Allow Players to Respec Their Mastery at a High Cost

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Players should be able to respec their Mastery class at a high cost and here’s why:

There is no way at level 25 that you can make an informed decision about what Mastery you should choose no matter how good the description is.

It forces people to do a bunch of research about what they should choose online (which they shouldn’t have to do) in order to play the game. You also don’t know what Mastery is going to resonate with you as a player.

Towards the end of the game so much of what you have to do is experimenting with gear and different builds that you are essentially punishing players and limiting their access to do that.

The vast majority of players will be “casual” and will not have the time to reinvest in leveling a duplicative class just to choose a different Mastery. At this point there is a pretty good chance that these players will lose interest in the game and move on. For the elitests out there I’m sure this is fine but let me appeal to your business sense because after all, this is a product and you want to retain your customers.

The wise decision as a business and a game developer is to make this game have the widest appeal possible. The best chance for success is to allow players to experiment and find a class/mastery they fall in love with and are willing to sink years into playing. That is why you should allow players to respec their Mastery at a high cost.

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There have been countless of discussions regarding this subject:

Search results for ‘mastery respec’ - Last Epoch Forums

I think the better solution (which I have suggested in the past and other people ahve suggested simialr things) would be to gives player a litle bit of a taste of masteries, some kind of Training/Testing Area.

I suggested this to have some sort of time travel aspect, where you can free test stuff and once you decide you character gets reset.

This could be explained with some time travel and “your character explores possible futures of himself”

While I totally understand the desired adn request for this, I prefer having meaningful choices.
And the most meaningful chocie are choices that you can’t change.

Regardless of how hard it is to respec mastery, as soon as it’s possible it takes away a lot of it’s impact.

The most common argument against this, that I heard, was something like “if you care so much about it, jsut don’t use that feature”, but that’s not a very strong one, because it does impact me, even if I don’t use it.
Just the fact that it’s possible imapcts me.

EDIT: And btw, welcome to the LE Community!

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You can already respec your Mastery at a high cost. It’s the same cost you pay for any other respec you can do, you just pay it directly instead of through a proxy. The cost is your time, as you level a new character.

That same argument applies just as much to the choice of base character class. Do you also intend to advocate that a Rogue should be able to become an Acolyte or a Sentinel? If not, what do you believe the difference is?

If your argument is based on appealing to “casual” players, why are you attributing min/maxer behavior to them? Actual casual players mostly just hop in and play the game, make decisions based on what looks or sounds cool and appeals to their personal preferences, and go do (minimal) research only if they start hitting a wall. They don’t clutch their pearls so hard about character power at upper echelons that they make themselves feel “forced” to spend hours doing meta-research about a choice they haven’t even been presented with yet out of a fear that they’ll fall lower on an arbitrary Tier List than they’d like to. That’s something that only - as you put it, in your own words - “elitists” do.

If you as a player aren’t able to look at the full list of a class’s passives and abilities (which is available from Level 1) and have a decent idea of whether or not it will resonate with you, IMO that’s a self-awareness problem, not a game design problem.

A lack of unfettered flexibility is not a punishment. Categorizing it as one is hyperbole, and it does not help your argument.

This is an Action RPG, but still an RPG. Decisions have to matter and have some weight to them. It’s part of what makes an RPG an RPG.

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This is a great idea and a good compromise. My whole point is just that there is no way that someone should have to go watch boardman25 videos online to make a decision. Even if you generally understand the archetypes there is no way to know whether or not that class/mastery combo is going to feel good to play without trying it.

I know I personally chose Primalist/Beast and I thought it was going to be great. I hated it. I ended up quitting because I didn’t have time to relevel with two small children. I just so happen to come back to the game and give it one more chance and tried Sentinal which I really like. Even with Sentinal though I find there aren’t really that many build choices at the end of the game and I’m constantly wondering whether I should have chosen Forge Guard over void knight.

I hear the argument that choices should have weight a lot. This isn’t real life though and you’re playing a game to have fun. I want to play the class/mastery combo that is going to give the most joy playing for the 1 or 2 hours I have to play every day. You feel me?

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I totally get that and that’s why I think my suggestion is a good compromise.

But there are even people with very little time, that still like to have meaningful decisions.

Having an easy time to respec would make it way easier for people with less time, yes.
But there are also types of players, that onyl play a few horus a week and still want those chocies to matter.

I totally get you and just wanted to present some coutner arguments.

I personally think not knowing a lot about a mastery can also be a blessing.

I gives you the option to truely “discover” something in the game, by playing it.
And testing and trying out things, that I didn’t know before is one of the single best thing in these types of games IMO.

And I am super jealous sometimes, when I see a fresh player truely discovering a game like Last Epoch.

being a veteran sometiems suck :cry:

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This “slippery slope” argument doesn’t hold a lot of water for me. I’m not advocating for that nor do I believe it’s the same thing. Foundational classes are core archetypes that virtually everyone understands i.e. caster vs melee. By in large most folks know what they prefer up front. I don’t however know what a Forge Guard or a Void Knight really is because it’s something invented by this game. For that reason I don’t think it’s the same thing or reasonable to compare the two.

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I’m happy to tell you that that’s already the case! Nobody has to go watch boardman25 videos online to make a decision. That is a feeling that you foisted on yourself, and it isn’t real. FOMO is a common part of the human experience, but it is not a valid basis for game design arguments.

I’m confused. I thought you just said you had to watch boardman25 videos in order to make a decision about your class/mastery combo. Did I miss a groundbreaking new technology that allows YouTube videos to be interactive or? :slight_smile:

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Do you have a real argument to be made here or are you just slinging mud?

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I’m sure it doesn’t, but that’s to be expected when you grabbed a sieve to pour the water into instead of the bucket that everyone else is using.

Nearly all of the Mastery classes also follow very clear archetypes that most RPG players will either understand immediately, or be able to infer an understanding of. And in the few cases where they are not as transparent, which are pretty much exclusively the two examples you listed…

…that’s why the game allows you to see every skill, passive, and skill specialization for those classes from the moment you made your character.

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Yep:

The arguments you are making are neither logical nor logically consistent with themselves. You appeal to the poor casual players, but by giving them non-casual behaviors, attitudes, and concerns. You feel forced to watch hours of videos to make a Mastery decision but acknowledge you can’t actually get a good feel for something without playing it. It’s “a wise business decision” to give the game “the widest appeal possible” (which of course involves giving you what you want), but forget the decades of games with meaningful choices or niche appeal that have raked in millions.

You’re just saying anything you can think of that sounds good.

So, same question: Do you have a real argument to be made here? Or do you just know that “I don’t like it” is less boring if you take 6 paragraphs of embellishment to say it instead of a sentence?

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In addition, another argument I have to make is - This didn’t need another thread. As @Heavy pointed out, it’s been discussed already, extensively, and does not warrant discussing again.

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To be fair, all other threads about this subject are already closed.

Just because a topic has been discussed in the past, doesn’t mean it should never be discussed again.

I am also most tired of dozen of threads popping up, about the same topic, which already has (still open) threads to talk about it. (like fracturing, crafting and auto pick up and mastery respec)

All these topics are discussed due to a reason: Lots of people care about it.

Idieally I would prefer people to do some research before opening a thread, but the reality is, there are always people that will jump onto a forum and open a thread without looking at previous threads.

All we can do is to provide those often very interestign and useful threads and try to redirect some of the discussions, if there are still ope nthreads about it.

But in this case, there was no other option anyway.

You do discourage new players to post their opinion and feedback.

And especailly you @BroncoCollider are sometimes very aggressive, borderline hostile, when trying to counter argument players (especially newer players or player with wildly different opinions than yours). I don’t think you are doing this on purpose, but especially when newer player come to the forums, getting this amount of negative feedback on their own feedback and feelings can also feel discouraging.

It’s vital to understand, that feedback from a new player can be very usefull.
Even if the player might not get the full picture of some mechanics, due to the lack of experience or knowledge about intricate mechanics.

I think EHG has proven more than enough, that they do listen to the community, but not change some of their core philosopies, just because enough players complain about certain things.
I am sure they will come up with some good middle ground, similar to what they did with the while skill respec system (exp catch up mechanic and minimum respec level).

I mean auto-pick up and mastery respec are probably discussed very actively since 2 years.
And EHG does listen, but they don’t execute blindly, what a lot of people demand.

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Who is This Boardman25 I cant find him anywhere

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Do not agree with the concept. Masteries are distinct enough that even without guides or videos it is simple to choose the playstyle you want, and the skill tree itself does allow respecs.

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Kind of disagree. You can in a really general sense, but to really find out if a build clicks with you takes a lot more time.

There’s a reason folks’ll advocate leveling as a different build and then transitioning into your endgame build once you have the gear. A lot of builds just don’t play the way they’re meant to until you have enough of the pieces in place.

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I agree there should always be more options to players to respec at a cost, ive provided examples and even ways to introduce it such as end game boss drop that isnt tradeable

I knew before clicking the topic the same gatekeepers will tell why ‘they’ dont want it and give ‘reasons’ but really its because they cannot stand a player skipping something they ‘may’ have done. Even though you earned the levels anyway

My tactic on PoE is to respec after about day 4-5, most people reroll a new character. I do full respecs which cost me a decent amount of currency but I plan for it. I work fulltime and have shit to do I cant be rerolling for no reason and losing progress for nothing

then dont respec …lol? this is what im talking about. garbage comments that mean nothing and wont affect you

Also most of the people arguing over class respecs are just hypocrites because theres no real difference between swapping skills to your whole mastery, its just one is more indepth than the other

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This is exactly right. It’s toxic. You read half the comments on this thread and people are enraged that I even brought this up and slap down my opinion like I have no point simply because it’s not a viewpoint they share.

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I really despise, that these kind of discussions always steer towards things like gatekeeping.

“Gatekeeping” implies, that a main reason against a mastery respec would be, to keep a certain player type/group away from playing or enjoying LE.

That is absolutely not the case here for the vast majority of players that do promote the current implementation, with no mastery respec.

One of my main arguments is, that an option to respec a mastery would have a impact on my personal experience with the game.
This has nothing to do with gatekeeping.

This would be very similar to discussions about leveling is too fast/slow or getting BiS gear is too easy/hard and bringing up the argument that players don’t need to use the most efficient way to gain exp/BiS items if it’s too fast/easy for them.

The mere existence of a more efficient/faster way for all of these topics (respec, leveling, item hunt etc.) will impact everyone.

It would be also nice if you could tone down the hostility and don’t call other people’s opinions “garbage”.
It does nothing, but hurt your credibility.

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That’s because he’s too awesome for you…

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Honest question, but why do you appear to believe that more knowledgeable/experienced/skilled players shouldn’t have or share an opinion on something posted on a public forum? Is there some form of experiential matchmaking on the forum that’s not working? Should I only be conversing with people who are within a certain amount of experience to me? Or should I only be allowed to talk to people who agree with me?

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Here we go! This is a time travel themed game. And now we got a glimpse of the next iteration of your personality. What do you think @Llama17?

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