Takes away meaningful choices, choosing your strengths and weaknesses, and adapting to those against different challenges.
Free respecs offer less gameplay, not more, by taking the quality out of the gameplay.
I am not against having an MF bonus being lost on respecs. Quite the opposite.
It just shouldn’t stand on its own. A cost is needed that will continue to work throughout the game.
Nothing wrong when there are people that prefer to play that way. Copy/pasting builds takes away many things too yet the majority of players do it and Blizzard support it since this grants them more players long term.
The right design is to make those playing with free respecs to not gain advantage over the others who don’t. Then all is fine as long as you give them content on Seasonal basis.
It is kinda impossible to prevent people from copying builds. Not impossible to prevent frequent respecs.
I can only disagree with that. I am a fan of balancing different game choices (like attributes, skills, solo/multiplayer etc.). And most choices that exists in a game should try to be balanced.
Not everything should be allowed, even if you can balance it.
As pointed out, it is not free if it has a “cost of something”.
Why would you not need MF? That is a penalty.
Since “free” is in quotes, I assume what you mean is not free. Something is free or not.
Advantages such as experimenting with suboptimal builds that reduce your efficiency. These experiment reduce loot and make the experimenter fall behind. Therefore, the premise is flawed.
Irrespective of respec costs, almost every decision in D3 has meaning starting at the initial character creation screen? Season/non-seasons? Softcore/Hardcore? What class? In game, run/right? Range/melee attacks? Reposition or not? What order to cast spells?
I am part of this many.
Agreed.
I disagree with both points. I find the most gameplay value by being able to change my build to break monotony and to try out weird ideas.
The second point is off. How much of an advantage do you think respec freely grants? 5%? 10%? 25%? 50%? 200%? 1000%? I think that you have assumed that free respecs means that players play the optimal build for every situation or activity. It appears that you have neglected the fact that respecs allow players to try “off-meta” builds, thereby spending time at a disadvantage.
I disagree. I find free respecs add to the quality of the gameplay as I can try different combinations and permutations.
I have already pointed out the logical fallacy of this argument.
Yet it’s possible to prevent people from copying META as I wrote before:
But Blizzard won’t do that since this raises the skill cap tremendously and you’ll have cry babies not knowing what to do all over the place.
No, I haven’t. Playing with off-meta build is a choice you make and it doesn’t mean you should get a cookie for it. You get one when you discover a better build.
Okay. You cant do it without ruining the game then.
Randomly assigning numbers to each skill literally means the game is telling you which builds to play. Being able to viably use fireball because you got lucky and rolled 100, and not able to use frozen orb, is not exactly good game design. No skill required in that, just shallow gameplay.
It is a choice that I make in part because respec costs are not a “significant investment”. Therefore, it is fair to say that at least for me, free respecs lead me to spending more time with non-meta builds.
Mathematically, how much more quiclkly do you think people would gear up in the scenario of free respecs versus endgame respecs at “signifcant investment”?
At end game, I assume that you have the items for your build (not optimized rolls etc… but a working build).
It’s not only about gear (which would depend on how the game is built, it might be any value from 1% to 500%), it’s about gameplay too.
Just as you motivate the player in end game by allowing him to free respec, you make him spend less time in the game on avarage if he tried every build in early/mid game.
The majority of players quit very early the Seasons in D3 mainly due to:
The above two should be avoided in D4.
First, I am not sure how you determined the 2 main reasons that the majority of players “quit very early the” season in D3. The first reason you gave is plausible but I would word it differently. Players are not “handed the gear very fast”. Players play the game that has a generous drop rate (but still a large loot table that ameliorates this abit) and meet Blizzard’s criteria to get Haedrig’s gift.
The second reason given: " * Having the ability to free respec and try everything early" frankly is not something that has been a frequent complaint in the forum.
Could you please direct me to a few posts where someone said s/he quit a season because they could freely respec? My knowledge of the forums suggests that this is not a reason for the “majority of players”. It could be some.
How do you define early/mid game here? Most people do not try every build. Early on drops define what build players use in general although they may influence it by Kadala, the cube, and crafting (e.g. Challenge rift to craft rares/convert to legendary). Afterwards, they often seek their preferred six piece set (assuming that they are not aiming for a LoN build) where there may be an intermediate set in the middle. Therefore, the idea that the majority of players try everything early seems irreconciled with the facts.
I strongly suspect that respecs do not make people gear up 5X faster (=500%).
Your casual D3 player tries builds and leave the game when it gets boring after a while. This same type of player would put more hours into the game if he can’t try all these builds so fast since he’ll invest more time in completing these.
I obviously can’t provide you with exact data, I base this on logic and friend list observation in the past.
People tend to quit a game faster when they have no constraints and aren’t motivated to grind. Respecing to a different build is a type of motivation (we agree to that), so if a player wants to do it all the time freely we have to extend the grind.
No, that type of player will quit permanently when presented with a brick wall preventing them from doing what they want to do.
Your argument is that free respecs is a main cause for the “majority of players” to quit season very early. If true, I would logically expect to see many threads/posts stating that free respecs caused the player to quit season early. These types of posts are scarce to say the least.
You say your observations are based on your friends list. How many of them have you personally communicated with that stated that they quit a season where free respecs was a major factor?
I guess here we differ. I tend to play games longer where I can explore (e.g. elder scrolls games). In terms of motivated to grind when respec costs are high, I get less motivated to grind because loot drops for builds that I am not currently playing, leave a “oh drat” feeling. That item might be nice to try out, but knowing that there is a “significant investment” for me to switch a build is disheartening, leading to reduced desire to grind.
Having the ability to freely respec is a motivation to me, because I want to try things out and experiment. To me, costly respecs are a hindrance, deterrent, and impediment.
And what Meteorblade said.
Being able to explore certainly adds to the experience. Not that lack of respec should prevent you from exploring the game.
Cant officially respec in most elders scrolls games either. You can mod them of course. Would definitely be nice if you could mod Diablo 4 as well.
From Skyrim…
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Book:_Waking_Dreams
It is one of seven Black Books scattered across Solstheim. It will be found while pursuing the main questline. When read on Solstheim, it will teleport the Dragonborn to the realm of Apocrypha, where they may reset all the perks in an individual skill tree to be redistributed (after the completion of the quest “At the Summit of Apocrypha”). It costs one dragon soul per tree that is reset.
Of course, it’s possible to max every single skill tree in Skyrim with enough play-time, meaning you’re a warrior / rogue / mage using whatever armour, weaponry and spells as you see fit.
Also…
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Skills_(Skyrim)
Legendary skills is a mechanic introduced in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with patch 1.9. Prior to this patch, the maximum level of a character was 81 without console commands (cheats). The patch allows the player to reset one or more skills, thereby the character can gain additional skill increases leading to level ups and more points that can be spent on perks.
Once a skill has reached 100, it can be made “Legendary.” This resets the skill back to level 15, and refunds any Perk points that were spent in that skill tree.[1] The dragon symbol, commonly associated with the Imperial Legion, will be displayed under the skill’s name, indicating that it has been made Legendary, and a number appears beside it to track how many times this has occurred.
It quite literally lets the player have access to every single available toy, and lets them choose which one to play with.
Yeah, but we are talking free respecs?
Those are hardly free. As for maxing everything, that takes time, not free either.
Of course, it is bad to let people max everything, but still different from free respecs.
Personally it wouldn’t have much effect on me because I only play one build per character
But…
If it is going to cost me a ton just to try a new build that doesn’t mesh with my current build because Blizzard decides to add more equipment at a later date than it sucks
e.g.
Diablo and RoS has been out for ages now and they only just released a new set for each class
Why should I get penalized for wanting to try out a new build that they bring in years after release
You shouldn’t.
Each patch should come with a single, completely free respec for each of your characters.
So, you use your free respec token to switch to the new build, discover you don’t like it, and then what? Oh, yeah, you have to play the build you don’t like to earn a respec token to get back to the build you do like.
Also, if grinding that token takes longer than 15 minutes, no-one’s going to do it, because they’ll just roll a new level 1 hero, have it power-levelled to 70, then put the spec onto it.
Yes.
Though since you got one for free with the patch, if you also automatically get another respec token each week, you would probably have 2 tokens very close each patch release. At minimum within the first week (and, since you know a patch is coming, it might just be a good idea to have saved up the respec token from the previous week).
It should not be possible to power level people in Diablo 4. Shouldn’t be possible in D3 either.
In any case, sure, lvling a new character to try a new build would be ‘working as intended’.
There are many threads demanding slower acquisition of gear (aka longer item grind in D3). This and free respecs are related regarding people quitting early in Season, as I wrote you:
If you have free respecs and fast gear acquisition people will quit faster then if you have:
1] Free respecs with slower gear acquisition
2] Respec costs
(where player’s time investment and respective game progression in 1] and 2] is equal)
Since we both agree on: “Respecing to a different build is a type of motivation”.
Put otherwise, if I make a thread to extend the item grind in D3 and the majority of players agree to it, that would automatically answer your OP question in this thread.