How would easy respec's hurt the game?

I agree re-specs should be easier to come by. 3 to 5 hours to complete acts in poe1 and orbs of regret. Much easier to try new builds and experiment. Poe 2 makes it so you have to do a 20-30 hour campaign just to try a new ascendancy and all your gold to re-spec if you even have enough. I feel like its extreme.

I see no issues with giving people more control over their mistakes instead of forcing people to restart. Also, If the campaign layouts weren't so large, maybe the campaign would be tolerable to run. It is still fun in terms of content, but I get tired of running around the zone for 10 minutes looking for a door.

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Avaricta#4758 wrote:

It is a slippery slope. First you give players free respec, then they want smart loot, after that they want XYZ ... and poof, the game feels like you can just cheat in every item you want and nobody plays it anymore because it has become boring af.

Players often wine they want xyz. But in reality this would ruin the game. GGG has proven, over many years, that they are very good in identifying the actual underlying issue and come up with their own, better solution.

At some point there just has to be a hard NO and the wining must be ignored. Wining players will inevitable ruin every game, if listened to.

Furthermore, there is absolutely zero need for free respecs!

Everybody has the option to respec for gold. If you do not have enough gold, then you mismanaged a limited resource, that is by design limited (in the sense of time spent), or you just need to farm more resources. On this character or a new one.

Slippery slope doesn't apply. You can add a feature without adding others - see the myriad of games that have proved that.

Sure - there is no _need_ for respecs. There's no need for anything in the game. But respecs are available - I'm discussing the cost. As you said, gold is limited, so why should the respec cost hours and hours of time? What exactly does that add to the gameplay?

The effect is telling people to not waste time going off the beaten path and follow other's footsteps.

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Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

this is a game where you roll new characters, go again. you play out the different choices, you dont just spend a minute respeccing to them, go "oh thats that build hu? ok, next..." and just burn through all the game has to offer with 0 commitment, importance or feeling of investment in what you are doing. easy come easy go.

So - you roll a new character, play through the whole campaign, try your new build, say "That sux", and then repeat the process again? How often do you expect people to do that before they throw in the towel?

There are plenty of games with free (or essentially free) respec options where people do *gasp* keep playing because they can keep trying new things without having to waste the time restarting and playing for hours just to get back to where they were. They can even break the routine with off the wall builds to have fun with for a while instead of always playing the meta.

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Mouser#2899 wrote:

Slippery slope doesn't apply. You can add a feature without adding others - see the myriad of games that have proved that.

Sure - there is no _need_ for respecs. There's no need for anything in the game. But respecs are available - I'm discussing the cost. As you said, gold is limited, so why should the respec cost hours and hours of time? What exactly does that add to the gameplay?

The effect is telling people to not waste time going off the beaten path and follow other's footsteps.

I have to disagree strongly. Currently people are wining relentless about respec. If GGG gives in, there will inevitable be a next thing people wine relentlessly. That was always the case and will always be the case. And every time there will be the same argument, but it is only this small change, it can't hurt. This has already ruined countless games.

Maybe the game just is not for you.

About the cost. People have the misguided idea that every change in a build needs a complete respec that costs hundreds of thousands of gold. Which is complete bs. In most cases a few points are enough to change a build. If one lightning skill gets nerfed there are still other playable lightning skills that use almost, if not exactly, the same tree.

And even if this does not apply to a certain scenario, then we are back at the point that part of the game is managing your resources. If you fail at this than you need to farm resources again.

If the gold cost for respecs gets changed, then suddenly the resource is more available for other aspects of the game, that were not balanced for that surplus of gold and have to be rebalanced.

People only think they want things for free in the game, without realizing that having everything free in the game ruins it. I was like that too at some point. Then I lost interest in some games, looked back why and saw that the requested changes made it boring.

The easiest and fastest way to kill a game, is to give players everything they ask for.

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Mouser#2899 wrote:

Someone please explain to me why full respecs shouldn't be free, or a nominal cost.

There are different types of endgame content, so wouldn't you want to switch up your builds to do different things? You may want to try different gear setups from time to time - again, easy respecs make that possible.

How does that not make the player experience better and more fun? If I want to try a different build every day, how exactly is that a bad thing?

For people saying "meaningful choices" - the more meaningful you make the choice, the less willing people are to make them. Even Pokemon realized they had to stop single use TM's because people never used them. I'd rather be free to keep experimenting and switching things up, rather than having to rely on a build guide so I don't end up nerfing myself.

Help me out here, guys.

Depends on the context on what you mean.

Early Access? I think it'd be fine to have a severe discount to respeccing. However GGG has learnt the hard way its impossible to take something back once given. If we had 100 gold respecs for the next 6 months, there would be a nuclear war in the forums the moment its gone.

In the standard game? There needs to be some kind of permanence to your choice. It can definitely go too far and be restrictive, but it does need to have some kind of expected cost.

I'm stretching the analogy here a fair bit, but its in the same methodology as our gear. If we could login and just create the exact items we want, the game would be solved in a hour.

I've recently had to switch my Titan from Sunder Totems to Full Fire Ignite, and honestly at level 67 it took me like a hour or two farming yellows from Act 3 Cruel to get enough gold to respec.

I do agree with the last thing you said - players don't always know what they want. That doesn't mean some of their suggestions aren't good.

This isn't Path of Exile - if there aren't significant changes to the game, then this game has no reason to exist and the devs wasted the last five years of their life. That doesn't mean it turns into Diablo, but it shouldn't be PoE with a new graphics. The original game still exists and will be supported, so maybe that's the game for you (see how that works?)

The purpose of the early access is to figure things like this out. We have respecs - now how available should they be? That's an open question that will probably be adjusted several times over the next few months to a year.

I still don't see how making a player level a character up again so they can get to the endgame (ie: the real game) and try their changes adds to the gameplay.

As to replayability and longevity - the real reason Path of Exile kept its player base so long is the league mechanics, not the locked in skill tree. Players always had a reason to come back and try the new league. I haven't seen anything to suggest that won't be the case here.


Edit: Responding to the above post - I think farming for an hour or so qualifies as "easy" for a full respec. Personally, I'm partial to the Diablo 2 method where you farm bosses for items you craft into a respec token, but gold works.

But this is easy re-specialization, and you seem to agree, so why did you make this thread ??

In D2, if you don't count the likes of PlugY, it's not like it's that easy either : you get 3 free full respecs while doing the campaign on the 3 difficulties, but then it's only by farming act bosses on the hardest difficulty, for what I hear are infrequent drops (I rarely got to play on the hardest difficulty). Much less opportunity for tinkering here !

And also this is easy by PoE1 standards too : in particular before the Settlers of Kalguur update half a year ago, before which you had something like 20 respec points through the campaign, then had to farm fairly rare items too.

In fact the respec difficulty seems to be very much in line of the one from SoK (at least, with my experience playing PoE1 on Ruthless), where you now can respec with gold too.

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Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

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auspexa#1404 wrote:

After A3 and A6, we should receive an itemized-untradeable consumable for a full respec.

Alternatively, there should be an option for a full respec at a discounted price.

part of me agrees, another part thinks thats dangerous.


the counterpoint would be in order to get there, beat campaign, you have to have a functioning build that completed the task. what if you then respec to a build that doesnt work? a build incapable of getting you to the point you are at?

see what im saying? the presumption is the thing you respec to will be better, but the reality is that it often isnt.


ive even seen posts from people in the feedback already saying "i spent all my gold respeccing and the new tree doesnt work, now i have no character, no gold and no way to farm gold."

Well then that was kind of dumb of them, and hopefully they won't make this same mistake again. (It's a bit like trying to corrupt your weapon when you don't have a decent backup...)

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A different issue is (mandatory !) updates 'bricking' characters :
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3623617

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BlueTemplar85#0647 wrote:

And pray tell, how are you supposed to know that in advance ?

Anyway, you should probably re-use PoE1's one-time (per update) free full re-specialization system, but this time also for minor, rather than only major updates :

(See the RESET ALL PASSIVES button on top.)

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BlueTemplar85#0647 wrote:

It should be done for any major changes, and as far as I understand this (0.1.0d) is a major one ? (And not only for trigger gems.)

And since there will be likely a lot of major changes early on, might as well do it for every minor (non-hotfix) update (at least in the early stages of the open beta), to prevent endless discussions about why this update got a free respec and that other did not.

I always see people saying how a reason to not have easy respec is to try and make people not be meta hounds, but that is already contrary to the current design of the actual game. The endgame maps heavily push you to go meta. And having the cost to respec be so prohibitive just causes people to go meta hopping much earlier than normal because of the cost. Instead of looking up a guide later on or refining the build, the play instead becomes following a guide from the very start because it becomes too prohibitive to make or correct a mistake at all. Path of least resistance and all that.

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Mouser#2899 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

this is a game where you roll new characters, go again. you play out the different choices, you dont just spend a minute respeccing to them, go "oh thats that build hu? ok, next..." and just burn through all the game has to offer with 0 commitment, importance or feeling of investment in what you are doing. easy come easy go.

So - you roll a new character, play through the whole campaign, try your new build, say "That sux", and then repeat the process again? How often do you expect people to do that before they throw in the towel?

well i played poe1 for about 20,000 hours over a 12 year period before feeling like i was probably done with the thing. your milage may vary.


the point is whatever the number, for the core audience the game is relying on for long term 10 year+ success, its a bigger number than it would be with free respeccing.





essentially you earn your way into being able to do it in a limited fashion. every new league will come with a balance update and all the old characters in the permanent standard realm will get a full 1 off respec. so over time as you build up characters there every 3 months you can go and try something out with each of them, in the perm eternal server away from the current balanced and competitive game state happening in the new league.

as someone who has respecced standard league characters many many times i can attest to how hollow and disposable that really feels compared to starting a character and progressing it from level 1.

thats ultimately the game, making a character and progressing it from level 1 to endgame. its not endgame barbie dressing simulator sandbox. you can get to a point where you have 20+ standard league respecs and a ton of endgame gold to somewhat do that, but its something you earn over time, the ability to do that itself is a process of mastery and investment.






old poe1 regrets were terrible because what happened is a new player at level 30 hardly had any power to make mistakes and change them because they had no regrets, but a vet player with a ton of experience who knew how to make really good builds had 1000s of regrets on hand and could freely change builds on a whim despite proving they didnt need to correct mistakes by having the power to have amassed that many respec orbs. it was totally backwards.

the idea now is that its a trivial gold cost in early game to make mistakes and try things out, but by the time you are in endgame you have made decisions you should be sticking with and the fact you got there says that what you did worked, your character was effective enough, you dont need to make corrections. if you want to try a new thing cause its really fun to have new ideas etc, ok, if its such a different idea you need a total respec then you should either roll a new character or earn it by grinding enough gold to pay for it if you REALLY dont want to reroll. but do yourself a favour and reroll, learn the build from the ground up, grow with the character, feel invested.

I don't think current respec is expensive at all, especially compared to PoE1. I recently had to respec 20 points and guess what? It didn't cost me much. Maybe like 30k? There's plenty of gold in this game and it's hardly useful for anything than gambling and occasionaly good item from vendor (vendor gear > loot, which is sad, but that's another story). What are people doing with their gold they think respec is expensive?

People complain too much. Mainly because those who always relied on guides from Internet now are exposed. PoE1 was hard at first too. Dominus, especially Malachai was nightmare, when they first added him. Atziri, Shaper - every new pinnacle boss, I won't even mention how painful was labyrinth at first. This game has annoying monster respawn (which shouldn't be a thing, locations are big and it's just not respecting player time) and trials that are way too overturned (especially chaos, but even that first one, if you get stun locked all your honor lost in seconds, it shouldn't work like that), which that I agree, otherwise it's fine. It will get much easier in time, when community find out meta builds, we will have many guides how to progress faster and most efficiently. I love current, virgin period, when everyone has to rely on themselves. It's not that difficult, seriously, some things may be poorly balanced, but that's expected for EA.

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Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

the point is whatever the number, for the core audience the game is relying on for long term 10 year+ success, its a bigger number than it would be with free respeccing.

And yet, most MMO's let people respec freely, and people play them for years...

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Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

the idea now is that its a trivial gold cost in early game to make mistakes and try things out, but by the time you are in endgame you have made decisions you should be sticking with and the fact you got there says that what you did worked, your character was effective enough, you dont need to make corrections. if you want to try a new thing cause its really fun to have new ideas etc, ok, if its such a different idea you need a total respec then you should either roll a new character or earn it by grinding enough gold to pay for it if you REALLY dont want to reroll. but do yourself a favour and reroll, learn the build from the ground up, grow with the character, feel invested.

The Atlas is infinite, so there's no end to the endgame. Call me crazy, but once I get a character up to or near max level I don't see myself wanting to slog through the campaign again just to try a new build. Especially if I've got a few characters up there - which I plan on doing. If I want to start fresh, I'll wait for a new league and roll someone for that.

I think getting the character up that high would be all the "earning" required. Honestly, the idea that changing your build is something that needs to be "earned" seems rather backwards to begin with.

I'm not saying it needs to be a free reset button - but it shouldn't take hours of work, either. Forcing a player to spend a lot of time doing something they don't want to do, so that they can then do the stuff they do want, generally isn't good game design.

Now I am NOT suggesting this game do this, but there is a reason MMO's sell character boosts - so you can skip the grind and get to the content you want to play (again - NOT saying this game should do that). But suggesting people should redo the whole campaign with every change to "feel invested" is bonkers to me.