Anyone ever see the original design intent statement for Path of Exile? It was full of words like “brutal”, “hardcore” and “merciless” and it included a design intent that the looting system would be as brutal as the game. First come first served. If you’re not fast, you’re last. Loot was shared and open for any player to hoover up,
A huge debate occurred in the forums over that, of which I was very much part of. It was an incredibly unfair system for one thing because melee chars had all the loot drop at their feet.
Many hundreds of posts later, with the “true fans” encouraging the devs to stick to their guns no matter what. Stay true to their hardcore vision. “This is what I signed up for - don’t betray me” etc etc etc. What do we have now in PoE? Nice looting options so players can have personal instanced loot if they want it. A complete U-turn by the devs on that front. And why? Because their original intention was a really bad idea and would turn off many more players than it attracted. Fortunately they were big and clever enough to see that.
I am actually with you on that front. At not point will I or have I argued for free respecs and that’s it. I realise that yourself and others hang a lot of importance on the “choices matter” peg, that players like myself will never really understand. I agree there is no right or wrong answer to this.
That’s why I have always asked for an OPTION. Give us BOTH what we want. Have a checkbox on character creation that enables free respec for those that want it - under controlled circumstances - and that can be left unchecked for those that do not. Then surely we both walk away happy? Options are GOOD.
Devs already said that they don’t want to split the community because of respec options, and having characters within the same season/league/mode with different respec options doesn’t make much sense.
We need a unified system, either one side or the other side, or make a compromise somewhere in the middle.
I do agree that options/different ways to achieve something are good though.
But what about trying to suggest new ideas noone has brought up yet? Or commenting on some suggestions that were already made within this thread? It kinda get’s boring and meanigless when arguing with the same stuff over and over and over again.
I think a compromise is the only way to go, that way everybody’s pissed off.
I think I’ve probably been argued round to there being a farmable currency that makes a respec retain the skill point, or if you don’t have any then you just loose the skill point as you do now. My alternative would be to regain the xp much faster, as I said earlier.
Yeah, i have been argued as well. When this started i was totally against it, but there are indeed some suggestions i really could live with.
To recap some of the stuff i would be “ok-ish” with when implemented:
When respeccing skill [A],you have to relevel the new skill [B], but the last skill [A] in that skill spec slots get’s “remembered”. When respeccing again and taking skill [A] again will give you X amount of faster progress for releveling
Having a “training area” where you can freely respec and spend points/kill mobs, when leaving the area everything get back to your initial state. So this would be just for testing purposes, to see if new skills/nodes paly out like you imagined.
Having some kind of currency(should be pretty rare, but obtained in a good amount in the story playthrough)
My personal favorite of those would be number 2. Would allow for experimentation but wouldn’t affect the actual character. Could try out things like mana sustain and cooldown timing etc.
Great to have some options to weigh against each other, feels like we’re getting somewhere
The problem I have with specialized currency, is:
it takes up inventory space (thought this can be solved by moving it to the ‘Respec NPC’s’ stash)
it’s RNG based, meaning you cannot gauarantee you’ll be able to respec given a certain amount of time spent playing. Unless it’s not pure rng, but that’s I’ve only seen doen once in a game.
the more you need it the less you have of it (initially in the game), and vice versa (much later your character is pretty much sorted out, and you’re left with 300 respec orbs at the end of a season.
As a counter argument to 3, you might say that it makes respeccing your following characters easier, so there is that.
Here is idea nr 4: how about a progressive system, where you get a fixed amount of ‘respeccing ability’, based on your character level (xp), so maybe you start with 10% and end up with 100% at max char level. So it’s a ‘privilege’ you unlock, and keep once you’ve earned it?
This could be solved with respec currency as a reward for daily quests.
Through story this could be a reward along with passive points or idol slots.
The important point for me with this would be that you can’t stack those currency (or only to a very small amount) and it should also not be tradable. This would prevent instant swapping depending on game situation.
Or make the currency only usable with an npc and get a cooldown timer at respec. This way you could farm infinite currency but you can only respec every 30 minutes.
There are even more ways to connect this:
Global respec timer per character - One skill ever 30 minutes
Timer per skill - You can respec as often as you want but only different skills
Timer per specialisation slot - You can respec every single skill of your 5 specialised skills every 30 minutes
This timer could also be 2 hours or 1 day. This in combination with the 3 different models above results in a bunch of some more or less restrictive respec solutions.
Also the timer could increase everytime you make use of a respec. And there could be another (or the same) currency to decrease the duration again. Or the duration decreases backwards for every day/hour/month you don’t respec.
What about getting a free respec once a day on login with each character?
I think they should be tradeable, but only usable in town, that way you can change your entire build if you want, but you wouldn’t be able to do it mid-arena. Though the downside is that you could run through a level to the boss with your clear skills, then respec to your boss kill set in town & portal back to kill the boss (more so since the levels-respawning will be fixed with MP).
That would feel janky as ****. Even if it’s “just” respeccing one skill every 30 mins. And heaven forbid you respec 1 skill a bit, the cooldown kicks in then you realise you forgot to change a node & have to wait another 30 mins…
They could even make respec’s free up to skill lvl 5, that way you get to play around a bit early on.
I am with you. I like to have a respec barrier, I first preferred the option of a
quick regain of skillpoints but after hearing arguments I think best would be to invest this time before you respec instead of having to do it after.
It could be a currency you build up (respec points) or you have to invest some time after which you can fully respec. The first sounds like the best, maybe with a maximum you can save up. I don’t know, make it collectibles with a bag for them or whatever.
Thinking a bit further, having it as collectible items actually feels good. You give them to the respec NPC as payment.
They could even be dropped per class or even skill specific. Happy respec token hunting.
But having a hardtimer on how often you can reset does not feel right, when you have a currency needed for that. Even without currency having a hardtimer feels bad, when you really wanna test out new stuff and after 10 min realise it’s not something you enjoy.
Just make respec only available in town/hub areas, maybe at an npc(could be the same that is for passive skills).
I would also prefer the currency being not tradable, as long as you will get enough from it via story and some occasionally drops. On top of that make the first few level free respec anyway, like level 1-10, or until you unlocked your 3rd specialisation slot.
If they will implement something like that, player also should recieve a very notable alert, before they reach the point, where respec is no longer free or you lose exp.
What ever method they implement, if they implement something at all, i would also like to keep the current way of respeccing without any cost, except losing all exp on that skill slot.
alright theres been 335 post so maybe this has been said, but just want to throw out 1 more ideal.
What if the moment a skill was unlocked it started leveling up. You can have all your skills level 20 at the same time, however the skill points are locked and your not able to spend them unless the skill is put into the specalization slot. Removing a skill from the specilization slot keeps the skill level 20 but respecs all the points so its back to the base skill but if you put it back in the slot you can redo the 20 points. Just an idea that would keep skills as they are and make respeccing something you couldnt do in the middle of combat.
What about skill points that are independent of the skill? So, you earn skill points globally, but you can use them on any of the skills as you wish. If you put more points into one particular skill, you get reduced rate of new skill points, but obviously more power out of that skill.
So for example I’m leveling up and I really wanna prioritise Glacier, I could spend 5 or so levels just really focusing hard on that before going into TP or something.
If you spend too many in one skill and ignore other’s the trade off is obviously that you’ll start to earn at a reduced rate (but maybe that one skill is really important to you!). You could also just apply some kind of cap or tie it to player level to limit the amount of points allocated.
Bit more player freedom and choice in how you progress.
While the current system is not really balanced for that, it could work. I am not a fan of that, since i really like the current system where all of your skills currently specialised getting “on the same level” pretty quickly.
Problem with your suggestion is, that depending on how you want to handle respec/changing points. That is the OP main concern and the biggest part of this discussion. Regardless if we keep the current skill system or change it hower(like your idea). The main discussion here is what happens when you want to change your skills/build and wanna test/experiment things.
I guess the main premise of my idea is about that idea of wanting to experiment and test things, since the time that’s hardest to do is while getting those points the first time. At end game it’s not quite as hard to respec because the points are gained back quicker at that point. Just a super random idea though that I thought I’d throw out there haha!
Yes of course, don’t think i want to shut your idea down or something, but it sounded a bit like a totally different idea for a “different skill system”.
But now when reading your idea twice i think i know were you wanted to go with it.
When keeping 20 points per skill max and capping the maximum points on a single skill by player level i think this idea could work out. As soon as you have all 5 spec slots and all skill points the system is almsot identical to the current one. I like that.
Question stays, how would you want to handle respecs? Do you have any own ideas? Or do you liked any of the previous mentioned ideas, that you could maybe combine with your suggestion?
Not a problem! It definitely was off scope of the discussion (just figured it wasn’t worth it’s own post at this point).
Yeah, the keeping things consistent by end-game is important so as to not require any major reworks, and my suggestion is more aimed at making initial leveling feel a bit less restrictive and allow a bit more experimentation in that mid-game period, and doesn’t address respecing at all (yet?).
As far as respecing does go…Personally I feel like the amount of points you reallocate at any one time is relevant, if that makes sense. For example, if you only shuffle a single point, it’s totally fine for it to take ages to be usable again. But, lets say you remove 10 points. At that point I feel like there should possibly be some kind of “bulk bonus”, where you get slightly increased xp proportional to the points lost.
Another way to ease that could be a slight xp gain bonus if you make changes to multiple skills at the same time… (because at that point you really could be damaging your build effectiveness temporarily).
To counter my own point, some would argue that it should be even more punishing because you’ve done such a drastic change…This is going to be an eternal and ongoing debate no matter what happens hah!
(because at that point you really could be damaging your build effectiveness temporarily).