In my MP experience, I respecced a lot during several points in progression. At lvl 80 or so you get boosted XP for skills up to max level, but even when it didn’t happen, I still had half the points and on 4-5 story maps the skills were in level.
Just prioritizing the most impacting nodes and filling up as you recover is good enough, the respec oppotunity cost is already very low.
Of course if you respec everything halfway through the story and you don’t know what you’re doing, you will suffer.
It requires just a bit of thought and common sense, you are already seeing how fast skills catch up as you unlock new ones, this aspect is not more demanding than any other, I would say is less demanding.
That’s not a respecc issue but a game issue. If the game was realy fun you won’t care. At least thats my problem because in it’s current state LE is boring af.
That’s every single new player to this game, then, right?
Just let them suffer.
That’s a great way to retain your players when a massive competitor game is about to land everyone. Still, if the devs’ desire is to alienate potential new players by punishing them for trying out build experiments as they level their first char through the campaign, and push them to D4, don’t let me stop them.
Having been through the campaign 20+ times now, I agree the game is boring. At least the campaign levelling bit is tedious as hell, I like the end-game.
Know what would make the campaign NOT boring and lots of FUN for me, no matter how many times I’ve been forced through it? Yup, being able to freely respec my new chars as I level them without losing hours of levelling each time I swap a skill.
Let me compare to Grim Dawn. I have 2000+ hours in that game and have been through the campaign many more times than I have been through the LE campaign. GD even takes the old school Diablo route and makes the player go through the campaign three times with each new char, on 3 different difficulties!
Never once did this get boring because I could freely respec at any time so every campaign run with a new char allowed me to experiment and tweak the build I was aiming for constantly. This was FUN. Not only did it hide the tediousness of re-running the campaign, but it was an absolute adventure for every char, as I often ended up with a build that was quite different from what I had planned when I started.
Heh. Disagreeing is fine. For fun, here’s a list of the respec costs for all the BIG ARPGs on the market today. See if you can spot the odd one out…(it’s pretty difficult, but look really hard and I am sure you can spot it)…
PoE: Main build respec is free and instant; swap gems about as you please, they stay levelled
D3: Respec is free and instant
D4: Respec is free and instant
Grim Dawn: Respec costs gold (which is irrelevant) and is instant
Wolcen: Respec is free and instant
Lost Ark: Respec is free and instant and you can also define multiple builds and swap them on the fly!
Last Epoch: Respeccing means you lose all progress you had in the respecced skill and it can take hours to get it back, depending on what level you were when you despecced (the lower, the more expensive)
Expensive respeccing (and the “choices must matter” argument) died out back in 2000 with Diablo 2. Even Blizz said later one of their biggest regret with D2 was making the respecs so difficult/expensive.
Having played the beta 2 full days, I wouldn’t worry about that game, like, at all. The core audience of this games are all in for the gameplay, most will not stand more than 2 hours of fetch quests…
Actually in D4 you pay more and more gold with levels and with each respec, to the point you can brick your character.
PoE: You need regret stoness to change your skilltree at last when I played
D3: Is free because it’s… well D3 ^^
D4: Costs gold and later at level 100 at least 100k EACH POINT
Seems like you are a tad bit wrong here or you look at “respeccing” in a very not big picture way ^^.
PoE I am sitting on 400+ Regret Orbs right now, and I respec a LOT. Build experimentation during levelling involves Gem swapping. (As an aside, imagine the LE designers had designed PoE. The gems would reset to levl 1 if you removed them…)
Last Epoch respecs cost the most precious and scarce resource of all… the player’s time. I also would ask just what exactly the current design is adding to the game?
My biggest problem with it all, which is probably the way it is intentionally, is the way it all functions combined.
You have to relevel skills, have limited specialization slots, only have a limited number of minimum level points, skills only unlock at certain levels AND mastery points?!?
It’s absurdly convoluted for a new player.
The system is the opposite of what it should be. Experienced players know exactly what they want to do, and re-leveling at end game isn’t much effort.
But for new players it’s actively punishing you for trying to learn the game.
It’s more punishing than Path of Exile, where the only long term commitment you really make is in the passive tree, and you can always not put points. But if you take the same strategy to not spec in a skill in LE, you’re practically wasting experience.
The is my new player experience, the furthest I’ve gotten is completing the campaign. Haven’t done much with monoliths. I haven’t even ever gotten a skill to level 20, so the person saying you’d have one at 20 easily by the end of the campaign is outright wrong. Maybe I was despeccing too much, but that only proves my point.
Hi Dertros.
You make some interesting points, here are a few thoughts if it helps…
Indeed, plain wrong.
I didn’t see this comment… Your skills will reach level 20 around character level 75, give or take. That’s about half-way through monoliths or a bit after that. No way you will get level 20 skills in the campaign unless you purposefully grind for hours in chapter 9 (and I don’t see a reason to do that).
How much you respec on the way doesn’t make much difference about that (because the first few levels xp is super small compared to the latest levels).
There is literally no point in doing that. A new skill will always start at your “minimum skill level”, so it is better to spec all your slots as soon as they open, you can always change later.
It is a bit harder to change skills, but a lot easier to respec the passive trees.
I don’t think “punishing” is the best word anyway, because the campaign is much easier than PoE’s one (allowing you to respec and still be able to progress despite lower-level skills).
Generally, a good trick if you find it hard to respec is to avoid respeccing ALL your skills at the same time. Do one or two, then one or two more once these ones have levelled a bit. This way you will never feel too weak.
And remember that campaign and early monos are really not very hard.
The 5-6 skill points you get by the end of the campaign in a newly respecced skill will give you enough power to do a few areas or monos, and they will level quickly until they catch up with the older skills. Just avoid respeccing just outside a boss fight and you will be fine.
Hope this helps, good luck exploring the monoliths!
I level a lot of skill gems from 1 to 20 just to corrupt them. Imagine PoE designed Le where you corrupted a skilltree and it went south and you have to start a new toon. What a mood thing to say.
Farming gold takes time as well and is passivly created so gold = time. Respeccing = time so respeccing = gold.
As I said up there somewhere (iirc) lowlevel respeccs should not waste XP untill you have 5 skillpoints. If respeccing is an issue in late game the problem sits in front of the screen. I respecced the wrong skill once I almost felt asleep and it was teribble to respecc it. Outside of my own player errors there have never been issues with respeccing.
I just hope for a better new player experience because if experienced players make wrong descissions it should be on them.
What is the point of “should come with a cost”. That you need a certain level for an skill is absolutly fine, but skills should be able to be changed on the fly. Not while doing an map, but in non-combat zones.
The problem is and that is my point of view as an business administrator (Thats really the english term for “Betriebswirt”? Had to deepl.com it) that you want to keep new players in the game. The first 2-3 hours are critical, after that the risk that a new player leaves the game gets lower, the more hours he put in. Yes, in an 100 mono map it’s fast to get an skill back to 20, but why is that not the case in the lower levels? Leveling an skill should always take the same amount of time, regardless of player level.
When is the point where you test out skills, new specs? It’s when you are at an low level. At the point you can actually relevel an skill to 20 in 1-2 hours you dont really switch the skills anymore. But you want to try out different builds and skills while doing the campaign, while new at the game and you simply cant because it takes to long and then you wont do it.
This can be frustrating for new players, and thats the last thing you want.
Also, i would advice, that it’s clear ingame when a skill reach an level cap, because it is not. A new player simply dont know, that he reached the max level for that skill and wonders why the heck it takes so long to level skills. A clear indicator in the skill xp bar like “Reach level xy to level this skill further” would help here.
New players also dont look into the forums (there are exceptions of course), they just want to play and have fun.
So, from my point of view it’s a dumb decission, let it cost gold, ok. But time (i know gold is time also) is not a good choice.
Because decisions will matter and not simply become some checkmarks in some menu.
You really don’t need a “maximum level” (relative to the current maximum skill level at that point) of skills during early and mid parts of the game.
Also you have 2 specialisation slots very early on and the 3rd one also unlocks within the first few hours.
You can always use these strategically and keep one skills that you are decently happy with high level and experiment with the otehr skill spec slots.
I really like when games make you do decisions early on that matter. This “forgiving new player experience” is something that makes games boring IMO.
Generally I would agree, but when you are already in endgame it does matter if your skill is level 16 or 20, so having them relevel very quickly during that stage of the game is important because you need the power.
I really think this is a mindset issue with a lot of people, because they think that its not worth testign and and respeccing because the skills that you frequently respec are like 1-2 levels below the rest of your skills.
But in reality, that doesn’t make a big difference.
Quite the opposite, with this you have some “Yes finally my skill level up to unlock skill node XYZ” moments.
I 100% agree, the currently implementation basically is like a “invisible wall”, where skills don’t earn any noticeable experience until your character reaches a certain level threshold to then gain one more level relatively quickly to then hit that invisible wall again.
For anything that is discussed here the player really don’t need to go to outside sources to “have fun”. Even if you don’t understand every single system out of the gate, you can still enjoy the game.
Also I will restate my question above. For those in favour of the current system, what exactly is it adding to the game? Certainly not “choices matter”, since several folks just posted how easy it was to respec (and at level 100 I agree it is). So what are we getting out this current design?
I see nothing in it except player frustration at low levels, especially for players who like to experiment a LOT as they level.
So we have a respec system that is more punishing the lower level the player is, and almost ignorable at high levels. And people are for this???
The issue is, that a new player wants to try out new skills, realize it takes a while to level them and then ask the internet for an build because he dont want to try something on his own. And new players are a valuable ressource you want to keep. I for my own dont understand why it takes as a new player way longer to level an skill, where you WANT to play around with skills, than for a veteran player who dont really switches skills that often while he could level an new skill in 1-2 hours. The other way around i could understand this.
