinda sad to punish people for wanting to Try new stuff .
Nothing worse than wanting to start playing a game and knowing you NEED to follow a guide or you toon is probably going to be useless .
I understand the “Make respecs hard” crowd, your Argument can be Extended, I could say “Why is there no cheat engine to create all the items I want with perfect rolls? It hurts noone, if you don’t like it don’t use it.” … it’s an extreme example of Course, but maybe you get my Point, just by having the Option of freely respeccing whenever and whatever I want, you automatically reduce the importance of your build. You don’t Need to plan, and furthermore you can simply start with a leveling build, and Switch to the build you really want to Play at Level 80 or whatever…
I personally understand both sides, I don’t have much time to Play either, and having to reroll a character just because I misunderstood what a passive does or whatever would probably turn me off the game…at the same time D3 with it’s full-on insta-respec whenever you want makes everything unimportant. I think the General direction of LE, making it expensive, but not impossible and not tooooo prohibitive is good. The Details can be changed once the Content is largely complete and we see how much a 1.000 Gold Ends up being worth.
I think the biggest problem right now is that so many prefixes, suffixes, passives, and spell points are not very obvious “what they do”. For new players, and even advanced players to be able to test out what things actually do, try different builds, try variations of builds, like the difference between 1 point in a build.
I want to be able to theorycraft and test hundreds, thousands of variations. How can I do that when it takes like 3-4 days to respect once? With that in mind to respec all the times I want to will take 400 days of play, an entire year. Seems silly, no?
Everyone has it is own way to be happy. If you want to be punished - get it, but don’t force it on other people. It is not right. ‘Meaning’ and ‘importance’ are subjective too. Hence I believe respeccing should be free, so everyone could choose that is right for them.
I definitely don’t want fully respeccing to be free. I like that the game encourages you to level an alt if you want to try a different build; from experience in PoE, I think this improves its replay value. Maybe there’s an argument to be made that full respecs should be free/cheap during early beta for testing purposes, but I don’t want it to be that way long term.
What I was trying to say with this thread is that it shouldn’t be drastically more expensive to fix small mistakes from early in your build than those late in your build.
Concrete example: Right now, when allocating literally your very first passive points as a Mage, you have to choose between int and elemental damage. Most new players at level 3 are not going to know which of these stats is better for their build. But if you pick the wrong one, and you realize it after you hit endgame and understand the mechanics better, you have to spend a full respec’s worth of gold to fix the mistake.
This is bad, and will result in new players getting frustrated and quitting just as they’re starting to figure things out.
I definitely don’t want fully respeccing to be free. I like that the game encourages you to level an alt if you want to try a different build; from experience in PoE, I think this improves its replay value.
The problem with this is that there are hundreds, thousands, millions of variations of builds. How can anyone test any build out if it’s basically locked to 1 build (or taking 5 days+ to respec everything / farm gold)?
All you can do is theorycraft, and probably mess up. But even now, a lot of players don’t really know what any passives / spells / prefixes even do to their character. The impact of things are very vague right now, so the ability to test is crucial. Also for patches, you could spec out a character and then a patch comes and destroys your entire build you spent a long time building.
Maybe there’s an argument to be made that full respecs should be free/cheap during early beta for testing purposes, but I don’t want it to be that way long term.
Why just during beta? Let’s say someone buys the game, they’re put at a really bad disadvantage to beta players, because they can’t test and play with anything. They can’t get a feel of the game, because they spec once wrong and they’re just never going to play the game well. OR they just follow a streamers build and there is group-think to basically pick whatever the current “best” build is.
I think that re-specing should be free so players can test and theorycraft. Otherwise the meta of the game will be incredibly flat because nothing will ever get figured out, because it requires hours, days to re-spec even 1 point far down in a tree that you want to test if it’s as good as another point.
That is a ton of assuming. Are you really saying metas wont evolve because there is a cost to respec? Seriously? There will ALWAYS be a lot of people who do things their way and feel 0 satisfaction following a cookie cutter build found on a forum, therefore there will always be new, interesting and op builds available to us all.
Also, look at it from a different perspective. The hardcore crowd is typically the group of people who are willing to purchase mtx. If it so happens that this group loses interestest quick because there is no reason to reroll, the devs are potentially losing a lot of revenue by catering to the more casual crowd. A cost of some sort should always be present in my opinion. The values associated with the respec are up for debate, but I dont agree with totally free.
It seems almost all argumentation in this tread based on feelings. Feelings are not argument, since they are deeply personal. Advantage of free respeccing is what it allows everyone to choose the approach they like the most.
Otherwise there should be just hardcore mode since there is group of players who don’t enjoy game without perma-death penalty.
If the only thing keeping people playing the game is because you can’t respec, then the core game mechanics probably need another thought.
Give Last Epoch to any new player and when they hit 40, 50, 60, and realize they can’t freely re-spec / test out all the passives / trees will quickly make players not stay.
The devs are well aware what all the numbers do behind the scenes, what are good specs and spells… but the vast majority of players have no idea the impact of things, and need time and re-spec to test.
For me personally, I’ve speced out 5 spells to level 20, and 2 trees on a level 75 toon, and I literally have no idea if what I have done is good, or the impact of my choices vs not. I have no sense of understanding what anything really does other than “this sounded better than that I chose this”.
No where did I say that, I said there needs to be an opportunity cost to respec. Some of us actually appreciate there being a weight to our decisions. If the choice turns out to be shit, tough luck gotta pay up to fix!
Upcoming optimizations will help. Skill transparency will be huge so we arent blindly picking skills and relying on hope alone that the skill is good.
