What is the theory behind making skill point refunds so expensive?

Hi. I'm a PoE noob. I've been playing for a few weeks now. Long time mature adult DII player.

What is the theory behind making passive skill point refunds so expensive?

How does this benefit the game? Do the players want this, or is this supposed to be a part of the challenge?

If there are existing discussions on this matter, feel free to just point to those.



I am here looking at my skill tree and thinking to myself...

"If I make the wrong decision, I'm screwed forever." Next thing you know I'm level 30 with 32 unallocated skill points.

"The number of bad choices is infinite, but the number of good choices are few".

"This is like Google2Win." I have to look up a known-OP build or be castigated as a low-DPS noob.



It's designed to encourage entry level trading.
Obviously they don´t want you to level up ONE character and then respec when you want to try a new build.

They want you to level up a new character for a new build.


Why?

It ads playtime.

You may feel like buying new MTX for your new character.



"
Next thing you know I'm level 30 with 32 unallocated skill points.


You should have a skilltree planned out when you start a character

If you don´t do that it will fail most of the time.
Current Builds:
All in one Thread until i make new Guides
poeurl.com/c4vT
Your choices should matter, that's the point :)
GGG banning all political discussion shortly after getting acquired by China is a weird coincidence.
When I first played the game in 2012 I didn't even expect orbs of regret to exist. I wouldn't have been surprised if the quest respec points were the ONLY way to fix your mistakes on the skill tree. I found orbs of regret to be a pleasant surprise and overly generous by the devs. Am I the only one who felt this way?
Standard Forever

These are great, there is also a skill reset after each major version release.
A D2 player complaining about respecs.



........



...anyway, as others have said: choices that matter.
"
Unhold wrote:
A D2 player complaining about respecs.


Same thing I was about to comment on....

You do remember that in D2, you couldn't respec anything, ever, right? One wrong skill in a meteorb build and what were you even thinking?
When DII came out, players quickly figured out that hoarding skill points was the way to go. This was because it only took a few skill point to progress in the tree, but skill points allocated to older skills were basically wasted because they did not contribute to the power of the higher-level skills.

The devs later fixed this by making skills lower in the tree contribute to the power of skills further down in the tree.

I like the idea of the Orbs of Regret. I just wish they were not so rare.

The economic theory of incentives does not always lead to the desired result. Measure factory worker output by weight of goods shipped and soon there will be free bags of sand included with every shipment.
When I finally got tired of my Static Striker in Torment and wanted something different, I found I easily had enough Regrets to respec into my next build (3-dragons freeze), since the trees are very similar. I decided to level a new character from scratch though, since A) mistakes are less costly, and B) I'll be earning more currency to buy the gear. By the time my next character got to 75, I was swimming in currency and could easily slap together a pretty strong gear base for the build.


I feel like Regrets are more useful for permanent league players who mess up fixing their tree after a major patch. Oh, and also for small quality-of-life changes to the tree as well, such as rearranging resist passives after upgrading your gear.
IGN: Ikimashouka, Tsukiyattekudasai, DontCallMeMrFroyo

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