Yes, I’m quoting myself. That’s because there has yet to be any reasonable argument to refute the point, just a bunch of dancing around other points that don’t address the damage to game design.
PvP is and always will be an afterthought in this game. They won’t disrupt the design of PvE to accomodate PvP functionality including saving and toggling builds because it will be abused by PvE people to have build swapping.
Using cheats is by definition not part of the game. So sure, cheats are irrelevant.
But I assume you dont want respecs to be cheating.
I mean, I very much think D4 should have an offline mode. In which you could of course cheat yourself to endless respecs.
I literally just spelled out why other players were not relevant for any of this, but you keep going on about other players 
Which I consider to be extremely bad game design.
So no, I dont think that would be a good solution.
Games need rules, limitations and restrictions.
I would be quite surprised if there aren’t multiple AoE focused world bosses showing up.
One dmg skill builds should be basically unviable in my opinion.
I would definitely expect respec restrictions to help with that, by asking players to have more tools in their toolbox for different kinds of challenges.
But it cant stand alone, a big part is also better encounter design, and better skill balance. One big issue in D3, and PoE, is AoE being absurdly overpowered to the point where it can simply be used as your single target skill too.
AoE should feel weak against single targets, just like single target dmg should feel weak against large groups of enemies. That is a foundation for pretty much any good A-RPG design imo.
Yeah, just very little variety on what is optimal at the same point in time.
We can tell, if we have the relevant information. Which the player in question would have. Instead of trying to guess stuff based on a player profile.
For most people it is probably just indicative of things being complex.
There aren’t simple solutions to everything in the world.
But if you want to compare simplicity in solutions, lets not forget that even you seem to admit that free respeccing needs some added solutions on top, such as preventing respecs mid-combat and mid-dungeon.
Well, they could add a PvP build swap that only happens inside PvP zones, and automatically. That way it could not be abused for PvE.
I like it. Rewards thoughtful planning & commitment. Gives more weight to your decisions, and better replayability.
Except multiple of us claim counter to how you claim “everyone” plays it.
Many people simply don’t want to bother with the additional work involved with supporting multiple specs. So they don’t; even though it would be “more optimal”.
Nice additional information. Looks like you had some reason(s) for not being the “most optimal” build as is claimed will always happen if we have free respecs. That’s the point in bringing it up.
There are multiple factors to respecs and why people do/don’t leverage them. Many don’t care to fool with more than one spec because it’s more farming, another spec to figure out and learn to play, and so on. Whatever their reasons are.
Something a game forces players to do that they don’t want to do feels like a waste of time to the players. You can wordsmith it however you want, but that’s a pretty well-established/-accepted fact.
Games are for having fun. If you aren’t having fun, you are likely to feel like that attempt at fun was a waste of time.
See some people talk about why they don’t play MMORPGs … they often cite that the real game is end-game and they don’t like having to waste all that time leveling up just to finally reach the real game. Is it down to perspective? Yep.
Yep. The ability to freely respec is the only thing that has me spend any time as sometimes I just want to play around as a build.
Between the content drought and out of control power creep … that’s all there is.
Even experimentation there is pretty dry. Not much changes per season imo.
Agreed. Play variety right there to keep things fresh. The same 6 buttons can only be entertaining for so long. This is also why we have different classes. Good ol variety.
Precisely. It’s even advocated via challenges per season as well as separate leaderboards for those that care about that.
Why? Because some players will do that and find it enjoyable? While the rest won’t … so we have to add more restriction to make those that enjoy it have less enjoyment?
What’s the gain there?
As we’ve seen in our discussions in the Barbarian Theorycrafting thread, we don’t yet full know how each skill, aspect, etc. works. There are several questions we’re all still asking.
So how are you going to flawlessly plan?
This doesn’t make sense. If you can’t kill anything, how are you going to pull your weight?
This is disgusting.
Many people’s play sessions don’t even last 5 hours; definitely not 10.
In addition, that cost then pulls away from their other classes, their gear upgrades, their gear rerolls, their aspect extractions/applications …
… and you are gaining nothing but impeding playstyles that are not your own and have no effect on you.
Correct. Aren’t the only factor are or not even one of the factors.
I’m quite aware of its complex system. I’d be all over that game if they had negligible cost respecs as I could tinker like a madmen with all that complexity and I’d enjoy every minute of it.
I saw nothing to indicate it did or didn’t. Can you elaborate?
Why is that fine but someone swapping between specs they have farmed, rerolled, and upgraded the gear for is not fine?
Do you mean that it rewards looking up guides on the internet and adopting cookie cutter builds?
No. You’re silly.
Looking up guides and doing cookie-cutter builds is something people will choose to do or not to do, regardless of any game design choices.
Well, they could add a PvP build swap that only happens inside PvP zones, and automatically. That way it could not be abused for PvE.
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This is brilliant. You could even put an object to interact with to create your spec. Like an altar of hatred.
Very nice, that you elaborate all answers for everyone
Yeah its hard to know how eveerything will work
But honestly, it really depends on what you’re looking to do
Do you need flawless to be able to do most things?
Again, Pulling my weight again, I see myself focusing on Staggerring CC / Taunting as much as possible , and allowing dpsers with me, to be able to unleash, while worrying the least possible about other things
Yeah, there is still a lot to figure out
But you can help a group in many ways
Of course, keep in mind Im not an end-game elite
Ill find a way of playing that i will enjoy, and it performs 80 or 85% of what you could find, and use for extra output, if I’m happy, and confident and enjoying what i do , it will be fine 
Well if were talking about Pvp, thats another level , where it would be tricky, to be kind of stuck in certain builds ;o
It seems to me that you’re saying that since I specifically didn’t play at maximum optimization at some point, that means the devs won’t scale difficulty to the greatest common factor. And that I think is a false equivalancy.
You’re also assuming that wasn’t the maximum optimization for what I was doing at the time.
100% agreed and is my main point.
Different people are looking to do different things. What we each do is largely, if not wholly independent from each other. Thus they don’t affect each other. Thus we should not be looking to restrict others if we don’t have to. Let them play how they want and we play like we want.
Me? No. I want respecs for my own tinkering purposes (you’ve seen I like theorycrafting from the other thread) as well as swapping between builds to have more fun with my friends. I’ve elaborated more on this before and can do so again if you want more details.
Do others? Some. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that as it doesn’t affect me nor does it affect others either. So let them.
Ah, this makes sense … especially given our recent discussions on stuns, etc. in the theorycrafting thread.
I would say you should look up a bit more in these respec threads because those not wanting respecs were arguing against free respecs enabling the very thing you are saying you want to be able to do. They did not want to see a group of people with 1 Barbarian tanking for 3 DPSers. They took issue with that.
This is exactly what I expect you and most players to do. Find the build(s) you enjoy and play them. I think free respecs better enables this.
If someone likes to play multiple builds on the same class. Awesome. Free respecs will be their friend. But if you add a cost, it runs the risk of impeding this.
Which is odd, given if someone wants to play multiple builds that are different classes, they aren’t affected at all.
No. I was pointing it out as a datapoint against the claim that “everyone will just play the optimal build”.
We’ve been over what I think the devs will do balance-wise, but I’ll restate it.
ah I see, you found an outlier, what now?
I as a dev found an outlier?
See the 2nd and 3rd bullets from my previous post… it’s above the max or below the min.
I as a player found an outlier?
If I want to, I play it.
If I don’t, I don’t play it.
If you think free respecs cause an issue when players found this, I would again point you to the beauty of seasons as well as the fact that such builds get largely used even in the games with far-from-free respecs like Path of Exile.
I dont’ think it free respecs cause this problem. If I said that, I certainly didn’t mean it that way. My point was people will gravitate to these anyways. I don’t think free respecs is something that pulls players away from the meta, they often fall right into the meta lane such as you did – which is why I pointed out your profile in the first place. You were playing two specs that were virtually identical to two builds on the maxroll tier list. What percentage of time would you say you spent in those builds, honestly? You very well could have been outside of that range for most of the time, but I think that would have also made you an outlier.
The Dev expectation will also take this into account when scaling the difficulty.
Necromancer? I was actually Rathma for most of it … pretty close to the meta admittedly.
I think D3 is very poorly done itemization-wise with needing those 6-pieces sets which take up most slots and strongly push you towards using whatever skill(s) the set gives a huge bonus to … grabbing the non-set pieces that buff the damage for the same skill(s).
I think they did try to get a little away from that with the Legendary Gem and the Set Rings for giving damage and DR bonuses per piece of non-set Ancient Gear … but you still see a bit of it.
I don’t think it matters to the devs as, again, they can identify a min and max range of acceptable power and design the content around it and then play buff/nerf hammer with the possible builds to keep things in that range.
Sure. But that is NOT the same as wasting time merely because they were playing a nonspecialized optimal build. Attempting to imply that being unoptimized is not fun.
If you feel like you are not having fun (whatever fun means in the context to you) then you should of course consider not playing.
Indeed.
How long is ‘so long’ for you?
Most of us here are not against respecs. Just frequent respecs.
Yep. Examples of the game being designed around its free respeccing.
Because players should not feel like they need to have multiple characters to be efficient.
I didnt say anything about preventing people from having multiple alts, with multiple builds. It should simply be something people do because they find it fun, and not because it gives them increased efficiency or power.
Blizzard very much should add more character slots. 10 is absurd. 50+ slots should be the start.
How would that be a problem. I definitely didnt mean you should need to get it done in a single session.
Yes. That should be the goal.
Or rather, it should not pull away from other classes and characters really.
Since currencies should be character bound, not shared.
yeah, D3 is a poor example cause it’s so easy to get trapped in the meta. In fact I’d almost say you’d be foolishly wasting time to not follow the meta at all.
And I think the part we were arguing is surrounding the min-max and how free respecs influence that. I think time will tell whether respec costs will hold or not. I, personally, am for them – though maybe not as crazy for them as Shadout is 
But I do think that there is a relationship between the game difficulty design and how accessible the respec system is. It’s not a binary free vs cost. it always comes down to time cost.
I’m just bracing for that inevitable encounter where someone criticizes me for showing up to a world boss in some garbage build or an non-optimal build. I’m hoping respec costs will make that more forgivable.
If it were up to me, there would be no respecs whatsoever.
But I would also add a separate planner or “training room” function that gave you a max level character to edit, so you can test whatever crazy build you want before having to commit to leveling a character.
As much as I don’t like respecs, it does suck to get to max level and realize that none of the skills you picked scale into late game.
from what i saw at lvl 75 respec of 1 paragon skill is 20k
This is always a concept in the back of my mind. It’s harsh, but it also has its merits. It means that when you reach endgame, you know you took on all challenges up to this point using those choices, for better or worse.
It means that your fire sorc or whatever knows what it is like to level up as a fire sorc. You didn’t start as an ice sorc and then switch to fire at the point where it got good.