Then you don’t need to have free respecs.
That’s what character slots are for.
Plus there is no such thing as optimizing a build for every single challenge. If you are Nova Sorc without mobility skills, there is no way you can clear the content with a leaderboard as fast as those builds with mobility or fight a zone with long-ranged monsters as you need to keep moving close on those long-ranged monsters to spam your nova while the disintegrate wizard probably will clear those long-ranged monsters and zone faster since the disintegrate wizard won’t have to waste time to get close to every single long-ranged monsters as he can just spam disintegrate from afar.
It doesn’t need to take IQ 300 to see that the T16 Speed Rift will never going to clear GR130 or the GR push build will never going to complete T16 Rift and Bounties as fast as the T16 Bounty/Rift build. This applied to every Diablo game out there.
“Viable” for all challenges is just a fancy way to sugarcoat that the build is just mediocre as it excels at nothing. If a build cleared GR150 using 50 minutes, does it considered “viable” or “effective”? You tell me since it does killed the Rift Guardian, just longer. 
Speak for yourself, I run several different builds for different things every season. There’s the leveling/fresh 70 build, then there’s the “just assembled the set” build, then there’s the speed GR build, the high GR push build, the bounties build, the “build to clear the set dungeon without being so overpowered I can’t even do the objectives right”, the EN farming build which is usually not quite the same as the GR push build. Not to mention I often play more than one set every season because the speed build from certain sets is better than the speed build from the main set I’m going for. There’s no way I’d do that without being able to freely swap skills, runes and passives.
If that’s not optimizing for every situation, idk what is.
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You’d be surprise. Some folks don’t see that (I’ve seen that happen from time to time even on these forums) and would believe that you’re stating an opinion as fact and/or tell you that your statement is only an opinion, all because you didn’t include it in the first place. So simply putting an "imo or “In my opinion” from the start saves time from having to discuss the difference between facts and opinions.
You are talking about temperory builds like for set dungeans, just assemble a set build.
When your char is optimise there are not not infinite for every challenge as claimed.
Sure we have a few builds , bounties, speed, T16, but not infinite, & for each case, ou need the proper gears to compliment. Its not just simply switching skill tree
I like that you cannot just run or try the bosses over and over and over again without any friction. The boss(es) looses a lot of the meaning. I heavily prefer that there is opportunity cost if you fail, it makes the boss(es) a lot more exciting. Either in terms of time (farming “keys”) or currency cost if you decide to buy the keys (PoE).
i mean that’s not even a thing
Kiadaw assumes that when you die to a boss you have to change your skills in order to be able to try it again. so many times until you trial and errored yourself into being lucky enough to have picked the right skills for a boss
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Lucky you, it can continue to do so…
in PoE.
But keep this out of Diablo or any game for that matters.
Thats your opinion, not mine. And that is fine.
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You assume my assumption.
My point is, a game that have hard bosses that require you to learn get better in the fight is meaningful. The hard part is organic.
Impose artifical challange like time penalty is not meaningful ways to add challenge. Its lame.
where do you find a time penalty?
Its an example, you can replay it with other artifical enforce penalty.
You have time penalty in PoE. It not a physical timer, but you have to repeat many process to come to the same fight again.,
also elden ring and dark souls don’t always spawn you in front of the boss door. often walks to a fight are more frustrating than the fight itself. it’s a balancing act. it makes the attemt more valuable and yes, punishes the player for failing. it’s not a sandbox. it’s a cruel world with it’s own rules and people love it for that. play on PC and turn on cheats if you don’t want to play the way devs decided to make a game feel like.
Nothing overboard though, you can see going to the boss as part of the fight. This is not same as artifical imposed penalty like now you have to go to find 3 pieces of rune to combine that is RNG, to fight the boss again.
Its not about the challenge, its not about choices. Its about them being meaningful, not artificial.
i don’t play PoE so i don’t know i don’t see any similarity here.
Yeah. The difference is key. For example I say less cooldowns = more APM as a statement of fact; and whether that makes the game better as a statement of opinion. When it gets to where the former point is taken for opinion, that is flat wrong. or obviously candidate for a rebuttal in the objective realm (and not just auto-dismiss anti-opinion drivel)
This is a wonderful magnificent post that I can probably use for reference on recurring counter-arguments far into the future.
But yes, this topic is a big reason why we all more-or-less agreed that, for example immunities weren’t a great thing & wouldn’t be missed, so that builds would no longer be brick-walled that respec would be the only option. And as far as my opinion on how stuff would play out with free respec, I’m not particularly keen on swapping to fire/ice/thunder/etc. every dungeon, nor am I so keen on having builds tied only to items…(though actually the concept of a “randomly-built character” might have silly potential now that I think about it).
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Agreed about Souls design. But it also isnt like there is no “punishment” for failure in Souls. You might lose a ton of saved up currency/XP for example.
Some people would talk about that the same way you talk about having to farm to open a new portal. People just have different views on what is reasonable difficulty limitations. As Osiris said, games are artificial creations, including the difficulty design.
Well, some of the Souls games had farmable potions, so you might end up having to farm potions before a boss. Which was bad all around. Most of the games luckily changed to a potion charge system that refilled on death.
As for trying bosses instantly again; yes and no, most of the Souls games are famous for their boss runs; having to get back to the boss fight before you can try again. Some people really hate that, others love it.
One thing is certain, it increases the time between the boss kill attempts. I think it works fine; the boss and the lead up to the boss is one shared experience, a gauntlet so to speak. It is all part of the fight.
But yeah, as said, others really disagree with that view, and would prefer if they could just spawn again right before the boss each time.
In any case, I would love to see D4 learn a lot of difficulty lessons from the Souls games. Not so much the specifics of what is in the game. Just the goals.
Like, get people back into the action fast if they fall, but also have distinct rewards/punishments for success and failure.
And, in regards to respecs and choies; let people stick with these choices for the most part. Another thing Souls are famous for, is how quests can change which NPCs you have access to, heck, you can outright kill most NPCs if you want to. And then you live with the consequences of those choices.
That is specifically part of Souls boss design however, as mentioned above.
And also should be part of D4s design imo. If you died in a Nightmare Dungeon you should just have to start over in the dungeon.
From what I have heard, if you die in Helltides, you might lose the resources gathered.
You dont just spawn back where you left, with everything you had.
That is good design to me.
Everyone can likely agree on that. Just not which challenges and choices that “enhances gameplay”.
Completely agreed.
I certainly dont have a problem with it. I think that is exactly how things should be.
Exactly!
But that falls apart with free and instant respecs. That is my entire point.
Yeah, and that is also why this topic is, like most topics really, a matter of preferences.
Those tradeoffs to me pretty much is the fun. Taking tradeoffs and limitations away is the same as taking fun away from the gameplay.
Agreed.
Both are parts of creating a character. Those decisions should have some persistence. To make the character have meaning.
To facilitate interesting gameplay based on those decisions, and the character that was shaped from them.
Yeah. I throw in “imo” a thousand times in my posts these days, even though you are 100% right, since I got annoyed by the constant “Omg that is just your opinion” responses.
But it truly should not be needed.
And yeah, also really agree with
If I didn’t, I would change my opinion to the thing I thought was right. Seems obvious 
Eh, that happens a lot in D3.
Push GRift, speed GRift, Rift, Bounty, solo, group, etc. Different builds for different activities. That pretty much is the game at this point.
Exactly this.
Yeah, that is why I have started doing that so extensively, even if it annoys me a bit 
Yeah, throw players out of dungeons if the character dies. That would (or should) also mean the key is lost.
Yep, one of my fears here is, if you CAN change skills like that, Blizzard have more of an incentive to design boss challenges to be like that.
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It’s a counter argument some of us had made in the past. My variation from earlier in this thread.
As others have stated, it’s not at all. POE is that. D4 is less hardcore than Lost Ark although in an MMO way. I’d say D4 is less hardcore than Grim Dawn and Last Epoch as well.
D4 is still too casual for me, especially with the uninspired itemization and the lackluster paragon boards. It could also benefit from a lot more skill customization on the skill tree. Based on their design they’d need to add more skill points in addition to nodes.
Personally I think Last Epoch does a much better job of iterating on D4 skill runes with trees per skill. POE’s, and Undecember’s, link systems are fine as well.
Right, and if we want a challenging game that would be the best case of a free-respec scenario, that the boss is actually challenging with the best build possible for it. Because in the case where a boss would be moderately difficult with an “average” build, it would conversely be laughably-easy with the “right” build. No thanks!
I’m half inclined at this point to remark: “…You’d be surprised.” I should hope that we are being realistic and not um, “naive” to the wider world of misrepresenting one’s honest opinion in order to exaggerate popularity of a thing in order to coerce change to the contrary. Speaking on the whole “there’s the truth and then there’s who knows the truth” sort of nihilist drek… yeah I’m pretty sure that sort of treachery is one of the big four no-no’s tyrael hates, even the five big no-no’s. That is to say, honk honk. 
Yeah. I was referring to the entire post, particularly where he is answering the painfully common mantra “d2 didn’t execute it soundly so get rid of it entirely” again & again, even problems with easily-addressable issues like xp boosting.
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