Respeccing and other class drops are terrible

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81

Yes, that is the mentality D3 introduced. That isn’t the one EHG wants for LE. They want you to create many alts. They want LE to appeal to older players that like to watch their character grow, rather than the ones that just want to do all content optimally with the click of a button.

If mastery respec is a thing, there’s nothing stopping you from having a build with one mastery so you can farm echoes, then switch to a build with another mastery so you can farm bosses/dungeons, then switch to another for arena. Makes the game feel pointless for many players.

The fact that you can already somewhat do this by respeccing builds easily in the same mastery is already a concession and one many players don’t like it either. These things are a part of a game’s identity, and changing that identity will bring different types of players and drive others away.
LE is aiming for a type of player that doesn’t like the D3 on-the-fly respecs.

82

You literally used it as your main argument point above.

It was mentioned in context of the leaderboards being an important part for the long-term health of the game. Not the functionality of the mechanic there and how it’s affected by the current state of the game or changes to it.

The leaderboard and the fresh economy are both the major reasons for there to be a cycle, which entails a whole game-mod, the most important one actually I would argue since it causes the biggest player-retention overall.

So then going on a bit of a mind-tangent there the explanation for why the leaderboard itself becomes important is the following, so you can connect the dots:

Imagine yourself having a sort of pool for your effort you’re willing to give for something. Let’s call it your ‘mental mana’ here to make it sound nice and silly but keep it in mind for a few moments.
So, if you’re starting a new cycle on a leaderboard and try to get a high ranking you need a good amount of effort you’re willing to spent. You must be willing to use up your mental mana resource, because what you’ll do is not primarily ‘fun’ but primarily ‘efficient’, the best way possible, no matter the cost, because that’s the only way you’ll come out on top after all.
No downtimes in the towns or between monoliths.
Optimized usage of the factions.
Optimized usage of the resources you acquire.
Optimized selling time.

And also:
Optimizing your build for every situation as quickly as you can.

And here comes the crux of the problem. You’re already getting all that nice juicy ‘mental mana’ drained by those things for the prospect of winning. As to why? Because winning or even coming high onto the ranking list is a massive and amazing rush to feel. You beat the odds, nobody world wide or only a few people world-wide can even come close to you. You did it. It puts all the effort taken into a far better light, the things you’ve given up… which is fun lazy experiencing the game, sleep time, social contacts and whatever else… is made up for. You’ve refilled your mental mana to max, actually… you’ve probably increased your maximum capacity even!

But here comes the downfall.
Each of the aforementioned aspects makes you consider ‘should I really do it? Is it worth the effort in the first place?’ as well as during the competition ‘Is it really worth it? Should I really keep on doing this?’ and when you run out of mental mana you do the one and only thing left… you quit it! Or you don’t even start it after taking the expenditure into consideration.

So yes, the leaderboards are directly affected by frictionless respec.
You’ll be able to switch from Single Target to Screen clear builds on the fly.
You have to hence take off some piece of gear, put it back on, respec the points without cost and off you go!

Now imagine doing that before every… single… boss during the whole competition. It feels shit the first time, it feels like the biggest pile of turd created in the history of humanity when you’re starting to become burned out from the mental strain of powering through despite all odds.

This means less people will directly engage with the leaderboards in the first place, directly impacting retention time and hence income for EHG.
Also this means that more people will drop out along the way, once more, retention time and direct income for EHG.
A lower competition pool means that the ones at the top have generally less competition as few newer people make it in, allowing less ‘innovation’ in that area. The competition becomes stale… it slowly dies out over time. Less retention, less money.

So it has an effect, and one which has been well established over the course of any sort of competition and with no difference for this one here.

Several arguments against it already, hence factually wrong. You can’t remove the friction from the system.
Hence the solution is to think up a way to sidestep that friction as well as possible.
That’s a viable suggestion.

And it takes 5-10 minutes to respec.
What’s your point?

A choice has weight at the moment any amount of effort needs to be put into it.
The more the heftier the weight.

5 minutes is low, but hinders people on doing it.
2 hours is a decent chunk of time, it’s a decent hindrance actually.

They’re looking into that actually at the moment.
Also it’s not ‘half assed’ but a fairly ingenious idea they’ve come up with. The competition is half-assed in comparison.

83

I’m 42, and played d1 and D2 launch…

I still think mastery respec is a good idea. If mastery respecting means you can do all content with the click of a button, the game simply is not designed very well.

PoE has what could functionally be considered “mastery respec”, despite not having subclasses, and you still can’t do all content with the push of the button. I’m not saying any game is better than another, But it’s not a vacuum of: “add mastery respec, change nothing”. The rest of the game would obviously change in that regard.

It’s fine if the developer vision is to not allow it, in the game, but they do so by limiting fun. The more people that play this game, the more this will come up because it’s 2024.

84

That is very subjective, though. To me, it’s more fun the way it is now. I prefer to have multiple characters and level them. And I love that LE actually encourages me to do this. If they allow this change, then that becomes the meta and that makes it less fun for me. Just like D3 did.

2 Likes
85

And fulll PoE respec, including any balancing for pinnacles, takes as long as LE new character creation and campaign skip…what’s YOUR point?

Neither system is good. Just add fun…lol

The ability to change masteries would have objectively zero impact on the leaderboards. The same people that would get discouraged by your “mental mana” usage, are the same people that care about leaderboards…

Pretty much no one. Only hardcores which is a small % of the player base. How do we know this? Well… Look at the player coming, in beta versus launch.

The general population buying this game don’t care that there are leaderboards to use them… they will never top them…they care that there are leaderboards because other games have leaderboards and are looking for features.

Not sure it works this way :slight_smile:

86

Totally agreed. It is 100% subjective.

I don’t claim to know or speak for everyone’s definition of fun. At the end of the day, it’s a suggestion forum and I know what I would like. I can only speak to that, everything else is opinion or assumption based on my subjective determination of fun.

87

I play PoE since 2014 and I hardly ever make more than a Char, usually with the same build these days cause it’s so boring until it gets fun. I really love the game, but it’s too time consuming trying to architect a new viable build for each new character, unless you’re following a guide.
In LE I’m getting my 5th toon to 90 since release, after having leveled multiple to 100 in EA, just because it’s so much fun and easy and viable trying out new, unusual stuff… I really don’t get why people have ANY issues with respeccing in this game… I can only assume they’re spending more time doing anything else than actually playing it.

1 Like
88

Yeah, PoE respec is a steaming pile of horseshit.
To say it in respectful terms, you don’t wanna hear the ones which aren’t.

I also agree 100% that we should’ve loadouts for the Blessings so we can actually create several loadouts on character, since Blessings are specifically hard to acquire and change.

Pinnacles?

You keep repeating this sentence like you’re old school music box and haven’t even read my comment, otherwise you would’ve quoted the actual reasoning rather then the start of the argumentation.

So it’s fairly senseless talking to you I guess, you can’t argue and find common ground - or even solutions - if the person on the other side doesn’t even get into what was written directly.

Exactly! Also it entails a mechanical reason.
And also there’s surely a way to please both sides without interfering in the pre-existing systems.

89

Pinnacle bosses in PoE.

I read your reasoning and provided input below the sentence that you quoted…??

Totally! We don’t have to agree on the fundamental position of what we think the best direction for the game is. We can agree the game is great and it’s going to develop im some form! Would be great if there was a way to please both sides

90

What does it have to do with respec?

Yeah, but the first sentence already shows me the stance you’re taking. Denial.

Obviously, that’s why I made the point, which is a valid one after all.
Hence here we have ‘Reason 1’, meaning you ‘zero impact’ is already automatically gone.

You can’t claim one thing and then immediately make a 180 and claim argument about something that refutes the sentence before fully.

It’s a newly released game and we also didn’t have leaderboards before. In this game.
What we have are statistics from other games offering similar mechanics in one for or another.
Diablo 3 Season → High player Influx, leaderboard rush, new economy.
PoE League → High player influx, leaderboard and competition rush, new economy.

As 2 examples.
It always breaks down to either the economy or the leaderboards.
Economy in the current faction system with MG is nothing to look forward to for the average joe, hence the majority of the players, CoF is the main way for them to enjoy the game as in-between the ranks and functionality is a large gap for a long while.
Besides that and the missing functionality to price items properly through comparison and hence resistance towards listing items for the fear of undervaluing items it makes for a very slow-paced marketplace.
Leaves only the leaderboard as a major reason for the cycle.

Hence any influence towards it is very severe unless the MG situation is balanced better.

The general population won’t reach empowered monoliths as well, that’s a given. Most will stop playing after Act 1-2, as is also common.

You need a core audience to sustain a game as well as a turnover-audience to have a decent profit influx.
The core audience has a higher amount of competition based poeple then the turnover obviously.
The turnover only looks out for new content, but since that content is also available in Legacy there’s no reason to play Cycle unless you want to do limit yourself in some way.

So yeah, still a high focus solely on leaderboard, the core aspect of ‘it causes frustrating friction’ to switch out and allocate points before important fights still stand nonetheless. It would be a clunky mechanic which people start building around. It’s still a turnoff for people.

91

Preparing gear is part of the respec process. Preparing gear for Pinnacles PoE takes more time.

But it is my opinion is no impact… Other than the perceived impact by you. I obviously don’t feel this way about leaderboards…and you do.

You can’t tell me my subjective opinion is incorrect based on your subjective opinion. This is a suggestion forum.

I would argue barely anyone cares about the leaderboards at all, and they care about the two newly released classes and factions, offline mode. People picking up the game, or even existing players would have no idea that The merchants guild or circle of Fortune is poorly implemented… They would only find that out after making a seasonal/cycle character.

I don’t know how you could say that trading wouldn’t be something important for the average Joe… and even if that were the case… Circle of Fortune offers more loot…something that is interesting for everyone.

Being able to respec masteries only creates more demand in the marketplace, is a more interesting use of circle of Fortune… And doesn’t impact offline mode at all.

Or, you want to play with friends, whom are used season aarpg’s and cycle character offer the most content with regard to factions and leaderboards. Just because you choose the version with More options doesn’t mean you care about each one specifically.

Factions alone, poorly implemented or not, and the two release classes are the reason the majority of people would play this cycle… Also, we look at the fact that the majority of Diablo 4 players, and off-season PoE players are seeking a change and come try LE out at launch.

Who is not going to select a cycle/seasonal character at the launch of a game? I think it’s safe to say the majority of the playerbase does not give two craps about the integrity of the leaderboard; they just wanna have fun.

Either way, like you said… I’m sure there’s a way to please both sides of the community.

92

That’s not even apples and oranges, that’s apples and a mouse in comparison :stuck_out_tongue:
It’s about the respec system, not basic game progression.
For the respec you’re going out of your way of the basic game progression.
For gearing towards pinnacle bosses you’re not, it happens along the line as you improve your character.

A good way to put something in the same level would be acquiring ~ LP 1-2 Legendary items in Last Epoch given the game stage.

That they have impact is not an opinion, it’s a fact.
We can talk about how much and if it warrants the worry, but that they have one is an imperial fact which can’t be denied by logic itself.

As for the Cycle:
Legacy offers the same. Why pick the cycle then? It’ll have far less meaning then for example PoE where it’s tied to the new mechanic, something EHG already mentioned they want not to solely implement there.

And for trading.
Only in the current state. Early game it’s extremely strong, access to 4 T5 items right away, that’s massive. But those also cost a decent amount of gold, but a miniscule amount of favor.
The game isn’t even nearly as long as PoE though (yet) so that’s another consideration there.
It brings a large slump until reaching Tier 6 or even Tier 7 then. A time when someone has already reached at least level 85-90 I would say. It’s a bit late. And around 100 for 8. Hence access to the ‘good stuff’ is barred with MG currently in such cases, that’s not the ‘common player’ which probably stop somewhere between 75-90 with a character. Maybe starts a new one then, maybe not.

As for offering more demand on the marketplace:
True, I agree with that fully.
I also concur that it would be a inherently good thing.
Easy swap of skills or actually worse masteries would lower the replay-time needed to get character up to end-game.
First and foremost the lifeline of a game like LE is player retention, the longer they stay the more they earn, the longer they can keep services up and the more they can expand and improve their product.
In the current state you would have to play through it 15 times to get every archetype up.
Respec of masteries reduces it to 5 times, 1/3rd hence.
And variances in builds with how big they can be sometimes warrant a full outfit, idol and blessing change. That’s another hindrance for player retention if it’s made too easy to do.

I actually made a topic with a suggestion which is a compromise between ‘I want to respec freely’ and ‘I want to have weight behind every action’, allowing for both while sacrificing player retention for variance characters but also offering incentive to grind for gear for variance characters… so net negative or positive isn’t quite clear.

And about cycle again:
Nono, you’re getting me wrong there, that’s not what I meant. I don’t mean ‘during this cycle’ I meant ‘In the cycle’ so where you create your character.
The fresh content is important, the fresh reset for an economy as well, leaderboards aren’t usable in the context of groups commonly, only in some rare cases they have a positive effect there rather then a negative one. Competition in ARPGs is commonly a solo-endeavor.

And the bigger question is: Outside of simple habit… why would someone choose a seasonal/cycle character? What upsides does it provide compared to pre-existing Legacy?

In PoE it’s 100% obvious. The League mechanic.
In Torchlight Infinite as well. League mechanic.
I didn’t play more then a short bit of D3, so I don’t know it there, and had to put D4 down with disgust for Blizzards utter lack of care for their products upon reaching end-game.

And yeah, I’m sure there is, just the issue to find out how.

93

I’m getting multiple set drops in duplicates, except for me of course.

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