Wow, so two weeks to a month of playing just to be able to swap from one build to another and back again? And you can’t see how this would be massively detrimental to experimentation?
If you haven’t respecced in the last 2-4 weeks, then you could swap to another build, and back again, instantly.
But if you respec once, got no more tokens, and then want to respec to another build, aaaand respec back again, then yeah, 2-4 weeks.
As for experimentation. Have an arena where people can test out builds, before they commit to something.
(well, also, each balance patch, give 1-2 extra tokens for free, in case people had used theirs before the patch)
in an ARPG your skills ARE the game. loot is what you get, but your skills are 99% of gameplay. What are you doing 99% of the time in Diablo? Killing things… with your skills. Free respecs makes skill choice meaningless. Since you can swap to whatever skill at any time for no price. So as Shadout pointed out, you literally are ruining 98-99% of the playability for yourself. Its baffling why 5 different people have pointed out this fact and you literally ignore it and start repeating your old moot arguments as if everyone else “just doesn’t get it” while you have your head in the sand.
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No, they mean you can change your build to better match what you want to do at the time. As previously mentioned, my seasonal hero is a WW/Rend Barb. If I’m speed-running rifts / bounties, I change my armour slot in the Cube from Mantle of Channelling to Nemesis Bracers, I change Ancient Spear / Rage Flip to Sprint / Marathon, change from Istvan’s Paired Blades to Bul-Kathos weaponry, and amend the runes on WW and Battle Rage accordingly. If I do Vault runs, I change the armour slot in the Cube to be a Broken Crown. If I’m speed-running GRs, up to GR100, I’ll use BK swords and Nemesis (cubed), 100-110 I stick with BKs, but change back to Mantle in cube, and 110+ I switch to IPBs, with changes to runes.
Under your schema, I’d have to run rifts / bounties for 2-4 weeks, then GRs for 2-4 weeks, and so on. It’s nonsense.
why are you using D3 to argue D4? Theres A LOT of problems in D3, one of them being free respecs.
also, saying “no, it doesn’t” and then giving an example of being able to switch your build on the fly is literally proving my point. you’re right, it IS meaningless when you can swap and do whatever you want in no time at all. Destroying your overall playability and ending the game much faster than it would be.
this “i want free respecs so i can constantly be 100% efficient in all situations and finish the game in 2 days” is LUNACY guys. dear lord.
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If that is your conclusion, then the timer needs to be way higher.
Also, there should be a cap on how many dungeon keys a character can hold at any time tbh. Like 20, after which you need to start completing them, to be able to get more.
And they should of course be bound to the character.
An additional respec cost could also be that all your existing dungeon keys are deleted on respecs.
It shows really well why we need a very significant respec cost.
I used it as an example of why there can be a need to change your build way more frequently than every two weeks. For example, in Diablo IV, what might work open-world might not work in dungeons, and vice versa. So, do 2 weeks of open world then respec for two weeks of dungeons?
Fantastic! Any more punishments you’d like to add to players that want to change their build more than twice a month?
Probably. If anyone find ways to exploit the cost, more might be needed.
That is not a need. Just a desire.
The goal of a respec cost is to combat that desire.
there should never be a need to change your build bud. THATS the point. your build is your build. you can pay to change it to test new skills, but you’re talking about a game that doesn’t just allow free respecs, but REQUIRES them? dude, HELL NO.
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So why are there respecs at all then?
need /= want.
and as shadout pointed out. id actually prefer a game without respecs at all. if its VS free respecs .
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there is always the possibility to make mistakes, brick your character as we all know it from D2
or you might actually change your mind about your character and want to switch from a fire to an ice sorc
its possible
and with enough time investment you might also be able to play another build every day
but the concept of “i go in a key dungeon, i switch to the key dungeon build, i play a world boss, i switch to my world boss build, i play pvp, is switch to my pvp build” is probably the wrong way to think about it
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I am surprised that no one suggested that to respec a character, you need to purchase an additional copy of the game. That would make choices financially meaningful.
Kidding aside even though it is suggested that you “can pay to change it”. Even if I thought that high respec costs were a good idea (I don’t), how do you balance the “hardcore, make choices meaningful” versus the causual playerbase who buys the majority of the copies of the game. If you tailor your game to hardcore grinders, your sales will be trash in comparison to accommodating the majority of players who by definition are more casual. Casuals do not want to spend weeks to be able to respec a build.
Just think back to Act 2 in the original inferno. Some players embraced that difficulty. The vast majority thought the the difficulty of the original inferno was way too difficult. Do you know what happened? Complaints rained down on Blizzard until they changed it. Make respec costs too high the same thing will happen. The vast majority of players don’t want to grind a long time to make a minor tweak to a build at end game or experiment with a subtle variant.
The developers will soon realize that high respecs costs invalidates their efforts. At launch, I do not think builds will be well-balanced. Very quickly, there will be youtube videos and websites demonstrating optimal buils that will be cut/pasted by the majority of players. Any effort that the developers put into items or skills that are not part of the meta build will have limited utility/worth.
The developers will then rebalance the game. The current meta builds will be replaced. Time to respec…
I have thousands of hours in the game. I still think high respecs costs are a bad idea. It is not about not wanting to work for it, but simply I consider it bad game design.
Why do you think the “casual” players don’t want choices and consequences?
Well, we can only hope Blizzard got both a vision and a spine this time around.
If not, none of this really matters.
But yeah, things might change. That is part of the reason I personally bother talking about this topic. In a naive hope that Blizzard stick to what they claim they want in Diablo 4 when it comes to respecs. Because their recent endeavors do not give me much hope.
And the respec costs most people are talking about here will allow you to respec after a patch. Imo it should be completely free to respec right after a patch.
One of the positive things about respec limits is that you simply can’t optimize 100%. Which gives reason to hope that there will just be a lot more unoptimized builds to go for, and all those youtubers etc will reflect that.
This should help more skills to be viable, but also more items. While I am not a big fan of PoE that is what we see there imo.
But of course, many people will copy builds. That will happen no matter what. Here they might just have way more builds to copy from.
And if some builds are OP, well, same thing should happen with or without respec limitations; Blizzard should grab the nerfhammer and use it extensively.
I never said that casual players don’t want choices and consequences. Moreover, I explained that every choice in the game has consequences. Lets start with character creation.
Softcore or hardcore?
What class should I play?
What item drops should I use?
ShouldI fight this monster here or there?
What order of skills should I use?
Should I make a range or melee attack?
What activity should I do?
Every player’s decision is a choice and has consequences.
The idea that the “neaning” of the game is largely derived from high respecs costs at end game (where you have already invested considerable time to reach end game) is not consistent with the facts.
I do not think it is about growing a spine. Relative to D3, Blizzard made a decision in D3 that respecs should be free in large part due to the widespread negative backlash of how D2 handled respecs. As illustrated in this thread, many arguments used in this thread to support high respec costs are logical fallacies (without respecs no decision has “meaning” or the free respecs equal “god mode” that is like being “immortal” or doing “infinite damage” or the same as instantly having " 99999999999999" main stat).
Me too. That is wwhy I present arguments that demonstrate why high respecs costs are a bad idea in my mind and highlight the issues with counter arguments that are steeped in hyperbole.
You would hope. However, in this thread, I pointed out using D3 as an example that patch 2.6.4 had 23 class set changes and changed LoN that affects all 7 ckasses. One poster suggested the you should receive a single respec per account. This again demonstrates how some want respecs to be punitive, especially for players that play mutiple classes. Also, another suggested that you should get a respec token for each class on the account. The problem with this is many players will make several characters of the same class. For example in D3 that has free respecs, I have 17 level 70 characters. Using D3 as an example, do I get only 7 respec tokens even though I have leveled 17 characters to end game?
To my knowledge no character in D3 is optimized 100%. The game is 8+ years old. Go check the top players on the leaderboard. You will see that they are not decked out in all primal ancient gear. D3 has free respecs and yet no one has a 100% optimized character. I have played DH more than 2,500 hours, I have no build that is 100% optimized.
Also, we are limited to 6 skills (the same as D4), therefore we are always restricted in the number of skills that we can choose.
No. It means that more people will copy/paste guides and stick to the same 6 skills per class. With free respecs, people can try out other skills and builds without being punished by having a high respec cost at end game.
This also reduces game replayability as described earlier for the majority of player types.
See:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/d4-respec-concept/25389/485
This will happen even more without free respecs.
This gets back to how many respecs are allowed after a patch. Again, more copy/paste buils. No experimentation.
Also, we haven’t discussed uniques yet which Blizzard has claimed are items that powerful builds can be established using. As you know these drops will be rare and which unique drops determined by RNG. It is had to plan a build around an item that may or may not drop within a reasonable amount of time. Even in D3 where legendaries “rain from the sky”, there are players who want to play effectively UE multihot but Yang’s recurve, an absolutely critical item for that build, has not dropped after hundred of hours farming, using Kadala, etc… RNG is RNG.
We are talking skills here and you bring gear to the table
None is talking about gear
You can optimize your skills for every single activity in a matter of seconds with no cost or effort
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D3 has free respecs.
Do you change your skills during a normal rift in response to monster types?
When you see a monster with arcane, do you put on an arcane immunity amulet?
Even in D3 with free respecs and the ability to swap gear and skills, people are not changing their skills/gear to overcome every challenge optimally.
If I’m speed-running on my WW/Rend Barb I use Bul-Kathos weapons. These mean I generate a huge amount of fury. This means I rune Whirlwind with Blood Funnel and Battle Rage with Into The Fray.
If I’m pushing high level GRs, I use Istvan’s Paired Blades, which offer no inherent fury generation. This means I rune Whirlwind with Wind Shear and Battle Rage with Swords to Ploughshares.
So, which gear you’re using can absolutely have a requirement for changing your abilities / runes.
That’s not the question here
Because none was ever asking for gear to not be swappable
It’s about being able to swap your skills together with your gear before every single ACTIVITY (NOT ENEMY)
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Lolli,
Excluding misclicks and patch changes, it is my understanding that you personally will never respec as you said you plan your builds out well in advance and stick to them irrespective of item drops or any other factor.
Is that fair to say about your position?
I am basing my comment on your prior post