respecing.

It is the developers' intention that, if you want to try something quite different, you start a new character. You see the character and build develop as you play through, learn how it works, its strengths, its weaknesses. Maybe you get to use that really nice low-level item that you could never trade because it suits them, and of course you get to find new things too.

It's a lot hollower to just instantly respec a character in a different way (speaking from personal experience, having tried it a couple of times when there were passive skill wipes when the tree was changed around). And if you can just respec to try something else again... what's the motivation to stay with the character? You'll just try out all the possible builds, find which one you like the most, and always use that one - even if, had you played all the way through the build, you may have found yourself happy with it. And then after that, what's the motivation to even continue playing the game once you've done everything?

So in my opinion, yes, not being able to freely respec is in the best interests of the game. If a player, hardcore or casual, likes the game enough, then when they run into the wall presented by a bad build, they will learn how to fix it. Maybe it will only take a few of all of their respec points. Maybe it will require a full restart. It might be as simple as swapping the +80% evasion chest for one with some more life (sometimes gear is the problem, again speaking from personal experience).

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Rediron wrote:

(First post so big congratulations to GGG for an awesome arpg.)

There are so many options for builds that I feel respecs should be allowed in a more accessible form than Orbs of Regret. I don't feel it is reasonable to expect players to reroll just to try out another of the myriad possible builds of their class. Sure, to modify the main theme of the build Orbs are fine, but there are just so many diverse flavours of each class.

Unfortunately many of us do feel (unnecessary) regret at earlier spec choices. Is this in the best interest of the game?

Ya it really is. Some other games got boring fast because there was no reason whatsoever to roll a new build in the same class. Making it yourself is what defines you as a player, its much more satisfying.

You get an idea and then you try to build it. If it doesn't work you start over. Its easy to fix small mistakes with the generous amounts of respec already in the game.

The question is do we want to play this game and learn about it for the next month or for years to come?

One of PoE's strengths is its ginormous Passive Tree, which I feel could be a weakness without the ability to experiment and try different builds (without re-leveling new characters). To get to a high level only to find you are gimped, and with no realistic way to fix things, doesn't necessarily encourage a player to reroll.

I didn't mean to suggest "freely" available respeccing - there should be a real effort involved to respec - but the current situation seems unbalanced. I don't want to have to use cookie-cutter builds for fear of wasting all those hours.

Then learn about the game first. Use easy builds until you plan out a good build using what you have learned with the gooid items that you have found. If you mess up thats ok. Keep the character there and you can still use him someday. There will be occasionally passive wipes when the tree changes.

Also you can build up enough regrets to wipe that characters tree yourself.

Admittedly new at this but at this (early) point, I'm coming down firmly on the side of: the current respec mechanic is too harsh.

Especially given that -- as far as I can tell -- there doesn't seem to be so much as a "Click OK to Confirm", or "Are You Sure?" involved in actually permanently consuming a skill point! No "Undo" either? One click and it's gone. You could accidentally consume a point just trying to navigate your way around the tree! (And I almost did.)

Obviously brings to mind memories of the old days -- hur hur threw my lvl 99 in the trash cuz I mis-clicked -- but We really should have moved permanently beyond that, at this point.

Please, please don't tell me you are going to throw away such advancements in usability and excuse it with "be more careful/be more pro", cuz that's just ridiculous. There's "old school cool" and "old school wtf were they thinking?!" and obviously We want as much as possible of the former and as little as possible of the latter.

Again, just an early take, and certainly my opinion will evolve somewhat the more I play the game, but I doubt I'll ever change my view that a character config screen should not be one of the most fear-inducing/dangerous places in the game.

TY for reading.

It seems that I'm not the only one who thinks that the huge size of the skill tree is the very reason why respecs shouldn't be so harsh.

As for saying that this respec system allows more replayability, I have to say that's a cheap way of replayability through a really outdated concept. Do you remember pac-man, super mario bros., space invaders? You beat the game once but then all that happened was that you just started over again with increased difficulty. And what happened if you beat that? It would restart again with even more difficulty. And it just never ended... Of course after a few years game devs started to realize that this system didn't really motivate players to replay the game... The current respec system is a very similar situation. Not only that but I believe it's unfair to reward players for playing way too much, not everyone has that kind of free time.

Sorry but respecing is not a good idea at all. I agree with the devs on this one. Learn and experiment to build your character the way you want and perfect it over time with various characters. This is why this game rocks...respecing is what you do in easy/casual games...not fun.

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funky007 wrote:

Sorry but respecing is not a good idea at all. I agree with the devs on this one. Learn and experiment to build your character the way you want and perfect it over time with various characters. This is why this game rocks...respecing is what you do in easy/casual games...not fun.

A full respec won't make the game easier if it has the proper limitations. And the size of the skill tree is already a limitation on itself. Who wins or loses shouldn't be about who is the biggest no-lifer, which is currently the only way to truly experiment with the game...

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funky007 wrote:

Sorry but respecing is not a good idea at all. I agree with the devs on this one. Learn and experiment to build your character the way you want and perfect it over time with various characters. This is why this game rocks...respecing is what you do in easy/casual games...not fun.

Respecing has nothing to do with if the game is easy or not. Being unable to respec just for the sake of having to make a new char is a HUGE gamebreaking flaw. If that's what it takes to make you re-play the game something is very wrong with the game. It is a mentality of maybe 10-20 years past and games today should IMO be more flexible especially considering the huge talent trees. It's funny when you say experiment when this game design DOES NOT approve of experimenting. What a no respec policy will mean is there will be one cookie-cutter build that everyone will stick to since if they mess up they're screwed. I don't like the idea that you should be able to respec whenever either, so maybe put an x day timer on it or something like that. Something else I'm missing is a confirm button when specing.

Personally not being able to respec really puts me off and even tho I enjoy the game as a whole, I've had really bad experiences with no respecing in the past and in PoE.

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MightyRavenDark wrote:

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Runeclaw wrote:

I knew I had seen something about respecs, but could not remember where or what it said. But after a large cup of coffee and looking around, I saw this on the Developer Diary page:

Path of Exile doesn’t allow entire-character passive-skill respecs. We will allow a limited quantity of small-scale respecs to fix mistakes or planning errors, but we want to encourage people to build a new character rather than entirely repurpose an existing one. This isn’t just because we want people to play our game more, but because it’s meant to be fun to play characters, rather than some chore that people want to press a button to skip. Also, the quality of characters evolved through play is often substantially higher than that of characters that have all of their passive skills allocated in one go. As we’ve seen from resetting passives in the Alpha, many players are very short-sighted with their skill allocation and skip important skills to maximize damage. This means they don’t have the right amount of life/mana/accuracy and other crucial stats they wouldn’t think to allocate without actually playing the character as they allocate the points. The lack of full respecs means that it’s not trivial for people to merely copy a good build from the internet. This rewards players who come up with innovative builds themselves

Honestly have to say I strongly disagree with the devs on this one, because they are implying that if I want to be successful in-game or avoid passive skill planning errors, I need to break immersion and follow someone else's build. I think that discourages experimentation and limits what you want to do, it scares people into thinking they need to have the right build to properly progress through the game and that seems like a huge mistake in D2 that they are repeating, but this time, without a second chance (there were 3 full respecs in D2 which allowed you to fix your character if a faulty build was preventing you from continuing the game). But in all honesty, I don't want there to be any "right" builds, I don't want there to be a "strongest" build, I want to see many unique builds that all work equally as well.

So sorry GGG, but I don't think "fix small errors" is good enough.

Just reroll. The point is to make people plan their builds. You don't have to copy someone else's build. They WANT you to think of your own build that matches your playstyle. Then, make it viable. Make it work. The tools are there, you just need to learn to use them. I've made so many characters, and I had fun with them, but then had to reroll when I found out that they were useless later on. That's the way the game works. It's fine if you don't like it, but that's the kind of hardcore gamer the game is shooting for. This isn't Farmville or D3. Decisions mean something here.