It’s neither. The cost is based on the total points allocated in the specific node you are taking points from. It’s a very strange system that seems to punish mages since they have so many really high point nodes.
I have used it, it tends towards more than 1000 per point in end game to respec.
It’s a bit more complicated than that (& apparently I really wasn’t clear before).
So I tested 4 different passives at various levels of the Paladin passive tree. Light of Rahyeh (right at the top, requires 45 points in Paladin & goes up to 12 points at cap), Holy Precision (requires 30 points in Paladin & goes up to 10 points at cap), Faith Armour (@ 25 points in Paladin & goes up to 8 points) and Prayer (@ 20 points in Paladin & goes up to 10 points at cap).
Respeccing points in Light of Rahyeh became cheaper ny 280 gold for each point respec’d, so if you have 12 points in the passive the first point respeced (ie, going down from 12 points to 11) will cost 3,360 gold, the next point respeced will cost 3,080 (going down to 10 points in the skill) & the cost reduces by 280 gold each point.
Holy Precision works the same but will only cost 240 gold per point already invested to respec. So if you’re respecing from the cap of 10 points, the first point will cost 2,400 taking you down to 9 points, then the next respec will cost 2,220, then 1,980, etc.
Faith Armour costs 200 gold per point invested to respec, so respeccing from the full 8 points will cost 1,600 for the first point (taking you down to 7), respeccing down to 6 points will then cost 1,400, then 1,200 for the next point, etc.
Prayer, you guessed it, 180 gold per point already invested. So respeccing from the cap of 10 will cost 1,800 for the first point (taking you down to 9 points), then 1,620 to respec from 9 points to 8, then 1,440, etc.
What I wasn’t aware of (thanks for getting me to have a look into it), was that the per-point respec costs increase at 20 gold per tier of the skill. So the first tier of passives (the ones at the bottom requiring 0 points in a mastery) will cost 100 gold per point invested so respeccing down from 8 to 7 will cost 800 gold, going from 7 to 6 will cost 700 gold, etc.
The next tier of passives (requiring 5 points in the mastery tree) will cost 120 gold per point invested to respec, so respecing from 6 points to 5 will cost 720, going from 5 to 4 will cost 600, etc
Base classes, however, cost somewhat less. A passive that requires 20 points in the base class costs 50 gold to respec per point invested & the base class respec costs increase at only 10 gold per tier. So a passive that requires 0 point in the base class will only cost 10 gold per point invested, a passive that requires 5 points in the base class require 20 gold per point invested, etc.
So as it turns out, reality was a mix of what we thought.
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Lazy? Nope iam not lazy at all. I just want to have fun. And having to level a character trough a story line everytime again is just boring for me. I experienced this in POE and many other rpgs and iam sick of it.
Agreed. I actually really loved the story of Wolcen. I think the story is nice aswell but the way Wolcen presented it really sucked me into it. I would love to play it again. To bad that game sucks in many other ways however.
I think Last epoch starts to late with being interesting story wise. So iam really worried about having to level trough the story over and over again. So i guess i quit again like i did now after leveling 1 character.
I really would love to explore other characters in endgame but doing the story again is a big yikes to me. It takes to long and while it was fun the first time its not diablo 2 good. And like you say its self-fulfilling prophecy.
I have to wait for far to long before it gets interesting.
I kind of like the direction of sanctum breach not really making too many bones about a particular “primary story” and really just focusing on many divergent paths to take after a quick intro the world you play through. I think the foundation is actually already in place and strongly supported thematically with LE that if they wanted to (and think they should) condense the primary story into more of a worldbuilding and short origin story and focus on the game being more choose your own adventure end game systems and stories that present a good variety of well done self-contained timelines in the multiverseque context that appears to be setup. This way you end up with tight worldbuilding setup story which could then be skipped on alternative characters after first completion and drop the player at say level 19 in End of Time with a lot of variety regarding whether they want to do monolith, some other altternative timeline systems (like the imperial timeline,) to level up, arena, etc.
I think for now just giving alt characters level 19 and all idol slots unlocked, some weak baby monolith zones, would be a decent start.
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While I genuinely like some of the ideas thrown out here, I do think it’s a little odd to dislike playing the main story over so much. Let’s face it, you are still doing the same thing whether it’s in the MoF or the story; in fact I’d argue it’s a faster flow to run through the story instead of resetting for new monoliths. Are you really in that much of a hurry to get to the repetitive endgame grinding? I’m guessing the percentage of time you spend in the main quest is really small compared to what it takes to get to lvl 100.
The only “rush” I’d say is to get to the class specialization phase, so I do like the idea of skipping to lvl 19-20 or whatever. Maybe you can do that for each core class, so basically you end up needing to do the main quest 5 times? With a few uniques and twink gear, it can go really quickly.
If you skip useless sidezones and only go for the objectives and the passive points the story is done pretty fast untill you enter the snow chapter. There you need to stack some protections to have a real good time but untill then the game is a walk in the park if you play an alt with all the crating mats at hand.
I think you might even level faster through the story then through MoF. Btw did some streamers do some kind of race to the end of the current story? I think it might be pretty intresting to see how long it takes for some veterans with all the crafting mats at hand to go from 0 to the end of the story.
While that might be true, it’s beside the (original) point:
The point is: forced repetition.
In a game like this, where the story takes maybe 5 to 50 hours, and people play the game for well over 10 times that amount, the bulk of the play is in the ‘end game’. People can play the ‘endgame’ for 2000 hours, and still enjoy it, but the same people loathe having to repeat the steps they know by heart (like the ‘racers’ in POE), that ‘only’ take them 2 hours maybe.
Considering these ratio’s, I truly don’t know why developers keep forcing their players to play the story mode each time you play a new character, either an alt or in a new ‘league / season’.
The ROI in these games is never going to be in story mode again, like it used to be 15-20 years ago, it’s in the endgame. Accept it, and let the story go, please.
I keep seeing discussions about builds, and people optimizing the numbers of the stats, skills, gear - there is absolutely no Roleplay in that, but nobody complains about the fact that you cannot just play an ARPG anymore by just reading the flavour text, and hoping the skills you pickup because they fit your character will be all equally valid and balanced so you can reach the end game in the way you like and that is aligned with the role you want to play. Unfortunately, when you try that, and struggle to progress in the game, people tell you ‘your build is not optimized’, or ‘you’re not using that one mechanic that all builds must use’, or you don’t have a movement skill to dodge the one hit attacks’. I think that’s sad, that you can’t seem to play an arpg without a spreadsheet / build calculator and thinking about tier x / damage number z is or whatever. The ARPG lost the roleplay and it got replaced by ‘calculate’ and became ‘CAPG’ along the way it seems.
Trying to forcefeed the few hours of ‘story’ on the players each time around, which seems to be the closest thing to roleplay, is not going to compensate for that. There is no roleplay in repetition, when it’s the endgame randomness you are craving as a player.
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To me, the storyline of these type of games is basically just an elongated, actually cool sometimes, tutorial. Once you know it, it shouldn’t have to be repeated. It isn’t like there are options in the storyline to make each playthrough different.
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Isn’t mapping or rifting the same thing? How many hours have I spent in D3s low tier Rifts and Grifts watching stuff on my second monitor? Every time I play a PoE league I’m sad the story is over, oh boy what a crappy story part ^^, and I have to do nobrainer low tier maps.
I still like the idea of Sanctum Breach most. Play the story and after it you have 6 (iirc) endgame modes and you can simply play what suites your fancy untill you’ve enough of it. Maybe it’s only me but rushing through a game just to play the same thing over and over again and call it endgame just isn’t that fancy anymore. I like to chill through the story arc or leveling experience from time to time.
On top of this we talk about an unreleased game. I think it’ll be a bad idea to offer shortcuts like an adventure mode this early. If they implement something 6-12 months after the game is released I’m okayish with it but atm I’m almost sure it might hurt the game in the long run Instead of improving it.
Ok i do like d3 (even though i totally stopped playing it now) and i think there are 2 ways of doing this that d3 does quite well
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have a D3 approach where you can powerlevel a new char in 5min (in d3 this is either solo with high level items augmented to reduce level requirement to L1 or in multiplayer through another toon)
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have an armory system (i wrote about this in another post somewhere) where you can switch effortlessly between builds hence negating the need for multiple sentinels as @Llama8 put it ------- i think this is the preferred route where if you gate the armory behind reaching L100 with each mastery class then i think this avoids “trivialising” switching between builds
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The problem with that is how it interacts with the skill levels/respeccing.
passive obv easy as is only gold cost but if you make skill respec gold cost once you hit L100 on a char then it is also easy
Definitely, me too. That is why I like D3’s approach wher you can choose this as a player - replay the story to level a char, or go rifting for example.
This is exactly what i mean. Why forcing the same playtrough over and over.
Games like this are meant to play for years. It is horrible that the base idea is to have to repeat a story 1000 of times like in every other RPG. it is just boring.
Some people say it is a nice introducing and yes i agree. But after doing it 5 times for example i really dont need an introducing…
Especially if this game is planning to make leagues like POE.
I love grinding, but this design of having to do a way to long story line over and over is just boring. People keep saying don’t be lazy which sounds strange to me.
I play games because its fun. The endgame things of games like this is fun for me.
Repeating questlines is not. It feels like MMO’s were you need to walk from point A to talk to a guy and then walk miles to talk to a guy at point B ( this story is better dont get me wrong).
I dont get why people had change so much. Why are devs and people so scared to change things around. Last epoch has a portal system. Put it in to use for quicker leveling.
Add a new act for alt leveling or a different short version. The foundation is there already.
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I would just like to add a side note to my previous point. While I still think there should be an alternate way to level after you complete the storyline on a character, I also think that while the game is in Early Access, and changes continue to be made to the storyline and its levels, it should be played through. If only for the changes to be consistently tested. That is the point of EA, afterall.
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Ok, so to compensate in D3, every time you change your skills, donate some gold to the ground. You can roleplay a harder game if you truly want to.
To say that adventure mode is “simply the campaign maps playable out of order”. . .how is this different than mapworks in the Torchlight series, maps in PoE, MoF in Last Epoch. . .the list goes on. It’s the same system! lol
At least with D3 or GD you have the CHOICE to skip the campaign and level an alt a different way. You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to, and I think that’s what the OP here is trying so say.
The option to not have to replay the campaign every single character, would be pretty nice.
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Yep thats exactly what i mean 
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Personally I love leveling new characters and don’t get people who complain about leveling and this is in every game it takes what 6 hours on average among the classes/specs to get to monolith 45~ lvl so I don’t get the point of it getting shorter it extends the life of the game for me personally I can’t think of an RPG game with an option for shorter leveling experience after you leveled up one character that’s why its called RPG(Role-Playing Game)
But I do have one thing to add to the leveling process and it’s the fact that the last act is much much harder and rippy than the other ones you after the frost zone u get thrown into a zone much harsher environment and for solo hc enjoying people such as me its a big no no to go there until I’m somewhat geared and 55-60 lvl I haven’t tried it in the new patch as I was busy the last couple of days so I don’t know if the difficulty has been brought down but in my experience compared to the other acts even the last 3 acts are much tougher/rippy yes the new resistance overhaul might change that but still the fact stands that compared to the 1-35~lvl experience last acts are with much higher difficulty.