So when 50% here say respecing is too easy and the other 50% says it’s too punishing atm, everything is as it should be 
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Many of us enjoy, when your choice actually has some weight. Again, while I would be perfectly okay, if NO respec would exists, I understand how important is for many players. So compromise should be like “Unlimited respec is possible, but not trivial, it should cost you time and/or resources.”. Make respec very easy and you will end with “load-out” system like Diablo 3 has, where character building is just non-existent. We tried this system and I believe it’s horrible for any RPG.
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I think I’m with RawSuicide on this one.
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I like the way it is now,
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I feel like respec’ing active skills is a huge pain in the early game.
I am okay with losing a point but it would be nice if we received a skill experience buff that doubled experience for the skill or something along those lines.
Maybe there could be a ‘global’ respec point pool that fills up 4 times slower than individual active skill experiences? Or better yet, award a respec point for every 4 levels gained in active skills.
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These are the exact points, I love how the skills are done, you can respec your specialization trees but you need to relevel the points you lost. It is very well done and makes you feel like your choices in your skill specialization trees matter. I consider these points much harder than I consider my choices in my character tree.
The singular reason is because if i mess up in the skill specialization tree or choose something not ideal, i need to put in effort to fix it. Where as the character tree feels more like a loadout due to how easy it is to respec and how easy gold is to get. There are not enough dumps to make gold feel like a strapped resource.
Leaving the story with over 60k-100k gold and being able to respec the entire tree with no issue is kind of silly. I ended the story with 60k and my friend who ended the story at a similar time ended with 80k. We quickly realized theres nothing really to use gold on other than respeccing and shatter runes so we have been doing so with reckless abandon.
Id like to see it require an item alongside gold that isnt easy to get or requires time to get. Could put it in the arena and have it be in shards. After so many shards, it becomes the full thing and you can respec. For new characters, could make the base class choices stay as they are now and only cost gold until mastery is unlocked. (or you choose a specialization.)
This will allow early experimentation for new players before completely locking in. Could have a prompt when unlocking mastery/Specialization saying that “once unlocked, respeccing will require the use of an item obtained in the end of time”
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So, if i need to respec my entire primary damaging spell it resets back to level 1 rendering it useless until i crawl through some higher level arenas/shrine runs with other spells.
You can see how this is a design flaw?
Give me another option, either pay gold to keep the same XP level or allow me to level it up again.
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In 2 monoliths (low level), you’re at at least lvl 10-15 (depends of the size of the map) in the respec’ skills.
I recently did it (respec’ 2 entire skills at the same time, hence from lvl 1). In 3 Monoliths (not high-experience rewards), i was full respect (or maybe it lacks 1 point i’m not entirely sure, but you see my point).
You still can think it’s an horrible idea but it’s not as punitive as it seems.
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And gambling to get a decent base with a decently rolled implicit with ideally 2 of the required affixes of at least tier 3. Then 500 gold to refresh the gambler. That uses up a lot of gold, more so not the implicits are rolled when you buy the item. I can easily go through a hundred k of gold just for 1 item.
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It’s like gambling is not designed to to be main source of items, nor it is designed to replace drops or crafting.
Gambling, how it is designed now, is exactly for case, when player have tons and tons of money, but nothing to spend it on. But other gold sinks should not be designed around gambling, because it’s just secondary system in the game. We should not be saying “Respec/Crafting should be cheaper, because Gambling is expansive”.
If gambling was supposed to be progression alternative for your character, it would be designed like Kadala in Diablo 3.
Respeccing passives is completely fine as is. Your build changes, you find gear that does better than your passives can, your ideas behind how your passives will actually work out don’t fit reality. Being able to easily respec passive skills is a good thing. Coupled with active skill respecs being much more of an issue to the player is great!
I don’t think there needs to be any more cost involved with passive skills respecs, especially now that your chosen mastery has much more weight to it alongside confirmation that you can never change it. Everything to do with respecs is just fine for the future, though there should be more indication to new players that active skills only go up to level 20.
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So what happens with low cost respecing, is that the tree feels more like a loadout. We can look at other games in the genre for comparison.
We can see this in the example of Diablo 3. The respecing is completely free and you eventually “max” all the passives. Your character is what gear it has and skills you have selected. There is no hard and fast growth to your character. You are as good as your loadout.
Then there is the other side of the spectrum. Path of exile, where each point is a somewhat hefty choice for a player that is not rich by trading. Each point can only be removed by earned “respec points”. A small number are earned in the main story, enough to make small adjustments to your tree. But the main “respec” is handled by a currency that drops. Each one you consume gives you a single respec point. This can be quite costly if you need to redo your entire tree or change specializations since from nothing, it can take almost 200 of these items.
This game has a dichotomy of both worlds. The skill system where it allows for respecing at 0 cost but the price is paid in your time to relevel the skill. This makes the choices you make with a skill especially before you have gear and earned the ability to do high tier monoliths an investment especially the last few levels.
on the other side of the coin we have the passive tree. The tree takes very little gold per point to remove passives and can be done with ease. I would prefer a system that makes this harder to reflect more towards how the skill leveling system works. I would like to see it cost character levels to respec alongside gold or require an item. This would make you think twice about where you choose to place your points.
Ideally, id like to also see the ability to change masteries but ideally it shouldnt be readily accessible and cost like 10 character levels. Make it a real hefty choice on if you really want to swap.
Now, there’s two different things going on their & they shouldn’t be mixed/confused/conflated - 1) free respecs, 2)being able to max the “passives” (paragon).
Being able to respec at any time does make D3 characters feel less “special” (IMO), and while being able to eventually hit maxxed out paragon passives (at, what, plvl 800?) also reduce the “specialness” of a character, they are entirely separate.
Umm, you can only get ~123 skill points in PoE (plus 5 per ascendancy point), you get 21 from quests. LE could go down that route, but they aren’t a particularly rare drop, plus there’s a vendor recipe for them.
I think my main difficulty/disagreement with having passives cost character levels is that it would affect gear & it’s entirely possible that you then wouldn’t be able to use gear that you’ve spent a lot of time/effort crafting (which I’m sure you’ll say is a good cost as it makes you think & you aren’t necessarily wrong there).
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The silliest part of diablo 3 for me was when they introduced the armory, so that you can select an entirely different set of gear and passives at the touch of a button. THAT is when cheap/free respecs make having more than one character pointless. This game already says no to that with the mastery class and making your mastery permanent and I think that’s very important for your character build to be part of your character, rather than just an aspect of your gear.
In this game, each passive point is generally ~5% increased damage or some such, if you want to make any impact on your build by respeccing you need to respec about 5+ points and figure out where they’d be better spent. Conversely I can swap out a piece of gear that has 70% increased damage on one affix for another at no cost of any kind. With the amount of impact your gear has on your characters stats, I think it would be damaging to the game if respecs of passive points were more costly than just gold, as it would limit what gear you would want to “exactly what I have now, but better”. Right now you can look at any piece of equipment you have on you and have multiple options on how to improve it: finding something with different but high stats you can refit your passives to accommodate, or finding something close to the same with potential to be crafted even better than what you have. That first option is what lets you try out unique items and experiment with your build and I think it’s vital to making a game with good character growth.
Keep mastery permanent and passive respecs only cost gold and I think the system will work great for the future. Adjust the gold cost of passives all you want (not too high of course) but keep it to gold.
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Oooo, I’d forgotten about the relative strengths of passive points & gear.
I was trying to illustrate the point with POE, If you do get into specifics you only need 163 to completely respec a level 100 character down to nothing and rebuild. This doesn’t include the bandit choice which is another 10-20 if i remember correctly.
I know i have personally opted to just relevel a character in the game rather than fix a skill tree i messed up on since there was the material cost that if the mistake is big enough is non trivial. Granted, the player based market of the game does alleviate some of these woes since you can spend your currency to buy these items. It is a different beast entirely when dealing with solo self found and engaging with the systems as designed.
You are correct, the paragon system was the one i was alluding to in conjuction to the armory in D3, these 2 factors really make a character not feel like a character and more of a set of loadouts since there is no repercussions or real choice at the end of the day.
Ideally, you would want to make the player think and really consider if they want to change their specialization from one to another. I hadn’t thought of the impact of gear that is possibly unequipable once you change this. Possibly the devs have a better solution but anything that makes you really consider if this point or this choice is a good one, it makes it really have weight since there are repercussions to undo it.
Ideally, Id like to see more choice brought in on top of feeling like these choices matter.
But i do see where you are coming from. It is a fine line where you want to give enough leeway for minor changes especially for new players but not make the system too easy to abuse/change within.
I hadnt considered this part. Its a very good point. The tree needs to be just enough to enhance gear but not overshadow gearing choices since if the trees are too strong, gear doesnt feel like it matters but if gear is too strong, the passives dont feel like they matter.
You do, but you also want them to feel as though they can experiment & play around with a character without feeling like they need to follow a build guide due to the perceived punitively high cost of respecing. It’s a difficult line to tread, especially since where the line is varies per player & is also “(in-game) wealth” dependant.
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It’s an interesting question, how much of the character power should come from gear, skills & passives? I was going to say that it should be 50:50 gear/passives, but what about skills (another 50%?)?
This is question what Diablo 4 devs asked and general opinion was 33% skills / 33% talents/ 33% gear And I think I sort of agree.
I think overall character skill and passives should give you a bit more power than items in majority of the time. However character progression is capped earlier than items power. So I believe it should be like 60% character / 40% gear and in the end game it could slowly shift to 40% character/ 60% of items (with absolutely best items in the game).
We should really avoid situation of Diablo 3, where your character can’t kill a single zombie without items.