The way minimum skill level works is backwards, and completely irrelevant. Doling them out so sparsely early means you don’t get to experiment while leveling up when you really need to. And at end game, the early levels they cover would fill up in 10 seconds of play anyway. I think they should all be given along with your first 12 points, so you aren’t screwed by having to invest 10 points to find out a capstone is garbage. As it is now, what’s the point of the system at all?
I’ve never understood this silly idea that you somehow can’t experiment in the easiest part of the game without having the maximum possible skill points available to spend. There is no reason that you can’t experiment during the campaign. Skills still level at a perfectly reasonable pace, and any alleged loss of power by missing one or two skill points from a skill from being “underleveled” is so small as to be meaningless because the content is very forgiving.
I’ve leveled dozens of characters of nearly every class and Mastery, and experimented with swapping skills and points around on all of them. I’ve yet to see any evidence or have any experience supporting the claim that this problem exists anywhere other than the imaginations of players who are hung up on the skill level not being the highest it could be.
Try actually experimenting instead of focusing on the skill not being its highest possible level. You’ll very quickly find out that it’s actually fine.
5 Likes
I mostly agree with you, but I think the suggestion is probably fine? If the mini um skill level was higher early on, say it was 1:1 up till 5 points then slowly went to 10. You wouldn’t be so punished for switching skills around. I think the feels bad moment comes when someone specs a node (way for example channeled fireball) then realizes something about it they didn’t like. How much mana it costs, what it does, or the feeling of it.
A higher minimum skill level would fix that.
2 Likes
I think it’s totaly fair to say it’s backwards. Ramp it up faster in the beginning so new players don’t feel punished and make it much harder to repecc lategame when it is a non issue right now that makes respeccing a joke.
it’s a completely changed system compared to other games where you need more to respecc later on and less in the beginning.
Yeah sure this will be a non issue over time but again the new player experience is important and this topic pops up again and again so the most stubborn “Me no problems!” bonehead might come to conclusion that this is in fact a problem for people.
I don’t have a problem with it because I been there and done that and now I skill on autopilot but I see the issue new and unexperienced players have with this.
3 Likes
Gaslight much? A single point literally changes the entire nature of abilities. Going from 12 points to 5 is a huge setback. No, it won’t stop you from completing the campaign, but it feels awful to finally reach a capstone, be super disappointed by it for reasons you couldn’t know without trying it, and having to lose hours of progress because the trees are designed with build pathways being mutually exclusive. You aren’t losing just the capstone point, you’re losing every point not covered by the minimum to make any course change. That minimum needs to do a better job of making “trap” capstones less punishing.
4 Likes
if you’ve played thousands of hours already, it seems quite likely that there are things that the avg. player would find boring or annoying, that you do not
Exaggerate much? At low skill levels, actual gameplay is hardly affected.
1 Like
I don’t think you know what that word means, and it’s kind of rude to actual victims of actual gaslighting for you to use it so flippantly, and over a video game.
Not in the content you’re talking about, it isn’t. It’s only a “huge setback” if you are thinking in the most shallow possible terms of “5 is 7 less than 12”, and then stop thinking altogether.
This is a massive exaggeration.
Replying to the accusation that you’re being hyperbolic with even more hyperbole is an interesting strategy, let’s see how it works out for him, Cotton.
2 Likes
It probably would “fix” that. But it doesn’t need to be fixed. It’s among the most small, transient, inconsequential “feels bad” moments that there are in the game, and it’s not even a universal one. “It feels bad to some people” is not synonymous with “it should be fixed”.
The current system is fine. Some people just need to stop making mountains out of a molehill.
1 Like
I just don’t understand why it shouldn’t be fixed then. Something that affects some players but provides no positive benefit to others should be fixed. Can you provide an argument that the proposed solution shouldn’t be done other than just it’s a waste of time or a non-issue. As you said it’s an issue to some.
Since the new skill re-leveling got introduced way back when (anyone else remember no minimum level from the get-to? 
) this topic keeps coming up all the time. As a fairly experienced player I’ve not really had much issue with it BUT, that said, some of the things in this thread and over in another thread recently gave me an idea.
I know some new players find it a bit daunting and while I think too much leeway isn’t necessary, finding some way to give BRAND NEW players a chance to dink around more without altering stuff too much might not be a bad thing.
Please keep in mind, this is mainly thinking in terms of new first/second time campaign players.
Since campaign currently ends around ~50ish if you got all the way through without any skips, what if the minimum points is set to, let’s say “7” from the start of campaign, lvl 1. Then after 50 it would return to the normal baseline progression that goes up to the current minimum reset when you hit char lvl 80
So from character level 1-50 you can respec the first 7 skill level points you’ve earned of each skill for free.
[[EARNED: you still have to earn each point. So at char lvl 6 if you’ve only got 2 skills level to 3, you’d only be able to respec the 3 points in each.]]
This would give new players the chance to mess around all they want during campaign and explore how stuff feels or plays but it wouldn’t really have much effect on veteran players or characters who’ve already hit lvl 80 or what not.
I shall now brace myself for the incoming dogpile. 
2 Likes
I don’t think 7 fixes it. The problem is you don’t really know what you’re investing in until you get to a capstone, and the whole investment is usually wasted if you end up not liking the capstone. It feels unfairly punishing because you’re being asked to make a choice way in advance of being able to try it to see if you will like that choice, and correcting that choice is going back to square one. So the only way the minimum point level addresses that is if it covers the most efficient path to the farthest capstone there is, which it does, but not until you’re so high level that protection is irrelevant. You’d get those points in no time post campaign anyway. Being able to respec the distance to capstone from the start would actually let you try them to know how they work without being penalized for not knowing something the game is not telling you. They could also fix this by making the distance to capstones from the start shorter so you were making that choice at a point the current minimums covered, but I doubt they’re going to redesign all the trees at this point. Making the minimum “keep up” early is the easiest solution, and literally changes nothing for end game.
this would be the “let’s say…” part of my statement. Speculation. As in, an example to utilize to illustrate the broader approach to trying to give first time players.
And I also don’t think it needs to cover every single example (capstones as you refer to them) either. I think 7 or 8 easily gets you to several capstones on almost any skill to be able to at least test things out for lvl 1-50 play to give you a good idea if you like the skill or not. If the only way someone is able to determine if they like a skill is by getting to the META capstone of it, then for me, that’s not an issue of encouraging experimentation, that’s an issue of trying to push a meta and that I’d be 100% against.
1 Like
You’re misreading him.
Certain nodes do, yes, but they aren’t usually within the first few skill points of the start.
That’s not “a single point” now is it.
Or make them better so they aren’t “trap”.
Not about the feels bad.
2 Likes
Yes, it can feel that way. On the other hand, you will get accelerated XP, so those skills level up much faster.
We can fiddle around with the minimums and rates and whatnot, but if you’re respeccing you should pay something, you shouldn’t be able to just respec for free, especially skills. If you respec passives you pay gold, if you respec skills you pay with time.
1 Like
I don’t need to. Those are already strong enough arguments, and the default correct action for a working system - and this system is working just fine - is not to change it. The burden to make an argument is on the person who wants it to change, and “it feels bad” is an intensely weak argument when the bad feeling only exists if you exaggerate and over-react.
1 Like
Yeah, that’s what’s involved in planning and experimentation. At least, until humanity invents crystal balls.
Except that you’re not actually put back to square one at all, the time it takes to get back to where you are is only noticeable if you’re focused on being bothered by it instead of playing the game, as is the actual, practical, gameplay difference in Square X and Square Max.
I’m not sure what ‘feels bad’ has to do with ‘changes the entire nature of abilities’.
I think that’s called: Moving the Goalposts. 
Are you sure that’s not a description of replying to a specific part of a comment, “gaslight much?” with “exaggerate much” then me say he’s not exaggerating about the “feels bad”. Plus, there are nodes that are a single point that change the entire feel of a skill (eg, Fireball’s channelling node, Static Orb has several such nodes). He was talking about the feels bad of loosing skill points when you respec, I believe was the flavour of the overall post rather than (ironic that I’m making this point) the specific sentences that you pulled out…
That’s reductionist, at best. None of those nodes are reached with just one point. Otherwise, which skill’s feel are we going to use as a baseline here? Because Shift changes all the way up to 20+ skill points, with all the skill-triggering it can do.
Saying 1 point alters a skill significantly is dishonest, at best, since there’s usually a significant investment to get that to 1 point threshold. And, since different skills are significantly altered at vastly differing thresholds, unless this can accommodate them all, why are we having this discussion? Hammer Throw alters with less investment (2+,4+) than where Shift might alter (3+, 9+, etc)… all depending on what playstyle you want to experiment with.
And yes, I also feel that this takes away from the need to play the game in order to do all the things you want to do. I mean, it feels bad when I brick a craft. So, can I have an ‘undo’ option to revert the results from a bad craft? I’d like to experiment with various runes and glyphs, and don’t want to be locked in (in any fashion) to the results of that experimentation. I just want to be able to wipe anything I don’t like away, without any additional work on my part. kthx.
2 Likes