Certainly more civil than you were when you accused EHG developers of being bootlickers.
Itâs not just about masteries, it is a lot about character identity.
Your character loses a lot of its identity if you can freely switch between builds, even within the same mastery.
For example, a janky Detonating Arrow dagger build (through the unique Jelkhorâs Blast Knife) loses all of its identity if it can simply become a poison multishot build, and then a Hail of Arrows Endless Barrage build, with just a few clicks.
Another example for a double-binary system guided Black Hole build suddenly becoming a Meteor Shower build, and then an Arcane Ascendance build using the lightning version of the flamethrower Fireball.
Or again, a strongly Strength-based Werebear build suddenly becoming a strongly Attunement-based Spriggan build.
This kind of very significant instant change is something that would most likely drive away good chunks of the community, because consistency in the build is something that matters to us, even if we donât use that option.
That doesnât mean that itâs illegitimate to not be interested in that consistency, and to want something more practical. Different players want different things in their games. Itâs just two different crowds having fundamentally opposed wants on one matter, and the devs trying to do the best they can to please as much of their target audience as possible.
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Hey now, I never said that or accused anyone of anything. I merely pondered the possibility that business have a power structure and sometimes an idea or policy is coming from a place where this is not a conversation this is what weâre doing.
Regardless, I appreciate your feedback. It sounds like the current system does dissuade changes in meta and gameplay mentality that might ultimately create a worse experience. Im glad to see the current system is well supported by the community. It sounds like if the devlopers gave the community here a vote they would keep things the way they are, and i think thats pretty cool.
Please do not give them any ideas. As Elsword has this item and it costs 40 usd per change and run by nexon, nexon is owned by net marble and net marble are partners with tencent as they own large stock.
Tencent funds LE. So if you give them ideas, most likely end up on mods paper sheet, paper sheet will make it to devsl devs will add it.
I agree there.
But given we only have a limited space for character storage and itâs a problem for EHG to provide more an alternative to let us make more builds would be nice.
Even a band-aid function to allow it, since currently weâre facing a hard-cap rather swiftly.
Which is why a viable solution for that would be to keep baseline progress but save gear, passives, skills, idols, blessings and corruption level to the respective loadout.
It means you basically loose everything without any access to it but allows you to go through new builds even when at the character limit.
Itâs never about what the suggestion is but rather how itâs set up. If thereâs a limitation then working around it seems good⌠if thatâs not possible then widening your horizons.
The build identity wonât get lost so much if youâre basically doing the same as going to the character screen minus quest progress. Given itâs solely fixed inside the same mastery.
Unless we get more character space the current situation is simply sub-optimal to say it mildly.
Itâs Nexon, that company is a⌠well⌠letâs not get into the terms Iâll use for that company which has no right to even exist, it would warrant a permanent ban writing it out. Imagine it yourself what the terminology for them would be.
I mean⌠Tencent funds a lot. Their whole premise is getting as much user data as possible, not specifically always making a profit. And theyâre darn good in what they do, gotta give them that.
More and more theyâre hands-off in terms of the actual development though, rather getting money in the background gradually and⌠well⌠your data.
I donât think the system is particularly punishing compared to most ARPGs. Compare this to Diablo 1 or 2, for instance.
Redoing your passive tree in LE is a breeze. It takes 30s to swap things out. Only in the skills do you lose anything, but even here when youâre at higher levels itâs literally a single echo to go from retraining a skill to max level again. It really is very easy to completely redo your spec in this game and completely change how your character operates.
Iâm not sure loadouts and things of that nature are really fit the kind of game LE is. This isnât an MMO operating on the trinity system where youâd want to be able to swap between healer/tank/dps on the fly depending on what was needed in the party finder. And it would be a bit more complicated to implement here than something like D3. Weâre talking vastly different gear sets, completely different passive trees, diffrent skill assignments. And for what gain? Are you really going to be swapping builds with any regularity? The need for dramatically different builds between dungeons/arenas/monos just isnât there- if a build performs one in well, itâs going to perform well in all of them.
Really the only thing Iâd change about the respec system is to make relelving skills at lower character levels a bit easier, so that players new to the game can more easily explore different skills as they unlock them. Currently when youâre level 30 or so it takes a while to completely relevel a skill and it discourages playing around with different builds until you are higher level. But I think experimenting while youâre leveling should be encouraged.
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Agree with this. My suggestion would be to âfreezeâ the skill level for one slot even if it is above the minimum level up until mid-game. That way you could have the flexibillity to change your main skill as you are figuring your character out. The others would continue to act the same.
I canât understand why people try to argue that âif others can switch their build freely, I donât have fun in the game anymore.â If there was a way to switch masteries, players like me for example would still play the game and I am most certain that players who donât like that feature would also still play the game since it is not something you have to ever do.
This whole Diablo 3 and 4 was not fun for me thing is completly irrelevant. If you think your character loses itâs identity if you respecc, simply donât respec. But there is no point in forcing that on other players who donât enjoy and/or have the time to level up a character for each mastery.
This type of game design does nothing for player retention, it activly loses players. You get to the endgame, your mastery falls of, you want to switch? âEasy, make a new character and do everything you did to this point again, such fun!â
Ahh you want no consequences whatsoever for respeccing. You want to roll up one character and be able to pay literally everything the game offers. Go whine somewhere else. This isnât an MMORPG like WOW. This is an ARPG. This is one of the most forgiving systems for any actual ARPG on the market, and no D3 doesnât really count as an ARPG. If you think this system punishes you go play D2 or Path of Exile. Youâd curl up into the fetal position within minutes. Me thinks this genre isnât for you.
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Really this type of game design does nothing for player retention? How many people play POE, D2, Grim Dawn? Tons. Far more than D3 or D4. Iâd say player retention for consequences is plenty favorable to games without them. Actually D3 was the most forgiving of the âgenreâ if you consider D3 an actual ARPG which I do not.
Punishing people for playing is a mindset from 1990s. Why would you ever punish your players? Other games and genres have nothing to do with this issue. And i donât see where a system that has irreversible choices is âmost forgivingâ, even Path of Exile is more forgiving than this.
Nobody says it has to be easy to respec. You could also gate it behind something you have to farm/do. Elitism and Gating like your comment is never a solution.
In the end not having the option vs. having the option is a net loss in my calculation.
Thats my take, I feel for me retention is lower
Low IQ take, no one suggested that
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Well whil EHG always listens to their playerbase in many aspects there are still some areas where they are adamant about stuff that is beeing asked frequently like respeccing or auto pickup of shards and whatnot.
After you first 100 or so alts you simply stop caring at all because the game made you an autopilot zombie at this point anyway. On top of it if EHG is changing the respecc than Iâll never again hear from the âIt takes only an hour to make a new char with another mastery!â that think all the other content you played before on another toon is for nothing and not have a good laugh.
Diablo 4 doesnât have loadouts. Itâs quite likely that it will at some point, since itâs also targetted to the casual player like D3 was (just less cartoony and with more content), but as of now, it doesnât.
If you have something that is clearly an advantage to the gameplay, and one where the whole game is balanced around it, you either use it or you donât play the game. Itâs disingenuous to say you donât have to use it. Itâs like saying that you donât have to use trade in PoE when you clearly see what a crappy experience that is.
Features like these are part of a gameâs identity. They define which types of players it will attract. D3 was very clearly (and assumedly) aiming for casual players. The ones that like an easy game where everything is handed out to them, you get BiS gear in a day and you get to GR150 in a few days. PoE was clearly aiming for the hardcore veteran player. Itâs not casual friendly at all. LE is somewhere in the middle.
Devs have repeatedly said they wonât give in-game advantage for money. They have stated that purchases are only for cosmetic stuff.
And yet the most successful ARPGs are the ones that do exactly that.
PoE has XP loss on death, plus respeccing is even worse, forcing you to spend a ton of currency to do so (so basically gating it so that casuals canât do that as easily as veterans) to the point that even veteran players prefer to make a new character.
D2, which is still played to this day, not only has XP penalty but it gives you 3 respecs (after much much much outcry from the community) and then you have to farm rare materials for another. And D2 does have the excuse that if you choose poorly, you can completely brick your build, which doesnât happen in other ARPGs.
And letâs not talk about souls games.
Yes, most games donât do this anymore. But ARPGs have a different player target. One that likes friction (to an extent). The tolerance for the amount of friction you have is what determines which game you want to play.
What we are saying is âIf WE can switch our build freely, we canât have fun anymoreâ. And you guys want to force the feature on us.
Especially the skill system, which is one that can easily incentivize frequently changing skills. Without the current hurdle to changing skills, itâs just a slightly more complex version of D3âs rune system, which is one we highly dislike. It is very important that the hurdle does remain, at least for us.
The main issue here isnât that we donât want to give you what you want. Iâd be all for a checkbox on character creation that says âfree respecâ, that I wouldnât check and that you would in order to respec everything you want as much as you want.
The actual issue is that you guys do not and will not understand that the hurdles are important for other players, and want to forcefeed your âitâs just an optionâ free respec system to everyone. Itâs impressive how often some of you say you understand what we want and have the solution for everyone and then offer something that completely negates that.
Iâve got 3000+ hours in PoE and I can tell you that even the PoE playerbase wants this to change. And with all the gating and restrictions PoE has, this is even worse, because you can never respec.
I donât put the time into PoE becasue I canât respec, I put time in PoE because it is fun. Like i said in my comment above:
If there was a way to switch masteries, players like me for example would still play the game and I am most certain that players who donât like that feature would also still play the game since it is not something you have to ever do.
It doesnât really matter how other games do this or how other games did this in the past. We used to hit our children or burn witches at the stake. Doesnât mean that was good or that we should still do that.
Players like you would still play the game, but many players wouldnât. Just like many players left D3. Different players want different things and different games cater to different players.
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I have been re-speccing all the way up to where my character is now, constantly. I think this system is fine the way it is. It is one of the easiest systems to respec in, even the skill re-leveling does not take that long.
also people who said D4 has loadouts, where?
Saying people do not play d3 because you can respec is crazy. Different players wanting different things doesnât help this argument.
If there was an option to respec the mastery you could still not use it and make a new character for every mastery you want to play. There is no point in not making it an option other then: âI donât like when people can respec.â On the other side is a huge time investment to beeing able to getting to the spot you are at again.
I agree, in case of Diablo 3 (and no iâm not shtting on it, while itâs not completly onpar with D2 for me, esp. once the Expansion and all the updates dropped plus console version with offline-mode i have a blast with it and revisit it sometimes and play it from time to time⌠like last year where i had for a half year no internet so couldnât play at D4 Release, i started D3 over on Switch (Iâd love too finally get time for D2 Ressurected but they effers did me dirty with their stupide 30-days-to-be-able-to-play-offline bs so i couldnât factually play D2R because of that sht - and i dunno if people understand that, but when you paid quite some bucks for a Remake/Remastered with better visuals and such, itâs a bit demotivating to go back to the og one because it feels wasted money but anyway) and it was overall a great time, despite some issues which iâve with D3. I know a pretty unpopular opinion on spaces like this, and my opinions on D3 is a bit more nuanced than a short example like this can properly deliever this but yeah anyway). The overall âleveling-processâ (atleast from my PoV) isnât really fun in Diablo 3, because of how linear and streamlined is and you donât have any kind of proper skill,- or talenttrees which took quite alot of excitement out to alt characters. If you unlock everything anway - esp. in the same order every time, and you can switch between everything on the fly, it makes leveling a character quite meaningless and unfun. So for a game like this to have âloadoutsâ makes absolutely sense and profit from it.
But for ARPGâs with strong buildingaspects like good skilltrees where leveling is fun because you can tinker around and build your character of it, loadouts isnât really that important or great, because pretty much âaltingâ is creating your loadouts. Thatâs why iâm also not fond of the idea of actual loadouts or esp. make it that we can change masterys because it kills a lot of value of alting, replaybility and so on.