It takes me 1 to 2 play sessions to get a new character from level 1 to 55+ using campaign skip… We’re talking a few hours tops. I’m not against mastery respec necessarily, but it is such a minor obstacle that I do not think it should be anywhere near the top 10 priorities for LE right now … Seems like a waste of time and resources until maybe when EHG has a lot of free time.
A few hours to make new character in order to have a different mastery is easy-peasy.
I also kind of like having lots of different characters with different builds anyway … I don’t particularly like respeccing to different roles, but I do like respeccing within my role. I’d rather have another character to switch to when changing roles - just feels better for continuity, level of effort and RP.
I have personally never really wanted to respecc, but I do want a way to get the skills under other masteries.
So many times I’ve begun to build something cool only to find out that one skill I really want is locked away behind another mastery. Ooh, I just create a new char then. No, my other skill I want to use is locked behind my current mastery.
Some you can get via uniques, but then it’s the wrong damage type or something.
So for me it would be fun to be able to get to the other skills (as in being able to specialize in them) in some other way.
Maybe from the unique you got equipped?
This way you still won’t have access to skill points which is another of a mastery identity, and you are locked with an item you can’t change.
I really like that. Maybe even go one step further and give the player a “trial”, kinda like the weird “kill your own shadows” scenario we had before but shorter and with a level 60 or so build of the mastery you would like to test. That should be optional of course.
So you don’t just see it, but can also test it right there if you want.
Concerning the respec itself I’m personally not a fan. I heavily disliked that in D3. No identity for the character whatsoever until you were “locked” in through your gear.
Most of the positives were already said, but I want to stress a point Kulze made again. For a player like me (and I’m in favour of permanent choices in LE) having a permanent Ascendency but having only 30 or so character slots is a big friction point. It does not kill my motivation as much as his. I don’t want to play a build I have played before. So when creating a new character I dislike having to think about what else I could do with the mastery if the build I want to try does not work out and I haven’t done before.
Then again even with the ability to switch masteries I would run into this problem. I prefere having a character per build so I don’t need to hoard and manage X equipment sets for each character.
Agreed, which is why I’m - currently - for unlockable loadouts.
They need to be respectively hard to unlock as well as individual per character. So for example putting in a equivalent amount of effort which would be to play a new character up… but on an existing one simply.
This then provides a new ‘page’ on the loadouts which is similar to a new character but without the extra name slot in the database, the position, the chosen mastery, quest progress or anything of the sort. That stays the same between all loadouts, hence reducing overhead and allowing EHG to provide more space per player.
Optimally it would also enforce staying within the same mastery - as mentioned above - which makes it viable to have the 15 Legacy character slots taken up and still use the 10 others for… well… HC, cycle, SSF… whatever else. Not optimal but ‘better’ at least.
What should be inside though is a new passive point layout, skill layout, gear and idols, saved, one-click change only in town.
This would allow at least the switching between builds inside the same mastery while reducing (not eliminating sadly) the impact on character identity. It’s still a sub-par method to ‘just providing more character slots’ but overall an option.
Also, one thing I would be more leaning towards - given that it costs EHG money to provide us database space - is to unlock more character slots beyond the baseline 25 with monetary measures. I don’t see that as P2W (since 25 is a more then substantial base amount anyway, most won’t ever need more, some - like me - do though) and it would counter the issues EHG faces with ramping up costs, hence allowing them to at least do it, and earlier rather then later as well. Plus… it’s another type of income for them sustaining the product given they are a live-service company after all.
Personally I love the idea of creating one of every mastery. I would much rather the maximum character limit was raised instead of allowing to respec masteries.
This is something only ive really dealt with afaik, but being able to change a characters name would be a great QoL feature that would make it more enjoyable to mess around with builds within the mastery.
I wouldnt completely oppose to DJSamhein’s concept of making it very difficult/costly to change mastery, I would rather that wouldnt be the case, but if it means more people play and enjoy the game I definitely wouldnt fight it.
Overall, my personal take is that the game should remain in a place where you cant respec mastery, or perhaps allow 1 respec per character, but really limit it. And just increase the character limit for players who enjoy making lots of different builds (me). It also encourages people to play at least portions of the campaign which is good since its a huge chunk of the game and becomes almost obsolete outside of brand new players.
It’s not P2W. There is no inherent gameplay advantage to having 50 slots vs 25.
Like someone once pointed out in another thread some time ago, it could even be looked at as pay to lose, since you spend a lot more time leveling characters
That being said, Mike has always said they wouldn’t do pay for convenience features either, so I don’t know if this would ever happen. Their philosophy is that doing this would be available to everyone, meaning they’d need to increase the slot limit for everyone.
Personally, even if I would hate any stuff like paying pets for autoloot, or similar stuff, I would be completely fine with paying for character slots.
Tbh I would love to see all of this and agree with everything in this message. If more character slots is the problem for EHG, this would be an effective measure at allowing people to have lots of different builds while not having to increase max char number. (or pay real money for char slots which makes perfect sense as well).
They could also make loadouts the thing that costs irl money. It isnt really P2W if you can only switch outside of combat instances, and it is in essence the exact same thing as paying for more character slots, but without the need for EHG to spend more money to enable more character slots.
I could maybe agree here, if more character slots are just not a thing they are able or willing to do. For me identity is more important. And more slots are the superior solution in my mind.
Loadouts are a compromise that I hope will not be necessary.
Same here. Though I would still prefer I they would handle it like they did with stash tabs. Make character slots available with game currency (gold - not gems or whatever it is called). This is a little bit “meta” (your characters buys something that will replace him in some sense) but would provide additional motivation to play for altaholics like me. This means more playtime and more playtime increases the likelihood of me buying cosmetic stuff.
Having to buy slots with real money is still fine though. At least for online play. I would not blame them for doing this.
