Respec Talk (started from Zizaran interview)

The talk they had in Ziz's recent interview about PoE2 baffles the hell out of me.
I'd link it, but I'm not sure the forums look fondly on that.

TLDR from the interview:
Zizaran asked about if they've considered making respecing easier/cheaper early on, to avoid scaring away new players.
GGG wants respecs to be "a mission" you're on and it should be expensive.
They were even confused when Ziz said that it was cheaper to respec a level 100 and rerolling, as their intention is that rerolling a character should be "the better investment" (to which Ziz panic-laughed, and said "I'm sorry PoE community").
And they said that they haven't seen it as an issue, because there no feedback saying otherwise.



So... here's feedback that "says otherwise".


How can GGG even think this way?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering their general way of pushing PoE.

I know this make me sound like I want everything to be easy, that is not my point at all...
I LOVE PoE, and a lot of that love comes from how deep and crazily complicated it is.


I feel like it's likely the number one reason people get turned off from PoE...


All my ARPG friends are used to "feeling their way forward"... and yeah, PoE is different and demands more from the builds... but that is EXACTLY why it needs to be easier...


Punishing new players because of being new is insane...
"It should be more viable to reroll your character" is a crazy answer to me.... if it happens at level 50 or so.... that's EASILY 30-50 hours of playtime, if they just follow SOME of the story stuff...

Seems like GGG is seeing it as the same investment that "no lifers" put into the champaign for every league...
If you get told after 30 hours that EVERYTHING you've done is this new game your TRYING OUT is completely useless... you're likely gonna jump ship and never look back.

I tried PoE the first time in Beta... and didn't REALLY get into it before Breach league, where I "tried again" for the 4 or 5th time...
I played the hell out of D2... it was almost my life for 2 years... I HATED D3 for being too casual, and only have a decent (casual player) hour-count in there because of friends pulling me into it a couple of times...

How can GGG not see that respecing is scaring away A TON of people?
PoE is already overwhelming as all hell from having 800000 different league mechanics everywhere... 2000 different systems... 23947875923 passive points...
And crafting.... holy s***.....
It's exciting as hell when it works... but I only started REALLY crafting last league, because it's SOOO random... and expensive...

And the "cheap respec" at high levels comes from a person who plays PoE for a living... someone with tons of currency, who benefits more from throwing currency at a problem, than spending hours on rerolling a new character.

Like Ziz, I DO NOT want respecs to be free... it's taking away the "build a character" feel... which is also what GGG mentions.
I 100% agree on that part... but making it borderline impossible for new players is not the way to go.


I LOVE PoE, and HATE that I can't get people into it... but I 140% get why I can't... the game is insanely overwhelming...
I'm a.... uhm... dedicated casual, I guess I'd say... I usually return for 1-2 leagues a year... and have been during so since Breach...
There's still mechanics I'm unsure of... and when I finally figure them out, they change in an update...
There's still bosses I've never beaten...
And with focusing on some things over others when playing, I also have a browser open on my other monitor for CONSTANTLY looking up random things...


The reason there's not more players on here complaining about it... is because the people who ends up on game forums are the dedicated players...
The ones being scared away won't even bother going here, unless it's for an answer on how to respec, and get scared off by the answer.

I've been saying for years that there needs to be a one-time use full respec option when you beat Act 5 Kitava, specifically to help first-time players fix mistakes they made in the first 20 levels when they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. You can't trade or save this, it's literally something you have to choose before getting on the boat to act 6 or it's gone forever.

Last Epoch will change respecs in PoE for the better as well.

It will take a bit longer than the long overdue trading improvements we will get, but we will get more accessible respecs, too.

PoE really needs to stop to be a game focused on the 0.1% of gigachad-nolife-streamers and become a game for the 99.9%.

But when Last Epoch 1.0 drops this will get things going.

Just be patient.

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navigator4223 wrote:

Last Epoch will change respecs in PoE for the better as well.

It will take a bit longer than the long overdue trading improvements we will get, but we will get more accessible respecs, too.

PoE really needs to stop to be a game focused on the 0.1% of gigachad-nolife-streamers and become a game for the 99.9%.

But when Last Epoch 1.0 drops this will get things going.

Just be patient.

Last Epoch will change nothing. Do you realize how many games have come and gone during PoE's lifetime....and had zero effect on the development of this game? GGG is famous and notorious for butting the trends shown in other games across its entire lifetime.

But that is also part of why PoE has existed for the last 11 years with solidly even, and even growing audience while other games have seen much heavier waxes and wanes (by percentages).

The issue isn't that respecs are expensive, it's that the complexity of the game isn't being communicated effectively. Something about the game that *kinda* hasn't changed since before my hiatus is that you more-or-less pick 2 clusters that you care about, connect those two clusters, pick up life/defenses/ES/etc opportunistically, then pick up some damage if you need it (you will probably re-spec out of it at some point), and then stretch for jewel sockets -- preferably at least 2 cluster jewel sockets.

Fact of the matter, half the skill tree becomes irrelevant as soon as you make one decision about your character. After 2, pretty much your entire build is made for you.

[Removed by Support] Difficulty should come from the game content you attempt to beat, not from fixing some misallocations on the passive tree you made early on because it's your first build. They just don't understand the difference between difficulty and tedium. POE does have some of the former but 90% of it's gameplay is the latter stacked in absurd amounts. Looks like POE2 is going to be even worse. I am really looking forward to the games release and the players reaction to it.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

[Removed by Support] Difficulty should come from the game content you attempt to beat, not from fixing some misallocations on the passive tree you made early on because it's your first build. They just don't understand the difference between difficulty and tedium. POE does have some of the former but 90% of it's gameplay is the latter stacked in absurd amounts. Looks like POE2 is going to be even worse. I am really looking forward to the games release and the players reaction to it.

Thing is, you have to do some truly awful things like not picking up any defense nodes whatsoever to legitimately brick a character. Further, considering most endgame builds include cluster jewels of some description, I think characterizing early allocations as "wrong" is itself, wrong. You're going to invest in certain nodes early to be efficient and you're going to re-spec when you get high-quality cluster jewels. The only trick is to minimize how much you re-spec in the middle so you don't spend all your regrets.