When time farming respecs detracts from doing other in-game things, yes, I’m going to call it out as a problem. By Blizzard’s own admission, we’re also not dealing with a “cheap and easy” restriction. They’ve up and said it’s going to be more expensive the more you wish to revise. Any speculation that it’s not going to be that bad is just that. I’m here now because I otherwise do not want to see the worst case scenario come to fruition because I’m already seeing the devs make bad concessions to vocal minorities on other game matters.
Conversely, I look to PoE as an example of what exactly “more expensive the more you want to change” is through their orb system. If you’re lucky, maybe a patch hits and everyone is given a free respec, but dramatic revisions of builds aren’t going to be happening often there, which coincidentally taps into that concern you’d need multiple characters of the same class to minimize that farming cost long term if you’re trying to do specific things or simply have different whims. The game also comes with other caveats like EXP loss on death, so experimenting late-game can be extra irksome and exacerbate farming needs even further.
Seeing it come up over and over, however, anyone thinking tighter restrictions makes a player base more flexible on party configurations is delusional, especially the more difficult content gets to access/beat. We know Blizzard’s record here. They want multiplayer to be king even if they say solo is an option. I’m not falling for it because I’ve seen how multiplayer communities work. The moment they sense soloists are competitive, they want either nerfs to them or buffs to their own play. Again, some players are vocally irksome control freaks like that. It’s why raiding communities turn MMOs into garbage because they want to hog development for their 5-15% population and make open world/crafting suck. And seeing D4 further adapting MMO-like elements with its world, well… you’ll forgive me for reading the tea leaves.