Make Mastery a permanent choice again

Feedback and Suggestions
41

To be fair, the “it impacts me by existing in the game” was not a real argument, but rather something to counter-weight your “if oyu don’t like it don#t use it”, because I feel in a lot of these discussions and arguments people thing that how they feel and thigns they can’t imagine do not exist.

I had dozens, if not hundreds of posts pointing out why I don’t like mastery respec, I could do the whole essay again now.

But I hate to see if people do argumentations that neglect the other side as non-existent or try to play down they concerns.

Well the choice that mastery respec is not planned or will not come was made years and months ago again and then suddenly, BOOM here we go.

I know this is very unlikely to go back completely, but that is why I said on multipel occasions what I would like to see change to make it cooler and not just as borign and stupid as it is right now.

This is nto about “making the game harder”. This is the exact same argumentation with the “don’t use it if you don’t liek it”.

If there are two paths, a short one and a long one. Players will always tend to use the short one. And putting arbitrary restrictions on yourself is something only a very select few players will ever do.

So devs and games need to creatre a baseline and rulebook we as players have to obey by.
The purpose of a vidoe game is not always to get to the end as fast and smoothyl as possible. Putting restrictions in your way will create challenges, ideas and makes you feel like you solved and succedded with something.

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42

It sound like the issue is that other people can use it. Which would point to a superiority complex. None of you have once mentioned how it directly impacts you. Maybe having the option to “allow respeccing” at character creation would suffice.

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43

Change of skill is an individual choice of each player. This mechanics are not imposed on anyone. Just do not use it.

44

That may have been the way it was at one time… but those types of things change. If you were to ask most players if they got a character to 100, they could start the any further characters at 100, most would say yes… simply because the game doesn’t really start until you get to end game, have unlocked all your passives/ skills, etc.

The level up process is a grind, that most people don’t enjoy, and you can’t really even play the character you want to because your skills don’t work due to lack of points, your talents aren’t fleshed out, you don’t have access to all your passives, etc.

Plus, letting people reuse old characters is a great way to get around the character limit on accounts, or people feeling like they have to give up something to delete a character they don’t play.

45

I am not so sure about that and its very hard to get good nubmers or evidence for this.

The problem with things like this is, you might have the feeling that it is this way, because you always hear people talk one way or the other here on the forums, the ingame chat or on other platforms.

But everybody who uses these platforms is already way more invested in the game then your average player.

So your datapoints are skewed.

Here I have to massively disagree with you. Especially LE does an excellent job, the best of any otehr ARPG in my opinion, in terms of progressio nand pacing.

You can start the “endgame build” you want to play from the getgo, with some very few exceptions (like build enabling uniques etc., but even with those you can paly very adjecent builds and swap over). Even in the worst case, when one of oyur main skills is one of the 30 or 35+ Mastery Skills, you unlock that within a few hours of playing.
And every and all builds are totally viable and doable during the campaign.

Also the Blank statement that most peopel don’t enjoy level up proces or grind is very hard to prove, we don’t knwo the exact numbers.

I would argue , specifically in LE there are way, way more people that actually enjoy playing new builds and leveling them up.

Ther are players now that will always use the mastery respec, there are also players who will never use mastery respec, becuase leveling up a new build just gives them a better experience. “Growing into the build” and progression it is one of the mroe enjoyable experiences for me personally for example.

Now there will be a middleground between those camps of players who might use the mastery respec, even though they don’t WANTED it.

The ratio of these different playergroups we don’t really know.

46

Totally agree with everything you’ve said here.

47

I think the ratio of people with god complexes has gone up. I have a friend who hates not being THE ONE. He also does not like respec in games, he also spends days reading build guides, something I personally don’t care about because I don’t need to be THE ONE!. I’d rather fiddle around and figure stuff out for my self and making mistakes along the way is fine with me.

48

It impacts me because it negates character identity. I’m no longer playing a Paladin, Marksman, or Lich. I’m playing a Sentinel, Rogue, and Acolyte.

Additionally, this change opens the floodgates for additional changes that will make things even worse, such as loadouts or entire class respecs. The logic EHG gave was “We didn’t feel like continuing to punish players for picking a mastery they didn’t enjoy.” Ok? What if I didn’t enjoy Rogue or any of it’s masteries, you’re punishing my by making me make a new character that’s a Mage, so you should let me respec my Rogue into a Mage. The same logic for mastery respec applies to class respec so you can’t claim they’re different. Especially when, until a couple months ago, EHG’s stance was your Mastery was your class and it didn’t make sense to respec your class. So if they can double back on Class Respecs when “Class” is read as “Mastery”, what’s to stop them from doubling back on Class Respecs when “Class” is read as “Class”?

Loadouts are already being asked for to streamline the respec process between builds, and there’s even a very easy way for them to apply Loadouts without removing the penalty of having to relevel your skills by saving the skill loadout at the Minimum Skill Level, you can allocate the remaining points as your skills re-level but all your passives and gear would be automatically replaced.

Mastery Respec on it’s own is a minor change that doesn’t affect much but game feel by removing one of the last remaining permanent choices in your character development, but opens the way for far more significant changes, especially with how mundane the respec was implemented (pay gold = respec vs a quest like Den of Evil or a farmable item like The Token of Absolution from D2R)

I refuse to use the system, but I’m very wary of how the meta will shift due to how easy and cheap respecs are (it would take <6 hours of gold farming to respec at lv 100 for a CoF player and <1 hour for a MG player) and how this slippery slope will play out. I hope EHG won’t budge any further, but given the FotM WASD and Mastery Respec implementations, I don’t have much hope that EHG will hold firm against loadouts and full class respecs.

Edit:
To be clear: if the game was designed (or redesigned) to be like FFXIV or OSRS with the “your character is an account” mentality. I wouldn’t be opposed to loadouts or swapping classes. In FFXIV you can play as a Gladiator from lv 1 and become a Paladin at lv 30 and level it to 70 before saying “I’m not having fun with this” and swap to Pugilist, which starts at lv 1 and becomes a Monk at lv 30. The system even offers an EXP boost for all Jobs (read: classes) that are below your highest level class. Being able to make a character in LE and then leveling Sentinel to 75 and swapping between Void Knight/Forge Guard/Paladin on that class and then swapping to Rogue, for free, which starts at lv 1 again with an exp boost up until lv 75 would be perfectly fine with me. Lots of fun, even. It’d be even better if each Mastery also had their own levels but started at 20 (minimim passive requirement to access the Mastery Tree). Add in Loadouts/Gear Sets and it would create a really unique ARPG experience. But… LE isn’t that game.

49

So so wrong. I and others have said how it impacts us and other players. Perhaps go read the other mastery respec post. Especially the one where they forst revealed this before we knew about the gold cost.

Also as @Scipo0419 points out. This also affects the game itself not just players.

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50

So you want to feel special? Precisely what I said above.
You can stick a guarantee on a box and call it guaranteed, but all you’re doing is putting a label on a box.

51

No, please do not and if u dont want the feature just dont use it. Like i dont understand if you want it permanent just dont use it. Do you lack the self control and need ehg to force you to not be able to respec?

52

It has nothing to do with “feeling special” and has everything to do with character identity. Some players don’t care about character identity, while others do. Character Identity personally isn’t that impactful to me, but I’m a strong believer in “restrictions add build diversity”. For example, by adding the 5 skill specialization restriction, you’re forced to decide which 5 skills are most important to you as a player. If EHG suddenly let you specialize every skill and added an uncapped hotbar, then the only restriction remaining is the 20 points per skill and every Beastmaster would be nearly indistinguishable from every other Beastmaster as they’d all have full access to every skill in the game and only the way those 20 points (minimum) per skill are applied would potentially be different. The removal of restrictions reduced build diversity. The same thing applies to Mastery Respecs, by removing the restriction of being locked into a Mastery, the build diversity will shift. As a very basic example, people may stop making Bladedancer builds for mapping when they can just swap to Falconer with an insignificant amount of Gold (not like there’s many gold sinks for it to go towards outside of stash tabs tbf).

So again, it has nothing to do with needing to feel special or like we’re “The One” and has everything to do with build diversity and character identity.

It’s far more complicated than “just don’t use it.” It impacts many aspects of the game and the game’s future beyond just allowing you to change from Falconer to Marksman.

Edit:
I mean we’re already seeing the impact when you look for Leveling Builds on Maxroll. There’s one per base class and each one contains the note:

This guide focuses on Mastery Choice to provide the optimal Base Class leveling experience, feel free to respec your Mastery after the leveling process at the Respec NPC in the End of Time.

No more “Necromancer Leveling Guide” it’s just “Play Warlock and then Respec.” No more Shaman Leveling Guide, it’s “Play Druid and Respec.” But you know, the decision was soooooo good for the game /s.

53

While the comment makes valid points about build diversity and mechanical balance, dismissing the emotional aspect – like wanting to feel unique — seems a bit in denial. Character identity and specialization inherently create distinction, and that does make players feel special, whether consciously or not. Denying this emotional layer overlooks a key reason why restrictions feel meaningful in the first place.

54

And reducing that feeling to “they just want to feel special” and dismissing the core reasons isn’t fair to the valid complaint.

Saying “you just want to feel special” has a negative undertone to it. As if, somehow, a player wanting choice permanence and character identity somehow makes them snobby or elitist. When in reality most players who prefer to have character identity aren’t out there playing games to “feel special” or “be The One”, they just want to have a character that feels realistic or grounded (within the bounds of the game world). For example, I have far more attachment to my Eldritch Knight DnD character who I crafted an intricate backstory for that ties him to the world of the campaign than I do with my first few “metagaming” DnD characters where I tried to make them optimal and didn’t pay much attention to the character’s identity/motives. By having an identity to my character it became someone I was involved with raising. It had nothing to do with feeling “special”

55

Bro.

You sure did gottem

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56

There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel special. Maybe they will add the option to turn off respeccing at character creation for those who want a more authentic experience.

57

Honestly, it sounds more like a self-control issue than a game design problem.

Saying mastery respec “impacts the future of the game” because you might use it even though you don’t want to is like saying smoking should be illegal because you can’t stop yourself from lighting up. That’s not a design flaw — that’s personal discipline.

The option exists. If you think the game is better with permanent mastery, great — play it that way. Lock yourself in and enjoy. But don’t act like the existence of flexibility ruins the game for everyone else. For many players, being able to correct a mistake or salvage a dead build is the difference between continuing to enjoy the game or quitting out of frustration.

Just because you struggle with having the option doesn’t mean it should be taken away from the rest of us.

58

Look, if you’re roleplaying and you want your character to feel like a Paladin forever — then just… play as a Paladin. Nobody’s stopping you. You don’t need the game to hard-lock you into your fantasy to feel like it’s real. That’s your own RP headcanon — own it. You don’t need dev-enforced restrictions to commit to your identity.

Trying to claim that a mastery respec removes character identity is just wild. It doesn’t remove your choice — it just stops punishing people who made the wrong one early on. This change helps people who want to enjoy the game, not those looking for arbitrary walls.

Also: the slippery slope thing? Total overreaction. There is a huge difference between respec’ing a mastery within the class you picked and fully swapping a Rogue into a Mage. The difference is obvious. Mastery is a subclass, and even now, you still have to play through and earn it. You’re not just flipping buttons mid-combat. You’re still committing — it’s just not permanent until you’ve seen how it actually plays.

And let’s be real — the people most hurt by permanent mastery were new players, not meta-chasers. They pick what sounds cool, then realize 20 levels later they’re stuck in a dead build and either start over or quit. That’s not meaningful choice. That’s a great way to lose players who might’ve fallen in love with the game if it hadn’t punished them for not being psychic.

You don’t have to use the respec. You’ve said it yourself — you won’t. That’s fine. But don’t try to take away a feature that’s literally saving the game for others just because you’re afraid of what it might lead to. Let the devs balance that when and if it ever happens.

Not everything needs to be locked behind regret to be meaningful.

59

No one is saying that it impacts the future of the game because we might use it. It impacts the future of the game because of the following:

I even said:

And pointed out:

60

You’re arguing that quality-of-life features like mastery respecs are bad because they might lead to other features you don’t like. That’s not a valid reason to take away a system that’s actively helping people right now.

Being able to try out a new build — like testing a legendary I found or experimenting with a skill interaction — without making a whole new character is fun. It’s engaging. It keeps me playing. That’s not a slippery slope. That’s good design. Why should I have to spend 10–20 more hours just to see if an idea even works?

How does that hurt you?

If you want to play one character and never respec, great! That’s your roleplay. Nothing about mastery respec stops you from doing that. But what hurts the game more is forcing everyone to play your way by removing the ability to experiment without being punished for it.

You say “what if I don’t like Rogue, why can’t I be a Mage?” — because that’s an actual class change, not a subclass tweak. That’s a totally different line. Mastery respec is within the fantasy and framework of your chosen class. It’s like deciding what kind of Sentinel you want to be, not rewriting your entire identity. Pretending they’re the same thing is just trying to spin a narrative.

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