If you buy Dark Souls without researching, you then can’t complain that it’s too hard.
I mean, you could go to FromSoftware’s forums and ask for it to be easier or have more QoL, but everyone would laugh at you and the devs would ignore you.
So yes, if you bought LE without researching and don’t like it, that’s on you. As with any other game. Games shouldn’t have to change to just please you. Or me. Which is why I never went to D3 forums or PoE forums asking them to change their game. I either like them and play or I don’t and don’t play.
I bought D4, despite misgivings. I don’t enjoy it. It’s on me. Blizzard has no obligation to change the game to suit me.
Since you don’t seem to understand the difference and I admittedly know very little about PoE I’ll give you some specific examples of why LEs “Mastery” is a class and PoEs “Ascendency” is not.
Diablo 2, 3, and 4: I pick my class on character creation and I pick Barbarian. I’m locked into Barbarian, I cannot change to Necromancer.
Titan Quest: I pick my first mastery, Defense, at lv 2 making me a Defender and as soon as I confirm the points spent in Defense I cannot change that mastery. At lv 8 I can pick a second mastery (if I want) and I pick Warfare, this makes me Defense+Warfare changing my class from Defender to Conqueror, as soon as I confirm the points I spent in Warfare I cannot change that mastery. Locking my character permanently into Conqueror.
Grim Dawn: I pick my first mastery, Soldier, at lv 2 making me a Soldier and as soon as I confirm the points spent in Soldier I cannot change that mastery. At lv 10 I can pick a second mastery (if I want) and I pick Nightblade, this makes me Solider+Nightblade changing my class from Soldier to Blademaster, as soon as I confirm the points I spent in Nightblade I cannot change that mastery. Locking my character permanently into Blademaster.
Torchlight II: I pick my class on character creation and I pick Engineer. I’m locked into Engineer, and I cannot change into Embermage.
Eternium: I pick my class on character creation and I pick Warrior. I’m locked into Warrior and I cannot change into Mage
Chronicon: I pick my class on character creation and I pick Berkserker. I’m locked into Berserker and I cannot change into Templar.
Lost Ark (even if it’s not exactly the same as the rest): I pick my class on character creation and I pick Warrior. Upon finishing the tutorial I pick my Advanced Class and I pick Berserker. Upon picking Berserker I am locked in and I can not change into Paladin, nor could I change into Martial Artist.
Last Epoch: I pick Sentinel. I’m a Sentinel till I reach The End of Time, then I pick Forge Guard. That’s my new class, Forge Guard. I can’t change it once I hit confirm on a screen that says THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE
Path of Exile: I pick my “Core” class on character creation. I pick Marauder I am locked in and cannot change into Witch. Upon completion of The Lord’s Labyrinth I can pick an Ascendancy and I pick Juggernaut. I am not locked into this decision and I can change it at any time by refunding my Ascendency Points and re-running The Lord’s Labyrinth.
Ascendency may be called your “Ascendency Class”, but just like how Last Epoch’s “Mastery” is a label for “Advanced Class”, POEs “Ascendancy Class” is a label for “Subclass”. I’m STILL a Marauder, I just also happen to have the Juggernaut Subclass. In Last Epoch, Titan Quest, and Grim Dawn, I’m no longer the base class, I’m the new combined class. Sentinel BECOMES Forge Guard, it’s not a Sentinel that happens to also be a Forge Guard. The devs have confirmed this repeatedly and after looking through all these games the system is closest to Lost Ark (ironically) due to the journey to the End of Time being the Tutorial equivalent.
I mean, i don’t find it fun to jump out of a plane and skydive… you’ve people love that and do that.
I don’t find it fun to drink myself to almost coma, and do wild sh’t… you still have people who party all weekends.
I don’t (to go back to games) find PvP Games for the most part fun, and still you’ve people who dig that and even ask for Solo/Co-op Games for that.
I don’t find it fun that ARPGs get overcasualized to the point, that it is expected that even class-choice doesn’t matter anymore, because some people making wildly weird sh’t up that it’s not a class anymore and want to kill skillsystems by overly accessible respeccing, because i can swap anything on the fly, killing the point of putting actual thought into what i’m doing, not just do it and if it doesn’t work, WHO CARES… i can due it without any cost and penality anyway.
Yeah because multiple people including the devs explain to you and your likes: the Mastery is an actual class choice. Someone which takes a step back and look at it more factually would see it’s an actual class choice… again → a necromancer or warlock is NOT a specialization… it’s a class. And hundres of Games have always proven that.
So yeah - my perception is skewed, not the people which can’t take a step back for once and admit that they are in the wrong (doesn’t mean you need to like tho) and maybe another Game is better suited for them.
Which is an absolutely Wild argument to make. People always cry, b’tch and whine about Ubisoft, Activision and such with their Games, to do every year the same sh’t, which seams cater to the default people. But when a game doesn’t really bend the knee, and rather try to stand on it’s own, it’s own niche, maybe being creative… than people criticsize them for not going mainstream and don’t cater to them. You just can’t win.
And then look at other Franchises in the past years dying, because they try to cater to the modern audiences and mainstream, dying because they don’t care and also p’ssed of your loyal fanbase.
Plus i really don’t like this sentiment to begin with, because it kills all (freedom of) creativity… then devs should only make the most popular stuff, why not another Battle Royal or Moba, or i see Gacha Games are a trend, why not oversaturate the market with more of them. Because Niche and Overspecific niche which have their own audience is “wrong” in your opinion Which is even funny because playerbases of 'niche’games are often willing to pay and support devs more - because they’re so niche and often don’t have many options.
Which brings me to my last point:
Going with the mainstream/most popular choice is also pretty problematic, because it means more competition and so mcuh more likely to fail… while niche is smaller in audience but more easy to get into and sustain for the long run.
I was commenting on the punishment for respec’ing.
What’s your retort against that? Or is it going to be another essay against “me and my likes”?
I am asking again for actual technical objective counter-arguments. “It’s not for you” is not a counter-argument, it’s your wild assumption. I want something concrete and tangible, not your fantasies.
Oh, do tell? Explain to me, point by point, how giving more freedom and NOT punishing people for respec’ing is “killing creativity”? EXACTLY, please?
Honestly, he’s not wrong. I hate Soulsborne games, so I don’t play them. I don’t tell FromSoft that I find their systems to be arbitrarily punishing in order to make people frustrated and the game harder by proxy. I don’t tell them that their games are not actually difficult but simply frustrating by having stupid shit like moving hit boxes for enemy attacks, enemy placements designed to kill you the first time you experience them because “why would you know they’re there”, and a currency system that is both your funding and your experience so you have to balance increasing your stats and keeping your supplies topped off. I don’t tell them that all of this makes a game that is not fun, but aggravating and intentionally a time waster.
I don’t do that because I’m a) the minority on that opinion and b) not who the game is designed for. They’re not obligated to design their game for me and my enjoyment. Fucking hell, Breath of the Wild is, in my opinion, the worst thing to come out of the Legend of Zelda franchise and that’s including Wand of Gamelon. I hate that game, I hate it’s open world bullshit, I hate that you can ignore the entire plot and just fight Ganon immediately, I hate that you don’t have any sense of progression through the game once you finish the plateau, and I hate that it’s so goddamn popular that they’ll likely never make a traditional 3D Zelda game ever again. Guess what? I didn’t write Nintendo and give them my “feedback” because I didn’t like their design choices.
There’s a strong difference between giving feedback about a system that doesn’t seem to be working as intended and is causing frustrations (the Dynamic Damage Reduction is a perfect example), and blatantly telling the developers that their vision for the game is wrong because you don’t like it.
Same here, but we’re not talking the same thing. I have some visibility on the general game types, I know what I like and hate, and stay away from what I know does not work for me.
So yes he’s wrong because he’s derailing and tearing down a straw man which is a very easy thing to do – while not actually addressing the topic at hand.
So I’ll ask you as well: what’s so bad about not punishing people for respec’ing? What is lost by removing that system?
I’m not sure if that was his point or what he said. I really can’t imagine anyone who is arguing here against yours and OP’s idea is saying this. But if ‘feedback’ is valid and important, so it that people speak against it as well, because that also effects them. If you add respeccing for masteries you take away from the 'core’audience whom is it vital for meaningfull choices, class identity and such. So why shouldn’t they allowed to express their distaste.
The Real problem here is the entitlement often showed by OP, yours and such, that everytime people try to normal counterargue and say why they don’t find it good and stuff… explain why something be like that,t hat it’s dismissed and often met with highly aggressive behaviour. Which than leads the other side to do the same.
As pointed out above, everyone can and should give feedback, but you also should be aware that some type of feedback doesn’t work well, because it doesn’t fit the concept / genre.
Like to give you an simple abstract example:
If a Gran Turismo Fan would go into Mario Kart and complain that the racing/car-mechanics aren’t realistic & immersive enough, do you find its a good and fitting suggestion/feedback?
I’d argue not because MK was never meant to be a racing-sim but a funracer. And the same sense here… Last Epoch might never be meant as an direct diablo-casual-alternative… that’s why your suggestions are so offputting because people who argue here against it, don’t want another Diablo, they want Last Epoch - exactly where it stands. And feedback should rather enhance the experience… not kill it.
I see no normal counter-argument, I only see flaming, from yourself included: because I am apparently entitled for wanting to be not punished for experimenting with the game.
I am not sure how you are not seeing it: you and others are escalating super quickly and trying to silence those who are not 100% on board with the current state of the game, and then claim you are being constructive.
You are, even in your reply, not at all constructive. You are trying to paint OP, me and “such” as some sort of bad actors – because it’s easier to shut them down that way.
Which I disagree with.
You too, like all others before you, provided zero objective arguments against not punishing players for wanting to experiment. The only thing resembling an argument in your comment was this:
Please clarify how removing punishment for respec’ing will:
Remove your meaningful choices;
Remove your idea of a class identity;
And all others “such” things that you conveniently left out.
Let’s hear it. For real, I want a discussion and for now the only thing I am getting is flaming.
We’ve already discussed ad nauseum about why removing any respec punishments is a bad design decision and also against what the developers want but I’ll give you the cliff-notes.
Allowing unlimited respecs anywhere you want creates a system where the player can customize their build for the content their facing on the fly and creates a situation, like someone described in WoW, where players would reach the boss and spend 5-10 minutes retrofitting their build for the boss IN THE DUNGEON.
Most people aren’t saying the current system isn’t punishing enough, we’re fine with the gold cost, it’s just that it becomes negligible and the lack of QoL (needing to confirm EVERY point is tedious) is annoying. A few people want it more punishing but they’re the minority. An even smaller few want it removed entirely.
The devs have confirmed that they want SOME player choice to be permanent, i.e. Mastery/Advanced Classes. The passive respec and skill respec systems are something they wanted to have to decentivize players from constantly hot swapping their build all the time but also not locking them in permanently and requiring a character wipe.
Then maybe another idea is: less gold cost, easier to do (not clicking every point) but some sort of a cooldown then? Would that work for you? Would that not feel like something valuable is being taken away from your experience?
TBF I am quite fine with that as well, maybe I was not clear for which I apologize: I was only commenting about the punishment for respec’ing. I am fine becoming a Void Knight once and for all.
The gold cost is already negligible, so lowering it is kind of pointless. Unfortunately there’s not really a better alternative. Requiring you to go to an Npc with a gold cost is the same system as GD and TQ and the only other system I’m aware of is D2s that gives you 3 full respecs per character (terrrrrrible design) and Torchlight 2 which let’s you Respec the last 3 points spent at any time and the console version has a craftable Respec potion that refunds all points (I’d be fine with craftable option, or equivalent, as well.) the TL2 recipe does require multiple Legendaries IIRC though.
Edit: i realized after posting that TL2s system with the Respec potion only matters because it doesn’t have an alternative to a full Respec (or the ability to remove all the points with a gold cost) so that’s kind of pointless and removing the Respec Npc in favor of the potion is needlessly punishing for build experimentation
Well, again valid points, but I refuse to accept there’s no better option.
F.ex. my wife is playing the Rune mage and she found herself dying easily. So she got the Focus skill and got pissed that now has to level it from half-way just so she can get to the parts with extra HP and MP regen / gain.
There has to be a better way to handle leveling.
Another idea: have harder and harder requirements depending on character level and/or advancement progress in the story?
I only got as far as lvl 32 so far because I want to try all classes and sub-classes and the respec punishment and lack of itemization (but that’s off-topic for this thread) definitely made things more frustrating than they should be when you are just trying out stuff and wanting to check what is giving you more fun.
Seriously bro, stop b’tching around, i’m only human and also can’t go into everything at once, let me finish the stuff which i’ve quoted and started to write before you dropped that suff. Sheesh. That’s exhausting.
Also i don’t shift the goalpoast derail or whatever… the point of the topic is arguing about both - classchoice and respecc that’s why i also argued on the class-choice as well…
I’ve a few reasons why i find respeccing should come with some sort of limitation. Again i’m not one of the oldschool hardcore diablo 2 fans which argue we should go way back were respecc didn’t exist at all… and i also don’t find it should super heavily grindable like PoE (alteast when i still played PoE dunno how much effort it takes nowdays). But it should have some sort of limitation and penality/price for it.
Because without it, it makes every build super replacable, with no sense of actual character-identity. It kills replaybility, especially if something like loadout saving get implemented (like D3) → because instead making a new character you just switch back and forth. A fair price/penality of respeccing still can allow a level of experementing or changing your builds, while also encourage if you target for a specific build to just start a new character.
And also on e mechanical level itself. It makes less sense or (subjective) less fun to have a level-system if there is no real thoughtprocess behind it.
To clarify: What did Level in Diablo 3 actually do? You unlock progressively / linear new skills and it auto-allocate points. But there is no real wheight to it, because you get everything everytime you play a new character. Meanwhile when i played Diablo 2 every level did matter, because it was a valuable point to spent on… and it also made each time i replayed with a new character more interesting because i could play different playstyles even on the level-process.
Now → a skillsystem with points, where you can change everything no the fly, might still be better than diablo 3 in that regard, because you’ve still some tinkering left, but it also dimish the value of the leveling / leveling of the skills itself because it makes it so replacable and feels more like an (cheap) illusion of choice, because any choice i do don’t have any real weight,impact or meaningfullness, even if i screw up, because there isn’t a consequence. I just can fix it, without any downside. And at that point it begs the question why we’ve leveling skills/leveling to begin with, why not unlock everything to the getgo, give a hardcap on how many points you can allocate and thats it. And that kills then the sense of progression in a RPG with a level-system.
/Edit: And @Scipo0419 brought up a good point as well.
Good, than i’m sorry that i’m too focused on the class - but than again this topic is also around the mastery-lock that’s why i did get into that as well…
No. My take is that “My fun is more important than your fun” isn’t a valid argument. You bought the game, you’re not having fun, you want the game to change so you’re having fun even if it makes other players stop having fun. By your own words (the ones I quoted) “No fun in the first 10-15 hours? I am gone.”, implying that the game should be changed so you can have fun and stay.
Saying “I’d like it to be this way” is valid, saying “Your point is irrelevant because it’s not fun for me” isn’t.
To be fair, his point was that if they changed it to allow to respec it would be the exact same thing. As in, the only difference between them is that you can respec one and not the other.
In D&D you can’t respec classes either, but it’s quite common in D&D based RPGs that they let you fully respec everything.
The limitation of something doesn’t make them fundamentally different. A padlock and door lock are fundamentally the same, even if one is portable and the other isn’t.
Lots of people (including the devs) have also already explained that: to prevent quick switches to cheese content.
I always found Grim Dawn on a pretty good spot, because the cost for respeccing is high enough that it gives some weight but not to heigh that it feels super grindy. And then they’ve the respecc potions which are valuable… not too rare but also not to common.
For the most part i’m happy in that regard about LE as well… as i pointed out above for me personally the balancing about skillrespecc feels off, because that’s one aspect where i really can see the frustration. If you start out it’s very limiting to experiment and i can see that people shy away to try stuff, meanwhile if you are in the endgame it gets so fast that it really invites you to try some stuff. I’m personally here more on the stance that early on it should be a bit easier to acquire a few points and less penality so people can try stuff, but for later on when you wanna finish your skill, it should a bit harder to achieve or let me rephrase it - with a bit more effort. But that’s just me maybe.
Passive-Tree is a whole other topic if it comes down to QoL and Accessebility…
the crafting system is extremely core to the game even at the low levels and just full on ignoring a key system is asking to have a bad time, everything up to empowered monoliths in this game is honestly extremely trivial even with putting points in stuff randomly.
Having a bad time because you refuse to fully utilize the tools given to you is honestly entirely your fault and removing the restrictions on respeccing arent going to fix it
I am absolutely not interested in playing a stupid zoomer metagame of constantly swapping between highly specialized builds to complete content in “the most optimal and efficient way”. I am therefore absolutely not interested in playing a game that is necessarily balanced around people doing that.
I played Diablo 3 already. I didn’t like it. I want to play Last Epoch.
This is called a Motte and Bailey. There is already a ton of room for choice and free experimentation. You aren’t upset that you can’t make choices and freely experiment. You’re upset that you can’t do it with the click of a button. That complaint isn’t interesting.
If it is valid for you to tell others they should just leave if they “don’t like having freedom of choice”, then it’s equally valid for me and @DJSamhein to tell you to leave if you don’t like having to make choices that you can’t flip-flop on at the whim of whatever YouTubers you follow.
Then go already. Clearly the game you want to play is not Last Epoch, but Diablo 3: Time Travel Wallpaper.
Just because some jackass asserts a thing doesn’t mean it’s worthy of refutation.
You aren’t making a genuine argument, but a loaded one - ala “Have you stopped beating your wife?” - because you aren’t being punished for experimenting. “Punishment” is not a synonym for “cost”. You are no more being “punished” for changing your skills than you are being “punished” for being hungry when your waiter delivers the check.
You don’t get to play this card. Sorry. Flag on the play, automatic first down for the other team. Nothing you’ve done in this thread is in service to constructive, civil discussion, and every one of your comments has been combative. You came here to validate your salt by butting heads with other people until they say something that lets you declare your objective correctness by way of a low effort understanding of logical fallacies.
The gold cost for passive respec has no relevance in my eyes, agreed. Would probably suffice to simply limit it to the town area.
The level cost for skills though is substantial enough to have a clear-cut and visible meaning.
The limitation on mastery class also has a clear-cut reason and meaning, just not as visible.
They do it in PoE.
Gem-swap before a boss from AoE gems to single-target gems.
Imagine a Rift enforcing you to play through it at once, hence killing everything inside + the boss without allowing you to change your build in-between.
Now you have to build to do both decently well rather then one amazingly so and one poorly.
That’s the choice which has been made here.
Most people don’t feel bothered by it until they do and then loose motivation for the game slowly.
It’s a friction mechanic after all, and friction without reward leads to frustration.
Mostly the people which disliked the D3 casual approach to builds, hence people From Grim Dawn, Path of Exile and also Torchlight Infinite by now.
They’re all used to the more ‘rigid’ types of building since switching between them has distinct hurdles attached or isn’t possible at all having learned to love those things as it enforces a more thought out approach to the content presented.
Once more, flavor.
That is a factually wrong statement.
Niche products cater to niches.
Broad products cater to broad audiences.
Both can be successful.
You don’t need to be Nr. 1 to provide a good product, the most important thing is a solid playerbase which enjoys it and ensures sustained existence.
The only short-sighted business decision is one which tries to compete with established companies in their field of expertise rather then finding a different approach which allows you to grow without being hindered by a superior product already on the market and readily available.
If you go out and make another D3 with less money then Blizzard you’ll likely have a baaaaaad time. If you go out and try to make another PoE without having the funds to even achieve it and make it not looks utterly atrocious as well as a nigh non-playable buggy mess then you’ll also have a baaaaaad time.
Hence you grab a positioning which isn’t exactly theirs… welcome to LE, neither as casual as D3 nor as convoluted and harsh to learn as PoE.
Exactly!
You understood it
I congratulate you!
Working inside a limited framework and making things work is indeed fun for a surprisingly large category of people.
Yep, but people which are fervent fans of the diablo-clone genre will usually take a closer look at the game and how it’s set up before buying into it, hence knowing reasonably well what they get into and having specific expectations.
EHG catered to those early on, they stuck, brought more people in through word of mouth and here we are having a fairly established community which a fairly established direction despite being freshly released… the product isn’t new after all.
Yes If you don’t look what you buy into then obviously it’s your own fault… the game present the overall premise fairly well in the first 2 hours and you got hundreds of hours of content on Youtube to inform yourself personally before making a proper decision for buying into it.
It’s your responsibility as a customer to buy things which you are likely to enjoy. I personally am of the mind that someone buying a product should at least know the ups and downs of it and how it functions as a baseline (not in detail, don’t need the code, just how the customer side is handled).
How else wouldn’t I stumble blindly around and waste money on stuff I neither need nor enjoy?
Oh, they do, regularly so.
I can’t remember how often a difficulty slider was proposed and rightfully declined since FromSoftware decided to provide a experience where the distinct difficulty provided functions as a aspect of subtle environmental storytelling.
It’s a distinct difference there.
Feedback was provided.
People repeated the stance of the devs that it’s a core aspect of the game they want to make, provided clear-cut reasons which actually are upheld (rather then the fear-based design-philosophy of no-trade from PoE as an example) when tested out.
It wasn’t accepted to be the case or to work within the framework provided, instead demanding that it’s changed nonetheless.
That’s not how feedback works, neither the community nor the devs are mandated to follow the feedback given, they can throw every single thing said into the bin and laugh at it… and face the consequences for ignoring good feedback which would improve their product along it. They can also go and take tons of feedback with negative outcomes and ignore good ones… or the can go and take lots of positive feedback and ignore bad feedback. All up to them.
In the end… if the devs declare something is ‘fixed’ and won’t be changed you can give reasons as to why it should be changed… but you have no darn right to be pissed off for people telling you ‘that’s not enough’ or ‘that’s counter to what we think would be good’.
Character identity and casual approach to locking in choices and hence giving them weight and meaning.
It was mentioned a dozen times by now.
Wrong equivalency.
You’re putting the argument of your comment about catering more to mainstream in comparison with the argument about respec.
This doesn’t function that way. You can’t combine two subjects willy-nilly and then expect to receive a proper answer… they don’t relate together directly
Killing creativity was in relation to choosing a niche and hence inherently not catering to mainstream.
Punishing people for respec is in relation to the choice between a more casual approach and a more rigid approach enforcing choices within a framework.
Actually… you do to a degree. The people here tell you that’s a clearly intended and well discussed topic which the devs have given a distinct answer about and nonetheless you hammer against it without any arguments that haven’t been heard a dozen times… which is repeatedly said even and those are answered.
Sense of achievement for the character by beating the limitations.
Distinction between specific characters.
Has also been mentioned several times.
You’re entitled for demanding it to be changed and ignoring the reasons given why it won’t happen that way.
Once more… nobody will let you smash your head against the wall when you start to understand that you have to simply work within another framework. Mastery changing won’t happen… so… argue about ways to reduce the replay time instead so it makes less a difference to you.
Argue about ways to have upsides for secondary characters giving you a head-start for the same base class.
Do those things.
Obviously you’ll ram senselessly against a wall if you simply ignore the things said and asked for them to be answered again despite being answered.
And that is the exact type of sentence why people escalate it with you
People did provide arguments as well as you generalizing. So don’t expect sympathy there, you’re bringing it onto yourself after all.
Having a permanent thing locked in is by design a ‘meaningful choice’. Having that removed obviously removes the meaning as you can change it.
Pretty self-explanatory, what more do you need?
There is no further concept behind it.
Every rigid aspect of a story, of progressing a character, of outfitting a character, of skill-choices and so on and so forth is a part of forming a character identity. That’s what that character is, nothing else.
It goes from being a meaningless blob of existence to a rock-solid unchangeable character where you can’t change anything about it. This is a scale, not a black and white position.
To answer that please specify so I can.
That’s actually planned and I’m a bit bummed it hasn’t been implemented yet.
Eh… the gold cost is already fairly useless. I don’t know if going to the point of outright removing it entirely would have any actual meaning… so I’m open on that.
I didn’t go into all the details of it though, the other major difference is you can’t spend Ascendency points into other Ascendency Trees. It’s very obvious if you look at LEs system that the Mastery you pick is the advanced class with the ability to “subclass” into the other two “locked” masteries. Your padlock and door lock analogy is a good one but the point I was making wasn’t that the limitations are what define them, but more that PoE is an outlier and their system is more akin to other RPGs than ARPGs. It’s also not what the developers want for their game so it could be the most common system in ARPGs and it wouldn’t change that it’s against the Dev’s vision lol (I know you know this, since we’ve been on the same side of this discussion the entire time.)
