Ability to save builds and quick swap

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I have been told that there has already been a statement that there is no intention to add something similar to the D3 wardrobe which allowed you to store your characters current state (gear, skills, passives etc) and I think that is a really poor decision.

The reasoning I heard was the statement of “decisions should matter” and I believe that is a misinterpretation of decisions matter.

My decisions should matter within my build, but I can manually do what I am talking about already. I can change builds manually in a matter of minutes for the cost of a couple thousand gold so clearly they don’t care so much that we can’t respec. I can level all my abilities in a matter of minutes back to 20 when im lvl 90+. It is already possible and even encouraged for us to try out multiple builds on the same character (within their mastery, a decision that DOES matter). So if they want to encourage build diversity and having people experiment then keeping it tedious for the sake of being tedious is just simply a poor design decision that does not serve their stated goal.

ARP’s are cool because of all the items and skills and the unique ways you can make them interact with each other. When a cool couple of items drop on the ground and I see a build forming in my head I don’t want to have to completely unspec my passives, unspec my skills to level 11, make a new stash tab for the gear I am currently wearing and then need to do that all again in reverse once I have played around with the new build just to get back to my prefered farming method.

Sometimes I just want to mess around with a build for a couple runs and then swap back into my main one because I really enjoy it, but variety is fun too. I should not have to spend 10+ minutes making that transition because it just keeps me from doing it in the first place and potentially finding something that could actually be more fun then what I am doing or better suited to a particular monolith/boss. Min maxing within a build is great, but also being able to min max a farming route is awesome as well and sometimes that means using a different build with different strengths.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk. Love the game btw and don’t worry about Blizz stealing your ideas yesterday. They made it a competition of player trust now and your transparency and player interaction blows theirs out of the water. Keep at it!

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2

There are multiple lines of reasoning. Mine is that character identity is something that I value in ARPGs, and being able to switch freely between build removes this identity entirely. When I play my Marksman frost archer, it is a unique character, fundamentally different from that guy’s bleed archer, or that other guy’s frost archer that uses different skills and nodes within the skills.
If I can simply instantly switch between builds, then I am not playing my unique Marksman frost archer, I am playing the generic Marksman, and using a flavor of the moment setup.
That identity is something that part of the community values.

And of course, that want of identity is fundamentally at odds with your want of ease of trying stuff out, which is why we find ourselves with this compromise that fully pleases no one.

Now, seeing you gloating that :

Clearly, the current respec system is too lenient at high levels. If anything, it is always clear that gold is almost never a significant cost to respecing. I would personally support replacing the gold cost with a 5% of a level cost (with possibility to delevel), as that would clearly be a meaningful cost, but not so high that you cannot fix mistakes or fully respec if you happent to not like your build. But I’ll let the devs look for better solutions for passive respec rather than push strongly that alternative that may not be liked by people that want to change their build regularly.

That’s precisely another thing they want to avoid. You are meant to look for a compromise build that can do some of all the content, rather than switch regularly depending on the content you are confronting.

The last thing to keep in mind is that being able to easily test all builds means that you are going to run much faster out of stuff to try. This means that it’s strategically not a good move to push people that prefer a restrictive respec system, just to let people that want to try everything out burn themselves much faster out of novelty to try.

2 Likes
3

So I hear all this and you are right they are different ways of looking at the game, but it leads me to a single question.

Why can’t I have access to the playstyle I want if you (a person who cares about fixed character identity) aren’t going to/are forced to interact with it if you don’t want to?

I am not asking for them to build me another game mode, this is just a stash tab for builds.

1 Like
4

The main reason is so that players don’t have a “Clear” build & a “Boss” build that they switch between depending on the challenge.
Your decision to choose between AoE or Single Target should & does matter.

5 Likes
5

So, who’s really affected by how I play this game? Does it bother you how I go about it? Or the folks who made the game? Maybe the real question is whether adding a feature like this would mess with how the game’s meant to be played.

Think about it: would letting players tweak their builds quicker mess things up for everyone else or even have an effect on the integrity of the game we all love?

Let me give you some background—I’ve played a bit of Diablo 4 (D4), which was honestly a letdown, but then I tried Last Epoch (LE), and man, I’m hooked. But you know what bugs me? Not being able to switch between builds easily.
I’ve got a family and a job, so gaming’s a treat I don’t get much of. I want to soak up all the cool stuff the devs packed into this game, but messing with my build takes forever. And when it doesn’t work out, it’s a total waste of my limited playtime.
Gaming’s supposed to be fun, right? It should be accessible to folks like me who can’t clock in the same hours as hardcore gamers.

The game has Cycles and after the Cycle I imagine the go to the “Eternal Realm” thing—assuming it’s like D4—why would me switching builds faster mess with your experience? It just doesn’t add up.

Bottom line: adding a feature to tweak builds quicker isn’t just about me—it’s about making the game better for everyone. It’s about being able to get the full effect from what this game has to offer, no matter how much time they’ve got to play.

6

In short: Being able to swap between a clear build and a boss build removes the challenge of finding the sweet spot in between. People generally play games for the challenge, so in that regard, removing it would make the game worse for everyone, not better.

And no “just self-impose it” isn’t a realistic ‘choice’.

2 Likes
7

Let me ask this… Why was there a need for Hardcore and Softcore? Why is there Character found and whatever that other option is?
The answers is because people have different play styles. Having an ability to choose something and match our playstyle, due to time to play, wanting/not wanting a challenge, or whatever other reason there is should not be a negative on the player.

Here is what I am proposing, a real “Sweet Spot” you could say.
My proposal is either:
Option 1: Put a button just like there is for Character found and the other one. Where is allows me to save my builds. Maybe I cant be apart of a party anymore or even be on any kind of leaderboard. Heck go all the way to where I have to play offline for this, I honestly don’t care. No copying and pasting builds from online. People might want that, I don’t. I want to create my build, save it somewhere, and be able to open that build with whatever items, passives, and skills I had chosen. Heck name this mode “People who generally play games NOT for the challenge” and put my name right there on it because obviously this kind of feature makes the game less challenging somehow. Either way build saving is in this mode.

Option 2: Add build saving, but limit how many times you can swap builds in a day. Cool someone cleared 1 area and killed 1 boss. Now they’ve used there allotted swaps for the day and are stuck to resorting back to the regular method of swapping builds, which works, just uses too much of my time. In this option it would eliminate the people who could abuse this to clear content too fast, which for some reason you think people wouldn’t enjoy that?

Either way, I think either of those options are a real sweet spot for people who are wanting “less challenging” content, which isn’t the case in my situation, but also makes it to where in either soft core or hardcore people really wouldn’t be able to abuse the build swapping method. If option 1 is went with then they know for a fact they are choosing the “People who generally play games NOT for the challenge” mode and they know what they are signing up for.

8

Because you having access to the “playstyle” you want - hot swapping builds at your whim - gives advantages and alters optimal play in ways that completely change how the game has to be designed and balanced, which affects everyone else whether or not they also hot swap between builds at their whim.

Some of us don’t like playing games that have to be balanced around build ADHD.

1 Like
9

It would significantly change the meta (most effcient tactic avaialble).
Making it so, that the meta for a lot of buidls will invole changing equipment, skills and passives. This is not intended form a design perspective and thus there are some inconveniences put in place for that.

Those inconveniences are low enough, that you don’t feel punished too much if you actually want to change up your build, but enough that they matter if you want to constantly switch back and forth.

So this would affect literally everybody. Even the people that don’t care about it that much will be affected to a certain capacity. Because you will be at a disadvantage not utilizing this.

3 Likes
10

Neither Hardcore, nor SAF or similar Solo modes change the challenge of making a build though.

Besides them being historically around, I do find them relatively useless, btw. With “Deathless” there is no real need for Hardcore (imho) and outside of SSF with character-bound stash, just not grouping with people is a playstyle I enjoy, even though I didn’t bother making my characters SAF.

But to address you options:
Option 1 would need a separate leaderboard, market, … everything, right? Because it inherently makes the game easier for you, so it would be an unfair advantage in MG or Arena. That’s a lot of work for something they may not want to have in the game.
Option 2 would just open the floodgates to either people rotating through alts once their daily respec are consumed, or people just complain on the forums until they got so many respecs, it becomes meaningless anyway.

Picking specific skill nodes has a slight weight or meaning to it, because it takes you a min or 2 to relevel the XP if you want to swap back. I would even argue that it makes trying out new points more interesting, because you’re ‘stuck’ actually playing with it for a bit, rather than hitting 2 enemies, not critting and giving up on it. (Maybe an exaggeration, but you get the point)

I’ve seen the system you are advocating for be implemented in D3 and in WoW (in several steps) and every time it was introduced/expanded, there was an irrevocable loss of character choice. I no longer have a dungeon healer Resto Sham in WoW, it’s just a sham, like everyone else. I use to have a tanky Crusader, now it’s just the same Crusader everyone else has, but mine happens to have the tank build equipped on logout.

If they would implement a free Wardrobe à la D3, the very next thing people will ask is for multiple Masteries on it as well. And suddenly having more than 5 characters, investing in more than 5 characters is a straight up loss of time. In a game where investing in characters is what keeps most players coming back to it.

PS: If you play offline characters, you could get yourself a ‘trainer’ or similar tool to change your save file to give you skill XP, solving your exact request. So technically, your game mode from option 1 already exists.

2 Likes
11

A disadvantage to whom? There is no PvP… Leaderboards are only there for people who go to those build websites and copy the meta builds. Someone for the love of God please tell me who is affected in a game where no one is affected by anyone lol.

I gave some options above on how this feature could potentially work that literally would not affect how the game works for people who like challenges, but also caters to people who want to try everything in a cycle but simply do not have enough time to do that.

1 Like
12

People not utilizing these methods compared to the ones using these methods.
The feeling of not using optimal play is a very strong effect and can heavily imapct people’s enjoyment of the game.

A game should never be designed in a way, that fiddling around in some menues before or after soem content is the way to optimally play.
On top of that it will make characters feel very replaceable, which removes all their identity.

1 Like
13

For Option 1, which in my opinion would be the best choice, since it would be offline, no leaderboards, no trading, no contact with the outside world. Just me, isolated with my build selections.

So you are saying for option 1 the best route for me would be to download another tool outside of what the game that I purchased offers and use that to modify my game? Are you actually being serious right now? Why would that be a viable option to tell someone to do? If you want to talk about taking away fun from a game or downloading malware, then by all means go do that. That is not apples to apples in any world.

14

Then explain Softcore, hardcore, Character found, and the other one?

They already have the ability to fiddle with the way the game operates in the menus before your character is actually created.

15

Hardcore and the solo modes are challenge modes. The game is not balanced around them. Players just go to them as is.

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This is not what it is about. That is difficulty/challenge settings.

I am talking about something you have to do constantly, over and over again.

You don’t have to agree with me, that is ok.

But the ability to swap builds on the fly would decrease the enjoyment that I get out of the game significantly.

17

How does eliminating trading NOT change "the challenge of making a build "? Very curious to hear this one…

18

An easy solution to this is that you can only switch between loadouts in town. Since instances reset upon portaling, this should solve that potential exploit.

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19

This statement is incorrect. The game has this type of modifiers and I assure you that the developers take this into account during the development and balancing of the game.

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20

THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT!!

ability to swap builds on the fly would decrease the enjoyment that I get out of the game

That non ability to swap builds on the fly, or to try something new out, Significantly decreases the enjoyment I get out of the game. By the time my character actually reaches level 100, which I started my character day one btw, the cycle will be over and I will be back to starting all over. I want an option where I can enjoy this game, all of the excitement, all of the cool features, go into different builds, but on a limited time per day/week budget.

1 Like