Which is why you respec before entering the final quest echo, given that they have, at most, ~3 mobs in that aren’t the boss(es).
Edit: I agree that people may not do it but I don’t think a game should be balanced on the assumption that the player has sufficient willpower to not do a thing that gives them a clear advantage.
This is a really weird objection. Why would you expect someone to use an aoe build for a boss fight? This just seems like bad design philosophy.
Currently you can’t swap effectively between two different builds in a short time period so you’re “required” to either accept your build’s deficiencies in either clear or single target or change it so you can get enough of both to do the content in an amount of time that you’re happy with.
You suggestion allows the player to swap significantly quicker between the two damage regimes (AoE/single target) to the point that they would be able to do it inbetween monoliths. And you’re expecting people to have the willpower to resist doing something that would be more effective. Some certainly would because making the changes would take the build outside of what they concider the build to be, but (an undefinable number) wouldn’t 'cause they could easily get some more power & go through monoliths more easily.
I’m still not seeing this as a problem, though.
Look at Grim Dawn. Not only can you very freely respec points at pretty much any time that you’re not in an Arena or “rogue-like” dungeon, but it even gives you enough skill slots that you don’t even really need to. LE does neither of these. It’s the worst of both worlds. I can see this causing players to get frustrated with the game in an unproductive way, especially since there doesn’t seem to be many good single target skills in the first place.
I can understand the point of wanting to limit skill selection to make the choices matter, but doing it to the point that players feel overly confined or that experimenting is overly costly really can hurt their engagement with the game. This seems to do a lot more harm than good to the overall health of the game.
For that matter, I keep seeing this pattern across many design aspects of this game–make things needlessly uncomfortable, tedious, annoying, time-consuming, or aggrevating… usually to apply some false sense of purpose, meaning, or “weight” to that given thing. There are better approaches out there. We should use some of them.
Yeah, and I think this is where one’s subjective point of view comes in a lot of the time. One person’s “needlessly uncomfortable” is another person’s “this thing has weight & is good”.
Think this one’s largely because in GD, so much of your power comes from gear. It’s a lot more of a hassle to have to juggle your gear, resists, and devotions than just skills.
Might help if the gold cost idea you suggested also scaled like GD so that it starts out cheap then becomes more expensive if you do it too much.
I think that’s a dismissive take on what I said. There’s a difference between something seeming to have weight and something having weight you can feel.
Not to derail this topic, but the shard topic I made is a relevant example. Adding chores to the loot process doesn’t give that loot value. Having loot that stands out because it’s unusual creates excitement. Just compare the difference between if you turned off your filter and how it feels to see white/blue items all the time to a unique you haven’t seen before.
In the same way, the exp cost on respec is a false weight. It just makes it tedious and annoying while discouraging experimentation. Forget the “respec right before a boss” issue–that’s largely irrelevant to the bigger picture of how it feels to respec in general.
When I look at Glacier, I see at least 4 distinct ways I can build it–but because of the extra grind involved, I have only employed one. This hampers my exploration and enjoyment of the game overall, and it’s because this is a poor approach to the issue the devs are trying to solve with this system.
I’m sure some tweaks can be made to put it more in line with whatever the devs are trying to achieve with the concept of a respec cost. My suggestion was just an “initial gut feeling” about where they might start.
Quite possibly & I apologise for any offense.
But that’s the subjective thing. Some people think that not being able to change a mastery gives that choice “weight” & others think that it’s an annoying restriction getting in their way of having fun by necessitating them creating a new character & running through eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeverything just to get to the endgame.
As it stands you & I are on different sides of the argument on this one.
I didn’t take offense, but when I say something seems to have weight, and you say someone else thinks it does, I only see that as them falling for a trick. I don’t see it as legitimately, actually adding weight to the aspect of the game.
Generally speaking, the difference between the two seems to stem from how it relates to the essence of the gameplay loop. If something seems needlessly obstructive to the loop, I would probably identify it as “false weight.” If it enhances some part of the loop, that’s “genuine weight.”
As this relates to the cost of respec, the cost itself can be seen as obstructive regardless of what it is–so then it’s a matter of what’s palatable–but the actual “weight” of the choices regarding skill specialization is really in the opportunity cost of using some nodes and not others. So even if you were to respec 100 times, this same weight applies, even if it was free.
The issue I have with losing exp to respec is that the cost is not only arbitrary in some sense, but it’s so obstructive that it undermines the enjoyment of both the gameplay loop and whatever weight I might feel behind the choices of my skill’s specialization (because I lose those points to spend).
That’s an interesting turn of phrase. Do you, therefore, think that they are dumb/stupid/silly/etc because they disagree with you 'cause that’s what I’d take from the phrase you used.
Which is fair enough, you don’t agree with their position.
Which is a fair point, though it’s still (often) going through a subjective filter of “I don’t like this”.
It’s not a problem of intelligence. It’s more like they’re probably just not aware that devs do this sort of thing.
This is basically a straw-man. I’m identifying how the features relate to the game experience from a functional perspective, and you’re trying to reduce it to an emotional reaction of one user.
Let me put it a little differently.
Let’s suppose we’re playing a match of Chess. Each turn, before you can view the board or take your turn, you must run an additional lap around a track (cumulatively, so turn 6 means 6 laps). Does this add “weight” to taking your turn? According to your position, it subjectively does. Does it really enhance the game any? Would this harm or help your impression of the game if all Chess was played this way? Would you want to play this Chess over a version that doesn’t require this?
I think you get the point.
I don’t think it is though.
Player A has a bad case of alt-itis, when they realise that mastery X is better than mastery Y for their particular build they happily reroll a new character armed with the knowledge they have gained.
Player B doesn’t like rerolling characters & just wants to make the most efficient/effective version of the build that they can. When they realise that the other mastery is more effective for the build than the one they chose, they’re pissed 'cause they don’t like rerolling characters.
Which player is objectively right? Does making the mastery unchangeable have genuine weight or false weight?
I do, that feels like a strawman argument, 'cause the devs don’t do anything like that.
Don’t know why but this example reminded me of chessboxing…
I think that those player wouldn’t agree with you that this sort of thing doesn’t add weight…
I think the vast majority of people still prefer regular chess. 
I’m actually against the Mastery lock too, so that’s not a line of reasoning that doesn’t do you any favors here. It’s false weight.
Not sure what you mean with this, though. Having to make up exp and running extra laps around a track both have nothing to do with what you’re actually trying to accomplish in the game you’re playing.
To butt in here… In Llama8s example…
I consider myself a Player A type.
You consider yourself Player B?
Both of us are entitled to prefer a way of playing…
Why would either be wrong or a choice having false weight?
We are both playing within the rules and environment of the games that the devs have setup… Just like in life we play within the rules of society where we all still have different opinions and who is to say that someone who has an opposing opinion is wrong or has less value… Going off topic here but I am trying to understand your perspective…
You are probably right, but that wasn’t the purpose of me making this comparison, my point was that to me weight perception is subjective just as llama said, and even the features that you were talking about can only be talked about over how they relate to your game experience. Other people will have other game experiences and other opinions about what they prefer.
I for example like the current system that makes you lose a few levels of skill upon changing them, even trough i think they could use a little tweaking, maybe make the base level of a skill scale a little faster or cap a little higher, also the idea that someone gave of a practice room where you could change all of your skills at will but when you exited the area your skills return to the level they were when you entered was quite nice.
I don’t think that erasing the penalty for changing builds all together or changing it to gold ( that except for sole characters would be the same thing as erasing them) would be good, one of the reasons is the aforementioned changing builds before bosses, other it’s just my personal preference.
I think I defined that pretty clearly. You may disagree with that definition, but what we’re talking about is how that system impacts gameplay. I find the benefits illusory and the detriments lead to disengagement.