Full respec

Wouldn't free full respecs in game completely devalue the orbs of regret? I like the orbs of regret alot and I was actually surprised when I started playing this game at how easy it would be to fix mistakes on the passive still tree. This game is forgiving enough. Please do not give any kind of full respec. I think that messing up a character under level 20 is not the end of the world since it didn't take super long to get to that level. For a new player this would be a great learning experience. They can start over with a new character and when they have enough orbs to fix the other one then they can do that. Its not a complete waste or anything. I really like the consequences this game currently has. Very good balance. Just my opinon.

What if completing Cruel gave you enough points for a full respec? By "full respec" I mean that however many points you've spent on passives gets refunded; not that you get 111 refund points... This change wouldn't devalue orbs of regret that much, it doesn't give people unlimited respecs, and you have to put in a bit of work to earn it.

Other thoughts:
- If completing Cruel is a bit too far away, you can grant refund points when someone gets to Act 2 in Cruel or something.
- You could also reduce the amount of refund points you get. Maybe completing Cruel only gives you half of your allocated points as refund points.

I think with proper research and collecting orbs of regret you can fix most minor mistakes. However, I don't see the harm with implementing some kind of "you can fully respec ONCE" feature.

The solution is quite simple - grant 20 respec points after finishing the first 2 difficulty levels. Once you finish Cruel, you should have ~50 respec points (20+20+quest rewards) which should be more than enough. It allows one full respec - after playing the game this much a player should know the game better, have more skill gems, gear with multiple sockets and such to make informed decisions.

I think full respecs could be more damning for casual players than they would be beneficial. It seems that most of the time (if not working on a guided build from the forums), a casual player will build "as needed," and the difficulty in PoE scales fairly consistently. Therefore, I could see more complaints arising because a player thought they had a better idea in mind, only to realize unforeseen weaknesses great enough to ruin the character completely, simply because the theory wasn't being tested as the character developed through increasing levels of difficulty. This would be worse than simply rerolling a toon or bartering for orbs of regret to fix minor errors. (note: this is assuming the difference between a "casual" and a "hardcore" player is the amount of time and experience they wish to dedicate to theory crafting a build before they roll their toon, and their willingness to learn through failure as they exercise their theory)

I think, if a full respect is necessary at all, it should be limited to a one time offer at the end of act 1 normal, and only then to reduce the monotony of rerolling a failed build theory and repeating the same content as you just completed. I don't think it will be apparent if this would be necessary until we see how the economy changes with the greater quantity of "casual" players that v1.0 is likely to bring. As it is, orbs of regret are easy enough to obtain (low demand, most players would be happy to trade a few of them for a desired item or skill rather than alchs, chaos, gcp, etc..) that a respec option is completely unneeded.

Disclaimer: I'm posting from a new iPad, and haven't figured out how to disable the damn autocorrect yet.. I revised the post three times, and at this point I don't care any longer if words like "rerolling" appear instead as "retooling" :P

Rather than have a full respec, what about being able to make a cash shop purchase to obtain a second talent tree to switch between? Like, I go back to town, talk to an NPC to switch my from my Staff Templar skill tree to my Shield+Spells skill tree.

Seems like a good way to get some $$cash money$$ in while not devaluing Orbs of Regret, not being Pay2Win, and encouraging custom/wacky builds. This would allow people to have a raiding build and a PvP build, or a 'safe' build and a test build.

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Frolic wrote:

Rather than have a full respec, what about being able to make a cash shop purchase to obtain a second talent tree to switch between? Like, I go back to town, talk to an NPC to switch my from my Staff Templar skill tree to my Shield+Spells skill tree.

Seems like a good way to get some $$cash money$$ in while not devaluing Orbs of Regret, not being Pay2Win, and encouraging custom/wacky builds. This would allow people to have a raiding build and a PvP build, or a 'safe' build and a test build.

Not going to happen. The devs have stated a few times and in a few ways why this will not be the case. For one, cash shop for respec is pay2win. For two, your character is not designed to be able to easily change its playstyle on a dime. You are encouraged to make multiple characters that do multiple things, not one character that does multiple things (for much the same reason that you can't change your character's gender or can't renege on your Bandit quest choices).

The character is meant to be built up throughout the life of the character, little by little, ending up in a state where you can see all your past hardships as if they were scars on the skin.

A full respec completely betrays that notion, and takes us to a land of min-maxing from which we'll never return.

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pneuma wrote:

The character is meant to be built up throughout the life of the character, little by little, ending up in a state where you can see all your past hardships as if they were scars on the skin.

Quoted for awesomeness.

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pneuma wrote:

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Frolic wrote:

Rather than have a full respec, what about being able to make a cash shop purchase to obtain a second talent tree to switch between? Like, I go back to town, talk to an NPC to switch my from my Staff Templar skill tree to my Shield+Spells skill tree.

Seems like a good way to get some $$cash money$$ in while not devaluing Orbs of Regret, not being Pay2Win, and encouraging custom/wacky builds. This would allow people to have a raiding build and a PvP build, or a 'safe' build and a test build.

Not going to happen. The devs have stated a few times and in a few ways why this will not be the case. For one, cash shop for respec is pay2win. For two, your character is not designed to be able to easily change its playstyle on a dime. You are encouraged to make multiple characters that do multiple things, not one character that does multiple things (for much the same reason that you can't change your character's gender or can't renege on your Bandit quest choices).

The character is meant to be built up throughout the life of the character, little by little, ending up in a state where you can see all your past hardships as if they were scars on the skin.

A full respec completely betrays that notion, and takes us to a land of min-maxing from which we'll never return.

I don't see how full respecs are pay to win when the Orb of Regret system is already in place, and Orbs of Chance are not terribly difficult to come by (or trade for). It's not like changing your talents from what they are to what they could have been gives you a numerical advantage over a savvy free-to-player who grinded Orbs, made another character, or didn't screw up his character to begin with.

If the problem with multiple skill trees is that changing the way your character plays quickly is bad, why not put a cooldown timer on it? You could even tax it with a cost on 5/10/25 Orbs of Regret, have it reset all instances (so you can't, say, switch from an electric damage build to a fire damage build because a monster is randomly immune to electric), and put a 24 hour cooldown timer on it.

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anubite wrote:

Casuals needing to respec has nothing to do with the availablility of respecs, but the failure to communicate to players that their choices matter and that the skills they are picking will not help them in the long run. The failure is purely on a communication level then, and not a mechanics one.

No one has to undo a mistake if they never make it in the first place. Putting a few random skill points every so often is fine; it takes a massive commitment to an ineffective build to screw up a character.

I am sorry but this is not true in my opinion. I find myself very casual. I have casual friends and we all enjoy to experiment with every game we participate in. I am ver glad PoE showed up. I am deeply in love with most of the game mechanics but a vision of grinding for orbs to make a respec because I want to tryout some new builds / gear combination has just made me think over if I want to play it anymore. Game is great as I said but it seems that it will take to much of my time. I don't mind other currency, it's fine with me. Going for perfection should take time and be rewarding. But skills.. I don't like it this way. Fresh palyer will not know the game at all. No basic knowledge about skill gems nor theorycrafting.

I don't care about scaning forums for "the one build that will owrk well" I do not aspire to be half best. But I know I want to have fun with game. Within a limited time that my life offers me as a playtime. I don't want to waste it on forums. I preffere to waste it in game. Experimenting was one of factors that brought me here. If I will have to grind to have fun, I will simply quit. It's not QQ or blackmail in any way, I am just honest and a bit saddened.

Let's be honest. The more important thing is that there are hundreds of thousands of people that think like I do. You just can't find em on this very forum while game is still in beta. But they will come on release or a bit later, and devs will need em to keep the game going. They will never aspire to be best, just like me, but after few passive mnistakes they will not find the time wasted on farming orbs woth it.

Economically I would sell free respeccs for certain leagues in the CS but not for Races or other tournaments.

If you want to Respecc a default Char for a PvP-Event... fine. If you want to respacc a Char for a HC-Race... not fine.

I don't see any harm in selling respeccs for default or normal HC. On the other hand a build in PoE is created normally in two ways.

First is evolution of your situation. Normally you skill your char by playing it and figuring out what you might need in your actual situation. You will just skill what you need.

And grinding for Orbs of Regrets does not mean that you go around hitting mobs in the hope of these Orbs dropping. It does mean that you just have to trade in some other currency. And actually I would think that most of the other orbs which are needed to create good rares are worth a fair amount of regrets.

But I guess the demand of rerolling rares is a lot higher, than the need of respeccing. I might switch some points too later, since I have some nodes, which might not be needed later on (Dex/Int/Str), but these respeccs are normally manageable by the free points you get.