Make the loadout cost the amount it would take to do it manually (full cost for a full Respec). Let the players “record” the skill points spent over minimum when saving the loadout, that way when you change loadout you’ll start with all skills at the minimum level and they’ll auto-specialize as they level up based on the recorded order. Alternatively, the system could just automatically allocate the points as they come in until the skill tree is filled out.
It’s probably complicated to actually implement, but the concept is relatively simple. Add in the ability to pull gear to and from the stash when changing loadouts (or create something like FFXIV’s Armory Chest that stores gear from loadouts) so the gear can change too.
Yes, that would help to facilitate a function that we aren’t attempting to promote. It’s like the Faction swapping. When we announced it, there was a worry that people would be switching back and forth like crazy. I think this is similar. We aren’t trying to promote frequent switching but want to allow “un-bricking” a character.
I’m not saying that a loadout system is impossible to do in the future but it’s not an obvious or necessary follow-up to adding an option to respec your mastery.
The problem that I see from an outsiders perspective is that allowing unlimited and effectively free Mastery Respecs absolutely promotes frequent switching and there are options that prevent frequent switching while still allowing characters to be unbricked. A level limit, a limited quest reward, and I suggested earlier in this thread to bring back the Shades mission we used to have but turning it into a 4th dungeon where you pick the mastery you’re wanting to switch to and you enter the void where you fight countless shades of timelines lost where they have base class skills for the weaker enemies and stronger enemies may be any of the three masterirs but only use one or two of the mastery skills, while the final boss would be the iteration of your character that mastered the Mastery you’ve chosen so you have to fight to take their place. This would prevent frequent switching while also being an interesting and thematic approach to changing your Mastery while also preventing characters from being bricked. Have it scale to your characters level and you’re good to go.
I’m going to push back on them being effectively free and even if they were, it wouldn’t “absolutely promote frequent switching”. It could under the right circumstances but I don’t think we have those. I think the premise of the argument is on very shaky ground.
As I said previously, if it does end up being a problem, we are prepared to make adjustments as we always are. We will be paying close attention to feedback and adjust accordingly if necessary.
Well, as long as you all continue to monitor it that’s all we can ask for now that it’s a done deal. I do wish there was a community poll, especially given than 4 days before the announcement you were still saying it was never going to happen lol. I know you already addressed that though.
I agree with this bit.
As I explained in another thread, I don’t really care about mastery respec.
My problem is that I don’t understand their design philosophy anymore, if there is still one.
Fair enough, but why do you think that a gold cost is an effective deterent to frequent switching? Is there much of a difference between gold balances for MG characters & CoF characters (& I’m aware that this could be difficult to see given gold is shared between them in modes where there are both on an account)? I’d assume there would be which would make it difficult to balance the respec cost to be an effective deterent for both MG & CoF.
I don’t really see how you can balance that. It’s either a low cost that CoF players don’t mind (like the passive respec) but that will open the way to being able to respec mastery 20 times a day, or it’s a higher cost that will deter CoF players but sitll allow MG players to respec 5 times a day.
Still, while I’m generally disappointed with this change, I guess there’s no point in further discussing it. Points for both sides have been made, Mike (and the rest of the team, I assume) are very aware of this issue and EHG does have a knack for delivering things in a way that tends to please most people.
So I guess I’ll wait for the actual details of this before continuing this discussion. I will give EHG the benefit of the doubt for now, albeit with some trepidation.
I’ve never actually been too sure about how that works. I think so, but it’s not very intuitive. And it probably has some limitations, because I do see that build guides will often tell you to join one or the other, otherwise they would just tell you to join one in one difficulty and the other in another.
Probably because when you join one you gain reputation with that faction, but lose reputation with the opposing one. So I assume you can’t really max both, even if you unlock them both in different difficulties.
But I assume that works fine for the smith, though.
You can pick a different option in the lower difficulty but I can’t remember how that affects what they can craft for a high level character is a lower level difficulty.
I think you will shoot yourself in the foot when you implement a mastery respec first and then observe what is happening. Because going back from something like this will cause more outrage. Taking something away from people that you granted them earlier always will feel worse than slowly adjusting the limitations/stipulations.
From the sound of it you don’t have any plans to make mastery respec a hurdle, so I assume it will be some neglectable gold cost and that’s it.
I really think you should start the other way around and give it some crazy stipulations and then based on feedback lower them.
I really despise this approach of going from 0 to 100 in a singular patch, whiel the previous 6 years it was always pushed back on.
This is not the EHG that I knwo from all the previous patch cycles, where you always found a very good middleground between the two camps. (e.g. shard vaccum instead of auto-loot, minimum respec levels + catchup instead of no penalty, MG/CoF to make both sides of the spectrum happy).
Now this mastery respec seems to have no middleground it simply changed from nope to yes.
I think they have shifted their stances because of pressure of loud camps.
Which isnt exactly that bad persay, but I view abby as a prime example.
The end game now has a “pinnacle” boss, but 1.1 still felt meh cause there wasnt that much content other then abby.
To me the content pipeline should be polish(balance/finishing class skills/graphical updates etc) → Monolith rework/content filling → pinnacle boss
But they jumped right to pinnacle boss, because certain camps of players were vocally upset about how there was no “final build checkmark” or whatever. So abby dropped in an otherwise somewhat barren end game. Most arpgs dont get their final boss before the end game has been fleshed out right? Every arpg ive played adds the final boss after they have set the tone/pacing of the game. Shaper wasnt in 1.0 poe.
it feels insane to me that for months and months since 1.0 and 1.1 the game has had unbalanced classes unchanged for literally 4+ years in many cases with missing skills, old ugly effects, old passive trees etc. How are we adding super end game bosses when the mid game is flat, and some character archetypes literally have 4 year old skill trees and passive trees? That seems so backwards to me…
But with 1.0 they got tons of General ARPG players, and now need to compete with other titles, if the other titles have mastery respec(PoE) and pinnacle bosses(PoE) then so must LE.
I just wanted to correct your use of “persay” and I’m trying to find a way to communicate that I’m not doing this to be pedantic or a grammar nazi, but rather in an informative way, mostly because I know it’s not an english term and it felt odd reading it that way.
I hope this suffices but if you take it wrongly or dislike it, I apologize in advance.
Anyway, the correct spelling is “per se” and it comes from latin. It literally translates as “by itself”.
Its helpful thanks, I have a bit of dyslexia so I often just butcher the spelling of words cause I write like I talk, so sometimes I have to actively think of how to spell things rofl
I promise that if mastery respec is meta defining I will push very hard to add a restriction. I understand the concern here. You’re right that it is harder to take something away than it is to add it. We are confident that if some limiting factor is required that it can be done cleanly enough that it’s worth it to just go to the system we think will be the best in the long run.
@DiceDragon
In this case, that loud camp I think actually delayed this. Low quality arguments for something can have the opposite effect by making the recipient dismiss the entire idea due to some reasons being ineffective. It’s not intentional but I sometimes find myself needing to figure out why on my own.
As an aside, I see the D2 approach being recommended quite a bit but I do want to point out that once you’re into deep end game in D2, you can “essentially freely respec” all you want. I think that D2 is actually more free than LE will be (assuming that the D2R system hasn’t changed in the last year or so). All the time that it takes in D2 is to allocate your points. In LE you’ll still have to re-level your skills up. Some combination of the difference in potential power for completing specific activities and the increased maximum potential reward would need to be very high to be enticing enough to cause people to want to use mastery respec as part of the endgame meta to switch frequently. I see 3 levers that we can pull to affect the desire to “abuse” the system. We can make the reward quality across various activities more consistent (good thing to strive for anyways). We can balance the relative power between the masteries at completing different types of content (good thing to strive for anyways). Finally we can increase the friction of the respec process (which is already higher than D2).
This isn’t true, Mike. After you spend the 3 free respecs you get, you need to collect 4 very rare materials from the act bosses (Andy and Duriel both drop the same one).
I often saw people wanting to trade one or another of these because they are so rare and required a lot of grinding to collect. I don’t think D2R has upped the drop rates, but my suggestion was based on D2 anway., not D2R.
You are correct that once you do get the respec (or one of the 3 free ones) then it’s much faster than in LE, but the ability to overall respec your build (not even talking about mastery) is much more limited in D2.
Good to hear, but my overall mood about this patch is still very negative, solely because of this one change and how abrupt is will be implemented.
The meta defining part is one of many concerns I have, but even though it will not affect me anyway (because I never strife for doing anything hyper effecient anyway).
With all the cool stuff being added in the patch, that I am looking forward to this patch overall will still be negative for my overall play experience with the game.
I love playing Lich and I love playing Warlock, but the simple fact that I don’t have to commit to one of them anymore makes both of them less exciting.
I really hope the Lich overhaul that will come with later patches will make me forget this patch forever so I can move on and have fun with the game again.
Last time I played hard I was rolling in tokens. I could easily respec daily without trying and I could easily afford to do it way more often than that. If that’s all you’re referring to, tokens are cheap.
Maybe that’s something they changed with D2R? That didn’t use to be the case with LoD.
Either way, my suggestion was having those tokens be rune of creation rare or similar (past the initial 3 free ones you always get), regardless of how D2 does it now.
