I get why people think re-speccing should “take investment”. They are thinking “How do I force players to play the game longer before quitting” (i.e. player retention).
But, Tedium (which is boring as all heck) drives players away at a greater rate than “I played every possible build imaginable, and now I’m bored/done” will.
Secondly, the Skill trees are only 1/3 (or less) of what you need to do to “Respec”. 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 they’ve done it once already on that character. Let the un-spec’d 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 people’s 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 I’d 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 it’s 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 wasn’t as bad as I expected. The new skill gets back to ‘almost’ 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).
This is a strawman and a bad one. It doesn’t apply to anybody on the other side. Not other players, not EHG. Nobody wants a cost on respecs because of “player retention”.
Babby’s 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 doesn’t 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 “optimally” 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 doesn’t even come close. And no, “Just don’t do it if you don’t like it” 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 aren’t going to give it to you*. This debate needs to die.
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 “fundamentally be bad for the game” again?
LOL!
I’d 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 doesn’t exist.
So, you claim its “bad” but can’t really posit anything tangible?
What if LE was a game where, as you “level” 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 don’t 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 “big bad” is under this scenario. Why is it “bad” 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?
Just because we disagree doesn’t make it a “talk-fight”. He’s claiming its “bad design” and “not fun” and therefore “bad for the game”, and then suggests we can’t keep discussing it on the, you know, Feedback & Suggestions forum, like he’s some Idea Cop. Challenging him to provide more proof of his claims doesn’t make it a fight - its just calling out his bad argument.
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 “LALALALALALALALALALA I can’t hear you!”
Sorry, but that’s just factually wrong. There isn’t a “right” and “wrong” here. Broco claimed that “maintaining skill EXP when respecced so that you can swap back to it later and have it at its previous exp level” is bad, but isn’t giving a reason why he thinks its bad. If he just doesn’t like the suggestion, that’s totally fine, he should just say “I don’t like flexibility and more progression, I prefer being locked into 5 skills and having it be a PITA to respec.” Then I’d 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 I’m just giving him the opportunity to expound on his claim.
Being able to swap skills instantly like in D3 is something EHG wants to prevent. You are supposed to put thought in your decisions and make it somehow meaningful.
The current implementation is the result of an iteration of steps done to make the system feel less punishing than back in the days where there was no min skill level and the catch up was way longer.
There will always be people that want the ultimate freedom. But EHGs vision is more into a direction to have meaningful decisions.
Because of this the current +skillpoint affixes work like they do. They don’t remove the last point spent, because then you could alter the mechanic of a skill at any moment, just by removing and replacing an item (e.g. swap between Lightning Blast Convergence node to make it a boss killer or a trash killer).
The current system prevents swapping but doesn’t prevent respeccing.
Imho early game respeccing could be a bit more forgiving. The devs could maybe accelerate the catch up time of respecced skills.
This sentence only shows your incapability of just accepting other opinions than yours could possibly be valid. Nothing anybody will post has the chance to be accepted by you.
You obviously think you are the smartest guy on these forums and think you need to proof it on whatever topic you enter.
I never played D3, but obviously, LE isn’t D3. What would be the real effect of keeping EXP on skills you previously specc’d and leveled up?
Let’s find out.
Nova Boy
Main Skills: Elemental Nova, Lightning Blast, Flame Ward, Teleport, Focus
Potential swaps:
– Replace Lightning Blast with Static for mapping/general mobs
– Replace Elemental Nova for Arcane Ascendance for bossing (and put back Lightning Blast)
Effect: I mean, like, in all seriousness… none. Arcane Ascendance would help a little, but Nova Boy is already strong on bosses without it. And Static is negligible extra damage while mapping.
Werebear EQ:
Main Skills: Werebear Form, and others which disable on Werebear form
Potential swaps: none, not possible while in Werebear form
– This is true for any shapeshifting skill
Shadow Daggers:
Main skills: Smoke Bomb, Shift, Shurikens, Shadow Cascade, Synchronized Strike
Potential Swaps: none, if any skill fit better into the build, it would take a Main spot.
Now, I can do more, or if you like, you can do some. I’d love to see you find something really exploitive or “bad” for the game and prove me wrong. Seriously, do it.
You found some builds where it’s not viable to swap, because they are broken op? Great investigation.
I already gave you an example with Lightning blast. There are skills like Devouring Orb or Abyssal Echoes, that provide a good bunch of resistances. You could swap before bossfights where you need these particular resistances.
There are numerous skills that can either be build as a trash clear or single target skill.
It’s more obvious if you think of multiplayer and skills that have interactions with allies. You would/could swap skill specs depending on your group setup or if you play solo. Your character would just be a placeholder for whatever build you just find handy. If you have the possibility to do this, the next logical step would be having loadouts where you can instant swap skills/specs/gear. Would be impossible to not do it if you go that route.
See, I know that there are people that say “yes, that’s great”. But there are also many people that don’t like the insignificance of build decisions that come with such a system. We like identity and commitment. We were hooked into LE because it exactly delivers that. And obviously this isn’t D3 as you already found out. And we want LE to stay true to its core and keep that.
In contrast to you, I don’t make jokes of people that think differently and I don’t devalue other opinions.
I don’t say my opinion is the only viable. The only thing I do is to proof that there are people playing LE that appreciate the importance of build decisions of the current system more than being able to play everything at any time. I don’t say that I want the game to feel tedious. Why would I??
The current system provides something that D3 failed to provide: Build identity. If this comes with a downside like having to relevel skills after respeccing, that’s ok for me. If there are better solutions for preventing instant swapping of skills, I’d be thankful to know them, I’m sure the devs are too.
