Is there a full respec option yet?

The orbs of regret system is fine. It allows you to make the minor adjustments to your build if needed. Full respec should not be an option. If you need to change your build that much, reroll a character because at that point its basically a whole new class.

They give you 24 character slots in POE. Its a game that is designed for you to level a lot of different characters. I think many people here are looking at POE as an MMO where you have one or two main characters for the whole game.

I have thought of a possible problem with the once-per-month (or 2 or 3) respec option. I don't know if it would create a major issue, so maybe it wouldn't be a big deal, but I suspect it really might, and I'll throw it out there because, well, it's the subject of this thread. :)

Is it possible that a once-per-month respec option would cause players do develop each class t a very high level, and then just come back around once each month to try new specs on the characters, but then just take a few weeks off the game until the respec option was available again?

What I mean is: Would the very fact that the option existed deter players from playing the game to level new characters?

I mean, those who really like playing will play because they like it. But I can imagine that *many* players wouldn't see the point, if they knew that they could just try out an alternate spec whenever the time period rolled around again, and see how those builds worked for maybe an hour or so, and then leave it alone again. I can see the thought process, "Well, I suppose I have other things to do anyway. I'll set this game aside for now, and come back some other time..." If that happened, it would cause a major stagnation in the player base as people got bored with the game and simply moved on after a while.

Now again, that might not be such the issue I'm imagining it to be. ... But it might, and if it were to occur, that could bode really badly for the longevity of the game.

whats the freeken problem. put it in game. if you don't like it DON'T USE IT. simple. wow stop acting like your opinion is all the matters

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cheeseheads wrote:

whats the freeken problem. put it in game. if you don't like it DON'T USE IT. simple. wow stop acting like your opinion is all the matters

Dude, stop being an i[CENSORED BY VG]. You aren't making any points, just being a pain. I'm not usually this blunt, but this is the second time you've done this in this thread. We're trying to have an intelligent discussion over here.

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VideoGeemer wrote:

I have thought of a possible problem with the once-per-month (or 2 or 3) respec option. I don't know if it would create a major issue, so maybe it wouldn't be a big deal, but I suspect it really might, and I'll throw it out there because, well, it's the subject of this thread. :)

Is it possible that a once-per-month respec option would cause players do develop each class t a very high level, and then just come back around once each month to try new specs on the characters, but then just take a few weeks off the game until the respec option was available again?

What I mean is: Would the very fact that the option existed deter players from playing the game to level new characters?

I mean, those who really like playing will play because they like it. But I can imagine that *many* players wouldn't see the point, if they knew that they could just try out an alternate spec whenever the time period rolled around again, and see how those builds worked for maybe an hour or so, and then leave it alone again. I can see the thought process, "Well, I suppose I have other things to do anyway. I'll set this game aside for now, and come back some other time..." If that happened, it would cause a major stagnation in the player base as people got bored with the game and simply moved on after a while.

Now again, that might not be such the issue I'm imagining it to be. ... But it might, and if it were to occur, that could bode really badly for the longevity of the game.

There might be this issue if there was no respec as well. I like PoE, but re-rolling a character every time you want try to something new for a class (Let's say witch) would also cause players to take weeks off.

The problem with people not wanting to re-roll in my opinion is not that the content is bad, or that the game is bad. The problem I feel is that when your playing a class a second time there is nothing visually different early on, and none of the feeling of waiting to use the "cool powers".

Like when you play a Paladin in D2 you may want to play a Hammerdin or a Zealer or some other build but both start off with different abilities and the tree's work you into cooler abilities/more effective. The reason for re-rolling is to use an entirely different character (Mechanically and visually), even though the character model looks the same.

I would not know where to begin to fix the above problem that players that like respecs will run into without adding respecs. The only thing that I can think of to fix it which probably has a million design problems with it, is to have gem nodes as part of the skill tree and you have to unlock them in the skill tree before you can use the skill gem. (like i said this prob has a million design flaws, but would make each playthrough of a class visually feel different.)

Just as a recap, In my opinion that even though when you play the same class again mechanically the class is different then any other, visually the abilities you can use and have access to feel the same.

This issue is that you can't know whether you like something before you use it. So, a player may see some ability, think that sounds great, work their way over and then find out they don't like how it works or looks or feels or whatever. So now they've spent X number of skill points and basically wasted their time. This is what a respec is for. Sure, keep it limited, maybe only 1 or 2 per character or only once a week per account or one quest reward per beating the entire game or something. But orbs of regret can't really deal with this except at a huge cost that just feels like punishing the player for trying something new.

Take Chaos Innoculation as an example. "Reduces my HP to 1 but makes me immune to an entire damage type? That's awesome!" But then maybe you get there and hate how it plays. I don't think it harms anyone else's game to let that player respec.

Choices without consequence have no value.

This is a lesson that Blizzard forgot, and thankfully GGG have not.

The system as it stands is perfect - plenty of respec points for correcting errors, but not so many as to invalidate rolling a fresh character.

To the people saying that it will drive new players away, I'm not so sure I agree with that. Reason being, many players that will come to PoE, have played the Diablos, with out a doubt. Now how many people have played Diablo 2, for how many years? Diablo 2 was out for 10 year....10 years, without having a way to reset skills, and people played it consistently the entire time.

PoE, is actually quite generous with giving the players some respec opportunity, and have even caved a bit to the players that want more, by adding an addition quest with another 2 respec points per difficulty.

I don't believe there should ever be a full respec option, too many games have gone to the wayside of catering to players, that don't want to think anymore. If you don't want to think, in anyway, on how to build your character, and he ends up with 111 points put into offensive nodes, and can't survive end game, then no, I don't think he should be allowed to press a magical button, and be able to competely redo your character.

I'm sure there are a lot of people that disagree, and that's fine, but a lot of that is simply because, most games have somewhat molded you to the idea of that there are no repercussion for your actions. GGG seems to have a different, and "old school", take on how they'd like to make this game, and I for one, am hoping they stand true to that.

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Cig wrote:

To the people saying that it will drive new players away, I'm not so sure I agree with that. Reason being, many players that will come to PoE, have played the Diablos, with out a doubt. Now how many people have played Diablo 2, for how many years? Diablo 2 was out for 10 year....10 years, without having a way to reset skills, and people played it consistently the entire time.

This is a very unfair analogy. It's true that PoE is absolutely a (possibly the) spiritual successor to Diablo 2, and that Diablo 2 is a reasonable framework to judge PoE against.

It's not at all reasonable, however, to say that PoE's skill system is more or less the same thing as Diablo 2's skill system. It clearly is not. Diablo 2's skill tree was incredibly limited compared to PoE's system.

In Diablo 2, you could easily improvise a skill system as you went. You wouldn't always end up with something ideal, but you would usually end up with something viable. This is because Blizzard severely limited the choices a player could make.

PoE does not limit the choices a player can make. The skill system has over 1000 nodes. Every class in the game is capable of getting any skill in the game. When a new player looks at the skill tree for the first time, it is literally dizzying because it is so overwhelming.

By the end of Act 1, normal difficulty, a player in PoE has more skill options and has been able to make more meaningful decisions than they could have in an entire character lifetime of Diablo 2.

Yes, Diablo 2 had no respec option for many years. Diablo 2's skill system was absolute child's play compared to PoE.

I really feel like it's going to turn a lot of people off when they find out that:

1) They have literally a thousand options available to them.
2) Some of these options will sound cool, but ultimately the player will not enjoy them.
3) Some of these options will cripple their character for life.
4) These options are essentially permanent choices and one usually needs to start from scratch if they make even a single bad choice.
(By "bad choice" I am talking about going towards an important cornerstone that they do not like, NOT mis-clicking or simple stuff like that.)

It's also kind of ridiculous that people are equating limited, penalized respecs--which is what we have now--to "choices without consequence." How is making orbs of regret more common "without consequence?" How is allowing 1 respec/month that takes away several levels "without consequence?"

GGG has drawn an arbitrary line in the sand about how hard respeccing should be--respeccing is already IN the game. The problem is just that it is a little too difficult. No one in this thread is seriously suggesting happy infinite respec fun time. It's a discussion about how to reduce the respec difficulty slightly so that one can make mistakes without having to trash their own character and start over.

Respecs need to be handled very carefully, but the current system is just going to encourage rage-quits and people slapping down cookie cutter builds that're proven to work because they are terrified of losing their character to a bad experiment.

In short: what's the fun of being given all the options in the world if they are ill-informed, basically permanent ones? Too much choice is an awful lot like too little choice.

Hell, even 1-2 "free" respecs per character lifetime would probably be enough.

I definitely see where you are coming from Saela, and I'll agree that is can look like a daunting task, to map out a build, but rather than adding respecs into the game I think there could be other options.

One such option, that I feel, would be quite helpful and would be a pseudo compromise to the respecing issue, would be to add a few features to the online skill tree.
Meaning, if the Passive skill tree on the website, was able to handle information such as, being able to select which spells you wanted to use, how you want to link such spells, and maybe even as far as a very rudimentary stat selection, it would then be able to give you additional information like; Health, Mana, DPS, Crit Chance, and whatnot. By adding something like this, it would give players a better template to design, and theorycraft, their characters, rather than doing so in game.

Now, I know I'd be able to live with this, and I'd like to think it'd not only be benificial to new players, but to the veterans, that are more interested in min-maxing their character.

As far as the point you made about D2's skill tree being a pale comparison to PoE, I agree, but does that really change the fact that players loved it, and stuck with it, for so long? It still boils down to, if you messed up, you'd have to reroll.