Respeccing

I see two major differences when it comes to players being able to respec.

Yes I believe that if a player makes a mistake they should live with it, orbs of regret are perfect for this situation.

The second point that I see here is the fact of players being penalized for what are essentially GGG's mistakes. What I mean by this is basically the unclear skill descriptions (there are alot, more than you wuld expect actually), and game mechanics that do not work as described. One point I want to make is there is a huge line between "Working as Intended" and "Working as Described". Obviously there's no way to just hand a respec out in this fashion.

One example of an unclear skill description would be when a spell is tagged with the "SPELL" tag at the top, but does not actually benefit from Increased Spell Damage % nodes.

That's huge, a player may have rolled a witch in order to gain easy access to these, and when they find out down the road that countless points have been wasted and a full respec is now required to make their build viable and free up points for other useful nodes.

GGG will have accomplished 2 things:

1) The player will feel that the game descriptions are sloppy and in turn that will reflect on their opinion of the game creators.
2) The player will feel that their time has been completely wasted, they will be frustrated and will lose trust in the game itself. How can you be confident in any other build after learning something that was presented in such a clear cut fashion was actually not "working as described" as it were.

I know GGG has their plate full, but when open beta hits the first couple months will weed out those that really won't put money in or play the game for a length of time.

Once people start experimenting with more in-depth builds, and they have a bad experience (due to no fault of their own) they'll probably quit and move on. You don't want to weed out the people that actually enjoy the game and wanted to play it for an extended amount of time.

I suggest GGG focus on the details and ensure things work as described or change the descriptions.

Not everyone uses the forums to research builds, some just want to look at the tree, look at their skills and gear and go for it. Those people shouldn't be penalized / punished or made to feel that way, that's a sure fire way to lose customers and money.

edit: fixed the spelling of witch from "with" to "witch"

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Chrono89 wrote:

The second point that I see here is the fact of players being penalized for what are essentially GGG's mistakes.

Our job is to fix those discrepancies, explaining how the wording is incorrect and how best to reword it during closed beta. Respecs are a heavy-handed and lazy solution and they open up an extra-large can of worms.

I agree that Detonate Dead could use a really big fix since it's the most broken (not in a good way) skill in the game right now. In addition to not really working as you'd expect, it doesn't scale with party size either (uses enemy base HP). Overall it's in a really bad place right now.

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Chrono89 wrote:

The second point that I see here is the fact of players being penalized for what are essentially GGG's mistakes. What I mean by this is basically the unclear skill descriptions (there are alot, more than you wuld expect actually), and game mechanics that do not work as described. One point I want to make is there is a huge line between "Working as Intended" and "Working as Described". Obviously there's no way to just hand a respec out in this fashion.

I see what you're getting at, however, this is a good argument for improving said skill gem descriptions, not respec.

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Chrono89 wrote:

Not everyone uses the forums to research builds, some just want to look at the tree, look at their skills and gear and go for it. Those people shouldn't be penalized / punished or made to feel that way, that's a sure fire way to lose customers and money.

Anyone who does this in such a complex game should not be surprised when they make mistakes. These "fly by the seat of their pants" kind of people want to learn for themselves... trial and error is expected.

In-game info is a legit concern. It's a polish feature I expect GGG will improve over time now that the core gameplay features are coming together. Respec is not the answer. These in-game info concerns should be brought up in the suggestions forums in the case of more general stuff or the specific skill thread for skill gem descriptions.

Stuff Up Build yourself?
-Farm or buy OoR's
-Suck it up and re-roll, learn from your mistakes and come back fighting stronger from the lesson.

Arguments:
But it's not my fault I stuffed up my build, it was a miss click, LAG!

It will always be your fault, playing the skill tree and building your build is 80% of the game, it's not something you absentmindedly click around. Think before you invest.


GGG Drastically change something in the tree that ruins your build?


-There usually comes a free tree wipe for you to play with.

-Suck it up and re-roll. Try and either find a work around from the change or find a new build.

Arguments:

But it's not fair that GGG changed something! They should give me free items for what they did!

No, it's not. It's your fault for not realizing that Path of Exile is a MMO (Not a open world MMO like other MMORPG). MMO's change with time they always do.

But it's my character and my build! They have no right in changing things!

No, they have all the rights in the world to change their game and morph it into what they visioned.

But they broke my totally game breakingly op build! It's not fair! QQ

Suck it up. If it was op and broken then it needed fixing. You shouldn't need to rely on things that break the game, learn, adapt and become a better player. I remember when somebody got through a lot of the game using just his fists.

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pneuma wrote:

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Chrono89 wrote:

The second point that I see here is the fact of players being penalized for what are essentially GGG's mistakes.

Our job is to fix those discrepancies, explaining how the wording is incorrect and how best to reword it during closed beta. Respecs are a heavy-handed and lazy solution and they open up an extra-large can of worms.

I agree that Detonate Dead could use a really big fix since it's the most broken (not in a good way) skill in the game right now. In addition to not really working as you'd expect, it doesn't scale with party size either (uses enemy base HP). Overall it's in a really bad place right now.

Yeah Detonate Dead is what I was referring to for my example.

[Also, you know the only way I knew that DD wasn't affected by spell % nodes was by searching the forum, looking through like 5 threads and reading the entire DD thread in beta skill feedback. It was honestly really tedious and it sucked. It was hard to find the information I needed.]

Well I know I didn't hit directly on respecing but what I was essentially getting at is in the first post it's mentioned that people want to respec because of unclear descriptions and things not "working as described", which in all honesty is fair. They deserve to want a respec because they actually made no mistake, GGG did. A bit harsh in my wording but correct.

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FriarJon wrote:

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Chrono89 wrote:

The second point that I see here is the fact of players being penalized for what are essentially GGG's mistakes. What I mean by this is basically the unclear skill descriptions (there are alot, more than you wuld expect actually), and game mechanics that do not work as described. One point I want to make is there is a huge line between "Working as Intended" and "Working as Described". Obviously there's no way to just hand a respec out in this fashion.

I see what you're getting at, however, this is a good argument for improving said skill gem descriptions, not respec.

"

Chrono89 wrote:

Not everyone uses the forums to research builds, some just want to look at the tree, look at their skills and gear and go for it. Those people shouldn't be penalized / punished or made to feel that way, that's a sure fire way to lose customers and money.

Anyone who does this in such a complex game should not be surprised when they make mistakes. These "fly by the seat of their pants" kind of people want to learn for themselves... trial and error is expected.

In-game info is a legit concern. It's a polish feature I expect GGG will improve over time now that the core gameplay features are coming together. Respec is not the answer. These in-game info concerns should be brought up in the suggestions forums in the case of more general stuff or the specific skill thread for skill gem descriptions.

Also, I wasn't referring to a fly by the seat of your pants method of building. When people feel they are experienced in the skill tree and have been at it for a few months, they deserve the credit of knowing. Not using the forums in that situation isn't a fly by pants method.

Improving the descriptions ingame will reduce the need for respec, is what I am getting at. I believe it's still on topic.

Another thing that would help tremendously with unclear descriptions and game mechanics causing skewed builds and wasted time (thus the want of respec) would be an incluson of an ingame wiki. Just a suggestion really, I understand that's a rather large undertaking. Possibly import the PoE wiki and have someone dedicated to updating it every patch (lots of $$ and manpower that could be put to other uses, I understand)

edited to add quotes

Path of Exile is an MMO? I didn't get that memo....

I thought it was an ARPG that has a few MMO type influences

Why can't you just have one respec on a character. I showed this game to a friend who was a D2 veteran and he disliked the refund point system. I recall him saying how he would have prefered one opportunity to respec rather than deal with points which may not even fix your build.

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iamstryker wrote:

Path of Exile is an MMO? I didn't get that memo....

I thought it was an ARPG that has a few MMO type influences

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_game

A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMO and MMOG) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously.

So yes, PoE is a MMO.

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zat0x91 wrote:

Why can't you just have one respec on a character. I showed this game to a friend who was a D2 veteran and he disliked the refund point system. I recall him saying how he would have prefered one opportunity to respec rather than deal with points which may not even fix your build.

Because giving a full respec breaks the game. You could get to level 100 in a completely safe full tank build, grind up all your required items in that tank build then use that respec to do a full dps powerhouse and clean up in pvp.

So then Call of Duty is an MMO? Its Multiplayer and supports more than that.

I already do this btw. This is actually how I plan my builds.