Quest to change the speciality?

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I ran yesterday a long part of the day to do a druid. And i realised that the gameplay is absolutely not for me. I finally prefer to switch to the shaman.

But, it seems that it not possible to do… When your choice is done, it is for the all your life (for this character ^^).

So, I am mandatory to start another character to play a shaman. And I don’t have a lot of time to play. It’s a little bit frustrating.

Do you consider a way to change your specialization ?

I though to do it by a special quest. I mean, you are mandatory to remove your specialization points, (temporaly), you make a special quest (30mn) to respecialize from one speciality to another.

It allows to keep the same character, and to change not too easily your specialization.

Could it be a good idea ?

3 Likes
2

It doesn’t take particularly long to get a new character up to the end of time to choose a mastery, I think you could do that in around 30 mins if you ran straight there.

Additionally, if there were a quest to change your mastery then it would have to deal with the possibility that you do it at high level and that it therefore needs to respec up to almost 90 points from your “old” mastery, what if you didn’t have enough gold to cover the cost?

Personally don’t think it’s a good idea for the game but YMMV.

1 Like
3

i think it would be fine to get some quest for respecing specialization and the increased cost in removing the points in the old mastery really makes up for it in the time you save on leveling up a new char from scratch

4

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the devs stated in the past that it was an intentional design choice to not allow you to change your Mastery to give your character choices more weight.

5

Or you lose all points. You can change the mastery with a quest, but you lose all the points that are not in the basic class.

6

i believe they did but it dont really work that well when you dont know how each mastery plays until after you select a mastery and then you suddenly have to level a new char which can make people that dont have much time to play simply quit and never return again

7

That is a fair point, but it really doesn’t take much time to level a new character up to choosing the mastery (30-60 mins without much difficulty).

8

normally when i find out if i like or dont like the master im at lvl 50+ and then it suddenly do take quite a while to make a new char and get back to the same point as im really not a fast lvler

9

Well, to me there’s a good balance right now. I honestly think that locking the mastery prolongs the game’s life. It’s one of the things that I liked about GD too, is that once the masteries are picked, it’s locked. I remember that one of the things that kept me in D2 for so long is that there was no re-spec at ALL, so if I wanted to switch things around, it’s time for a new character.

Besides, as previously stated, it really doesn’t take long to get to the EoT after you’ve done it a few times.

1 Like
10

Spot on, by “forcing” people to make a new char is often a good recipe for succes. It might be annoying to some people at first, but when they realize how easy it becomes after a few times, its actually fun to level as one has better gear found from the “failed” builds, and have learned so much about the game that it becomes kind of a overpowered feeling, which most people are seeking in these games.
Also that “failed build” will probably become good later on when you gathered enough gear to make it viable.

1 Like
11

Initially I thought that it shouldn’t be available in the game as a way to prevent abuse. I hate when people level up a build only to spec into a different end-game build because it doesn’t level fast enough itself. On further thinking, I’m not sure it would even matter that much. At the least, you would have to be level 50 before the mastery choice would even matter. At least when it comes to the choosing of passive points. With that, the mastery choice wouldn’t be something that would hold people back from starting a “leveling spec”.

Given that, maybe there could be a window of time in which you do have the choice to take back your mastery choice. Maybe 5 levels from the time you picked, it would allow you to go back to the same person and redo the quest. It should be substantially harder as it could be seen as a disrespect to the spirits or whatever.

I still think that a great deal of these similar issues wouldn’t be a thing if there were a build playground. A test room that allows you to spec anything you want and beat up on some dummies. It could even be made thematic with the story and explained as some glimpse of your future self in a stray time rift.

12

The mastery choice should be permanent. This is one of the design pillars of LE.

At the point when you stand next to the altar to choose your mastery and you are not sure what to build (and have limited time leveling) you should start collecting info about the masteries to choose.

You can read all the passive nodes to imagine what you can build. There are build guides for so many different masteries and different builds within the masteries. I don’t say “follow a guide”. But use the videos as a showcase of the class.

This decision has weight and should be made carefully.

Even if it would be allowed to respec your mastery at level 50# how would you do this effectively?

As a Druid you are a melee class that focuses close range combat and str as main attribute.

A Shaman is a spell/minion based mastery with focus on elemental (cold/lightning) damage and range combat.

The item choice is completely different. The game would leave you - a newbie that has no experience with the new mastery - with a lot of passive points and useless gear. On top you would have to change your skills and specialisation trees, too. You trash all your gear and skill progress.

I don’t think this would be a less punishing experience than leveling from scratch. It will leave you with a completely broken character, that isn’t able to progress the slightest bit.

For experienced players this is not that much of a problem. They would know what to do and may have items in their stash for a switch. But they wouldn’t have made a “wrong” choice either because of their experience.

I personally rather create a new toon than respec a build for a change. For example I have a melee VK and a caster variant. Because both of them have very different gear and skill setup (the passives aren’t that much different) it would have been a chore for me to change that build.

With a new playthrough you can grow into the character, skill synergies, passives and gear. You learn how to play and progress your build.

Yes, it sucks, if you end up with a character/playstyle you don’t like. But then you didn’t do your research, to be honest.

Just another advice:
Tell us, what is it exactly, that makes the Druid not feel good for you? Often new players make skill choices that aren’t most effective and so a class feels clunky, when there are ways to play a class differently. So maybe people could help you making your mastery being fun.

Cheers! :v:

2 Likes
13

I think we could be allowed to change the mastery, but we would lose all these points. It would be a kind of punishment, maybe. Either we keep what we have in our starting class (we keep our Primalist points and lose our Druid points for example) or we lose everything except 20 points. Respec would be a tough decision because we would not switch from a level 50 Druid to a level 50 Shaman, but from a level 50 Druid to a level 20 Shaman. You want to change? Change and become a beginner! :wink:

14

Losing 20-40 passive points permanently really would brick your character. And what happens if the devs bring out a new skill for that mastery that changes how it can be played and you really enjoy it? Would you want to change masteries again for another 20-40 point loss leaving your character with only the points you have in the base class & unable to actually play the mastery?

15

I understand that it’s a choice of designers. Just, when I choosen druid, I tested the bear form and I don’t really like it. I was not charmed by the appearance of the bear, and a little bit disturbed by the skill changes. I tried to go to the spriggan form to test it also. And I finally decided that I’m not a fan of the shapeshifting mecanism (I understand it could be powerfull and interesting but not for me ^^). So I have a character lvl 40+ that will don’t use the druid mecanism that I finally don’t like.

And the subject is not just to go to the end of time, because your need 10-15 level more to be sure you like it or not. Maybe it’s just for the druid, because before choosing the speciality, there is no example of shapeshifting. It means you don’t know if you like it or not the mechanism.

Of course, I will do another character and this is not a big deal. But it was really frustrating to grow up a character and on level 40, and you understand that you will just abandon it because you don’t like the gameplay.

In that case, imho, I prefer to do a quest to respecialize my character, I don’t loose my exp, but of course I loose skill points and I have to respec. Maybe it could be done just one time at level 45 (when you unlocked all the skills).

Anyway, thanks for your answers :slight_smile:

16

I really get, that some people are “afraid of making a bad choice” or they want to test stuff out before doing an important decision such as mastery choice.

But i really want to keep the mastery choice permanent.

I already suggested in the past, that we maybe could get a “trainings-room” where you could test out stuff freely, before permanently choosing.
This could be connected to the “time-traveling” aspect of the game, where you “explore your potentialy futures”, can choose passives and active skills as you please and once you go back, everything will go back to normal.

This will be probably kinda hard to program for the devs, so it might take some time.

But anything close to this idea, could give people a way to test out skills.

17

Yes, it would almost be a fresh start. I feel the only acceptable way to allow mastery change is to make it punitive. If it’s a price players don’t accept, I agree with you: we should not be allowed to change mastery.

18

I cannot disagree more.

I mean guys, let’s get real now.
If you download a game and within 2 hours you realize that your character is utter shit, then you’re not going to replay the first 2 hours AGAIN - you’re just not invested enough.

I personally uninstall all games which don’t allow me to reconfigure my character with minimal cost if I do happen to by accident choose the worst class which doesn’t work with my settings - especially if it’s a non-competitive game.

Not allowing players to respec their speciality is a terrible move.

19

8 posts were split to a new topic: Posts Removed From Quest to change the speciality?

21

Fair enough

If i realize my char is bad (which very few char are, it just the player that isnt experienced enough to play it), i just move on to another char etc. This teaches me about the game and makes me try chars i normally wouldnt play, all while gathering gear to actually make my fail builds work later on.
I can undestand some people want to be able to respec everything (and only find loot that fits your char), move through the game within a week and be done with it, but that imo isnt how you make a game last long. If most people were to uninstall their game if char wouldnt work then D2 wouldnt have been the succes it is, because that was really hard back when it started and there wasnt much guides or knowledge to go buy, and most people got wrecked in the last boss of the Den.

But to each their own, we all have different opinions about it.

1 Like