Totally agree on this, i’m not against people per se who don’t like the system that’s why it’s good that even classless games exist where you can build on your own accord. And for such games (or very casual class-based arpgs) i’m not even against free-respec and do whatever you want… it’s just often then not my type of game.
What annoys me is often the aggressive and entitled tone of these people, plus that it is seemingly not allowed anymore to have a more traditional and bit more core experience where atleast some choices (premanently) matter!
I don’t mind when people argue about some ‘real’ QoL Stuff like maybe a respec-mode for passive tree, so you don’t have to extra work around, to put out some points in tree b so you can put some points into tree a, so you can than take out the other points off tree a so you cen respent it in tree b how it was. That’s more of an Convinience Feature which just saves a bit of time … and i wouldn’t even be against a full-respec options to make that mroe smoothly either (maybe as an rare itemdrop from dungeons? Monoliths - or just calculate the money properly i dunno)… but changing mastery would be an absolutely no-go for me and i’m not fond of loadouts either.
I guess I have made my peace but my opnion has never changed. The respec system in this game (for skills not passives) is terrible. One of the worst in any ARPG ever. Here’s why…
At low levels, the time it takes to earn back points you lost is awful. It is hours. (I have measured it). At level 30, I had Fireball at level 10. I didn’t like it and wanted to try Lighting Blast. I respecced and levelled LB to 10 (this took over 1 hour of play). Then I decided I didn’t like LB and wanted FB back, so that was another hour+ to get back to where I was. So 2.5 hours just to experiment with one skill - terrible. Time is the most costly resource of all for the player.
Start of the game is where the player should be encouraged to experiment will his build and the skills. This mechanic discourages that. Losing points like this feels like a loss of progress which is always a terribly negative feeling to have with an ARPG.
Note that at high levels there is no issue. A level 100 player can do a full skill respec in under a minute. This is an early game problem.
Devs have said this mechanic is in the game solely to prevent people skill-swapping for boss fights etc. No idea why they frown upon that kind of thing, but there you go. That’s their stance. Since respeccing is quick and trivial at high levels as I said, they have failed here because high level players can skill-swap all they want, both quickly and easily, while low level players (just wanting to experiment with the game) are punished. They have it completely the wrong way round.
Bad mechanic is bad.
Ease and speed of respec is the one area where D4 has LE beaten into the dust. Never thought I’d say that.
If you play the game for the long run playing 15 classes to level 100 is like one to three years of content depending on the time at your hands. I’m Sad the catchup mechanics in the game are that bad that you have to replay the most boring parts of the game and still have to run through the storyline to get passives and idolslots. I hope LE will do better in the future and streamlines a lot of stuff to make the game experience better for people with little time. I don’t see switching classes as a good way to make the gaming experience better though.
I wish we had abbount wide passive points from quests and idol slots or a way to get them in the dungeons if we opt to do different quests in there. I wish we had account wide monolith progression just to remove the slog to play through all of them if we don’t want to or have a powerfull enough build at lvl 50 that allows us to run emp monos. i think stuff like this would help far more then just respeccing a mastery class.
Something should be done and I’m still under the impression EHG is intentionaly making systems that waste a lot of time for player retention because people are far to used to stuff like that.
Mike has said before that they’re considering rebalancing dungeons so you can effectively use them as campaign skips, as well as alternative ways to get the passive/idol quests outside of the campaign. So this will most likely happen at some point.
Personally I don’t mind repeating the campaign. In PoE, when I was in a clan, I was the unofficial campaign carrier because I never minded repeating it.
I’m way more bored by the normal monos and wish we could just jump to empowered ones on other alts.
And Diablo Immortal also has Loadouts/Armory, which is all the more baffling that they (still) didn’t include the feature in D4.
Back to LE, I also wished there was an easy way to switch builds. I’m stuck with my Runemaster and want to try out something different without having to respec everything and then again if I don’t like it.
It would still cost to respec the passives the first time and I’d even be okay to have the skill’s level reset one time. But once they are back fully levelled and my passives fully specced, I should be able to “save” the build and switch back and forth to it without any additional costs.
I play the story over the dungeons because to me LE dungeons are the worst excuse of dungeons in existence. I even feel bad kicking Julra just to craft legendaries. If there was another way to get that crafting done i would most likely never use the dungeons for anything anyway ^^.
LE won’t be the game for you if they introduce loadouts? Hard to imagine if you like it so much. I mean it’s not that you’d be forced to use them, you can still create multiple characters of the same class with different builds - but you won’t have to.
I already made an offline and online character of the same class and I don’t want to make a third one just to try a new build for the same class, a loadout feature would be very welcomed.
That’s something that was discussed a while ago already in a different thread that boiled down to: I takes 5 minutes to switch passive points and gear why should they work hundrets of manhours for that little time investment needed?
As I said before, yes. Changing this changes the game’s identity. I know I don’t have to use it, but the identity of the game shifts more towards the casual side of the spectrum, which is something I don’t enjoy.
Perception of the game’s identity is very important. It’s what attracts players or not. If FromSoftware implements many QoL features, a lot of their playerbase will leave. It might bring other players, but maybe it isn’t worth it and it’s not the players they are aiming for.
EDIT: To clarify: souls-games aren’t for me. If they do change their QoL features, maybe I’d like it more, but I’m not the type of player they want.
That is in already isn’t it? I swear I saw a youtube guide on how to skip the campaign via dungeons and still get all the idol slots and passives. I mean that’s why they added things like the exit point from Temporal Sanctum that leads to Majelka, right?
That would be completely new to me but I don’t follow dungeon content that much. If you find said video would you mind to post it or send me the link to it because I’m to stupid to find it.
It’s not in. Dungeons aren’t still balanced for low level characters. Normally, you can’t do the first dungeon as you first reach it because you don’t have enough damage/survivability, which is something they want to rebalance. And you still only get passives/idols from quests. It’s just that you have a larger number of quests so you can skip some and instead do others.
As it stands the system discourages experimentation unless you start a completely new character. Not ideal. Loadouts, or allowing respec without losing skill levels, would solve that issue.
That’s what I heared last time Dungeons where mentioned. Then again I think you are now able to run those T1 dungeons realy early and onl T3 and 4 dungeons scale with everything they built in with 1.0.
I haven’t tried dungeon skips, so I don’t know this from experience. What Mike said in his stream, when asked about this, is that the first dungeon you can reach is too hard for your level. I think the other 2 are fine, it’s just the first one that’s harder.
But I think the plan is to make it so that, in the future, you can simply do all dungeons to skip the campaign (almost) entirely and have a different way of getting the passives/idols without campaign quests.
You still need to pop out at key waypoints and hoover a couple of quests. And you need to be able to handle T1 Julra. But yeah you skip most of the campaign and get to Majelka without having to deal with Lagon or his island, and you get all your passives etc.
There is a reasonable discussion to be had on how to make the system feel more permissive at low/mid levels, and less so at high levels. Though free respec isn’t the solution.
Yeah that’s just the skip. You still have to do the quests for the passive points and idol slots. Aifaik are the passive points and idol points stuff they want to add to the skip so you go from the void era to whatever it was and from there to the next one and then you end up in the last act at some point. Iirc that’s the approach they want to take with dungeons.
Yes it would change the idenity from “(almost) everyone chooses a top-tier build when starting a class and follows a guide” to “(almost) everyone chooses a class and experiments to find the best build for them”. I don’t see this as a bad thing.
I also challenge your view that it would cost the devs 100red of manhours to implement it or that you can switch a build in 5 minutes. Maybe if you know by heart how many points belong in which skill/passive and which gear to put on but even then. And when you played for a few days you most likely forgot what your old build was. Put a a third build into the mix and now you almost certainly need to have taken notes. At least my memory isn’t that good anymore, I’m old. I made screenshots of my current build but even with that it is quite cumbersome to respec.
Also, I consider myself a Dark Souls Vet but the ability to quickly switch builds would’ve never made me not play the game, on the contrary I don’t see why any build-based game which lets you respec should not have a loadout feature.
You can still experiment. Quite frequently I’ve changed builds, especially when leveling, at low levels and had no issues with it. I like to watch my build grow so I spec into it as soon as possible and this usually means that I respec somewhere between level 15-30ish. And I never had any problems progressing even when respeccing all skills, including the previous DPS one.
Even if you allow instant respec most people will still follow build guides anyway, so this a moot point.
I have previously (in another of these threads that pop up every few days, because people can’t be bothered to search first, and that get less and less votes each time) agreed that a loadout system would be fine and a good option, as long as you maintain the restrictions in place. You still spend gold, you still have to level your skills, the loadout just remembers what they were and you can switch without having to memorize everything.
You might not have an issue with it, but the community at large would, especially those that have been with their games from the start. Quick respec is pretty much against the whole philosophy of the games FS creates. Even QoL is against it. As can easily be seen by the fact that Elden Ring introduced a lot of these QoL features and most of their community soon left.
Honestly, there is absolutely nothing new being said in this thread, by either side. It’s all been said lots of times in lots of other threads with lots more votes than this. To keep opening threads about it just makes it feel that this is no longer an issue.
If you have a topic that had a hundred votes a year ago but that has only half a dozen these days, makes it seem like players that had an issue with it don’t have anymore.
Which, to be fair, it’s quite possible. The system isn’t as restrictive as your initial impression makes it seem to be. Lots of people said they were surprised with it the first time but just kept on playing and realized that it’s not a real issue and they can still experiment.
The best solution for this, imo, is also something suggested in those threads, which is to make dummies training ground available from the start (maybe even without having to create a character) and letting you assign passive and skill points at will so you can experiment to your heart’s content. Then you leave and go make your build.
I don’t see why any build-based game which lets you respec should not have a loadout feature.