Maybe it shouldn’t be linked to character level… I’d say it would be fine if the mastery wasn’t locked up until you unlocked Empowered… That’s when the game really begins, after all.
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Well, besides all the things that were already discussed already, I can give you a downside to it for a portion of the playerbase:
Let’s suppose Season 3 comes with a new mastery, for example for Primalist. Players in legacy will log in to their level 100 Primalist, respec to the new mastery, try it out for a few hours with a few different builds (because they’re already level 100; so it doesn’t take too long) and be done with the new content in a day.
Whereas if you had a limit to it like in D2 (or a level cap like someone suggested), this is much less likely to happen.
I guess it’s fine if you don’t care about legacy players, though.
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I think I’m the one who started the level requirement suggestion lol. But I agree I think a handful (three would be perfect) quests that give a token of some sort that allows you to Respec. Let’s say you get the first from the quest where you pick the Mastery. The second from killing Majasa, and the final from finishing normal monoliths. I’d say those are reasonable times to give you a chance to experience the class.
You can Respec once at any time between unlocking the class and finishing the campaign. Once again between finishing the campaign and finishing normal mono’s (these could be done in either order) then you’d have one left for use during empowered mono’s if you still weren’t sure if you wanted that class.
I also realized halfway through writing this that I used “class” instead of Mastery every time. Is that telling? I think that’s telling.
Edit: I said Lagon, but my brain totally forgot Majasa lol
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Just the option for a mastery respec existing already dimishes the impact a this mastery choice has on you as a player and it strongly defines how the game is played and how it feels. Wheather you use the option or not.
Right now the mastery is part of the identify of that one particular character, it is not only a part of your build, your mastery is your character. And with how many choices within one given mastery exist there are a plethora of buidls you can go for even within that one mastery.
Now with mastery being able to change it is not part of your character anymore, it is part of your build, which can be changed and thus makes the whole character building a lot less impactful.
Also jsut because somethign is added that the majority of players will use, doesn’t make it a “good feature” or a net positive for the game.
Also the argument of:"If you don’t like it don’t use it " holds no weight for me.
I really like commitment in any kind of RPG and/or loot driven games. Character building and progression gives me a lot of fun and enjoyment.Just merely the option existing of changing it anytime severly downgrades this for me, evne though I am not using the feature.
No it is not, absolutely not. Having to rebuild a new character and “grow into it” is an entirely different experience.
If you change from a Level 75 Beastmaster to a Level 75 Shaman without ever having played that Shaman through the story of early monoliths is a very different experience.
This contradicts itself. A meaningful choice is one, that you cannot undo. Just because you decide not to change it, doesn’t make it meaningful. The game putting some, argueable arbitrary restrictions onto the player can convoke this.
I want to reemphasize, I can see the benefit of having a changeable mastery, but I do think it is a net negative for the game and it does not outweight the benefits of having some form of mroe permanent and meaningful choices.
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I’ll also address this and expand with a different example:
Many people complain that the campaign is too easy and boring to run. However, you have the option to run it naked and make it hard.
You can even just assign random points to your passive tree and randomly choose your skills and skill points.
Now the campaign is suddenly very hard and unpredictable. Does that mean that LE’s campaign is fine and doesn’t need changes? After all, you don’t HAVE to play the game the way it tells you to.
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Then you should be in favor of removing any respec ability at all. If choosing a mastery is a meaningful choice, then shouldn’t picking each and every skill point be a meaningful choice? Shouldn’t choosing which skills to specialize in be a meaningful choice?
We can see that EHG wants you to be able to play around and experiment to find what works for you. I see mastery respec as an extension of that philosophy. That being said, I don’t think it should be cheap or easy, and they might need to make you level up your skill points again if you do this, something like you lose all the skill points after your mastery tree and you need to re-earn them.
I am feeling like we are in politics now, its either extreme right or extreme left, no middle ground. If you are agaisnt something you need to be on the opposite spectrum… ehm no the world is not pure black & white.
You know there is a healthy dose of anything? I don’t want every single thing to be a meanignful choice. But I want some meaningful chocies and as of now there really is only the mastery, everything else is always very changeable. Also a meaningfull chocies doesn’t always have to come with a permanent stipulation, but a small penalty or stipulation is ok as well, like skill respeccing.
Back in 0.7.X they changed skill respec to be much much mroe forgiving, which was a change that I didn’t advocate for, I like it how it was before. (They implemented Minimum Respec Level and faster catchup mechanics for low level skills).
So it doesn’t mean I want permanent chocies with my skills, because I myself like to experiment with different setups and test out things.
But with how much freedom a single mastery gives you already, I think that commiting to one and then experiment within that mastery is more than enough.
You could see it that way and I wouldn’t disagree, but the issue here that I personally have and I heard soem other people saying this as well.
What makes this change so not with their philosophy is that it now all of the sudden changed from 0 to 100, at least this is how it was depicted in the very short segment of the trailer. (They always had a very clear stance of no plans for it and now all of the sudden they implement it)
So I am aiming all of my feedback and concerns very openly here in the forum in the hopes that EHG at least reconsiders how they implement it, since I doubt they will completely do a 180° on this and revoke this upcoming change.
I really don’t think this is necessary as long as there is some limitation or otehr stipulation involved. What you describe is just a arbitrary inconnvience to desincentivice switching mastery, but switching a mastery is such a large thing that whyever you decide to do it you will do it anyway, unless they implement this kind of thing to prevent switchign back and forth continously, which I hope will not be possible at all, because at that point it doesn’t have to do anything with “reconsidering your mastery”, but purely for the flavor of the week.
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BTW will class resets rest the monolith as well? Or don’t you mind if someone cleared all monos into the bosstages and then swaps into another mastery that is doing more single target dmg.
So a handbreake for the minmaxers and balsters so to speak. Many people already seem to have nightmares because other people they’ll never meet will do stuff they can’t ^^.
I don’t expect that will happen. After all, mastery respec doesn’t change this. You can already do it within the same mastery by changing builds for the same reason. Mastery respec just increases your options, nothing more.
I know this is just a preemptive post so we get an answer on this before that topic finds it’s way here. Met to much crybabys the past days.
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Best example is Crate with Grim Dawn, again they’ve been asked repeatedly for over 10 years to add Mastery Respec and infinite storage. Their response is “just use mods if it’s that big of a deal to you”
Edit: I should add that while mods aren’t an option for LE, the important thing was that Crate wasn’t going to go against their design philosophy even if a ton of people wanted it.
Mods are definitely an option for LE. Just because you can only use them offline doesn’t mean you can’t use them at all.
So the argument still applies as “just play offline and use mods if it’s that big of a deal to you”. Especially when seasonal content is also available offline.
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That’s a fair point. DJ always coming in clutch and enhancing the point I’m making. 
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what are you talking about? i’m not moving any goal posts and that doesn’t apply here. i’m asking for an additional qol feature since mastery respecs without templates is a waste of time. might as well level alts cuz switching characters would be way faster.
the slippery slope of saving time? lol why are you using fallacies as if this is some debate? another guy is too. weird.
i think it would be a good idea for last epoch to stand out more. its already a more casual game than poe2, adding awesome qol features like this to save time would give incentive to players to play LE over poe2. if a game with a smaller budget can add several things like this imo it can, if not stand toe to toe with a game of a bigger budget, at least carve out more ground for it to grow.
It does apply here 100%
You are moving goalposts. This is a prime example of that.
You might not be the one that requested mastery respec, but yo uare requesting a feature, that would have not been requested if mastery was not respecable. Because it is a feature relying on a certain other system to get changed first.
This is moving goalposts.
There is a spectrum with no mastery respec at all on one side and full one press of a button chagne the entire character build at once on the other side.
With the ability to even respec mastery we moved an waful lot towards the otehr end of the spectrum and now people like you come around the corner and want the last little bit to also make it into the game.
You cal it a Quality of Life feature, but putting certain restrictions or hurdles on things can be a game design decision. This is not a “waste of time”. It is a “cost”, so that using the respec feature has a little bit of friction in it, so it does not get overused.
You seem to think this is a black & whtie topic with zone in the middle, either all or nothing.
I absolutely can’t stand that mentality. Something gets added that moves into the direction of how people wannt it to be, but its not enough, they need more! This is not a “waste of time”
That is very clearly hyperbole and doesn’t help i nthis discussion.
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It’s actually quite different. One is reducing the overall play-time while the other is increasing the overall play-time. It gives the feeling of size, the feeling of depth and choices which matter. Do any matter actually? No… we’re playing a game after all, never does, but it gives the illusion better, which is enjoyable for a good amount of people.
That’s the same argument regularly made. Lemme give you an example leading to extremes and then explain.
So, for example… if you don’t have do use something… why not provide the option in-game to auto-loot? Why not have endless storage simply listing items? Why not have a single-click button with a pre-setup rotation macro fighting for you? After all you can use it… but you don’t have to, right?
The answer is perception. Pacing as well as how easy/difficult something is to achieve has a very heavy impact on our psyche. Someone building a grand structure in Minecraft in creative mode has far less attachment to it then someone else collecting the materials together gradually and building a nice cozy hut in survival mode.
The same goes for LE, anything which becomes easier does inherently remove the satisfaction of overcoming hurdles to reach that outcome. It’s been a very intensely researched topic since people seem to be really… reaaaaally bad in providing themselves with the best amount of enjoyment when they’re also provided with options to reduce the downsides which actually cause that enjoyment to happen in the first place.
A prime example is how games nowadays still implement annoying things like underwater levels and similar. Nigh nobody likes them… but surprisingly? Games tend to be perceived better when they have frustrating segments in them that nearly nobody likes… but also doesn’t stop the majority from progressing. It makes the other content feel all the better in comparison!
The human psyche is weird… and options which allow to circumvent things tend to cause us to fall into our own mental traps. That’s something which developers intentionally avoid hence.
I mean… if you implement a button which simply provides you the message ‘You win, congratulations!’ at the end… that would be more optimal to do, right?
Aren’t you proving the devs right that it is the optimal way to play the game hence? No?
That’s that example put into the extreme.
Why has FromSoftware not implemented difficulty choices? Why does Minecraft not only have a creative mode rather then also a survival one? Why does any difficulty besides the easiest even exist since you can make things harder for yourself by choice?
Because our mind loves to move inside a pre-established framework. We love to bend to rules given to us and be successful despite them. Imposing self-made limitations is not something the human mind is very good at and still finding it enjoyable. That’s not the norm. Overcoming external obstacles is far more enticing for the majority then internally created ones.
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This is where the phrase “optimizing the fun out of the game.” comes in. There are absolutely games where building the most optimal setup is a chore and a grind so it’s a hassle to reach that optimal thing, but you feel so accomplished when you get there. Now, what if you optimize the path to the optimal setup? Suddenly it’s less of a chore and therefore less of an accomplishment.
I spent 4 hours in Hydroneer planning out my setup, buying the necessary pipes and conveyors, and then putting it together, tweaking my plan as I went. I optimized this by counting how many pipes of each type, how many conveyors of each type, and the total smelters and gem compressors I’d need so I could make the fewest trips to the store as possible. But that was it. My setup is absolutely not optimized in the grand scheme, but I’m happy with it. I could have easily looked up an optimized setup someone else put together (something I often do in Anno games because I’m dumb and it’s complicated), but that would devalue the achievement of getting it up and running and I’ve had times where I genuinely optimized the fun out of a game by looking up the best way to handle things. Grim Dawn is a great example as making builds in Grim Dawn doesn’t click for me like it does in LE, not sure why, but I’ve gotten bored of characters when following a step by step leveling guide vs looking at an endgame build (as most have a “pre build defining item” setup listed) and figuring out how I would get there on my own.
Optimization can be fun and part of the experience. But the devs should provide simple tools to allow players to optimize while continuing to make sure those tools don’t ruin the fun. Skill Respecs and crafting, for example. Skill Respecs allow players to optimize their build and crafting let’s players optimize their gear. But Mastery Respec is a step too far (imo) as now players can optimize the leveling experience further by picking masteries that have an easier time at low levels and the swapping to the Mastery of choice later down the line. That takes some of the fun away of being forced to use a less optimal Mastery early on.
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The Hydroneer example is a fantastic one there!
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