I just think this would be a good compromise between players that want to be able to freely respec and those that prefer a more hardcore investment.
So for example, skill A is level 18. You switch out skill A for skill B, and now must level skill B from level 1. Later you switch from skill B, which is now level 5, back to skill A. Skill A is back at level 18 and skill B stays at level 5 for if you switch back to it again later.
Those that like to freely respec wont feel as if they are wasting their time when respecialising skills, they might even make it a goal to level all skills to level 20. Those that prefer more HC leveling will still be dissuaded from respecialising too often due to losing skill levels, and hence power, when respecialising. To be maximum power, you must commit to your first skill choices.
This would be instead of a skill losing all skill levels when respecialising, and gaining a few points back for the new skill. The current mechanic still has the trap of potentially infinitely releveling skills over and over again.
I think I did not understand your post.
What you describe is a system where if you despecialize, you keep your points for that specific skill, if I understood well. So, where is the dissuasion? I see only benefits and no drawback. Or do you mean the skill is capped? And if we unspec at level 18, it will never been able to go higher than 18 if we spec again?
My opinion is that this is totally unnecessary. The current skill respec system is just about the best I have ever seen in any online game. I fail to see how it could be improved at all.
If you unspec a skill in the 90âs it literally only takes 2 mono runs to spec the new one up to level 20, or you can do it quickly in the arena.
This is a tiny inconvenience, but more importantly it also discourages people from respeccing purely to run one instance. This will become more important when multiplayer hits. If you were in a party and people could respec without any penalty, that makes the game pretty much easy mode. There has to be some time delay between a respec and full skill level again. The method that the devs have come up with currently is an elegant one, there is a very small delay but not a game breaking one.
Why change for the sake of change? As the old saying goes: âIf it ainât broke, donât fix itâ.
I donât think there needs to be a compromise. Players who are advocating for unlimited freedom to respec are doing so without regard for the health of the game. Thankfully, EHG understands and cares about the issues with it that those players do not.
Your proposal doesnât solve any problems with zero-limitation respecs anyway, so itâs not even an actual compromise. It just puts a fake barrier of leveling a skill to 20 before you can swap it around freely, which as another poster pointed out is trivial to do.
As i see the skill system. Even though it might feel good its hard to see on a longer scale. Since the skill system dosent make the experience good at multible levels
- The skill system is not very detailed and some skills dosent even show dmg.
- The skill system requre HEAVY planning upfront, since you are punished late game for respec. (Should this be the focus of the game)? - Constantly needing to respec to try new spells, only to âRe-xpâ them to the same level as the other one.
- The skill system is highly likely to feel good but in practise it just limits different builds on the same char, instead we will see on overflow of the: Firemage 1, Firemage 2, Firemage 3, Nova mage blood circle selfcast 1, Nova mage blood circle selfcast 2
Maybe skill should always be leveling even after 20. but this xp is stored so if you change a skill, stored xp is kept and can be moved to a new skill if needed.
I get why people think re-speccing should âtake investmentâ. They are thinking âHow do I force players to play the game longer before quittingâ (i.e. player retention).
But, Tedium (which is boring as all heck) drives players away at a greater rate than âI played every possible build imaginable, and now Iâm bored/doneâ will.
Secondly, the Skill trees are only 1/3 (or less) of what you need to do to âRespecâ. You also have to respec your Passives, and then you need to re-Gear. Re-Gearing is the Biotch. That will take you longer than passives and skill trees anyway.
I see no tangible benefit to forcing players to re-level Skill trees once theyâve done it once already on that character. Let the un-specâd skill tree retain its Exp (but it acts as untrained skill if hotbarred) so that players can, in fact, swap a skill out between Echoes for particular fights. That LITERALLY adds a whole NEW level of strategy to the game.
I cannot predict how the overall health of the game would result from any suggested change, but I can tell my personal experience.
On my first character, my first attempt to respec a few skill points from one skill resulted in a that skill being behind the rest for a very long time. I felt regret over the decision, and later on was very fearful of trying to respec a skill again. I kept using the same skills although I was very much sick of them, and curious to see how other skills functioned. I tried using other skills without allotting any points to them, but they were so significantly underpowered compared to the skills I did invest in, that I felt forced to go back to the old skills all the time.
I am sure player personalities are all different, and one can blame me for playing incorrectly in a way that made me not enjoy the game as much as I could, but I expect many other players share my character and do feel heavily penalized by the current system.
Even when my first character was around level 60, I was still fearful of respecing, and dared to do it only by following other peopleâs builds from the web (as just playing around with the system as I would have liked to could potentially lock me in a bad, weak state and Iâd have to grind just to get back to where I was).
On my second character I already knew about the fact that the first few skillpoints are regained at an accelerated rate, while itâs only the last few skillpoints that are regained really slowly, and so I dared to respec into an entirely new skill, and saw it really wasnât as bad as I expected. The new skill gets back to âalmostâ the level of the old skill pretty fast, and then remains only a point or 2 behind other skills for a while.
Knowing this, I do get to play around a bit more, and enjoy more but I still feel this system, for my personal enjoyment, is terrible. I like experimenting with new stuff, and hate having to commit to abandoning a known successful build. I would have loved having multiple layouts I could freely switch between.
I also feel bad about being able to slot only 5 skills at a time, often wanting to experiment with a new skill without removing one that I am relying on (there are more than 5 buttons on my keyboard).
Totally agree with you
This is a strawman and a bad one. It doesnât apply to anybody on the other side. Not other players, not EHG. Nobody wants a cost on respecs because of âplayer retentionâ.
Babbyâs First Game Design Lesson is that given the opportunity, frustration and tedium are things that players are willing to treat as a currency that they can buy power with. It doesnât matter how tedious or annoying it would be. The full freedom to respec that the vocal minority keeps bleating for will result in swapping between the most specialized spec possible for any given task becoming the defacto way to play. Playing âoptimallyâ is a goal that - for enough people that it cannot be ignored - trumps every other, including fun. Meta-strategy must be either forcibly changed or balanced around, the latter of which only reinforces it further by making more players feel obligated to do it in order to succeed. EHG is doing the former pre-emptively because they are not short-sighted enough to do the latter.
Most people do not want to constantly respec in order to succeed, and your* desire to have complete freedom to play around with new builds at your* whim - which you* already have a great deal of - absolutely does not outweigh that. It doesnât even come close. And no, âJust donât do it if you donât like itâ is not a rebuttal to that and it never has been.
EHG clearly understands that what you* want is fundamentally bad design and bad for their game, and they arenât going to give it to you*. This debate needs to die.
-
* Royal âyouâ, not individual âyouâ
You seem confused.
Current system: unspeccing skills removes all EXP, and re-speccing requires you to re-level them if you go back to them. Per everybody, this takes a few echoes, tops.
Proposal: keep the exp when unspecced.
Difference: a few echoes.
So, tell us how this idea will âfundamentally be bad for the gameâ again?
LOL!
^^^^^
The funny thing about what they said is that in LE a respec is negated by a few echoes.
The real question I think they were asking is should it be?
Iâd like you to find a mirror, say this back to yourself, then re-read what I wrote. Repeat these steps as many times as necessary until you have an epiphany and stop starting arguments in defense of bad design ideas that are trying to solve a problem which doesnât exist.
So, you claim its âbadâ but canât really posit anything tangible?
What if LE was a game where, as you âlevelâ up a character, you eventually push every skill in their class + specialization to Level 20 (takes a while to max them all out, obviously). You can only train & use 5 at once. But, once you max a skill, you can swap it in and out from echo to echo, depending on the modifiers. Or, maybe you donât need to on echoes, but you do it for the end bosses in the 3rd quest echo. One set of skills for the dragon, a slightly different set for Lagon.
Please. Tell me what the âbig badâ is under this scenario. Why is it âbadâ to have a library of skills that I spent the time leveling up (per character!) that I can swap from echo to echo based on what I feel I want to utilize?
And one more topic becoming a talk-fight between two playersâŚ
Just because we disagree doesnât make it a âtalk-fightâ. Heâs claiming its âbad designâ and ânot funâ and therefore âbad for the gameâ, and then suggests we canât keep discussing it on the, you know, Feedback & Suggestions forum, like heâs some Idea Cop. Challenging him to provide more proof of his claims doesnât make it a fight - its just calling out his bad argument.
You seem confused.
Perhaps you should try reading what people write instead of ignoring it deliberately.
Let me know when you want to engage in good faith. It is not a good use of my time to explain why someone is wrong when their response is just going to be shoving their fingers in their ears and shout âLALALALALALALALALALA I canât hear you!â
You have not posted a single reason why you think the suggestion is âbadâ. All you did was rephrase the original suggestion.
Original: Let skills keep their EXP.
Your rephrase: This lets you swap skills.
Those are the SAME THING. You havenât posted WHY itâs a bad idea to allow it. While I have posted a tangible benefit to allowing it - two in fact:
- More progression possible, as you try to max all your skills out
- More flexibility in builds
There are no downsides to this idea.
What I was saying is that the discussion is over, now the topic is just you two saying âyouâre wrong Iâm right hereâs whyâ, but weâre going nowhere.
Sorry, but thatâs just factually wrong. There isnât a ârightâ and âwrongâ here. Broco claimed that âmaintaining skill EXP when respecced so that you can swap back to it later and have it at its previous exp levelâ is bad, but isnât giving a reason why he thinks its bad. If he just doesnât like the suggestion, thatâs totally fine, he should just say âI donât like flexibility and more progression, I prefer being locked into 5 skills and having it be a PITA to respec.â Then Iâd agree with you, Shtrak, the conversion would be over.
But maybe he is just having a hard time articulating why he thinks this idea is bad, and Iâm just giving him the opportunity to expound on his claim.