Please remove any costs to redistribute passive skill points

Cost to change skills needs to exist IMO but I would like to see the following things:
- one free respec when you pick an ascendancy, especially with ascendancy being a permanent choice.
A viable/enjoyable leveling build could significantly differ from your end goal.
- somewhat cheaper respec UP TO A CERTAIN POINT (through the first 2-3 acts? Up to level 30-40? Idk)
One you get into cruel you have had a chance to figure things out and the case for the current cost makes a lot more sense.

I also think that respec should be difficult and if needed, we should just start a new run.
What really matters is that you should not be able to easily "brick" your build before the endgame at least. That is where the focus should be.

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Sampawende#6115 wrote:

I also think that respec should be difficult and if needed, we should just start a new run.
What really matters is that you should not be able to easily "brick" your build before the endgame at least. That is where the focus should be.

This early on in the game would it not be beneficial to allow more freedom to respec though? I loathe the idea of having to recreate a clone of my character because of an arbitrarily excessive expense especially since not all of us are elite pro gamers

Make it free until 45. Basically whole normal difficulty length. By that time most people will have general clue about direction of leveling.

Those who need it later - can still do it for a gold price.

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Vel#9433 wrote:

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xxdarkynxx#1514 wrote:

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Vel#9433 wrote:

I like the idea of choices having consequences. Having unlimited free respecs just means that you're gonna respec every time a new meta build comes out and play follow-the-leader. No respect for your choices, because there's no consequences.

And why would that affect YOUR gameplay? If people wanna do that who cares.

Because it makes for a terrible meta.

Streamer comes out with a build, "TOP ONE PERCENT BUIILD!!11" - tons of people respec to it. GGG doesn't get any more data as people experiment, it's just data about that ONE build flooding the analysis.

Another streamer comes out with TOP 0.1 PERCENT BUILD a week later, everyone respecs again. And again, no good data is gathered on builds, passives, skills, or anything else, because it's all garbage from some stream

A day later, "Hay guyz, here's my TOP ZERO POINT ZERO ZERO ZERO ONE PERCENT BUILD SINCE YESTERDAY", and on it goes

Good data, good balancing, and good weighting depends on lots of players coming up with lots of builds, testing out the limits of how skills interact.
That's necessary to really make the kind of small adjustments to balance a game with 1,000+ skills. Forcing players to make a hard choice, and pay a price to undo it, prevents that kind of lemming mentality from taking hold and flooding the analysis with bad data.

If everyone is just a zombie, then all GGG gets is garbage and can't properly balance skills, except to react to whatever some 15 year old moron posted on Youtube, in which case, all they're doing is massive nerfs to OP builds, or buffs to things that don't need it because a million fans of some 10 year old are screaming that their favorite streamer's build needs a buff

you might be just caught in your own bubble here. I'll venture the guess that the majority of players don't watch any streamers nor follow their builds like you describe and once again the question is, why would that all matter for you as an indivual when other people have more room to experiment?

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JODYHiGHR0LLER#6171 wrote:

Cost to change skills needs to exist IMO but I would like to see the following things:
- one free respec when you pick an ascendancy, especially with ascendancy being a permanent choice.
A viable/enjoyable leveling build could significantly differ from your end goal.
- somewhat cheaper respec UP TO A CERTAIN POINT (through the first 2-3 acts? Up to level 30-40? Idk)
One you get into cruel you have had a chance to figure things out and the case for the current cost makes a lot more sense.

Why is it important that there is a cost to change skills?
What makes it ok to change it for free in Act 1-3 where it's arguably easier to get by even with a shitbuild but not in Cruel where your build needs to be more refined?

Yes Sir I agree with this post. I can not see any reason in the Acts to charge a fee to respec. Why punish new players for trying to figure out their builds. I could agree with once into maps to punish for repecs as you should have some idea your path by then but in act 1 to charge a player 2 or 3k gold to respec a handful of skills as they learn what to and not to pick.

Charging for respecs you are forcing players to follow build metas and not allow them to freely learn by mistakes.

It has to cost something otherwise the meta, especially in hardcore, will be to swap builds entirely depending on which map/league/trial/boss you're doing. This would be terrible for design, balance, and feel.

This is a proven concept.

If you disagree that it is important, that's fine, it's your opinion. If you disagree that it wouldn't affect the game negatively in those ways, you're objectively wrong.

People defending how annoying it is to respec are all in on the "weight" train because they don't know how to have fun without the threat of misery looming over them.

Posted this in another similar thread since I don't see a popular thread dedicated to gold drop.

Want to add my 2 cents here regarding the low gold drop overall. I see all defenders of high respec cost basically go by the same argument -> they themselves don't mind the grinding, and they are agaisnt other players having fun in their own way. What a selfish way to run a game, and if you have an entire team of devs thinking like this, well that's exactly how WoW ran itself into the ground.

Those who say currently players have enough gold: no we don't. My witch is 2/3 through Act 2 and still hasn't died once despite random lag spikes, is that good enough for the elitists? I have 12k gold, that's from selling every blue and yellow gear I can't salvage, and a random garbage rare from the NPC costs 1/3 to half of all my total gold. I will go completely broke just by gambling 6-8 times (almost guraranteed to get only garbage) or just total respec one time. That's not acceptable. Some people seem to have no idea how many good games are out there and how valuable gaming time is in 2024. This isn't 2004 anymore, the competition for gamers' time and money, industry wide and worldwide, is brutal.

So according to these people, it's perfectly fine for a casual player who clears maps much slower than me to grind for say 5 hours just to have enough gold to respec once, in the hope it will improve their suboptimal build. Do you guys have any idea how much actually fun, meaningful content I can experience in 5 hours in Elden Ring, Wukong, Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077 and so on and so on? It only shows that you might be a no lifer and you don't play a lot of other games to realize how valuable your time can be. If the game only panders to this crowd, and ignore both the overwhelming majority that is the casuals and players like me who have no problem skill-wise but not time-wise, soon you won't have a game. The idea of trying more than 1 or 2 characters, or playing every season, is already seeming incresingly unattractive to a lot of people.

Since Tencent owns GGG, I'll use China as an example. PoE1 in China had unique QoL features exclusive to that 1 country, like a pet that auto pickup and auto sell, similar to the pet in Torchlight. Because even though Chinese gamers might be quite grindy themselves (all those meaningless gatcha games come to mind) but even they value their time investment. WoW and FF14 as MMORPGs should in theory be some of the most grindy games in existence and as live-service games they're also built around the season/league system, but in China a LOT of players just use real money to buy gold because it's still a lot cheaper than sinking huge amount of time in real life, because in real life time is money, unless you're a no lifer. They almost never get banned because even the companies that run these games realize that you need to let the players have their fun then you earn their subscription fee, or they quit and you get nothing.