Just chiming in to say that I completely agree with the OP, and am pretty sure the player count would go up if mastery could be respecced, as it was one of the reasons I stopped playing the last cycle earlier than I would have because I couldn’t justify spending even more time just to level yet another character to play the third mastery of a single class.
Just making sure that you read all of the reasons why Mastery is locked and will never be able to be respecced.
My thought is that even if you spent 0 passive points it would still be clearable, and even if an op build can clear it mindlessly, it’s still a time investment.
So if you’re using an op build but want to try something new, take the 5-10 minutes to clear this rift and respec. If your build is underperforming because you messed up your passive points, then take the 7-12 minutes to clear the rift and respec.
The biggest downside would be if you misplaced a single point.
Overall I don’t mind the current passive respec system (except the lack of QOL in removing points) because it’s the same system as GD and TQ.
The fact whether a class is a permanent choice or not is kind of the subject of this discussion, so I’m surprised that you need me to point it out.
Sounds like the reason why you think Last Epoch’s masteries are a character’s class and Path of Exile’s ascendancies aren’t would be because the former cannot be changed while the latter can. Which is disingenuous, to say the least, when the point presented earlier was that Last Epoch’s masteries should not be changeable because they are the character’s class.
I agree. The current system is a compromise, but we have multiple examples in this discussion alone of people saying the current cost of respeccing is irrelevant. If it’s irrelevant, why not remove it entirely?
Because it has just the right amount of friction to prevent cheesing.
EDIT: to elaborate: if you genuinely just want to switch builds, it’s not relevant enough to be too annoying. But if you want to cheese the game by constantly switching between AoE/clear builds and ST/Boss builds, it’s annoying enough that most people won’t do it.
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When you say “cheesing”, you mean, for example, people using a build for clearing an area and then switching builds to kill the area’s boss, right?
(One edit later, yes, that’s pretty much what you meant :P)
Do people actually do that in Diablo 3, for example?
Haven’t you played D3 before? You literally have a set for speed farming and another for GRift pushing which you switch to with a click of a button. Every strategy guide for D3 mentioned that and told you which ones were better for each class in each season.
Switching builds according to content is a staple of D3 gameplay.
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Sure, but notice the granularity - people don’t use one build for clearing normal enemies in a Great Rift, then get out of the Rift, change their build, and go back to kill its boss (which would be a nuisance, but also the game’s design doesn’t favor this kind of behavior).
So the idea that, if we had a respec system with less friction in LE, people would use a build to clear common enemies in a map and then change build to kill that map’s boss doesn’t really sound like something that would happen.
Would people use different builds for different kinds of content? Sure, like using one kind of build for the arena, another for dungeons, and another for monoliths. It wouldn’t (mostly*) remove the opportunity cost of having to choose between, say, a single target build and an area of effect build.
*The main issue is how, in the current monolith system, the timeline boss is in its own area, without any other kind of enemy.
No, but they would use a build to clear echoes, then switch to a build to kill the monolith boss. Also switch to a build to clear dungeons. Also switch to a build to do arena.
As opposed to the way it is now where you have to consider all types of content you want to do and balance your build around that.
Instant respec actually removes diversity. Because if you have instant respec then you have a spec fully focused on AoE/clear, then you have a spec fully focused on ST/Boss killing for mono bosses, etc.
Instead of having to make compromises between each to make sure your build can do everything comfortably.
Honestly, this doesn’t bother me.
This, in other hand, does bother me.
IMO, there are three ways to deal with this:
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Do nothing. Keep the system as it currently is.
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Remove some friction from the current system, but not all.
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Change the monolith system so timeline bosses aren’t in their own instance without any other enemy (so people wouldn’t be able to use a single target build for killing bosses)
I (clearly) prefer options 2 or 3 to option 1.
Even if you placed the boss in an echo (which people wouldn’t like, since you’d often get interference from mobs on what is already supposed to be a challenging fight, or you’d feel obligated to clear it), you’d still have a spec for AoE/clear that you used on the 20 echoes leading to the boss and then switched to the ST/Boss killer echo.
It’s also the same reason devs don’t want to add weapon swap to the game.
Personally, I feel this is fine the way it is. If you want to change your build you can get it done in a few minutes, if you want to constantly change your build for content you can still do that, but it’s so annoying that only a few will try it.
The thing that bothers me the most is feeling the loss of progress when downleveling a skill.
I would be happy if, instead of a skill going back to minimum level, it kept its current level and the skill being equipped in its place began at level zero (so it would have to be levelled in order to be useful). Then returning to a skill that had already been levelled would bring no reduction in power, but trying a new skill would still demand some time.
But that would do the opposite of its purpose: you would level both skills and from then on you would switch at will without any downside.
What the devs want to avoid is a system like in PoE where every single build has an alternate setup where you switch a few gems and you now have a boss setup instead. It’s pretty much mandatory in PoE at this point.
The feeling of losing progress isn’t really relevant at endgame because you quickly make up for it, and not really relevant for campaign because it’s easy to complete even with a level 5 skill.
And ultimately, this is only an issue if you want to respec a bunch of times all the time. If you only occasionally respec, as is the normal thing to do, this is such a very low level of attrition as to be unnoticeable.
Now, they could create a system that would allow you to experiment freely without downsides. I’ve suggested before that you could change the arena dummies area to where you could completely respec your build however you want it, including with max points as if you were level 100. You experiment and switch at will and when you leave you’re back at your actual setup and you already have a clear idea of what you want to do.
You could even make this area accessible in the character screen menu so you could experiment with all classes and masteries before you even create a character.
And here you could switch masteries at will to experiment. Even classes, why not? The purpose of this zone would be to become a showcase of your classes/skills and to allow people to both decide what they want to play with and to theorycraft as well.
But in-game I feel respec is fine as is. And I do respec fairly often while I’m trying to decide what to play. It never stopped my progression or even slowed it significantly, both in monos and in early campaign.
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Absolutely not, i really hate that we’ve come to a point in the ARPG segment, most likely thanks to the likes of Diablo 3, that we kill everything and all about meaningfull choices. I’m not arguing we should go back to the point where respeccing doesn’t exist either and misplace a few points can pretty much ruin your build and you’ve to start over just for that itself, but atleast Class, and Masteries are FACTUALLY the actual class should be a meaningfull choice where you are locked in. Plus as others mentioned here: Class-Identity is also a thing.
So i heavily disagree on that and that’s definitely an hill which i’ll die on and fight for (similiar to the Offline-Mode).
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I mean while i find the Skill-Respecc might need a little tweaking because it feels off to me when you start out, that it can feel a bit of an drag if you want experiment stuff, meanwhile if you’re in the endgame, monolith and stuff, you powerlevel through the level like it’s nothing - which is for me personally a bit of an weird spot in balancing because i feel it should be the opposite.
Again “respeccing” shouldn’t be something which diminish the value of an actual skillsystem. And if you can swap everything super easy on the fly without a penality or a cost, than we don’t need a skillsystem at all, because part of it is the thoughtfull tinkering and choices. -
Why does this or every other Game need to cater towards ‘casuals’? Look this a reason why within the Gaming-Community Casuals often get so much heat and hatred, because you have some casuals which gets super arrogant and think absolutely every Game needs to be tinkered about their needs, doesn’t matter if it sacrifice or take away the experience for the core-audience. You’ve a tons of alternatives like esp. diablo or torchlight which are super casualfriendly and lite… the options for core-players in this genre however is rather limited with Path of Exile and maybe Grim Dawn (and even that might go more in the direction of the middleground).
And it’s not even like Last Epoch being a super “hardcore-game” either, it’s exactly in the middle between of super-casual diablo and super-hardcore path of exiles… which means you’ve a lot of features which are already casualfriendly(like respeccing in general might it be either skills or passive isn’t like the end of the world and heavy grind like some other games but rather accessable)
, but also stuff like masterylock for the core-audience, and i appreciate that.
That’s hardly a ‘good’ argument because a initial 1.0 Release tends to attract quite a different range of players, especially if it’s amplified by huge streamers and such which also generated awareness for the Game. Like you’ve a lot of which just want to check it out and test if it’s for them OR campaign & story-players which would, and that’s no matter how good a Game is, just finish it once and move on… (even more in the recent years where the Game-Market is oversatuarated with Games and almost each month drop something new, and the whole sales mentality where you grap 10 Games at once because they’re cheap).
You’ll find every major Game ever similiar statistics how you have initially a huge leap of people buying it and the player retention hitting hard, and the Games which could sustain a playerbase for a long time did it overtime - not from the getgo. You can bet that any game like PoE, GD etc at the release might have a huge amount of players at the beginning as well, and a huge drop-off pretty soon. The reason why you’ve now so many people stick/playing PoE is because due the constant support for the game adding new content and such, which made the game grow and more content rich. LE simply just released and while it did (in my opinion) quite an amazing job, you just can’t compensate 8 years or more post-launch content-support and polishing. That’s unrealistic to expect.
Plus another matter about ARPG is, that we also have the issue due the season-system that the community got cultivated to such a way, that they stick for the season until they are mostly done, and jump to the next one…
It’s not like let’s say older ARPGs or Grim Dawn which weren’t heavily centric around seasons, where people had to find out themself to squeeze out more fun and playtime, doing ton of builds and such… nowdays you get a clear season theme and mechanics, you engage with that and then you don’t want to spent more energy on it but rather save it up for the next one…
But that being said 50k to 70k for a new cycle is a pretty good number…
No mastery is your class. I mean how much is the gaming world screwed up, that we don’t consider a necromancer and warlock as different classes? Or a Druid, Beastmaster or Shaman? Start playing World of Warcraft or any other RPG and you’ll see they’re a all different classes.
People really have a perception issue in my PoV, because they think a mastery is kinda a specialications, which it isn’t because a specialization would be something like take sorc as example: Fire-Mage. But a class concept like Battle-Mage(Spellblade), traditional Sorc or Rune-Combiner isn’t a “specialization” → it’s a class. So what LE does is rather giving you a trainee/noviceclass with Primalist, Acolyte and such, and a bit later you pick your actual class(paladin, void knight etc). That you can hybrid a bit is a nice throw in tho…
In Grim Dawn you can’t respec masteries either… where is your complain about that? Why do you accept in case of GD that it’s part of the class-choice, but here you neglect it. And i don’t know… i’ve seen people who play World of Warcraft for almost 20 years, and don’t know anything about the Game. Only because you play a game, doesn’t mean you really engage with it and it’s mechanics and properly understand it. But in the end it doesn’t even really matter, this we’re here on about Last Epoch, and people explain to you why they find it’s a bad suggestion you do(and i agree with them).
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Sadly it seems that’s the only thing game devs understand – game must almost die for them to FINALLY ask themselves questions that were already asked and answered by the playerbase, likely years ago.
I am 100% with you with your suggestions. The current limitations are arbitrary and I have no clue who are they supposed to serve except a vanishing minority of hardcore no-lifers who make their mastery in a game a core part of their personality… and they are usually not whales either.
As a busy guy myself, I judge a game by the early experiences. No crafting, no trading, just rely on what drops or what is in the shop (and there’s absolutely never anything useful there). WTF am I supposed to do get some more damage or survivability, exactly? Of course I’ll “play the game, duh” but right now, right here, on this map, I need 10 seconds to down an elite, and it two-shots me. I go back to town and find myself with zero options on how to “git gud”. Great experience. /s
I already had several occurrences where the jump in difficulty when going 3-4 levels higher proved difficult to overcome (doable by respec’ing but yeah, good luck re-levelling skills!).
I am left scratching my head what was the thought process? Are the creators really relying on people muscling through 200+ hours of pain until you get to the “good stuff”?
Ain’t nobody got time fo’ that, darlings.
Highly irrelevant. No fun in the first 10-15 hours? I am gone.
Very likely it is your perception that is wrong (though in fairness, that’s irrelevant as well; games should cater to more people by default, not try to find some uber-specific niche from the get go – that’s a very short-sighted decision in business terms).
Fun means different things to different people. Lots of players have fun in PoE and don’t hve fun in D3. Lots of players have fun in D3 and don’t have fun in PoE.
Fun isn’t objective. Nothing in the design choices of a game is objective. Some people will like it and play, some won’t and leave. And if you change mastery respec, some people will like it and play, some won’t like it and leave.
So the only issue is what type of players EHG wants plaing LE. They design the systems according to the type of player that would like them.
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Thanks for letting me know, I would have never guessed. /s
You have people in this thread right here telling you how the fun area of the game can be expanded. What’s your counter-argument against doing it, exactly? Is it this? 
No, they will not if there is more choice and more room for free experimentation. Unless their fun is tied to being limited in their game choices.
Or, stay with me here, they are confused and lost and maybe these forum threads will help them. Don’t assume they have a 100% clear vision.
Yes, they will. I would leave and several other people would as well. Because mastery respec is one step too close to D3. And I don’t want to play D3.
They do, the whole premise of LE is that the devs set out to make the game THEY would like to play. And with that they attracted a bunch of players that feel the same way they do.
Not everyone will like it (which is fine, not every game is for everyone), and even the people that have a mentality like theirs (like me and others that often support them) can disagree with things they do.
But on the whole, they have a clear vision of the game they want to make. And the players they want to attract are the same ones that feel the same way. It’s the reason we came to this game in the first place.
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It was not my reason and that of many other people apparently (as visible in this thread), who don’t do a Ph.D. level of research before buying.
So frak the rest of us, right?
Furthermore, you have explained exactly nothing except “this game is not for you” which should not surprise me by this point but I wanted to make it visible one more time so everybody else can giggle.
Masters of non-arguments, the lot of you “hardcore fans”.