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

"
Barivius wrote:
You'll lose more players having easy respecs than not.


we'll never know ...


But I find it funny that making respecs easier to get somehow turns the game into D3. D3 has lots of huge problems, the ease of changing builds isn't one of them. They just stopped adding new builds and content and are in maintenance mode.


"
Imaginaerum wrote:
More games need learning curves. Letting you fix every mistake Diablo 3 style results in players not having to learn anything, and that just creates boredom. It isn't supposed to be easy, if you want easy play Diablo 3.


There are two things to consider:

Some players are totaly able to make their own builds and do some research to give a try to Path of Exile and will understand directly that they have to reroll when they fail. And eventualy what was wrong in a fair amount of time.

Some others just install and try Path of Exile. They are often able to reach merciless before hiting a wall and notice their char won't do it for endgame or not without a lot of costly changes and a lot of time spent ingame.

The problem i see, you are mentioning games need learning curves, we are in 2017 most of players that hit this wall won't learn and will just go on forum, copy paste a build, and run their new character with it.

According to my experience with testing builds from this forum this is not really learning even if there are good advices shared in some forum threads, this is far from allowing a player to became autonomous enough to create his own build later and a succesful one. Result is he just learned almost nothing. And sadly ... you have to consider a really low % of userbase actualy use their own builds that's what i'm disapointed about to be honest. By doing that you are also learning others players mistakes ... kinda bad.

I think having some more ingame advices and one full respec offered for your first character in standard ( not in leagues for obvious reasons ) when you start the game for the first time with your first character would be more than welcome. Player could at least try to fix their build, run trought content a bit longer, and be proud to finaly understand a bit more what they need for endgame and how to manage it.
Hf :)
Last edited by Heli0nix#0378 on Feb 19, 2017, 10:25:27 PM
I love how everyone seems to think that there's this one type of mythical new player that conveniently hits their issue right on. There's not. There's 1000s of new players each month. There's been 1000s of new players every month for over 4 years. So quit it already with this "there wont be any new players unless I get my way" nonsense.
Answering the OP directly:

In my opinion, yes it is.

1) There are respecs, they are just called "Orb of Regret"
2) There are full free respecs after most major releases - i.e. every few months
3) I don't think it deters so many players... and those it does deter are not the audience this game is aimed at.
Bird lover of Wraeclast
Las estrellas te iluminan - Hoy te sirven de guía
Te sientes tan fuerte que piensas - que nadie te puede tocar
Post like this is stupid as shit. @OP do you have solid proof or concrete numbers that show player drop rate due to not being able to do full respec for free ? Or is it because its just not the way u want it ?

If you are a complete new player (and by complete i mean you never play any arpg before), you would want pretty much to enjoy the story, the scenery, the feeling of combat, boss fight and some other stuff. No new player would care about how end game works because they dont have any idea what it should be or what to expect. So they either have fun at trying to build by themselves, or follow a guide which also dont need to respec point that much.

If you are somewhat experienced with grind game, then you will understand that rerolling a char is pretty normal. I mean if you are experienced, grinding for regrets isnt that difficult. At level 90, you have 123 points (including bandit passives) + 40 points accendency = 163 regrets or 163 chaos. If you reroll a char, going at the game record speed, you can do 6 hours from start to merc dried lake. I dont believe you cannot grind 163c in 6 hours playing straight (provided that you are experienced enough)

And by all means, you get around 20 regret points or so at merciless dried lake. At level 67 this is almost about 1/3 of your level, which should be enough for new player to mess around.

A full free respec would completely ruin the first time game experience for new player, because almost any guide will be using the tactics to power level in the fastest time. That means there would be less perference to choose at the start, especially for someone who is cluelessly following a guide.
Last edited by Pathfinder_cur#4752 on Feb 20, 2017, 6:30:17 AM
I find this discussion to be very strange.

On one hand, I do agree that people want to feel like their character build decisions have some long term impact. At the same time, its very easy to start a character and hit endgame in 3 days for me, (those who are actually good at poe can do so 6 hours or so.)'

How common do re-spec points have to be, in order for me consider respecing over recreating?
Even if they handed out 1 Regret Orb free for every day you log in, I dont know if that would be enough to make me respec instead of remake.
As of now, I only really use respec points for QoL during leveling (Getting Point Blank for Bows, or BM for mana issues), or if the endgame version of a certain build requires some amount of respec (CI).
"
Shagsbeard wrote:
I love how everyone seems to think that there's this one type of mythical new player that conveniently hits their issue right on. There's not. There's 1000s of new players each month. There's been 1000s of new players every month for over 4 years. So quit it already with this "there wont be any new players unless I get my way" nonsense.

^^

People need to pretend their opinion represents a majority when its a poorly cobbled together set of thoughts.

@OP your representing yourself only, nobody else and yes that makes your opinion as insignificant as it sounds.
"
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


I couldn't disagree more.
I find the current balance with respec points (quest rewards + regrets orbs + full respec every 3-4months) is fine.

Something more like D3, with basically no choice to make/ or potential mistakes, what you suggest will just go against the ARPG spirit -> create a character/ grind /make him stronger with wise choice.

As a side note, It feels like everybody is playing in standard in this thread, while I play hc only (temp league). I think this can be very relevant. Since you never rip in standard I do understand why not having more free respec could be an issue. In hc you will eventually fail, then reroll. Regrets orbs are not worth that much in hc leagues for this reason.

Anyway, I hope GGG won't ever change the game to a more casual game giving more free respec.
To me free respec points/ and regrets are not really for full respec a character into something totaly different. I love leveling a toon with the endgame stuff. Skipping everything by using regrets feels like cheating, and it's anti fun to me.

Respec points/regrets are for min-max a build, trying small iterations of the build, moving 4points here to 4points there. I tend to use all my regrets in endgame doing this. And as far as I know regrets are very cheap. For instance, last league (current one actually^^) I bought a 6L 84 regalia 300c. 300c > 300 regrets -> you need like 110 to make a full respec, maybe 20 -40 more for bandits, and 5 per ascendancy point, worst case scenario 40 more regrets. Basically 110+40+40 = 190 regrets to make a full respec.

Farming like an afternoon, like 3hours, will make it easily possible. I am not going to troll you guys with 300c per hour stuff. Just a simple fact, 190c is farmable pretty fast.

And the full respec is for the wealthy and worth only when you are lazy to reroll a 90+ character.

=.= Pls ignore my old threads (more than 1 month ago) =.=
Last edited by Oracle87#3935 on Feb 20, 2017, 7:28:31 AM
Regrets drop like candy and the skill point respec points you get from quests are more than enough to go from a leveling build to an endgame build by adjusting points.

Also why the fuck would they sell full respects when part of the economy of the game is based on Regret Orbs ? You can already buy regret orbs and theyre pretty cheap, theres zero reason to implement a full respec regardless.

Youre just being cheap.
Harvest sucks! But look at my decked out gear two weeks in!

Labyrinth salt farm miner.

"But my build diversity" , "Game is too hard!" - Meta drone playing the same 1-3 builds for years.
PoE's passive skill tree is one of the main perks of the game in my opinion. Changing it to suit a diablo 3 like mentality would be a terrible decision.

Go play d3

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info