Passive respec points need to go.

^You have it backward: there IS a cost in D4 (gold). In D3 there is, quite literally, NO cost to change your skills or runes or ANYTHING. You can do it willy nilly, whenever you want, no matter what.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

This is objectively untrue. Did you not play D3 or something?

In Diablo 3, you didn't choose skills when you levelled up - you unlocked every single skill automatically, and you chose loadouts between them. You literally didn't have builds in that game, because there were zero choices to make that couldn't be unmade for free out of combat. If you were playing Mystic Ally monk, and decided you want to try Wave of Light monk, you literally just walk to your stash and equip slightly different items. If you want to change back, you walk back to your stash and re-equip the first set of items. There is ZERO cost to doing this.

In D4, you have a limited number of skill points and there's a significant gold cost to refunding them. You can't have every single skill simultaneously unlocked on your character, which means the game actually has builds. There's a lot to dislike about D4, but not having builds isn't on that list.

Precisely: there is NO cost in D3. It is all immediately unlocked upon reaching a level, and ALWAYS available no matter what. There is no decision making at all when it comes to "leveling up" or skills or passive tree etc. Even the Paragon Points don't have any cost or decision making....there is a hard cap that you get to quite fast with 75% of the stats, and all the rest is basically negligible (in terms of CHOICE).

In D4, there IS a physical cost: respeccing your skill decisions costs gold, exponentially more expensive the higher level you are. THAT is a literal cost.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

This is objectively untrue. Did you not play D3 or something?

In Diablo 3, you didn't choose skills when you levelled up - you unlocked every single skill automatically, and you chose loadouts between them. You literally didn't have builds in that game, because there were zero choices to make that couldn't be unmade for free out of combat. If you were playing Mystic Ally monk, and decided you want to try Wave of Light monk, you literally just walk to your stash and equip slightly different items. If you want to change back, you walk back to your stash and re-equip the first set of items. There is ZERO cost to doing this.

In D4, you have a limited number of skill points and there's a significant gold cost to refunding them. You can't have every single skill simultaneously unlocked on your character, which means the game actually has builds. There's a lot to dislike about D4, but not having builds isn't on that list.

Yeah I'm talking about an entire game in the context of proving that a game with absolutely no choices isn't a game, and by degree a game with less impactful choices is less of a game (so as an example D3 and D4 in relation to POE) you're missing the point so that you can shit on D3 which is fair enough LOL..

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Precisely: there is NO cost in D3.

To build choices sure. But thats not what I was pointing out.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

^You have it backward: there IS a cost in D4 (gold). In D3 there is, quite literally, NO cost to change your skills or runes or ANYTHING. You can do it willy nilly, whenever you want, no matter what.

The gold cost in D4 is also effectively no cost. Just sayin' they're both pure dogshit in this regard (and many others tbh).

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alhazred70 wrote:

Yeah I'm talking about an entire game in the context of proving that a game with absolutely no choices isn't a game, and by degree a game with less impactful choices is less of a game (so as an example D3 and D4 in relation to POE) you're missing the point so that you can shit on D3 which is fair enough LOL..

You were the second post in a simple thread talking about "respec" points. The whole thread is talking ONLY about choices on the skill tree. And now you say your response was NOT to that topic, but to a much much much broader topic?

Then that was just a poor response...you are inviting strawmans and totally unrelated comparisons into the conversation.

THAT's why folks like me are picking up on your comment. Reign yourself in, sir, or find a much more clear way of making your point. As it reads, it is pretty clear you are talking about the skill tree and passive points and NOT the "entire game" as you describe, because that is all that was mentioned prior to your comment.



Whether effective or not, Gold IS a cost. Compare that to D3: one has a cost, one does not. You can argue that there is no real cost in PoE either since regrets are super super super easy to get. But that's not really the point being made. We aren't talking effectiveness, we are simply talking about the "existence" of a cost, whatever that may be.

And frankly, even though its a "non-cost" as you put it, the gold (and by extension, regret orbs) DO serve their purpose in adding weight to your skill tree decisions.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

You were the second post in a simple thread talking about "respec" points. The whole thread is talking ONLY about choices on the skill tree. And now you say your response was NOT to that topic, but to a much much much broader topic?

Its reasonable enough to misunderstand but none the less my statement has context and a game design discussion needs to keep that sorted I feel like. I made an analogy and I guess I can't be too surprised that someone wanted to make light of Diablo 3 and 3.5 based on it (again fair enough). They are clearly lesser games, but still also obviously games. Ofc they are great examples of having less weight (or in the case of build creativity no real weight at all). Anyway I'm just interested in good faith game design discussion.

I think it is interesting to see the hate d3 still gets when I found it quite a good time when I played it with my friends.

I think it is important to note it has different objectives and systems. Some of them are quite novel. Some of them aren't.

It doesn't have infinite build diversity, or even 10 builds per character but it is more complex then just slotting in the meta set and jewels. Especially when pushing greater rifts.

D3 has infinitely better grouplay in my opinion. The servers can
1) not lag out.
2) give everyone rewards, so your party progresses at the same rate.

But back to respec points, weight or perceived weight of choices.

I find it baffling how poor the new player experience is in poe. And locking the tree behind relatively rare respec orbs is a part if it. If experienced players never notice it, and it contributed to less people playing, why keep it around. It doesn't serve its purpose as a hurdle or barrier to choice if everyone uses guides anyway.

Why do we push for players to do so much outside the game? Read this article, download this program, join this discord, use the correct wiki, etc. Especially since 70 % of pobs i look at are just wrong. Inflated numbers, weird configuration. Sometimes people just casually add it like 3 mirror items. New players can't tell if a guide is good or bad because they are new. They also can't know if a skill is bad until they try it out, and they need a tree that supports the skill to really know.

Lets say for example someone is playing a witch. After killing Brutus they have three choices, spell damage. Es and mana or intelligence. But that may change. No matter what build they pick, they now need to burn 2 or 3 acts of respec points if the stat they choose isn't meaningful in their build. That is my issue. We need to burn so many respec points to correct our build to a ever changing character. At times we may need to change the entire archetype of what the character does. It isn't meaningful for that to have a cost, or informative, in my opinion.

In my opinion it serves no constructive or fun purpose. Would it really change the game to respec freely. Poeninja shows they hover between like 3 chaos and 1.5 chaos. So each map if using the chaos recipe gets like 2 orbs of regret or 50 maps for a whole reset (well 35 really since you rarely need 100 points).

My point is that its a punitive cost when it hurts the most for players and wouldn't really harm anything if it went away. Especially if it is something that harms new players.

I think the system is fine.

You have some respec points gained as quests rewards and also orbs of regret are dropping, which aren't very expensive.

I'm not sure if I would be against if we had a free respec in HO, but I'm not the one needing it... So, once again, for ME current system is fine.

Any time that player choices have no weight, there isn't actually a choice being made; unlimited/free respecs of the skill tree LOWER player agency by robbing their decisions of value. But the new player experience would definitely be improved by allowing them to experiment with a larger variety of tools and systems before (soft) locking them into their builds around level 45-50, after they've played enough to establish a foundational knowledge of what they need for their chosen skill/build.

I'd like to see one complete respec for free when players beat act 5, which must be activated before leaving act 6 or it disappears. In my head, you'd get this as your reward for beating Kitava. One line of dialogue added to Sin at the Cathedral Rooftop waypoint, and you're good to go. But it would also make thematic sense to replace the 2 regrets Lilly gives you for clearing the strand. Either way, this is deep enough into the game for first-time players to benefit from it but early enough to stop them from hitting a wall they can't surpass because their build is just that bad.