Is the benefit of no full respecs worth its costs in lost players?

"

lagwin1980 wrote:

Hmm, well lets see

The game has continued to grow in players (both accounts and retention of players)
Guess people like that their choice means something

look up the differences between correlation and causation and get back to me. The game could have grown even faster if there were ways to unlock full respecs (not a bunch of regrets). the most hardcore of players don't care about respec points.

"

PrivateRiem wrote:

"

The fun in ARPGs is at "endgame", not leveling

1000% disagree.

1000% agree with this disagreement.

There is already way too much respeccing available. The character that you are playing at L20 and L40 can be (and often is) an utterly different concept than at L80 and L90.

For example, crit and ES suck during the early game. Before we had crazy respecs, these builds were underrepresented because they required much more careful play during leveling. Nowadays, people explicitly say to "level as X, change into Y for maps". It throws away over half the game -- nobody gets to feel like they "clawed their way into success", then just went from the strongest early game build to the strongest late game build with no down time.

On top of this, there exist build-making uniques that aren't even equippable until L70, so you're forced to respec instead of growing into them. It's a serious design failure in my eyes. (On that point, at least Solaris Lorica was added so that low-life builds can function before Shav's.)

"

databeaver wrote:

Did you see the discussion about Diablo III when it was being made? There was an enormous outcry about removing stat and skill point assignments, lamenting the loss of character investment. They later implemented the paragon system where you get to assign points, though you can respec those whenever and will eventually reach the point where you can assign all the points. I bet some people have skipped Diablo III or quit it early because unlimited full respecs allow going through all the options very fast and you literally can't FUBAR your character.

Personally I think PoE has a pretty good balance. The free respec points you get while leveling allow fixing small mistakes. Every three months the free full respect gives an option for a larger overhaul. The limited respecs and time investment for leveling skill gems give me an incentive to make my build work rather than abandon it at the first sign of trouble. And I do make my own builds; six characters have made it to maps so far, with various levels of efficiency.

this is something i was going to bring up as well in a similar sense.

if you look at Diablo II you really could screw up your character just by putting stuff in the wrong places. which it wasnt as if you couldnt have fun with doing things you wanted early on, but later you really got punished when you got into later things.

Diablo III on the other hand, like you say, to things to the other extreme. it made things so you virtually cant screw up. you can just swap your skills out without penalty and everything is good.

personally i always liked the EQ2 style of respecing (which could be in some sense also seen here). it represents a middle ground. if you spec'd into a certain area of your 'achievement' points and later found that it really sucked for you then you could unspec it...at a cost. the first 3 would be free. the idea being "everyone starts somewhere and may not know what they are doing exactly". even with research maybe you made a mistake so they gave you 3 free respec points back then. after that though then they started charging gold. it started off small..then it grew each time you used it up to a max of (i think) like 1 platinum which was a absurd amount at the time for the majority of people to just blow on respecs. there the idea was you got your free 3, and now you need to make sure you think about what you are doing or it will cost you.

PoE isn't that much different tbh if you think about it. During the game there are several quests that offer up free respec points which are there to simply be "if you made a mistake" sort of things. Otherwise think about what you are doing or it will cost you. In other words if your "leveling" build is so drastically different from your "end" build that you have to respec most of your tree, then either something went wrong with what you think is acceptable costs or something is wrong with your build selections.

I think its fine exactly as it is now. You get a respec every 3 or 4 months which takes away your effort being destroyed by balance/meta changes, you can get regret orbs at a cost for midleague major respecs, you get quest respec points to allow build adaption as you level.

Spending passives still has meaning, theres reasons to relevel, its not brutal enough to punish the player with wasted time that cannot be rectified. No need to change anything.

D3 tried to appease every casual tear imaginable and they ended up with a shit game that failed and was an embarrassment even to a company as woefully casual and lacking in cred as blizzard. We need meaningful build choices, diverse and hard to obtain items, difficult content, extremely time consuming endgoals. Anyone who cant get along with that should be left by the wayside because longevity demands a credible game, you simply cant cave in to the lowest rung player or your game is dead in the water.

I only play temp leagues, so this post doesn't apply to standard.
I would like to have cheaper respec option, because personally for me the end game is the fun part. I absolutely don't want to level a new character to level 70+ just to see that I am not enjoying the build. Also respeccing on level 80 to a completely different spec and then realizing it's not as fun as I though is way too expensive for me and leaves a very bitter taste. That's why I usually sticked to only one build previous leagues.

Farm regrets, respect, profit??

You make absolutely no sense,.. the fact that GGG encourages you to play the game and farm regrets if you want to respect is a huge positive.

Your idea is retarded to say the least.. I think you need to go back to d3.

"

ladish wrote:

"

databeaver wrote:

Personally I think PoE has a pretty good balance. The free respec points you get while leveling allow fixing small mistakes. Every three months the free full respect gives an option for a larger overhaul. The limited respecs and time investment for leveling skill gems give me an incentive to make my build work rather than abandon it at the first sign of trouble. And I do make my own builds; six characters have made it to maps so far, with various levels of efficiency.

You made a really good argument. I no longer agree with myself about a potential full respec orb, even a super rare one :D

Huh. Someone changed their mind in an internet argument.

"

FrodoFraggins wrote:

The main benefits I can think of

1) you can't cheese by making a perfect leveling build and then hot swap to your endgame build.
2) GGG gets added player time as players are forced to level a new character if they want a different build


The main costs

1) some players won't even try to the game due to the respec system
2) Some players will try it but quit because their build turned out to not be viable
3) experimentation is punished


My personal opinion is that a lack of full respecs was the major detriment of Diablo 2 and I was actually glad when they eventually added an item to reset skill points. (stat points is a bit trickier imo though) Before then I simply got power leveled if I wanted a new spec so it's not like the lack of respecs added anything but inconvenience. The fun in ARPGs is at "endgame", not leveling.

In this game, the most hardcore players will have more than enough currency to do major respecs when they want. They also are super efficient at leveling and know the core mechanics like the back of their hands. So it's really only the new or potentially new players that feel the full brunt of full respec costs.

I'm resigned to using net builds when playing this game. But it does remove some immersion and joy from the experience. When I played Torchlight and Torchlight 2 I immediately go the mods that let me fully respec as I didn't want to have to look up builds for a single player game.

Why do you want to turn PoE into D3? You already have D3, go play that.

Arpgs keep me and a lot of people hooked because you progress with a character and get invested into one. The planning, the grinding, its all "fun" because you see the progression. As soon as you can skip all that there is no real point in playing.

And experimentation is not punished. On the contrary, its rewarded. Since it takes actual investment to experiment, if you do so and find something amazing, you actually have a huge advantage over others. If people could willy nilly try out everything in a day, you wouldnt find such advantages.