I accept that these games must have some kind of respec option. But it does sadden me, that even the slightest amount of respecs will kill this specific lvling experience, where you lvl with a build because you want to play it in endgame, even if the build is not good at lvling. That was an immensely important part of the characters journey imo.
In Diablo 2, the moment respecs were added, that was gone.
I mean, you can obviously choose to do it. And I have.
But it was gone as ‘viable choice’.
These examples are specifically what respec limitations should prevent from ever happening.
If the player wants to have some CC available sometimes, or some tankiness sometimes, then they should make a build that incorporates those elements.
Instead of just switching to CC when CC is needed, and to tankiness when that is needed.
That ain’t no build.
These people will look up builds regardless.
Really?
More than 50k views btw.
You are looking at a spurious correlation.
People copy builds no matter if you have free respecs or limited respecs.
Lets try to make it not be like that.
So do we all. We just wildly disagree on what is fun.
Honestly, got to disagree with you for a couple reasons. Firstly, we’re talking about a game. And that alone should be a giveaway - a game can be challenging but ultimately it should be enjoyable. If you create a scenario where a player spends time and effort investing in their character and at end game discovers they’ve made a mistake in their spec and they’re locked to it… that is poor design. Because the player can’t enjoy it and their options are start over again or spend a lot. This isn’t meant to be like life where you didn’t like engineering so went back to university to study law. It’s a GAME.
Second, we can’t predict the future. Maybe when you started playing you had a friend who like to play a tanky build so you could focus purely on DPS. But after a few weeks/months they can’t play anymore. Someone in your friend group might need to switch to a tankier build to fill that gap. Making respecs impossible or prohibitively expensive kills that option.
I’m happy enough to have some cost attached to respecs. I don’t necessarily think they should be as “casual” as they are in D3. But they absolutely shouldn’t be cripplingly expensive.
Note: Again, this is based on other peoples comments that it costs so much to respec that it’s easier to just start again from scratch. That information needs to be proved/disproved.
I’d say the opposite is true. The deeper the itemization the more important respeccing becomes. The only time respeccing isn’t important is if all items are basic stat sticks. ie: simply mathmatical +2 versus +3 versus +4. Doesn’t matter what abilities you’ve chosen then because who cares, it’s just flat damage buff.
When you start adding in affixes that add to a particular class of damage (eg: fire versus frost) or a specific ability (fireball versus frostbolt) or synergize between abilities that’s where the depth is, and that’s where respeccing becomes not just useful but practically mandatory.
Did you miss the bit where people have said how prohibitively expensive respecs are? Or the bit where people are saying “No don’t allow respecs at all”?
To be fair +20% cold damage is still a stat stick, and you could have non-stat stick affixes that are universal things.
Things like applying effects on hit/when struck, armour that lets you cheat death once every X minutes, etc. The only thing really holding it back would be creativity of the people coming up with effects.
Of course the idea that somebody picks up an awesome staff that supercharges your frost spells so they decide to respec to a frost build isn’t something that needs that respec to be free, either.
That makes no sense in the context of Diablo or most ARPGs. In the days of D2, what did everyone do (and still does)? GRush asap any new character to max and equip all prior farmed equipment for the build you want to run.
I would agree more if the leveling process or storyline were meant to be meaningful – in a strict RPG sense, like Witcher 3, Divinity series, even Mass Effect, etc. – but in diablo games it’s really just a stepping stone to doing the end-game activities.
At most it should be a nominal fee for respeccing, as seen in Borderlands 3 for example.
I mean, I don’t mind making a new character. I’m maxed out on D3 character slots and would use up tons more if they had more. But making more for the sake of making players make more doesn’t make too much sense.
On that note, any news on how many character slots will be available? There would need to be a ton of them if they go this route.
Honestly at some point if they don’t want to make leveling meaningful, I’d say they should reconsider if it’s even worth having leveling in the game at all.
What few arguments remain for what benefit leveling brings are things that can pretty easily be done without having a leveling process, and then you’re free to have respeccing just be the way to get a new character build and design around how often you want your players being able to do that.
It would also free up a lot of developer resources to focus on making the “endgame” the entire game and making it as good as possible, which seems like the thing to do if that’s what 99% of your playerbase is laser focused on.
Of course these days I figure if they went in for that they’d just drop leveling and replace it with nothing, but that’s another topic.
It’s an interesting thought since you have the whole Paragon system that starts at max level. So “leveling” initially should be kept for your first playthrough where you go through the story. Any new character after that point is max level, but zero paragon. I think that’s much more interesting (depending on what they have planned as endgame).
Seriously though, I don’t have too much faith currently in D4’s direction. There’s clearly going to be a content drought initially. The real game will be whatever it is after a couple seasons with all the updates and additions and so on.
There are apparently still people who actually like the process of watching a character become stronger and develop their power as planned throughout the skill tree. Others however just wanna swap from one maxed out super Saiyajin to the next because leveling is booooring.
Paragon is just a leveling system with extra steps.
If they’re not gonna make leveling mean anything I’d probably rather see them drop levels, have us go through the story at least once to unlock skill points, and then do paragon via challenges rather than grinding XP.
Don’t get me wrong I like the whole RPG thing of gaining power and leveling up.
However it’s also clear Blizzard doesn’t seem to care about leveling in games anymore, whether that be in WoW or Diablo. At this point, it seems to serve very little purpose beyond selling level boosts in WoW and… I don’t even know in Diablo 3 & 4.
I’d certainly never suggest that, say, Baldur’s Gate 3 have us start off as level 20 characters because leveling isn’t meaningless in that game.
I don’t think that’s what being said. I think leveling needs to make sense in the context of the game.
Witcher series, Baldur’s Gate, or any story-centric DnD derivative: it makes a ton of sense to get involved in crafting a unique character. You’re role-playing a character with meaningful choices in the way you like.
That’s not it for Diablo. You want to murder hordes of demons. Story and lore are presented as atmosphere – gameplay comes first. Leveling is a way to make your character stronger, it’s not centric to their identity.
So in this sense, a paragon system is great. Starting over at zero isn’t so great unless the process is made to be fun (which from what I’ve seen so far of D4 footage isn’t really the case).
Well the thing about leveling is that it’s fun. Done well, it’s a way to provide constant progression for the player and you get to feel powerful. So including it in some way still makes sense.
See that’s what I tried to tell you
There are people who enjoy leveling up a character (in that specific genre)
Especially in that genre where you can pick and choose new skills every few levels and feel the progression of getting more powerful, finding a cool item and keeping it for 10-15 levels (probably not with the level scaling in this game)
Especially in this genre and franchise the leveling up experience is a fundamental part for a lot of players that grew up with classic rpg aspects and experiences. Can’t speak for other people.
