1 suggestion I have for allowing for respec without make the game Diablo 3 easy is to allow 1 respec point at the EXACT SAME TIME you earn AND use a new specialization point. You level up to 30, you gain 1 specialization point and 1 despecialization point. Once you spend your spec point and save it, you are asked if you want to use your despec point and if you say no, that point is gone forever.
Making it difficult simply to make it difficult or to create that magical experience is absurd. You can easily impose limitations upon yourself to get the experience that you want without peeing in everybody else’s koolaid. Nothing of value is lost by letting the player respec easily and often, and only serves to enhance the players experience with the game. The leveling experience is “neat” the first time or two, and after that its a chore to be completed to get to the actual content. After leveling a few characters, the idea of doing another just because it is the lesser of two evils makes pulling finger nails with pliers sounds like a reasonable alternative. At the end of the day, if you want your precious clump of pixels to “mean” something to you, by all means roll a new toon every time you wanna play a new build. you have that luxury, but why limit the freedom for those who are not opposed to seeing the sun once in a while?
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Now I’m gonna nail you down, and expect a direct answer from you:
“At the end of the day, if you want your precious loot to “mean” something to you, by all means go grind for loot every day. You have that luxury, but why Limit the freedom for those who are not opposed to just getting every item for free whenever they want?”
A build, spec, setup etc. is a means to the end, the loot is the end. The difference is the game is the grind for loot, character power, progression, and/or advancement in some other meaningful way. The build should be your foundation, your starting point, and the gear should augment and enhance the character. Giving away free loot is defeating the entire purpose of a dungeon crawler/looter style game, where as giving away free/easy respecs allows for the game to be played without taxing the players time behind an artificial penalty of leveling. You can theory craft until you are blue in the face, but nothing beats first hand experience. XYZ build may sounds like a great idea, but maybe the way its implemented in this game doesn’t quite do it for you for what ever reason, just wasted 5-10 hours of leveling to find out you hate it. Conversely, what if we were required to permanently select a piece of gear for each slot? You are forced to pick at max level your gloves that you are going to use, and if you ever take them off they are destroyed and you have to start over.
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I’d like to differ. In my opinion, reaching Level 100 is as much a Progression as gaining better gear. Both increases your power, both has to be weighed against each other and complement each other. Both have to grow naturally to feel meaningful, and giving you one half of your Progression for free sucks half the Soul out of the game.
So, by following your logic, you should also be against the whole leveling process, and everyone should start at lvl 100, right? Since that’s the starting Point?
“taxing the Players time behind an artificial Penalty of finding the item” Are you really telling me that leveling is not a purpose of an ARPG?
Well, if you take them off you’re probably doing that because you found better ones, FOUND, you earned your replacement. Would it matter if the glove gets destroyed if I can just get it back for free? Why bother?
And yes, items in Last Epoch are very much like this. You craft an item, make it better and better. And then, boom. It’s fractured, you can’t improve it anymore, leaving it slightly weaker than your current item. It’s basically useless, “destroyed”. What you want is the equivalent of being able to craft your item as often as you want, with no risk involved.
For you it is meaningful the way you describe, for me it is meaningful not to waste my time on something what is not working from the beginning or something I already done many times.
If respec is free you could make you life harder if you wish. If respec is hard I forced to repeat leveling.
Actually I would not mind if PoE has adventure mode or even blank lvl 70 characters 
If you want to take the argument to absurd proportions and then criticize the results, have at it. You are trying to compare two completely different facets of the game and there is no real equivalency just to try and make a point. So to all of your “witty” comparisons, no you missed the mark completely. on each point you tried to make due to your in ability to see past your own bias. Nothing is lost by allowing players to freely or easily change specs or correct mistakes in a build. There is no relation to to build changing and giving away free gear, because the build is the means to obtain the gear. Being able to change your build still requires you play the game, giving away loot removes the reason to play. Simple, you’re welcome 
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Well, I’m giving you Arguments on WHY I think it is comparable. While you Keep saying “They are not comparable”…fine, but why aren’t they? Debunk my Arguments if I so completely missed the mark.
Gear is btw also Needed to obtain gear, you can try playing Arena naked if you don’t believe me.
EDIT: Changing it to a more neutral question instead:
Why can’t I say:
“Being able to Change your gear still requires you Play the game (if you can’t respec but get free gear, your case turned 180°), giving away respecs removes the reason to Play. Simple, you’re welcome ;-)”?
IMHO levelling and obtaining gear are two sides of the same medal. Of Course you could still go and grind for loot, but would it matter if everyone else can just get any item for free?
It’s the exact same with levelling again. Does it matter if everyone else can just respec for free?
You’re free to Counter my Arguments, but please Refrain from starting to get personal (referring to “witty”, “my inability to”).
EDIT: Now that I’m not longer at work and home I’ll just quickly add this and hopefully we see us ingame 
It boils down to simple psychology. Things have worth to us because we payed for it. With time, with effort, with thoughts, with money. Why are you happy when you find just THAT unique item you needed to improve your build? Because you put effort in, you earned it.
It’s the same with Builds, when you put effort in, you are happy when you reach that level 100 and finally get that last node that completes your build.
I think the whole argument roots in different scenarios we are talking about. I’m talking about full-on build changes, I was a Poison Druid, now I am a Lightning Shaman. I think you’re talking more about the times where you don’t know if you should put those 2 extra points in more element resistance, or maybe in the health regeneration. And you want to be able to test both and then decide with which you go. (Feel free to correct me on anything here, I’m assuming your thoughts) Or you put some points in +fire damage because you use a fireball, and then at lategame you notice that fire builds are underpowered at the moment, and you want to switch to an ice-build for example. Not all nodes, all those ward nodes are fine, but everything “fire” should be “ice” now.
I’m fine with the first scenario, removing some of your latest picks (the last 5 or something) can be really cheap, so you could save up 5 points and test two nodes where you aren’t sure. This also helps when you accidentaly misclick on another node, or put too much points in one due to lag. Not being able to change those is really painful.
But in the second scenario, you followed your idea, built your build as you wanted, and it didn’t work out. You don’t like your character that way, and now you need to level a new one or pay a hefty sum to respec. The thing is, along the way to this point, you thought hard about each and every point you spent. You guessed in places where you weren’t sure what’s better. You were happy when a node made you noticeably stronger, and second guessed yourself when a node didn’t.
All these feelings add to the excitement, the investment you have into the game. The feeling that your choices NOW are important.
Just as you invest in an crafting item, and it doesn’t work out. You are sad, but you get another chance, IF you put the effort in again to farm the materials you need.
And after much much effort, you finally GET that item, and you feel great.
And you only really appreciate your perfect build, if you had to put much much effort in it as well. Either through farming for expensive respecs, or through leveling another Char.
These are psychological facts, you can agree with them, or not, they stay facts. Instant respecs give you instant gratification, but in the long run reduces your investment in the game. See Diablo 2, that still has an active community, vs. Diablo 3, which is… well. Let’s just say D3 won’t have a community once D4 comes out (Though I do play every season, for one weekend. It’s a nice and shallow time waster, you don’t need to think, you don’t need to care, you get your skills for free, you get your set for free, you get free respecs once you find a better set, nothing matters but rushing through the season, and log out the second you reach it x-D )
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Not exactly like that. Every person has scale of needs from greatest to least. This scale is not static it changes over time. Person takes some actions to get means to fullfill these needs starting from the greatest one. The value of mean imputed on basis of need: greater the need more person value a mean which fullfill that need. It is subject of praxeology.
Well, I was assuming that someone who plays a Video Game has pretty much his needs sorted It’s extremely simplified obviously.
Human’s needs are endless. It is not possible to satisfy them all, since means are limited.
When I replied to your post I wanted to say that there is principal difference between ‘I price something because I put resources into it’ and ‘I put resources into something because I price it’.
Example: some person needs entertainment. That person can play ARPG or watch film or read a book, etc. All these are means. Also That person likes to try as many different builds as possible. For that player time spent on leveling from scratch or accumulating currency for respec are costs. The person choose form of entertainment what has best enjoynment relative to costs. If costs of releveling or respec are to high, that person choose another form of entertainment.
So, to that person to spent more time in game costs of respec should be less. You could argue that the person overenjoy himself and will leave game faster. It could be, but it is not problem for that player since he already satisfied his needs. Also he may return later.
There is common argument that longer player plays the game the more chance he buy MTX. It could be true, indeed. But is not for sake of the player it is for sake of developer.
You are right, but exactly these costs are what makes a fun, strong build you like that much more enjoyable, compared to mindlessly trying different combinations.
And I want to make clear that I’m not against respecs at all, they should just come with an according cost.
So if a player doesn’t enjoy leveling, but enjoys farming/grinding, he can cut his costs by grinding enough gold to respec.
It makes sense to be more inclusive than less. LE is looking to claim the attention from gamers with several great choices to choose from in a genre that is known for sucking away endless hours from peoples lives (a good thing).
I would generally disagree with this sentiment. This is, in my opinion, one of the problems with blizzard games today. They oversimplify and try to cater to everyone. WoW has been watered down numerous times in terms of skill-tree complexity over the years and I quickly became board with the focus on itemization over skill builds. Being overly inclusive deteriorates a game’s identity. There used to be a sense of adventure in WoW with attunements, quests that took you to other islands, keys, etc. That all got watered down to allow more casual players to access end-game content. Trying to make everything available to everyone lowers the sense of reward and satisfaction.
That all being said - I fundamentally do not understand why respecs have a cost at all in beta. The value each tester can provide significantly increases when you permit a higher frequency of build testing. I have to farm for hours to be able to change my build so if I have done something that is sub-optimal, then sure I can provide feedback on it. But I am also stuck with it for a significant period of time. This really demotivates me to continue providing that feedback.
Do we need another +1 here ?
Its espescially strange because right now it is the inverse of what would be expected. During the beta here, it is a pain to respec. That puts me off from trying different builds, in fact, i am only level 70, played just 1 build, and because respeccing is too much a hastle, i already swiched back to civ6 and i’ll have another look at this game in a few months time.
A few months after release however, we can already foresee that gold will lose most of its value, so respeccing won’t be much of an issue. Probably doubly so, because boosting another character in a multiplayer environment full of OP level 100’s will also be like 1% of the burden that it is now.
So yes, i prefer free respecing always, but certainly now during the beta.
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