+1 for The Respec Cost Method

PC General Discussion
141

Prove it. Find me one statement where they say this is the intended, tested design.

Every time I’ve seen them talk on the subject, they’ve said they’re okay with people doing that but don’t want people to feel forced to. So find me one statement where they say this is what they want people to do as the intended method of completion.

You’re making the absolutely absurd statement, so prove it with something concrete.

If you can’t, admit you’re just projecting without any proof and that you’re talking out your backside.

142

You must be unfamiliar with watching the RWF back when they would be in Heroic ilvl through splits prior to attempting the Mythic push. They 100% catered their spec to every boss. Heroic ilvl would be the intended gear level to complete the Mythic content btw. Anyone pushing the content past those first few weeks has inflated ilvl from Mythic+.

143

Again: There is a difference between ‘what the world first players are willing to do’ and ‘what the encounter is designed around’.

Find me one statement from the developers where they say that they INTEND for players to do that as the standard intended method of completing the content.

ie. where it is specifically designed with the idea that people will be swapping specs every fight. One statement from a dev where they say ‘We design the encounter assuming players will have swapped their specs before it’.

I am NOT saying players won’t do it. I am saying developers don’t design the encounter to force players to do it. And I want you to prove that I am wrong with a statement from a developer where they explicitly say that that is how they design the game. Find me one example. Doesn’t even have to be from WoW. One case, anywhere, where a dev states that they are designing that way.

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144

Missed the part where you had played Nightmare Dungeon lvl 100 in order to add even a semblance of validity to your claim here …

That is your interpretation.

Mine is that they are wanting the leveling process per season and per class to be more enjoyable since we will already be experiencing the leveling process once per season per class we want to play.

You seem to be also be stuck in the “finding meaning” in being stuck in a spec.

There is nothing keeping you from having that. You can never respec if you’d like. Other’s choosing otherwise doesn’t prevent that.

This is an odd. Wouldn’t respec be similar to having the undo functionality?

Asking it to draw something for you seems like that’d be more akin to using a bot to play your character for you.

@ other folks …

Please keep in mind that unless the devs explicitly said something, that you’re offering your interpretations from what they’ve said and their intentions.

145

Exactly. Every time I see a developer interview with almost any developer, the message is the opposite. I’ve seen a lot of dev interviews say things along the lines of “We don’t want anyone to ever feel pressured to change spec just because something is better, but we want to make it easy if you choose to do so” or “We’ve tested our content to ensure that a variety of comps and specs can complete it, so you should be able to bring your friends regardless of what they choose to play for most content”.

So I’m eagerly awaiting them to provide me the comment where they state the opposite.

146

D3 is balanced this way. From the leveling speed to the armory to the season rewards to the way they alternately push some skills and reign others in to the fact that all loot found below max level is trash, it is built around the idea that characters can swap their skills around easily. Players who chose not to do that would miss out on the things being added to the game, and would gain nothing by leveling a new character each time because that experience is basically intended to be skipped.

Now, I will grant that if they choose to balance this game the same way (greatly accelerate leveling, no loot found below level 100 is endgame viable, season reward items geared for very specific builds, seasonal challenges targeted at max level players), then it will cut against the respec cost as a part of the design. Current indications are that this is not their plan, though.

147

Not engaging with you until you find me a developer saying this.

You’re just talking out your behind assuming how they develop the game, and that’s just uneducated guesses at best. Find me a dev comment, an interview, a twitter statement from an actual developer, etc. that backs it up or else you’re just bsing us all.

Give me proof or else you’re just making your own assumptions based on your own biases.

148

RWF is not doing stuff at intended ilvl lol they are doing it between 3 to 7 or more ilvls under the tuning. There is a reason that those initial states get nerfed within weeks because the tuning is so insanely off that when a hotfix goes in can determine who gets world first.

149

Incorrect.

Not sure if you are intentionally misunderstanding, but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt. When I say, “D3 is balanced around people swapping specs all the time,” I don’t mean, “the devs want people to swap specs so they force them to do that,” I mean, “the incentives and challenges in the game assume that people can swap specs all the time.”

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150

ya, I remember back in the older days they always said that they balanced the encounters assuming your average Ilvl went up a tiny bit after each boss because you were assumed to clear boss 1 at least a few times before boss 2 went down. And so on. Which means it wasn’t, at least in the olden days, balanced around ‘week 1 clears’.

Nowadays with all the other alternate gearing paths, I can only imagine that they probably expect even higher ilvl per subsequent boss due to things like the vault and mythic+, etc. But I haven’t heard them discuss it recently, so I can’t say that with 100% confidence.

But that’s not ‘balanced around it’, that’s ‘you feeling pressured because the option exists and you don’t want to use it’. Balanced around it would be the Devs EXPLICITLY want you to do it and tune the game around the idea that the majority of players do it or even explicitly forcing players to do it by having the numbers be so tightly balanced that you can’t do it without doing so.

You feeling pressured because the option exists and other people are using it does not mean ‘the game was balanced around it’. You picking your spec and then boss #2 of a dungeon is too hard for you in your current spec so you have to swap but then boss #3 doesn’t work for that spec for a different reason so you have to respec again… that’d be ‘designed around it’.

The devs can’t control whether a few specific people feel bad because other people are having fun in a different way from them…

And again: Every interview I’ve ever heard from a WoW, FFXIV, D3, or any other MMO or ARPG dev has always said ‘we balance such that most well thought out specs/classes/builds can complete most content’ - which is the exact opposite of what you’re saying. Which is why I find it so mind-boggling that you are assuming without evidence that they’re doing something they’re explicitly saying they’re not and why I was hoping you had some proof.

151

The respecs currently in D4 are similar to having undo functionality: you can easily change a few points around if you want.

152

I mean, if you want to define those words your way that’s fine. Im telling you what I (and I assume many others making the same point) mean when saying those words. We feel pressured because the option exists and we don’t want to use it, yet the game’s incentives and challenges assume that we will.

153

But they don’t. The game’s challenges are designed explciitly around people being able to complete with most specs.

You’re just ASSUMING they’re designed that way because you want them to be to justify hating the system you don’t want to use.

154

Well I don’t know what to tell you. The words the devs use on some blogs are not more important to the experience than the actual mechanics in the game. And the actual mechanics are balanced in a way that assumes people will swap skills frequently.

Good, then I guess they will be free to ignore the small number of D4 players who will want to level a character once then constantly be changing the skills.

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155

Except… they’re not. Nearly every pieceo f content in d3 can be completed with like 50 different specs… and greater rifts explicitly lock you OUT of changing spec mid encounter. So they’re literally not designed that way. The option just exists because people wanted it. lol

156

And I laid out a whole bunch of mechanics that are problematic for people who aren’t frequently swapping specs, none of which are the difficulty of “nearly every piece of content”.

157

But not one of it is actually problematic… maybe you just sucked at the game?

I have a friend who really only lieks one build. And over the years, through nerfs and buffs, they’ve been able to consistently complete the vast majority of content on that one build. They don’t play all the time, but they’ve never been really restricted by that.

Like… they balance the game around that idea. That if you REALLY love one spec, you will - for the most part - be able to play that spec. And be fine with it. You might not be competing for the fastest clears, but you’ll be able to play the game. That’s the core design principle. Blizzard’s design teams would almost ALWAYS rather their content be too easy so people can play what they want than so difficult they feel constrained to the meta.

158

This comment makes no sense if you read my actual issues with the mechanics, so I guess you didn’t?

159

The stuff you commented as ‘problems’ are all just ‘I don’t personally like free respecs’ - nothing actually problematic, except on a very personal level to you. There is no CONTENT that is actually designed around it, you just FEEL like it is because you don’t like that other people get to have fun doing something you don’t enjoy… which is really selfish.

If you still think I’m missing the point then restate one ACTUAL problem that isn’t just ‘I think, with no evidence, that content is being designed assuming I change specs for everything’.

160

No, they are, “I don’t personally like games that are designed around leveling once and freely swapping skills at endgame to experience the skill variety.” Fortunately, this game is not being designed that way, from what I can see.

Fortunately for those who do want a game designed that way, D3 still exists.

I don’t really care if you think they should make a different game. That doesn’t make this a bad design or some uniquely selfish desire on the part of those who want a game designed better. Asserting that you don’t want to level the same class twice and therefore the game should be made so that you can skip leveling is silly, no one would take you seriously if you said that about most of the other systems. “I don’t want to find endgame items twice, so all items should just have an iLevel and then let me freely swap their stats around, scaled to that iLevel.” “I don’t want to beat the capstone dungeons twice, so beating them once should unlock the world tiers for my whole account.” “I don’t want to walk through the same dungeon twice, so I should just get to teleport to the endboss each time after that.”

It makes sense to let players skip past content that is the same every time, like cutscenes, or to let them take different paths through dynamic content with static shells, like overworld zones. In D3 leveling up a character was basically static content: you got the same skills in the same order with the same power levels, with a bunch of trash gear, and only as you reached max level did you start to have a way of differentiating yourself.

“But wait, why don’t they just design the game to make leveling fun and also let us respec for free?” I think in order to do this, they would have to create separate modes and develop content for each, because as I pointed out, the features desired by each type of play are different (endgame build-defining items vs lower level items that remain viable at endgame, fast leveling to max + many tiers of challenge with continually refreshed content beyond max level vs well-paced leveling with tiers of challenge and fresh content along the way, balance patches that shift the meta around vs balance patches that only step in when a build is way out of balance, skills and mechanics that are defined by their endgame viability vs skills and mechanics that matter as you level). It’s possible this could be handled by seasons vs eternal by having free respecs only in eternal and having seasonal patches with content for both modes.

So again, I don’t care if other people get to respec for free, I care that having a game where endgame respecs are free warps the design of the game.

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