No point to respecing

Can someone please explain to me why I loose all my acquired “points” when I wish to change my skill specializations ?

It seems so silly as to be really optimal, I would have to save all my points up till all the skills are unlocked…

This will be changed in future.

The current functionality dates back to our pre-alpha demos when the goal was just to make it be possible. In future you’ll be able to perform some skill tree changes without losing all of your points. That said, we do not intend on making it possible to constantly hotswap your build. We don’t want minor changes to feel punishing, but we also don’t want people alternating between a boss killer set-up and a speed clear set-up. Hope that helps clarify things. :slight_smile:

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Is there a time frame to expect a clear cut definition of how often and how in depth we’ll be able to respec? I can understand how you want to not have build swapping like that but it’s also really different because almost every other game has an option for build swaps or even just having two trees available for builds.

Basically I just worry about respecing being super limited because that’ll limit people to going with builds that other people have proven to have worked. It limits our ability to play with our trees.

Why is that? If the argument is “roll another character”, it seems like added time-investment just for the sake of added time-investment.

While I don’t know if free re-specing for spells and passives is the best option, I just know that it feels super lame to want to try other builds (there are thousands of possible combinations to just 1 build, let alone all possible builds), and right now it feels like you’re stuck doing 1 build which doesn’t feel that great for a game that has so many possibilities.

It’s like going to an icecream store with every flavour in the world, and being restricted to eating just 1 flavour, and only being able to change flavours every 3 days. To try all flavours is impossible. Is there any reason why you can’t give all the flavours a try and then pick your preferred one? Not really…

A character which specializes in boss killing will be able to defeat normal enemies, just as one which focuses on regular enemies will be capable of killing bosses.

I’d further note that some (most?) builds won’t have such a narrow focus.
 

This argument appears to be predicated on the premise that giving people more choices will inherently increase their freedom / “fun”. I would argue that this is not the case.

There is such a thing as the trap of having too many choices. We would prefer for people to know that there is no single ‘best’ build for all content, to choose one they think they will enjoy, and to put it out of their mind and simply enjoy playing the game.

The choice between having an optimal set-up and not is no choice at all. So if people can choose to have the ideal set-up for each part of the game, they will. No matter how convenient we might make changing between one build and another, it will still be work that is effectively downtime. Added to that is the challenge of supporting multiple builds - needing to have additional equipment for other builds, spending longer looking at each item to determine whether it is an upgrade for one of your builds, and so on.

Just because we are restricting choices does not mean we are “restricting fun.”
 

This strikes me as being an argument against free respecs rather than one in favor of them. To permit them would be to have people spend more time in UI windows building and re-building their characters, rather than killing enemies, crafting items, and picking up loot.
 

Well, this is what I was arguing against in the post you chose to disagree with. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re trying to argue here - it feels like your post is split between two different positions. Are you asking for a ‘training room’ of sorts where you can temporarily try any build? If so, it might be worth creating a different thread for that topic.

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Thanks for the reply, I think a lot of your position on this request is well thought out, and I agree with a lot of the points you make. Also, I am really enjoying the game right now and find it’s actually in a great place, and can’t wait for what’s to come in the next year.

With that said…

ARPGs tend to attract a lot of min-max players. While I am agreeing with what you said about “players having fun over picking the only optimal build” is actually a good argument, but I think there’s more to it.

There are usually two types of players in any game. More casual players who do whatever they want to have fun, even if it’s not “optimal” or “meta”. There are also players who want to min-max, get the best speed runs, and have the most optimal set ups.

For the casual players, allowing them to freely re-spec I don’t think will change much. They’ll still do whatever they want to have fun.

For the min-maxers / speed-runners, since they don’t really have free option to switch builds (especially when patches drop, which might nullify their current build), there might lead to a lot of group-think, where a streamer or pro-gamer will theorycraft / discover the “Best” build, and then all the min-maxers (who can’t necessarily test out builds easily) will jump on board and follow whatever the most popular builds are.

I think choice is better than no choice. It’s similar using different OSs in terms of how much choice power-users have, Linux (choice) vs Windows (limited choices), or Mac (very few choices). Mac just “works” for a lot of users, and I enjoy using it. But a lot of powerusers want to decide more about their OS. They tend to care more about minute things, and don’t want to be restricted arbitrarily because “company knows better”.

I’ve seen this sort of “restrict users choice because they don’t know better” in a lot of software, games etc… and almost always do I end up siding with “more choice is better”.

I started my post moreso trying to say “I don’t know what the best solution is”.

I think giving entirely free-reign respecs might not be ideal, but if I had to pitch an idea off the top of my head it would be:

  • Spells are actually fine where they are. In 1 arena, you can get from level 1-20 (unless re-specing a necessary damage spell). So maybe I’d increase exp gains from level 15-20 a tiny bit to make it a little less monotonous.

  • Passives, I think keep it at something reasonable like 50k gold for an entire re-spec. This is mostly because if you’re level 100, you have sooo many points, playing around with the first level of the tree (even for fun), is basically impossible with the current state of things

You want your level 100 character players playing around with lots of builds, it can keep those hardcore (not the mode) players really interested in discovering new builds, when there are just endless possible builds.

Force a min-max player on 1 build or slight re-specs and they won’t stay interested for long. Playing the exact same build for weeks, months etc… is just not super awesome, especially if you have all the best gear for that build. I get you can re-roll a new toon, but it just seems annoying to have to level 10 mages and sharing gear because of this design decision.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about it, again, thanks so much.

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