What would a test mode look like? How would it’s implementation be functionally different than free respecs?
While trying to imagine a test mode, I came up with another idea: someone mentioned Last Epoch in this or another thread where a change in the skill tree would drop the power of all skills to a base level. That seems a little harsh, and hard to truly test build power. How about this:
When you do a respec, instead of costing gold, for the next x minutes the monsters you kill give no experience and the chance of dropping anything above a blue (magic) item is cut in half.
This way, you can experiment freely, the variables in testing power don’t change, and the people who would respec to take advantage of the efficiency in swapping specs to do endgame content wouldn’t do it because the rise in effeciency cuts the outcome of loot.
Like a Nightmare Dungeon or similar, where you can choose a spec, and any item in the game, before entering. It is randomized to simulate real content, maybe you can even choose an area and modifiers yourself.
So here you can test builds all you want, before picking a build to use in the actual game.
Yeah, this is much more how I think a respec system should be designed. Reducing droprates definitely could be an alternative to resetting skill power. Albeit, not all content is about droprates, some activities is about getting currencies and such. So the design here would have to be well thought out. At minimum it would need to:
Lower XP gain, lower gold gain, lower droprates, lower any endgame currency gain, and maybe other stuff too.
For those who cares about leaderboards, it might also need to make you unable to compete for leaderboards during that time.
However, where people likely will disagree is; how long should that reduction last?
Just like it should not be viable to respec multiple times a day with gold cost, such as maybe costing 5-10 hours of gold farming, the same applies here.
So maybe 5-10 hours before the full Magic Find, XP, Currency gain etc. has been restored. It could come back slowly. So after 2 hours, 20% has been restored, 4 hours for 40% etc.
Also had to be determined how much the initial reduction should be. 50% less items, currency etc. might not really be enough to make it counter the efficiency gain from respeccing. As that could offer way more than 100% efficiency gain.
In any case, yeah, this kind of system, resembling Last Epochs system, is the optimal way to go imo.
Even if it hardly would make everyone agree on the details. And the devil very much is in those details.
Yeah, because I specifically left out reduced gold because you still need gold to supplement respecs with the gear modification (taking out and replacing gems, rolling affixes, swapping aspects, forging items, etc.). If those were free, too, then yeah, go ahead and cut gold drop rates, too.
You dont necessarily need that. As you can simply have two sets of gear. That is likely one of those costs that will, at minimum, disappear over time as you have found more and more gear.
I certainly didnt start rerolling affixes on my gear in D3 when I respecced between speed and push for example.
Wouldn’t you be modifying that second set of gear at all?
Yeah, it may not matter until mid-endgame, but I do like to keep my gear somewhat optimized.
I found myself rolling affixes in D3 any time I got an item that was a direct improvement from the Haedrig’s Gift set. Or whatever set I was focusing on that season.
Go look back at all my other posts and compare them to yours. You’re the one that is throwing the tantrums around various threads in these forums.
The game has rules that are clearly set out, built on philosophies and decisions extensively pondered on by the devs. You may disagree with the rules or the merits of those, in which case:
You can acknowledge the rules and understand why they may have been implemented in this way, and highlight any flaws within the potential reasonings of these rules. These forums are a great place to discuss these things, and that is what everyone else here is doing.
If you on the other hand, flat out ignore the rules and where they come from, and in this case, come back and say that instant gratification is a good thing (it’s not) then you’re just a kid whining why their Bishop can’t take the pieces right in front of them, which is a much better metaphor by the way than your absurd metaphor with the toy box.
Getting back on point. If the new item requires you to tweak your build, then just pay the respec cost to make it happen, or make a new character.
Beyond that, no one here or the game for that matter is telling you that you can’t use your drops the moment that you find them.
You have a very elementary understanding of what freedom actually is, but if being an annoying gnat towards others works for you in life, then maybe you won’t ever need to learn
Again, this isn’t D3. It seems like they’re going back towards the roots that many long time fans enjoyed far more than D3, by doing something closer to what D2 is now; you have a character, you have a build, and you can edit that build, but you better be confidant on what build you’re going for, otherwise you’ll have to actually work a little and invest time into that character, instead of just facerolling the respec button every 5 mins like in D3.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved D3 and spent an unhealthy amount of time playing it, but the characters always felt worthless. My only investment in any of them was a small amount of time to level them, then boom, my character is now just a scarecrow that I attach various stat sticks to so I can do +20,000% damage with the flavor of the month / season build. There’s no nuance, nothing interesting about them, just generic stat sticks with names like Wizard or Necromancer spamming billion dmg buttons.
Besides, if the respect costs we saw in the beta stay consistent with the flow of the game, it won’t be an issue. It took maybe 2 mob kills to get enough gold to repec a point, and it stayed that way up through max beta level. So, unless you’re spending more time in your character screen doing respecs than you are out actually playing the game, it’s all a moot point. Hell, we don’t even have much else to be spending gold on anyway. Stash tabs, maybe upgrade some gear once your max level, a couple potions. It’s ezpz so far, so lets wait until the full game is out before you all go REEEEE about the costs.
Oh, and I would like loadouts. I still want them to have a cost “You’ll need to reallocate 10 points to change loadout, that’ll be $20k gold”, but the time savings of not having to spam the skills would be nice.
I think you are largely discounting that a majority of your time is actually spent acquiring the gear that enables you to play a given spec on a given class; or even multiple specs.
I’m curious what difference there is to you in swapping between two characters, for example, your Lightning Sorc and your Frost Sorc, versus simply respec-ing your Sorc between its Lightning Spec and Frost Spec.
Really baffles me why the devs are going down the road of restrictive system when free system can provide them with net gain in terms of player retention and replay value without additional cost to the development in the future. Not only that, free respec system would synergize/scale so well with future contents, because players now have more stuffs to play around with, which means better play value for players (a.k.a player retention and future player acquisition, which are crucial for live service games afaik). This simple value change can snowball into this overall larger net gain with 0 additional costs in the future but they are insisting on missing out on that opportunity to make more without spending more than they have to.
