Yay, finally! Mastery respec. You brought me back!

General
123

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).

2 Likes
124

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. :laughing:

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.

3 Likes
125

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.

5 Likes
126

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.

1 Like
127

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.

2 Likes
128

Either way, I still don’t think people are going to do it because levelling the skills will take too long.

129

Not really? When you’re high level you get your skills leveled in 2-3 echoes, at most. That will be enough to prevent switching every time you want to fight a boss, but not enough to prevent lining up all bosses in several timelines and then switching once to do them all. It’s not “profitable” to do it for one boss, but it should be if you’re doing many in a row.

However, this is already possible with the current system. Mastery respec doesn’t change this, it just increases the options (and potential temptation) threefold.

I want to make it clear that I’m not asking that this should be removed. Respec is basically a spectrum with no respec at all in one end (like old D2), going through very limited build respec, easy build respec, mastery respec and ending with class respec at the other end.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with placing yourselves at any point of this spectrum. Each player will have their comfort zone at some point of it and this will determine whether they enjoy the way it is in any game or not.

My only issue with this is that you’ve always said mastery is your class, it’s an important part of the character identity and that you had no plans to ever change this. And I identified a lot with this stance.
Pivoting on this makes it seem like you don’t care about character identity anymore and that feels disappointing to me.

Like Heavy said, the fact that we don’t need to commit to a mastery makes masteries feel less exciting somehow.

4 Likes
130

Its good that the team will keep an eye on how mastery respecing goes. And hopefully make changes to it as time goes.

Tbh it having a gold cost oh lets say 1mil (we do not know exactly what the cost will be in gold) isnt enough even 5mil imo isnt enough. Why? Merchants guild. Heck even 1mil gold for CoF player (like myself) is easy to come by. Mastery respecing shouldnt be easy to do imo

Why? Players in MG will have far more of an ability to flip flop masteries at will vs CoF. Which in turn changes things for players that otherwise do not want to trade but do want to experiment. Item factions was about do u want to trade or not. A gold cost for mastery respec changes this.

The frequent switching is something that will happen in MG as well as make non trade players go trade that otherwise wouldnt just to swap on the fly.

What im trying to say is if the team wants mastery respec to be for new players or to fix bricked builds. Gold cost isnt enough of a downside to it. There needs to be more weight to the decision to switch. Especially when u look at the system together with MG players.

Imo the switch frequency is there with how mastery respecing is going to cost gold. If the team doesnt want that flip flopping like the team was concerned about with item factions. Mastery respec just needs more of a punishment to prevent that Especially for MG players.

Best way to prevent all of what i said is to do something similar to diablo 2 respecing. And remove gold completely as the cost to respecing mastery. Id also agree with the person that said using those shades. And making it a 4th dungeon but for mastery respecing as the reward. That we use to face before getting to pick our mastery class. Lvl locking ur mastery selection oh say around lvl 65 is another good way to prevent this frequent switching. Gold here would still work up to the lvl where ur mastery becomes locked in.

These suggestions others and i have said. Would fit alot better with the teams goal of help new players and bricked builds. Currently gold cost to switch isnt going to bring about the intentions the team has for mastery respecing at least IMO.

4 Likes
131

I think folks here are severely exaggerating the potential issue that would come with being able to freely swap.

It’s easy sit around and nit-pick any changes prior to implementation. I understand the “rose-tint” which creates some resistance to change, but Mike (and dev team), lets be honest … It is the same people on these forums that are the ones resistant to the change, not the general community/average Joe gamer.

While its important to keep the long-term players and supports happy, the general population does not care if respec aligns with a “previous vision”, or not. They want to enjoy a seasonal game they might play for 1-2 months per season. That is great that people here do, and want to preserve something, but I want more people to play this game. not less.

Those people that don’t like respec’s…can just not do it?

3 Likes
132

For some reason, that’s not a good enough argument for the people who are against it.

133

It’s almost like they could have done a community poll and addressed this major change in philosophy on a grand scale, something they’ve done before for other important issues (Patch 1.2 Timeline, 1.1 Event Updates, and Cycle Poll).

They’ve literally done this song and dance before. Announce something. There’s backlash from part of the community, they release poll. Just skip the backlash and release a poll. “hey guys, we’ve been reconsidering our design philosophy on Mastery Respecs, here’s a poll to get a pulse on how you, the community, feel about this change.” throw in a handful of options to get a general idea of how the community feels, and decide based on that. If the 5-10 of us in this thread upset by the change are the only people in the community who would be upset by it, then I’d completely concede my point. But the fact is it’s been a point of debate for over 5 years and even as recently as November 2024 the devs had no intent to make this change.

Edit: as I’ve said though. What’s done is done. It will be implemented whether we like it or not. I just hope that things don’t get worse because of Flavor of the Month changes like this and WASD taking up dev time from actually important changes like finishing masteries that are missing skills and the lack of class identity for masteries like Shaman.

3 Likes
134

Relevel is not that hard. It will stop from mastery respec a very lil % of players. And nearly 0 % of them are hardmode meta blasters. They will find how make it back to 20 in less then a minute. Probably somehow with coop play and Exp echoes :roll_eyes:

135

Because it isnt. Thats like saying u dont like having a campaign skip like d3/4 dont use it. When that is the most efficient way to get to end game.

Same thing with mastery respec. (We dont know how much gold it will cost. We do know it will cost gold) why would i wast my time rolling a new character when i can just respec my mastery.

The other issue is masteries for 5+ yrs where considered ur class. LE had 15 now its foing to be only 5. EHG took a hard stance on this. EHG has a hard time closing the door on things and keeping it closed. Mike says offten nothing is off the table.

So now what is the next thing they have taken a hard stance on that will now change.

2 Likes
136

The general community would gladly take cheats and bugged broken builds a lot of the time :confused:
just because something is wanted by the majority does not mean its good for the game.

The majority want campaign skip, if they add that we are basically on the d3 pipeline where basically seasons will be over in 3 days because anyone who isnt extremely casual can just beat it in 3 days.

Majority want 4lp to drop like candy, at the end of the day, I fall somewhere in the middle. but at this point its just a matter of philosophy.

Removing mastery lock is a limited form of campaign skip, because its 10 less campaigns someone who wanted to play all classes at level 100 needs. Rather then improving the campaign experience or early end game experience, the fix is to just let you change. Hit level 90 on a class you dont want anymore? just swap because “ewww i dont wanna have to play all the boring parts of the game” perhaps maybe we should make those parts not boring?

3 Likes
137

Just an hypothesis but maybe they didn’t do it because of the lull the game is in, right now ? The playerbase is scattered across all ARPGs since we are 8 months after the last official Cycle/Season. A poll would maybe be ‘skewed’ by the fact that it’s only a few thousand of players, probably mostly uber veterans, engaging with the game nowaday.

Yeah, there is a streamer that already evoked a few days ago the idea of switching between a mono-grinder and a boss killer build. Of course, that was already possible within a mastery but the number of effective builds to switch to was quite limited; now it’s three times that number and finding a combo like that is easier than ever. Of course, it would be such a ‘try-hard technique’, but when content becomes hard enough that it’s better to have specialized builds, I think that’s realistic to say that we will see that kind of behavior. Pushing the limits in a not-so-fun way, just because it’s optimal.

And I agree with people here saying that that lessens the character identity feeling. I was hoping that EHG was going to eventually reinforce the character identity, not lessen it. Find ways to make each character more unique, not more interchangeable.

For exemple, maybe a customizable ‘Title’ that you gain when you complete X thing (Campaign? Aberoth kill?) that you choose from preselectioned keywords ? Even if the multiplayer / social aspect is very limited (and it’s not an mmo), I’d like to see on my character sheet “Bob, Voidshatter Beast”. Customizable BUT permanent title; once choosed, you can only toggle it on and off, not changing it on a whim.

Or maybe a customizable non-tradeable item for killing Julra at X tier ? After killing Julra, a second altar, similar to the one for crafting legendaries, appears in the backroom. It’s a one-shot (once per character that killed Julra) machine that changes the appearance and the name of the item. Here again, the name must be chosen from a list of keywords. But warning : the item becomes character-bound; so even within a league, only ‘Bob, Voidshatter Beast’ would be able to equip the ‘Nightmare Rose’, a legendary Dreamthorn with 3 juicy affixes that I slapped on it. The Rose would have the skin of the Katana and a black tint or glow to it. (Please let me be a 12 years old edgy kid for a second.)

Of course, that’s just brainstorming suggestions but that’s the kind of direction I was (and still am) hoping to see LE go towards. More meaningful customization that helps makes my character unique and memorable, instead of being an interchangeable Mr. Potato Head.

2 Likes
138

That is because the people that use it don’t seem to have the capacity to understand the other side and dismiss it. There were already plenty of justifications on why this isn’t a valid argument.
But I’ll give it another go:

Imagine Elden Ring and the rest of the souls games from FromSoftware. Hard games that brutally punish players. Lots of people love them because of that. Lots of people also hate that it’s so hard and want them to be easier.
If FromSoftware were to implement a difficulty slider into Elden Ring so you could have a casual playthrough, the current fans of Elden Ring would have the option not to use it. However, most would simply leave. And why?
Because Elden Ring would stop being a “brutally hard game that punishes and challenges players” and would start being “an accessible game that has a hard mode”. It would be an entirely different game that appeals to entirely different people.

It wouldn’t necessarily make Elden Ring better or worse. Just a different game. And changing it after it being out for a year or 2 would cause the people that currently love it to go away, even if they still had the option to use that slider all the way to max. Because not being easy and not having an easy mode is a big part of the game’s identity.

Likewise, this change makes it so LE stops being a game that encourages altoholics (which it did) to one that doesn’t. So altoholics that liked LE because of that, now don’t enojoy it as much anymore. Some even enough to stop playing altogether. Even if they have the option to not to do it.

Because, and this is important, the majority of players don’t enjoy playing a game in a way the game doesn’t want you to.

6 Likes
139

So I guess the key question ends up being, “will this change chase away more players then it brings back?” and the only people that will know that are EHG.

1 Like
140

Yes, that has always been the question. On the multiple threads we’ve had about mastery respec over the years it’s been stated multiple times that it’s all about game identity and who EHG wants playing the game.
It was true before mastery respec and it remains true after mastery respec.

Although the question isn’t simply player numbers, but also player retention. Meaning how long do they actually play each season. After all, plenty of players that don’t like mastery respec might still keep playing, but just play 50 or 100h when they previously played 200h or more. And new players may come but that only play for 20h.

As you said, only EHG can know if it was worth it for them or not to change.

But do you finally understand why simply having the option not to do something isn’t enough to please players, why this might drive some away, and why this isn’t a good argument?

4 Likes
141

I totally understand why you and others feel that to be the case, but so far, nobody has offered any actual proof to support the claims. Honestly, we don’t have that data, and the only people who would have it are EHG themselves, and unless they are willing to provide that data, both sides are just taking about personal opinions/ tiny sample sizes.

This single forum is a great example. The tiny amount of people posting on it have different opinions on if this is good or bad for the game/ community.

1 Like
142

My point was never if it was good or bad for the game or the community as a whole. That is EHG’s decision to make and they made it.

My point was simply that “You don’t have to use it” isn’t a good argument for people that don’t like that option. That’s all.

4 Likes