Make Respecs Free or this game will become POE1

As this topic is rising in the feedback channel i gathered some of the more appalling reason pro and contra and even collected opinions on how to implement such a feature. before going in to a looong text i will put some ideas in a short format down there.


PRO

-Encouraging experimenting and fun: Respecing should be part of the games fun just like changing out a skill or putting in a different support gem to see how it turns out. Not a barrier with hours and hours of playtime to just brick a character and dont play anymore.

-Improved player engagement: with skill balancing and nerfs/buffs or improved weapon swapping players should be able to adapt to improved knowledge and shouldnt be punishing for a decision they made 40 hours ago. It helps nobody to abandon a char or abandon a whole league of poe simply because you misskilled a passive node early on.

-Accesibility for veterans and newer players. Every new player will now this situation from poe1. You basically hit a wall and people make fun out of you in global that you didnt look up a character guide for a top tier meta char before playing. Even people that play since basically 10 years relly on others to make builds to have fun.

-Reducing the use of third party tools: Currently in POE1 nearly everyone playing seriously uses path of building to see how the nodes work together. Even in poe2 people are waiting for a Path of building release and are scared that the now popular 2 builds will be nerfed and their time investment is gone to waste, i saw even a post of jungroan today on twitter asking if the skill he is about to use is on the hitlist of nerfs before investing into a char.

-More meaningfull Gameplay and use of the core game: Why would you ever put 1600+ passive nodes, 12 weapons and 200+ skills into a game without the option to explore those? free respecing would change this for the better and people could start explore the Passive tree. Now that would open up the game for An extraordinary number of Skill combinations. Imagine a pure INT STR warrior with spells to buff and slams to hit. Will i try this in the current state of the game? hell no, Respecing would cost me easily 15-20 hours of my life for my lvl 42 warrior. And imagine it beeing bad? i would basically never play this game again or depend on others to make working builds. But if its free even could try fun sounding combos and respec if they find it to not work how they imagined.

-Casual player engagement: Imagine someone that barely gets to play and he hits a wall in poe because he skilled the wrong way and lacks lets say some int nodes. You think this person will play for hours on low level maps with basically no reward to respec or drop this game to play something that offer something for the time investment?

-Enhancing longevity: Besides the mentioned notes, even in high endgame it brings back the fun to change some nodes up, try different uniques and so on, only the most hardcore players will have the time to proc a 50 hour campaign more then once per league.



CONTRA


- you need to experience the cost of your failures

- you need to proceed with meaningful choices

- you need to comit to your build

- people will change tree mid fight


those contras are btw real answers from real person from this sub. I dont know how it would affect them when others dont want to comit to their build or watch 20 hours of guides to exactly know how the synergies between the 1600+ passive nodes.

``You don't need to pay in gold when you switch your skill and support gems. Does it take away the "significance of player's choice"? Does it break the game since you can actually switch skills on the fly based on enemies you're fighting?
No. You're encouraged to try everything out and experiment with skills and combinations freely.`` (Thanks to avg54#6148 for this last part)

Solution



there are already the perfect NPCs implemented to solve the possible problems: Nameless Seer or even the hooded one!!! make it so that you can only reset passives for free at this NPC and make it so that it closes your open portals. Dont even give us a resett al at once button the simple clicking of 120 nodes is more then enough work to not do it too frequently: BAM 100% more fun and never looking into path of building again. And if you want to respec on the go keep the Respec costs right now in maps and fights in general.

- accidentally quoted.

No. Free respecs would mean you no longer have a build, you have a loadout instead. The best way to play would be to change your build for every type of content. Bossing? A loadout for that. Clearing normal mobs? A loadout for that. Different trials? Loadouts for all of those. Etc. Then players doing this start complaining about the game being too easy. Eventually content starts being balanced around this and anyone not doing it is screwed. Then players complain about the time and effort switching loadouts takes. They say 'GGG let us have multiple slots for our passive tree. Since there is no cost to switching giving us multiple tree loadouts is pure quality of life!' Now you get a game that is bland as hell. Builds no longer exist, characters are all the same, there is no replayability, etc. So yeah, no.

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Telzen#2427 wrote:

No. Free respecs would mean you no longer have a build, you have a loadout instead. The best way to play would be to change your build for every type of content. Bossing? A loadout for that. Clearing normal mobs? A loadout for that. Different trials? Loadouts for all of those. Etc. Then players doing this start complaining about the game being too easy. Eventually content starts being balanced around this and anyone not doing it is screwed. Then players complain about the time and effort switching loadouts takes. They say 'GGG let us have multiple slots for our passive tree. Since there is no cost to switching giving us multiple tree loadouts is pure quality of life!' Now you get a game that is bland as hell. Builds no longer exist, characters are all the same, there is no replayability, etc. So yeah, no.

what you say is basically a review of poe1. People have one char for mapping, one char for bossing, one char for sanctum some of us try a heist runner etc. You get the gist of it. Nobody cares about the build but the content they wanna do. Everyone i know that plays this game seriously waits for patchnotes and then waits for op league starter guides. Gets some currency and waits for better endgame guides. And this exactly will happen to poe2 if there is no change to the system. Honestly its even worse in poe 2. Gold is far worse to get then the old system of Regret orbs. You can get a full reset on poe 1 for under a div but i know and you know that people maybe changing their tree once or twice in a league. its simply bad game design and a remnant of the past. Look at games like wukong where respecing costs nothing and it is great.

POE2 respeccing is gatekeeped behind great sums of gold. I have a warrior i dont play anymore because the time i need to get enough gold for respeccing is worse then the time i need to push a new char through the acts. This shouldnt be the way to handle it

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RocksDJizz#0050 wrote:

POE2 respeccing is gatekeeped behind great sums of gold. I have a warrior i dont play anymore because the time i need to get enough gold for respeccing is worse then the time i need to push a new char through the acts. This shouldnt be the way to handle it

You're very blatantly overexaggerating.

1) For low-level characters the cost to reset their entire tree is measured in minutes of gold farming (not even hours).

2) The further you go, the more costly it becomes, HOWEVER you never need to untick 100% of nodes for a high-level character. Depending on the severity of changes, you might do it with much less unticks.

3) There's never a need to pay a great amount of gold once to change just about everything. Adjusting your build in several stages is both less problematic (you'll find more gold while you're testing your changes) and safer (you'll see if the build goes wrong ways before committing fully to it).