Diablo 4 Skill Respec Dungeon

General Discussion
1

Hoi,

There seems a discussion around skill respec in D4; some says what in place is quite right, some says it should be on the fly …

What if respec is given behind a challenge? Or a dungeon? Something like “Shrine of Rebirth”, you need to reach? Gives you the respec once there? Getting more challenging the more you have skill points?

Or, more flexible, your progress provides you rewind in ratio? The deeper you go in challenge / dungeon, the more your character can take back his recent skill points?

This may give a balance and some fun to respec.

Thanks,

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2

Sounds like a pointless chore that would annoy most of the player base.

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3

A major problem with such a system is, that the characters most in need of a respec, are the ones with the worst builds, so placing the respec behind a challenge would be counterproductive.

Imo respecs need to be very limited/rare, but within that restriction it needs to be easy to get that limited respec. Like maybe a respec once every 1-2 week at a fairly accessible cost.
For example talk to an NPC and pick between getting a free respec, or a 20 hour Magic Find boost (20 hour playtime, not real time, of course) . You can do that once each week. No direct payment, just an opportunity cost

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4

Points taken. :slight_smile:

5

The key question needs to be asked.

What is a respec meant for and how does it make sense in a roleplaying game?

Here, the use of a respec is totally inflationary, which makes absolutely no sense in an RPG.

If the game system is reasonable, then we don’t need a respec.
Sure, you can make mistakes, or you like the class, but didn’t know the skills in advance and after testing the skills, you want to find your final kill, that is what you want to represent in an RPG world.
There can then be a very restrictive system that gives you 1-2 times along the way a chance to change your mind, preferably as an immersive quest series credibly embedded in the game world.

But it must be prevented to turn an RPG into a laughing stock, where there are no values anymore and class systems are smoke and mirrors. Then you might as well leave the RPG if you constantly lead its development path ad absurdum…

The story of a character is his past and his development.
I am also the person I am, through my choices in life and my actions.
I would be nothing, a collection of cells, if I could change everything at the snap of my fingers.
A soulless piece of meat without a character without a presence without a story, nothing…

We are debating here about a constant devaluation of the avatar by the push of a button.
This is all anti-RPG and only makes the games worse.
As said, there may well be a respec for a few exceptions, but otherwise it must be restrictive and not possible.

Even such games, where there are no more classes, but you can freely kill in huge skill trees and be anything, are much much worse and weaker for RPGs than class systems and their valuable content that you can attach to it, such as a huge beautiful embedded in the game historical adaptation of all the orders, clans, guilds, monasteries, groves, etc. that then belong to the classes and you can build story and stories around it.
What could be better in an RPG than to have, besides the main story, a wonderful organized world through classes, all belonging to their houses, guilds, sects, maybe even divided into good and evil etc…?

If this breaks away, the RPG is already only half as good as it could be. That was almost always the case.
It’s always better from an RPG point of view when there are fixed classes and a lot of content and path is tied to them and you have to decide. But you are rewarded with a lot of content and real recognition value all the time.
How boring is it when you can be anything and always just re-skill… That hardly has any traction…

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6

One character should at least have 2/3 skill templates to make permanent.
Especially if they expect any PVP to stay competitive. Or am I supposed to reroll with a very similar build slightly specced for PVP.
I look forward to running out of character slots :see_no_evil:

7

Do what you want but pvp is optional and not really very Diablo. We have enough to deal with than to add player quarrels to the list.

8

Blizzard have implemented PVP into the game and featured it as key content.

The OP and most openly PVE focused content creators (who have played the previous beta) also seem to want a less punishing respec or template option. Notably, a compromise that doesn’t force players into multiple versions of the same class.

Lastly, who are you to define for everyone what is and isn’t “Diablo”?

9

So evil is trying to destroy us and you want to pvp me? No ty. portals away

And don’t use any hacks and try to follow me… lol.

10

No, I want (and I’m sure I’m not alone) to PVE and PVP with the same character, optimising both specializations.

Then I want to build another class and do the same again. Thats all.

I’d love to have the time to use RP as an argument to further create unecessary inconvenience to other players who hold different concerns than your own but fighting present evils in the real world takes up a lot of my non playing time.

Firetruck away​:fire::mute:

11

And you will be able to as pvp and pve gear are the same in D4.

Keep that to yourself then as you aren’t very good at it by telling everyone.

12

you used a lot of words to say a bunch of stuff that can all be countered with. . . .

This isn’t real life. This is a video game.

You can level new characters for every different build if it fits your fantasy.

Other people don’t want to play that way. World of warcraft has free skill respeccing at any time without restriction and guess what. Its great.

Restriciting respec adds nothing of value and only serves one purpose. to waste the players time. In no way does allowing me to respec whenever I want affect your game.

arbitrary restrictions like this are pointless.

Your choice of skills at any given time already are meaningful choices. preventing respec doesn’t somehow make them more meaningful.

All that other fluff you said is just a bunch of smoke up our asses. stop it.

Let people play how they want and stop worrying about what everyone else is doing.

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13

This shouldn’t even be a debate. Respec costs shouldn’t even be a thing. its really that simple.

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14

Very true, but it is exactly because it is a video game, that respecs should be limited.
It makes combat more interesting, build choices more interesting.

Certainly not the words I would use.
Imo WoW is a really good example of why free respeccing can hurt a game.

There is nothing arbitrary about restricting stuff in games. Restrictions are the foundation of a game.
We can disagree on what the restrictions should be, but they are not pointless.

It adds gameplay value.
It is true I am not affected by your ability to respec, however

  1. I am affected by my ability to respec
  2. You are affected by your ability to respec

The ability to respec, or not respec, matters.

No, a game cant do that. Then it is no longer a game. The rules defined what you can’t do.

This is the one thing that should be taken care of in a respec system.

Allow characters to have 2 builds, 1 PvE build, and 1 PvP build. The moment you enter a PvP zone the PvP build activates, in all other cases the PvE build is active.

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15

It also makes everyone have to keep playing the game in order to farm to respec.

16

respecs should be costly and never on the fly. IMO, that took out he RPG out of diablo 3.

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17

It makes combat more interesting, build choices more interesting.

How?

Imo WoW is a really good example of why free respeccing can hurt a game.

How does this hurt a game? How has this hurt wow?

It adds game play value.

What Value?

I am affected by my ability to respec

Have some self control. Don’t use it.

You are affected by your ability to respec

Yes, I would like to respec often for fun, that’s the point

No, a game cant do that. Then it is no longer a game.

What does this even mean?

No one in the respec cost camp has ever provided any good evidence why its a good thing other than fluff language like it provides value, makes choices meaningful, makes game play interesting, etc. None of those statements can be quantified at all. They don’t mean anything.

What can be objectively quantified, is how much time will be wasted forcing players to level new characters to try out a completely different build or grind up some arbitrary amount of currency. Its pointless, doesn’t solve anything people think it solves, and just creates artificial barriers to people experimenting and having fun in what looks to otherwise be a rather deep and complex toolkit for making very interesting and fun builds to play with.

A large variety of balanced skills makes choices meaningful, and game play interesting.
whether or not your locked into the choices you make has no impact on how interesting a build is.

Here is some more objectively quantifiable impacts of having prohibitive costs to respecing:

  • Casual players wont keep playing the game because it doesn’t respect their time. (directly impacting future revenue potential)
  • More players will adhere to a stricter META, therefore there will be even less build variety. (More pressure to not make a bad build means players will make sure their doing whats been proven to work) This is Ironic because everyone keeps saying that this phenomena (why is people playing meta builds even a problem? Sounds like Class balance is the bigger issue here) will be fixed with no respecing. . . .It wont be. People will do this regardless.
  • It Forces people to play new characters even if they would otherwise only play one.

I’m still waiting for a good counter argument with actual objectively quantifiable evidence.

How are we even debating this stupid topic. It really doesn’t feel like it should be.

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO RESPEC, THEN DON’T RESPEC. IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE.

3 Likes
18

do players need to be held at gunpoint to keep playing? If the game is fun to play people will play the game.

19

That’s a very silly question. How can you do that to someone on the other end of a computer if at all. And what are you trying to do exactly at this point? And obviously people are going to play the game if it’s good.

20

It also makes everyone have to keep playing the game in order to farm to respec.

It sounds like you’re saying people need a reason to play other than because they enjoy it.

There are ton of ways to occupy player’s time in and endgame.
farm for new items trying to find better rolls
farm for currency to reroll affixes on items.
farm for paragon levels
farm for cosmetics
push greater rifts. all of these are infinity more interesting then “I want to try a bleed build today” “guess i better grind” “oh boy new build here we go” “actually I don’t like this as much as my old build” “guess i need to grind again”

I think Grinding anything just to try a new build is very bad. I would use language not allowed here to describe how bad