As for the other questions u asked. @DJSamhein poined out why to one of them in this thread.
Its also why i said if u want to understand this more on why theres issues with the cost. Read the other threads that are about mastery respec. Im not going to repeat every single concern that was brought up about it in this thread.
U may not care about MG players having a far easier time respecing. Those that want to experiment and do not want to trade or hate trading. May feel as if they have to trade. Which breaks the whole reason cof was put into the game.
One way to fix this would be remove gold as a respec cost. And use something like rubies or platinum. And would still drop like gold does and can be picked up like gold. This would then put every player on the same lvl in terms of respec and not give an advantage to those trading.
This would also bring the philosophy of do u want to trade or not back in line with the intentions of putting cof in the game. Currently this is broken now due to gold is tied to trading
That is probably my biggest issue with it. Respecing should be a lvl playing field for all players not easier because one is a trade player.
My feedback post isnt just about me im also taking into account other players and how it may effect them. Or even the game itself.
I can certainly understand the concern for how this can affect the balance of the trade league. But I personally feel like the benefits outweigh the risk. As EH said themselves in a recent interview, allowing for respeccing of character mastery allows them, the devs, to make larger changes to masteries during a league if they feel they are necessary. And the benefits to the devs donât stop there.
Letâs say the worst fears of those in this post are true, and that players start using one ascendancy for the campaign, and then switch to another for endgame. Or start swapping between them when they reach a certain point in endgame, or to take out specific bosses in endgame. Guess what? All of that is data for the Devs to use to figure out whatâs wrong with certain masteries. Before, the only data comparing the masteries within a class was how many of each one got to certain milestones in endgame. Now, with players having the freedom to change their mind if they feel they made a bad choice, every single time they make that choice, itâs more data. And with that data, the Devs can better balance the masteries to make sure there isnât one thatâs miles ahead in crowd clearing, or trivializes bosses, or any other aspect thatâs important for game balance.
So in the end, I think the result long-term will be positive. The ideal for the Devs is not for players to play a specific mastery because they chose it at level ~15 and are now trapped. The ideal is for players to play a specific mastery because it is fun for them and they enjoy it. If a mastery isnât fun, or is too underpowered, or too outshined by another mastery in that class, the Devs want to fix that. And this gives them the ability to see that with cold hard data rather than having to sort through tons of subjective feedback.
Iâll have to admit that I have not read absolutely everything so I might have missed or misunderstood something here and there.
However:
As of now I do not think the cost for respeccing should be increased.
The main reason I can confidently have this opinion is that, as someone else pointed out, it does not really affect me at all if someone abuses the respeccing system.
The game is not suddenly less fun if I find out someone else is playing in a way that I donât find fun.
Maybe thereâs some competitive aspect that gets affected by this, I dont know and honestly dont really care that much.
What does affect me is the measures weâd take to prevent people from abusing the system.
It should be done in a way that does not âpunishâ the âcasual playersâ.
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I noticed a few people mentioned the idea that you should generally know what youâre going for by level 70 or so.
This is not the case at all.
There are build defining equipment pieces that canât be used before at least level 85.
Iâm currently thinking about World Splitter, since itâs the one Iâm most familiar with.
Iâm sure there are more that fit the role.
When you get to level 85 and the build youâve been grinding for is not as fun as you thought it could be, itâs very easy to just lose all motivation to play that character.
In this situation itâs really important to be able to respec subclasses, especially if you want to try to use the same equipment piece again.
Leveling up to 85 just to see if a build is functional is quite frankly miserable.
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I saw an idea about making the respeccing use a different currency that would be completely independent from gold but function pretty much the same.
The key point being that players in the merchant guild would have way easier access to loads of gold and thus the cost being effectively nothing.
I more or less agree with this idea.
I do wish this currency was shared between characters that share a stash though.
Going back to the World Splitter example. You can really quickly notice that the plan B does not work either if you can use World Splitter from the start.
Since plan C might also include respeccing to a different subclass it could be really annoying to have to gather more of this second currency to be able to respec back.
I believe it should be something you can at least go farm on a different character.
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There was also an idea of having to clear a dungeon to respec.
I have not played PoE so I donât know how this actually works there but I dont disagree with the idea.
I think as long as itâs not too challenging to clear itâll work well to make constantly respeccing more tedious while not affecting others that much.
The reason I donât think it should be challenging is because I donât believe a skill issue should prevent you from trying out something new with the same character.
The meta already started and weâre not even at launch day.
Rax is already saying that thereâs no point in leveling a Marksman, just level Falconer and then switch mastery.
Maxroll only has 5 leveling guides now, one for each class, because thereâs no point in not using the most efficient one and then switching later.
Which could still be done even with all players be on the same lvl when it comes to respecing. Vs trade having the advantage.
Which as iv said already breaks the whole do u want to trade or not. Imo this should remain as such. There should be nothing in the game that gives an incentive to go trading.
Switching should be an equal playing field. Replacing gold with something like rubies or platinum. Would level this out.
It would also bring back the philosophy of do u want to trade or not. From do u want to trade NO. Ok do u want to experiment or even only roll 2 characters maybe 5 and try all masteries YES. Then trade maybe where u want to go.
Its not about asking once self do u want to trade or not anymore.
As for sharing this with other characters like gold is. Yup id say that wouldnt be a problem. Would still keep respecing on a level play field.
By replacing gold with something like this. Im referring to everything in regards to respecing passives as well.
I agree this is another good idea for it. Could even be done in away to where its required. And the cost could still remain the same.
Only time will tell. And as we can see theres already a meta forming around this. To which i pointed out was already happening since the first day they revealed this. With no info on cost till a couple weeks later in the tour of the erased
Edit. Id also say mastery respecing should be a safty net. For if u dont like a build or make a mistake u can fix it.
What i dont agree with and 100% against it is mastery respecing being a form of campaign skip. Im all for experimentation. Exept once ur far enough into the game this should be harder to do. Aka safty net
Definitely agree with this.
Even if othersâ actions donât affect me I donât like the idea of using a different subclass purely because itâs faster to get through the story like that.
I agree that it should mainly be a safety net for those who want to try to correct a past mistake rather than a tool to be used strategically to optimize the playthrough.
I simply just donât see a perfect solution to prevent strategic respeccing while keeping the process easy and simple for others.
I donât think even level 100 should be too late to respec. There will be characters with the same builds being moved into legacy mode. At that point it might be preferable to just swap to a new subclass on one of the two instead of completely abandoning one. Obviously you could try to figure out a different build on the same subclass but if it was me Iâd just start leveling up something new.
Eventually the âduplicate charactersâ will start piling up and youâll have to abandon some of them. The point at which this happens will be delayed by the ability to respec and have more options for one character.
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Iâve thought about the issue a bit more after first reading about it here and so far my best idea on trying to minimize the effect to casual players is to add limitations to only hardcore characters. I would assume most people who donât care about trying to get through the story as efficiently as possible are not playing hardcore.
To be fair I donât actually know how many players actually have hardcore characters.
All I know is that I wont bother adding extra rules on myself. Iâd rather go with the fuck around and find out approach.
Itâs simple, actually. What you need is simply a number of allowed respecs per account. You start with X, each mastery respec spends one, over time you may gain more, like 1 every 6 months or so.
That way, players that are knowledgeable might actually use those to get fast respecs for a new character, but they would soon run out. And new players that actually want to change their mastery for legit reasons have ways to do so.
If you add 1 respec per character you still wonât prevent the meta of using one for leveling and then switching. Quite the contrary, actually.
The only limit that you can impose that might work in the long run has to be account bound.
True. Even a d2 respecing system would keep it simple. Other than having to farm up those essence or what the hell they are called. Havent played d2 in a long time.
i would summarize âwhyâ mastery respecs should be more expensive is to prevent players from going META starter build then respeccing into something else later.
beyond that LE respeccing hurts no one.
hence the easy solution is to have a respec counter similar to âdeath counterâ. any character which has a respec counter more than 1 simply is not legible for any achievement related to that mastery. similarly it disqualifies them from any races or leader boards.
I didnt make this feedback post due to it not having an affect on my enjoyment of the game. This may not affect u doesnt mean there arent players affected by it.
Its way to low. Part of the point of this feedback is to bring back some sort of permanence to the mastery selection.
Ur solution isnt a bad one in regards to players that care about these things. It just wont bring back the wight of ur chosen class mastery being a meaningful choice. As one that doesnt care about achievements ladder ect
so how does it actually make you have less enjoyment?
youâre right i have a bias here because i dont see it as a problem. the way i see it, if a game doesnt have hardcore mode, players can self enforce hardcore on themselves. it hurts no ones enjoyment. but if you force everyone to go hardcore, with no other option, its a selfish suggestion.
similarly for masteries. if people switched masteries on the fly and didnt care about permanency non stop, why do you need to feel upset that they do that?
if youâre saying that people who do that want to maximize trade profits by cornering the market fast, i would then say the problem is trade itself as the existance of trade encourages this min maxing. and if weâre being real, for real min maxers, it wont solve things too much as they would find other meta builds that work from beginning to end or even have parties so that they have meta starter builds carrying end game builds.
class mastery being a meaningful choice really is an archaic concept by todays standard. back in the day, players were forced to reroll but back in the day we had more time. being forced to reroll gave players an excuse to reroll and spend more time on the game.
if making masteries impossible/difficult to reset these will happen:
Newer players will be forced to always look for build guides
Players who want to experiment and make their own builds by organically changing their build will be severely punished.
Ragequit moments when newbie players dont like the mastery theyâve chosen but dont want to put extra effort to reroll/respec.
as a reminder. times have changed. i used to be gatekeepy as hell. i used to support xp penalty and a lot of gatekeeping mechanics. but now i feel that its always better for more players to enjoy the game.
there really is no benefit for EHG to enforce such a restriction. in fact iâm of the opinion that until a player hits maybe level 70, respecs should be free/cheap.
Undecember and TLI actually implement this where players have a lot of freedom trying different builds but once they hit a certain level, respecs become horribly expensive.
There have been already lots of threads about this and arguments from both sides.
But among other reasons, the most important is that basically it gives less enjoyment to people that care about it because of character idententity. Mastery was a permanent choice that mattered for character identity. Now it isnât. Makes the characters, and thus the game, feel more shallow than it used to.
The devs have always said that mastery is your class, not a specialization.
And how is mastery respec any different from class respec? Why should we allow one and not the other?
Why would this be true? And why would mastery respec change that? Each mastery has always had plenty of different builds. All mastery respec does is give you 3 times more choices.
This already happened before mastery respec. You could make your own build organically already. All mastery respec does is allow for meta strategies, as weâre already seeing.
This is the only case that is actually valid and the one the devs want to address. Itâs because of this that the gold cost is so low. Because if you make the gold costs higher, they will never have enough gold to switch and would have to keep farming and feel bad.
But for these cases having limited respecs per account will fix it without creating meta strategies that involve switching masteries.
And yet, in TLI, you can only change within your mastery. If you choose Moto Order, you canât change to Moto Calling.
Undecember doesnât have classes, so that doesnât apply.
Also, that was the problem being addressed in this thread. Once you hit a certain level in LE, respec costs are still low.
They might. I know Iâve used plenty of them. But Iâve never felt forced to do it, unlike in PoE. LE is simple enough that you can make a working build on your own, while being complex enough that you wonât likely have it optimized.
Besides, my point is that mastery respec doesnât actually change this. All it does is give you more builds to choose from.
