Oh, well that’s good information that I wasn’t aware of. And yeah, it kind of devolved from the original point of the post, atleast from my understanding that the respec system feels restrictive. I was under the impression that the poster was saying the respec system felt restrictive because you have to un-level a skill and re-level it to get the points back, and that just doesn’t feel fun when it takes so much investment to get to certain nodes.
For example, if I wanted only the extra proj and not the other node and I took the 3 points in poison like you said and realized I could save 1 point by taking the top route, I would have to respec all 3 points which I wouldn’t get back unless I hit the specific level it has set that starts giving you points back and level the skill 3 more times. That is specifically what makes the system not feel good to me.
I don’t speak for the original poster but hopefully this elaborates on at least what I thought he was trying to say.
Just tossing in 2.c here, but you can absolutely have creativity through restriction. There are entire fields of art dedicated to that sentiment. Engineers frequently need to find creative solutions within budgetary and design restrictions. Heck, as cheesy as it sounds, it’s not as if refrigerators are infinitely replenishing: professional cooks make way better dishes out of old leftovers than most other people.
That being said, there are other games that are less restrictive, and probably some that are more. At some point I think you need to take the current design as the dev’s vision and decide whether you want to buy into or not. To me, who’s used to this kind of skill tree where you have to invest a certain amount of skills to move down, this is pretty normal, and far less restrictive than what I’m used to. YMMV.
Dark Quiver has this.
4 points in ‘Nightfall’ - picking up Black Arrows grants Dusk Shroud, which is dodge + glance chance.
Locked behind that is ‘Until Dawn’ - 5 points, 5% chance on attack to summon a black arrow.
That being said, it’s the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and only because I really want Dark Quiver reworked, as it’s just a pain to use the ability. So much so that I have an un-specialized Decoy instead of it on the bar, because I’d rather have random arrows and a taunt, than just Dark Quiver by itself.
As far as the discussion on ‘waste’ points comparing PoE vs. LE… PoE is full of them. Tons of times you have to get +str/dex/int to go somewhere specific. If the ability you want for a specialized build is on the far side of the tree… well, it’s a long trek over, usually 10-15 points wasted.
My only qualm about LE’s trees is that it incentivizes you to not try new abilities. Wanna try a new skill while leveling? Ok, be prepared to lose 5-10 levels if you don’t like it. At least they put in the minimum specialization points, because before it was even worse.
Yes, you could jump into the arena at level 100 and get a skill to 20 in what, 15 minutes supposedly? The fact it’s possible to respec quickly eventually doesn’t mean it’s a good system while leveling.
Personally, I’d prefer it if you gained specialization points while leveling, and all skills could go to 25 instead of 20. Then you’d have to decide if you want to have one skill at 15, and another at 25, or 1 skill with zero, and 4 at 25. It’d be a fine line between ‘Which skill should have more points’, and ‘I can do with less here’
I agree with OP, the skill trees are a bit weird. One example that really sticks out is a waste of a point in Rip Blood that makes minions target what you target. Why is it a wasted point? Because pressing {A} costs zero skill points and targets whatever you want.
So if you had the points to take every node in a skill tree, how would that allow creativity? Every skill tree would look the same. Perhaps I should have said “restrictions breed creativity”? I thought that I meant was obvious but apparently not.
While this is more of a QoL Point, it is not even required as a prerequisite for anything, so you do not need to spend any points on it, if you don’t like it.
That is a fair example, but there the point of balancing kicks in. There are probably very few effects that would make sense as a prerequisite for that node. Since that is a gameplay altering change, that needs to be locked behind anything.
Having people not like Dark Quiver is totally ok, because that thing is pretty unique as a skill.
For me this ability is a game changer and the only reason i would play marksman, because without that i do feels marksman is pretty boring.
I find it to be unfair when I respec 1 single point (when I for example decide to swap points between 2 nodes) it just…disappears. And I need to earn it again. But why? While leveling every single point in skill tree is very valuable. And when the game takes my hard-earned point for now obvious reason it is weird.
Because you did make a decision. For me personally that is a very obvious reason and it makes you think before mindlessly putting points into skills.
Also don’t forget: Each skill point you respec, does reduce the skills level, which leads to re-leveling quicker than before. This gets faster and faster, the more you come into the later parts of the game.
Sure if you wanna look at it that way. My point is that PoE skill tree is much better, sure you can take a handful of useless nodes to get to something you want, but you have options, you can go around, you can grab it from a different angle, you can play as a different character, you can get less “useless” nodes and optimize your path to the point where you need every node you have. All that with an easy respec system that you can use while leveling to change up your build for what you need at that point in time.
LE is different, and I’ve said this before I don’t think its fair to compare this game to PoE because PoE is just objectively better and does all these systems way better. In LE you likely have 1-2 choices of path for each notable keystone. This is not creative, this is not a choice. And the real point of this post is that once you go down one of these paths and find out it sucks or you don’t like it, you have to de-level your skill and restart at square one.
I understand what you are saying but I have a feeling you haven’t played PoE to the fullest extent. Those 10-15 points “wasted” on str/int/dex are not really a waste, they improve your overall strength and dps a lot more than you would think. Certain skills require a certain amount of dex/str/int which you would otherwise have to waste time getting on gear if not for the skill tree. And especially in recent times when things like str/dex/mana stacking exist, it doesn’t really feel like a waste to get 10-15 points in those stats. As a side note, you also have the option to change your class to change where you start on the skill tree. It’s not often that you are absolutely forced to stretch across the entire tree to get just one build defining notable, you have a lot of choices.
But sometimes it is hard to decide just by reading the description. The player should see the changes in action to decide. Besides often the skill descriptions are vague and not 100% clear. Anyway i do understand that is the devs’ game design decision and take it but would prefer a more free skill respec system
I agree. You won’t exactly know how a notable might feel to play until you get it. Especially when it seems like a lot of the notables change the way skills work. Having to respec and then relevel a skill 5+ times just to try another keystone thats likely 2-3 nodes away doesn’t feel fun, it feels punishing and restrictive.
If you like it, more power to you. Some people don’t & liking something is usually a subjective thing. Plus more choice isn’t always a good thing (see, Tyranny of Choice).
It’s different & it has had a lot longer to polish things, that’s not necessarily the same thing as “objectively better”.
I would like there to be more ways to get to the various bigger nodes on the skill trees but I’m not sure how practical that would be given the skill trees are much smaller in LE compared to the Skilldrassil PoE has.
Yeah, as long as the travel nodes are relevant to your build (eg, int for an ES-build) then they aren’t wasted, or if they give you stat points that are needed for your gems, they’re very not wasted.
I agree, that you sometimes can’t judge how certain stuff will change and some tooltips could be more clear.
A Trainings Area with free instant respec for example was already suggested numerous times.
I also did find that idea cool, since you could combine that with the Time Travel aspect of the game, where your character explore “potential futures” and after you are done, everything gets set back to normal.
In terms of allowing player creativity, yes PoE does this better, objectively. That’s why I made it a point that I don’t want to compare the two games, I wasn’t even the person to bring up PoE to begin with, iirc. In terms of the overall game, yes it’s subjective whether it’s a better game or not or if you like one system over another, I can agree there.
And I agree, and I think it would be very simple. Literally just take the nodes that you can invest multiple points into, spread them out into individual nodes, make more connections with the new space, done. The tree is smaller because they chose it to be that way by design, they could always make it bigger if the demand was there or just have a zoom in and out option so you could scroll around.
I’d like to just reiterate the point of this post (from my understanding) because it’s really gone far from the actual point, for no real reason other than people picking apart small details they have issue with and ignoring the whole picture. The respec system is not fun, its very restrictive and actively punishes the player who wants to experiment. It’s made worse by the fact that you need to spend x points on a node to get to the next node. If you go down one path and you don’t enjoy the way that keystone/modifier plays, you have to reset and re-level the skill. When you are waiting for 5+ levels to get a modifier that’s 2-3 nodes away, it just makes it feel awful to respec at all. It also seems meaningless because there’s really no creative choice, you choose 1 or 2 paths and that’s it. The build for the specific keystone/modifier you choose to play is basically laid out for you on a silver platter. You could literally do a system like diablo and just choose a couple different modifiers freely and get the same exact effect. It’s trying to do something to allow you to be creative and experiment but literally restricting you from doing so through how the respec system works.
Being required to spend 20,000 gold for removing the last point, and decreasing for each point, the same way it is on the passive tree, would have worked just fine…
Unless you’re going to suggest it’s trivial to stockpile 20,000 Last Point + *20,000 Combined below and the cost of all that would be easily obtainable…
You can get, like, 100k in an hour or two in monoliths. I’m not sure if I’d say it’s trivial, but it’s not difficult by any means. Whereas in the early game 20k is very difficult, compared to, what, 10 mins to relevel early game?
If you wanted to use gold as a cost for respeccing, you’d have to make it character level dependent otherwise you’re making it nigh on impossible before mid-game (say, the Divine/Imperial era).
If we going to compare PoE. For a start, despite the need for currency to respec, PoE is FAR FAR more flexible. The passive skill trees is a glorified stat stick for the most part.
You can however freely switch skills & skill gems/support, weapons with the skills in-build on the fly. You can swap out a few skills, for certain content if you so wish.
Many builds I made in PoE I have 2 weapon swapping so I have one for AoE stash killing, & another with a different skill for Boss killing. Or have a gem or 2 that I swap in & out depends on which content.
The last Epoch is WAY too restrictive. You can only specialise 5 skills, which means you will NEVER want (you can of course but gimped) use any skills outside of the 5 you specialized.
On top of that, you can’t freely swap setup with a skill.
You can swap gears for sure, but Gears in Last epoch are just stat sticks for the most part.
I think arpg need to have some level of flexibility, allow uniqueness while able to optimise for different end game contents.
If you ask me, I say allow 8 skills to specialize, and allow freely respec of skill within a tree. This allow players to have sub-builds (with loadout like Diablo 3) that tailor to different contents (solo, multiplayer support fast farming etc) that prolong the game & not feeling stale fast.
im always in favor of a good respec system. look at payday 2. 15 profile pages with i think about 7 or 8 skill pages. you can respec freely.
this is one of the things i disliked about grim dawn so i use GD defiler to full respec. also used a respec app for titan quest.
let people play like they want. i will always stand by this statement.
Edit: GD also solved this problem of heavy point investment by separating the class level so that as long as your class has the level you can put points in the skill you want unless its connected to another skill which only takes 1 point before you can get the skill you want.
