You could just take the D2 route and give a quest (maybe given once you complete the campaign) that allows one free mastery respec. That way, you get one for free, you have to complete the campaign to get it (meaning that players will usually skip the campaign, but if they want to respec, they’ll have to go back and rush it, so it’s not immediate) and you won’t be too low level, so you’ll have some experience of the current mastery.
To be fair, it’s quite likely that the majority of players will simply follow a build guide. So it won’t be an issue for them.
Most people that know me for a while, know that I am an adversary of build guides.
I do acknowledge, that this is how a vast majority of players will and want to play these types of games, but I still think that a game should not be designed with this in mind.
Whether people will use build guides or not, should not influence the design decision behind some of these fundamental features.
I rather want LE to fully lean into its strenghts, one of which is, that you really do not need a build guide to be reasonable successful with a build.
Everytime somebody asks for specific builds guides I always tell them something along the lines of “don’t worry, just try out what you want”.
I really want that LE goes all in with that and gives the players a lot of leniency.
I just think that the Mastery is the point where it just should not be too lenient.
Essentially these masteries are suppsoed to be their own class and LE does fulfill that IMO, so having the line drawn here and not making mastery respeccable is fair and no leniency is needed here, as long as the information that is available in the game is sufficient for a new player to make that descion.
I think LE isn’t as complicated as PoE (where having a build guide is pretty much mandatory). However, if you’re a new player and you don’t yet know how everything works together (conversions, defense layers, etc), it’s not that hard to get into a point where your build is underpowered.
That being said, I don’t think it’s hard to make a build that will get you through the campaign and, if you screw it up and can’t get your build to empowered monos, then you can either ask help here or respec into a guide then.
And I also don’t mind mastery being locked. As I’ve previously said, it doesn’t really bother me one way or the other. You can lock it or give free respecs for 1 gold and I’ll be fine with either.
I’m a leveling kind of player, rather than an endgame one. I like to get into my build as soon as possible, even if it’s not the most effective way to do it (like when I was using melee wraiths for a while until I got the idols). And I enjoy the leveling process where your build starts to fill in and become more powerful.
I 100% agree with this. While I fully appreciate the ‘slog’ of re-doing the campaign, I continue to feel that this is far outweighed by the fact that the 50ish+ lvls it takes to get all the way to Majasa feels great in terms of character progression because of the steady advancement.
I don’t mind the high lvls 90+ being much, much slower but something about the mid lvl (~70-90) feels like dead man’s gulch.
Mastery lock feels especially bad for new players. They don’t know much about the game yet, gradually learning new skills and passives. Then suddenly at about level 15 they must learn all the mastery bonuses, skills and their trees and passives, to make the right decision. And wrong decision is heavily punished.
In Torchlight Infinite players can play around with mastery choices as they wish until reaching certain level (70?), and then it’s locked. Isn’t that a good compromise?
To add some insight from our side of the topic: We don’t view mastery as a specialization like your skill selection. Instead, your Mastery is part of your class creation, it’s just not chosen when you first create your character to help ease players into systems, passive trees, and lower the learning curve. This is why we opt for masteries not to be able to be changed as once you pick your mastery: you’re not a Sentinel that’s mastered into Paladin, you are a Paladin.
I was actually going to say something like this… how is the current system different than just having 15 ‘Classes’ and someone selecting the Wrong One™. Either way, they’d have to go back and re-level that whopping 2 hours of game time. Be glad the time investment has been lowered to where it is, currently, because it used to take a heck of a lot longer to get to the quest to select your Mastery.
This is a trick question, because a Void Knight is not the same class as a Paladin (is not the same class as a Forge Master) just because you spent your few hours as a Sentinel. You are incorrectly choosing to view them as the same, and they are not. It is no different than if you just clicked the Paladin button right at the time when you created your character, instead of clicking the Void Knight or Forge Master button.
I like this perspective, but the character will still look, sound, and mostly feel the same on another attempt at the same build. That said, changing the mindset from “I have to re-level from 1 again to fix this” to instead be “Paladin isn’t working, so I’ll level a Void Knight instead” sounds great, and I hope this is the sentiment players begin to feel in time.
My position has shifted to Heavy’s about helping the decision be more informed to avoid, as much as possible, the situation of “needing” to start over having made the “wrong” choice. When everything else about a character is changeable, this one and arguably most important decision being permanent makes it look arbitrary.
I also like this perspective. Perhaps another angle is changing the mindset from “this class can level up to one of these three” to instead be “these sets of three classes each share a passive tree, and all classes also have a separate unique tree.” Not sure how to accomplish this besides adding another 10 models. Otherwise, the stories of THE Paladin and THE Void Knight are apparently about the same person?
Right now you can’t change name, class and mastery. If you allow a mastery change and, presumably easier to get, a name change, then class will actually be the only thing you really can’t change. So according to your logic, next step would be to respec class, because
, right?
Not saying that there should or shouldn’t be a possibility to respec masteries. I’ve stated many times already that I’m fine with it either way. Just that your argument:
1- isn’t valid right now because there are more things you can’t change, and
2- isn’t necessarily valid in and of itself. Being able to change most things doesn’t automatically imply that you should be able to change ALL things. Just that you might want to.
Base class and character name choices don’t require time and investment. This is about how the decision making and game progression feels as a player, not some all-or-nothing cynicism. If you were just going for technically correct on my use of the word “everything”, I’ll grant you it is the best kind of correct. Misses the point, though.
What I want, and I’m confident I’m not the only one, is for our time valued as players, especially in the new player experience. So, a couple options are being passed around here to consider how the game can help alleviate the feeling of time being wasted on a reroll. These include the possibility of mastery respec in lieu of more clarity about what the decision will mean, or, better, a more comprehensive presentation around that decision so players are sufficiently informed.
I wish the mastery quest included some kind of flashbacks from former maters of the past and future so you can opt in to play a template of a mastery to see if you like the skills it’s offering.
When I start to play some games I find a lot of things sound awesome on paper just to find out it’s complete trash to use the stuff like I intended it. some form of playtest before you make a choice that worst case invalidates your whole progress might be intresting for new players.
This is actually a cool idea. It would tie into the whole splintered end of times and then incarnations of you running around all over the place that the Forgotten Knight hints at as well as a few others.
There was something kind of akin to this in D3 that they implemented several years after Reaper of Souls. I haven’t played it in years but it was the thing where you could test out other people’s builds and earn some rewards and xp while doing it. Can’t remember what it was called.
I highly doubt this would be something that could be implemented soon™ but it would definitely fit thematically with the shattered Epoch stuff.
That would be the challenge rifts. Although I’d argue it’s not really quite like this, since you couldn’t change the build at all and most selected builds were really bad. Even for a simple and easy game like D3, they usually had a lot of crappy barely functional builds.
I’d argue that the challenge rifts were actually worse for this purpose, since you’d be trying a class with frustrating choices, rather than a fun build.
I agree that, in theory, some sort of showcase of classes, as long as they’re minimally optimized and fun, is a good thing. But it breaks the workflow. You are playing the campaign, then around lvl 20ish you’re at the end of time and are taken somewhere where you’re trying out 2-3 builds. You spend some time with each and then go back to make your selection and continue the campaign. It feels clunky to me. Not saying it can’t be done, just that it would need to be “optimized” to not break your flow.
That’s not entirely true. The play style of all masteries is present in the base class. If a class has a melee/minion/caster mastery that play style will be available to the base class if you wish to try it.
True, but all of those things have been available to theplaywr to read through from lvl 1.
It also only takesa few moments for someone to give you a lift to the end of time for you to take a mastery at lvl 1 in MP.
I bet a lot of people don’t get how transformation skills work and don’t know how they are able to see what skills they are forced to use while shifted for the druid. When they played Druid and opt to play a Lich that can pick and choose they might be even more lost.
Just to note one glaring example where “reading” stuff isn’t helpfull. On top of it if I read the tooltip of Erasin Strike for example and play a VK to use it because it sounds awesome and I’m finaly there to get that wet noodle of an attack that isn’t even close to the tooltip from my point of view then I won’t care but a bunch of people will most likely riot.
All of this is part of a good new player experience and LE has… non. There is no need to implement somehting later tbh because all the pissed players will leave anyway and players who know the game don’t care anyway.
Then again I understand why people think it’s a bad thing to lock masteries… then again it is what it is. Before release the devs should post a read first thread in the steam discussions and on the forums that make it clear that mastery picks are final and can’t be changed and should be carefully choosen because people need to replay the whole story if they don’t like their choice.
Just to point at something so people stop crying what some will do for sure ^^.
This is basically a matter of perception, tbh. If you play for 20ish levels and then select your mastery, it gives you an illusion of choice and players sometimes wish they could take it back.
If, however, you selected your mastery directly from the character creation, this would be a non-issue.
Objectively, there is no difference between:
-getting 20 levels, selecting your mastery, getting 10 more levels and being unhappy with the development and wanting another mastery, and
-selecting your mastery, getting 30 levels and being unhappy with the development and wanting another mastery
But the player perception is different in both cases. In the first they feel like it was a character (or build) choice that didn’t pan out and should be able to be undone and in the second they feel like it was just a creation choice and they just have to make a new one. Even if both cases end up being the same, objectively.
Yeah, but either way will lead to complaining… it’s just the nature of society today. If you make mastery a selection at creation, then we’d hear about how it takes too long to invest in passives to unlock the master-specific skills, so players ‘waste’ 30 levels just to begin to play their mastery. Then we’d have threads to make all class/mastery skills available at level 1, so players don’t waste time playing the game.
I don’t totally agree with you. I agree that someone will always complaint no matter what, for sure. But the amount of people complaining changes based on the choices you make.
Skills being locked behind levels is a common enough thing in ARPGs that people are used to it. Whether it’s LE, D3/D4 or even PoE with minimum levels for skill gems, it’s just something that part of the deal. As you get more levels, you get more powerful skills. I don’t think (many) people would complaint about that.
They’d probably complaint about having to dump 20 points in the base tree before being able to use the other trees, though, so…
Ultimately, someone will always complaint about pretty much anything. Devs just have to balance between their vision of the game and the amount of complaints they can/are willing to ignore.
At least EHG replies to the community and explain their point of view. GGG just says “No”, when they answer at all.
Yes, and people have complained about that… “why do I have to wait so long before getting my build-defining skill/spell?”. It goes hand-in-hand with “why do build defining items have such a high level requirement?” But, as you said, there would be some other complaining, so it’s basically 6-of-1 or half-dozen of another.
