I like the system as it is at endgame because it’s easy to get exp in Monolith or Arena. The system shouldn’t be too difficult but it should not be too easy or even free. You need to put weight into your decisions, and you should be penalised when you want to make changes.
At early game it’s very tedious to try out new skills and respec. Probably they should make like a progressive refund? For example at first 5 invested nodes, refund X% of the points. At 10 invested nodes, refund Y% of the points. Something like a progressive tax bracket.
I don’t like that I have to put more than 20 points into the base tree first if I want to respec; it’s really tedious to do it. I think the game should force you to replace the point into something else when you click that button rather than you having to spec into something else first then remove it manually.
Honestly I’ve not readed all the pages before, but for me respec should be as easy as possible.
You are locked already to the class selection, so potentially you can do 3*5= 15 different characters.
It is nice to be able to experiment with skill and passive to find what is more fun and effective for your playstile.
For me if it will be free and if you can even save templates in game of my char (i.e. as you can do in Diablo 3 with wardrobe stashes that save equip, passive, etc…) this will be awasome!
Most of example here come from games that dont have real multiplayer.In multiplayer you will want to adjust your build with other party members.
And wasting time on leveling skills is annoying.
You have so many nodes in skills with ability to cast on alies, that pretty useless in single player. And you will for sure want it in multiplayer.
Yeah. There are 1000+ reasons why saving skill loadouts and swapping them instantly as well as respeccing skills without releveling again would be cool. I don’t think anybody would argue this would be a massive QoL improvement. But it has the one downside that skilltree decisions aren’t meaningful anymore. This is one of the main design pillars of LE. “Make decisions meaningfull”. This gives your build an identity. You are not just playing Paladin. Your playing a “Rive Ignite Paladin” with lots of DoT and fast melee attacks. Or a “Shieldthrow Buff Forge Guard”. You define your build not only by choosing the mastery. You define it even further by choosing your skill loadout and even much further by the way you build your skills.
This would all be meaningless. Everybody could play everything just by switching to another loadout.
I hated this mechanic in D3. That’s the main reason this game could not catch me. And the design decision of LE to prevent this is the main reason this game feels so fucking good.
And I hope EHG never change their mind regarding this!
Exactly the opposite.
This part was great in Diablo 3.
Why the hell ill waste time on making new char (and its a lot of time) if i simply want to try another build.
Mastery restriction is really enough. Here you change your path.
All micromanagement must be free.
Again take as example multiplayer and single player game. Its definitely different builds.
As For POE game it has very poor multiplayer experience (so many other games).
If last epoch devs want people to play multiplayer they must remove time penalty from respecing.
Thats your opinion. But it’s not a fact. MMOs are heavily based on multiplayer and also have the defined roles of tank, healer, damagedealer. In many of them you can’t instantly swap between single player and party specc. Some classes don’t even have those.
LE was founded with the philosophy in mind to NOT go the d3 route. And it attracted/ attracts many people that have this exact mindset.
Switching this would be like breaking their promise for many people.
I linked you an answer to this question in my previous post. Answers like this are all over this forum, reddit, discord. You just have to search a bit.
That’s correct. But the decision what’s the best from all games is not the same for everybody. Just because you like a certain mechanic doesn’t make it “best”. See that I dislike this mechanic. I don’t say that I am on the right side. But I am here because I read about the skill system that it won’t have instant swap mechanics like d3. This being the way to go for everybody is doubtful. But it’s the way I like it and I want it.
What is best is not black and white. You believe D3 approach for builds is great, I hate it very very much. So who is right here?
Answer is “neither of us is right” but it’s clear that LE devs share point of view on this issue with me and they are making game they would like to play.
LE is ARPG first and foremost, not multiplayer game or MMO so goal is to make great ARPG game here. And if it will be good and will have some solid multiplayer layer on top of it, it can be successful. PoE is proof of that.
This is true, unfortunately, as you can see from your versus RawSuicide’s differing viewpoints on this subject, what is “best” is an entirely subjective viewpoint (though there can be objective improvements).
Some people like having choices be meaningful (though that also requires that the options be useful, which they aren’t always), others like creating new characters, some just want to get to end game & grind for good gear.
test stuff out and make builds arround your findings
1.1. Minmax the living hell out things when you understood them
1.2. Establish a meta
Look for guides and news to always know what meta is
2.1. don’t use other skills outside of the meta skills because it’s not as fun and rarely something new is found if ever.
Do what you think is the best even if it’s not and perish because you didn’t knew it better.
There is some space inbetween these points but do I ever respecc? Hell no why should I? The only mastery I respecc is spellblade and that’s it. Everything else can be built the way I want it to. Just prepare, resarch and play the game and in no time you don’t have to especc anymore outside of testing changes.
I think the current system strikes a fair balance between establishing that choices matter, while still allowing for some freedom to alter your build without a full re-roll.
That being said, I think having points in a particular skill remain permanent (even when despecialized) would be a positive change to the system. You would still be penalized for wanting to change out your load out for a new skill you never leveled, but could revert that change without the unnecessary hassle of re-leveling a skill you already invested in. Of course, if you choose to change how that particular skill is built, the same de-leveling rules would apply.
I think PoE’s system is actually far more forgiving.
By the time you’re at endgame, you’ll have close to a hundred orbs of regret, or at least be able to afford them.
I think it’s currently too punishing to explore endgame build optimizations with Last Epoch’a current system relative to PoE.
I got tons of replay-ability in various leagues where I was seeking to eek out the last few % points of damage in Path of Building and needed to test the feel in game. I don’t personally buy the argument that making it too easy hurts replayability. Mastery locking already protects that to a fair extent, which feels fine to me.
In my opinion, the system to respec active skills as it is right now is kinda ok, but maybe they could make the new chosen skill to level a bit faster until reaching the level that the old one was. If not, the problem is that if u change a major damaging skill, it can be a problem or rather difficult to continue the game without struggling too much. And it’s even more true in beta stage i think. Some skills dont scale well with leveling while other are better. For exemple, I was struggling like crazy with fireball with my sorcerer at the beginning of act 2, then realized that with fire orb, it was way better. Punishing too much for a change of skill is not good in my opinon. The work of leveling a skill that you wanna change has been done already. The level of “punishment” should be at a good “dosage”: not too easy to make you select a skill too fast and without thinking, but also not frustating so much that it makes you want to quit.
Now that I am in end game, I think I like the way it works.
But early game could use an improvement.
I remember as a new player that I was too scared to choose a skill specialization for a while. I wanted to wait until I unlocked more skills before I choose. I didnt know it was easy enough to respec and that I should have just started trying stuff.
Damage in tooltips may help new players decide which skill they want to try first.
Also, I see some players that are very frustrated. If 80% of players gain a mild happiness from the current system but 20% get a big frustration. Perhaps it would be better to make some adjustments.
Maybe you could respec to a different skill up to your current level but that luxury maxes out at 5 levels. So you could respec a level 6 lightning blast to a level 5 fireball in your first specialization slot. And you could also respec your level 4 teleport to a level 4 flame ward in your second specialization slot. And there should be a short message explaining that, so new players feel like its okay to try out different things.
I prefer skill respecs be free and unconditional. I like to experiment. It’s that simple. Having to re-level de-specced skills is anti-creativity and stupid in my eyes.
PoE has it right. In PoE you only pay to respec your passives. Respeccing your actual playstyle in PoE is 100% free and involves simply changing gems and gems do not lose levels when removed. This allows plenty of build experimentation which is healthy for the genre and encourages player creativity. It is the reason PoE sees so many successful builds come and go.
This game has it backwards. Respeccing skills should be free and easy like PoE gem shuffling, thus allowing player experimentation, and respeccing the passive tree should cost or be difficult so that “choices matter”. The fact it is backwards to the PoE approach is the reason why so few builds are being used in this game and why everyone is a Death Seal Reaper Lich. Very sad.
Making respeccing expensive does not give your build an “identity”, it just means you goggle a build so you get the optimum without making a mistake that is difficult to change later. If anything, this is the opposite of giving your build an identity.
Ironically, if respeccing were completely free players would experiment all day long and likely end up with very personal builds that absolutely had identities.
Except in PoE there’s only a few (IE: 1 or 2 builds) each season that are actually playable. PoE gives the illusion of choice but in reality it has very little choices to give. Especially that absurdly large tree of skills to pick from that are 90% worthless.
Nice hyperbole you’ve got there, I would politely suggest that that kind of attitude is part of PoE’s problem (not all of it, obviously, “balance” is part of it as well). The attitude that a game should be approached as work, and that if you’re not taking the most optimal/optimised path (or Mathil’s builds) then you’re somehow wasting time, or a noob for not knowing, or for not having the best gear, or for wanting to play a different build/way/etc. And there’s the (IMO) toxic (for the community) viewpoint that focuses in so hard on differences of a fraction of a percent & declares the skill with the smaller figure garbage. It reminds me of when I raided in SWTOR & some groups wanted to only take people through a story mode raid if they had gear that dropped in the hard mode or nightmare mode…
Edit: That said, there is room for more than one way to play a game & “my” way is just as valid as the one I’m decrying…
