Alternate Respec Cost Solution #666

PC General Discussion
1

There have been a lot of posts complaining about the respec cost, or praising it, but very few posts about an alternate solution.

(Edit) Apparently I made a mistake by providing a TL;DR. Too many people opted for the DR.

THE PROBLEM

So I’ve been trying to break down the problem everyone has with the gold cost respec system. The spectrum seems to be those that think it should be completely free to those that think you shouldn’t be able to respec at all.

The free respec side wants freedom of expression for their characters, and the ability to adapt and experiment with the items/legendary aspects they find on the fly. The other side thinks your skill choices should matter and you should be forced to live with them, or pay a cost. The degree of that cost is most of the spectrum. I started out on the free respec end.

There’s also the group that thinks respecs open up the ability to abuse the respec system to trivialize certain content. They also assume the developers would adjust the balance of the content on the optimal loadout for that content to account for people respecing, enforcing a meta build for that content, reducing the viability of non-meta builds, reducing build diversity. I think this is unlikely, but it’s a valid concern.

THE GOAL

So the end goal of an alternate solution to the current respec system should be:

  • to allow the freedom to adapt and experiment without potentially locking a player into a busted build.
  • make it so that the choice to do a respec is meaningful and shouldn’t be done frequently.
  • prevent people from taking advantage of the fact that specific content is easier with certain builds.

Alternate Solution #666:

Instead of costing gold to refund skill/paragon points, the player gains a debuff that reduces multiple things:

  • XP gain rate
  • Gold drop rate
  • Item drop rate
  • Magic Find
  • Special currencies (Obols, FoH fragments, etc.)
  • Any other yet-to-be-determined abusable resource

The degree of that reduction should be left up to the devs to decide, but it should be severe enough to dissuade frivilous or exploitive respecs.

The debuff would apply once a skill/paragon point has been refunded. Ideally, they would implement a way to move skill/paragon points around and then click a button to confirm the point adjustment, but that’s a separate discussion.

My initial idea was that the debuff would last a specific amount of time, decaying faster towards the end. For example, if the debuff reduced everything by 66% and lasted for 6 hours, it would decay to 33% after the first hour, and then take 5 hours to reach 0% and remove the debuff. It was pointed out to me that people would then just sit in town and AFK the debuff away. Another idea was that it should be XP based, but I looked up how XP works (or worked since it was based off an old press version of the game), and it would give people in groups an advantage on removing thier debuff faster. So I’ve come to the idea that it should be based on killing a certain number of enemies.

To make the number of enemies needed to remove the debuff scale to your level, the equation would look something like this:

NE = MNE ( PL ÷ ML ) ^ 2 rounded up.

NE = # of enemies need to remove the debuff
MNE = max number of enemies needed at max level
PL = Player Level
ML = Max Level (may not always be 100)

The number of enemies needed at max level is the variable to adjust, and should be chosen by the devs. To illustrate, though, let’s put it at 5000, and assume the max level is 100:

  • Level 1 - 1 enemy
  • Level 25 - 313 enemies
  • Level 50 - 1250 enemies
  • Level 100 - 5000 enemies

And that’s for a full respec. It’s up to the devs if they want to implement a variable cost for a partial respec or not. The debuff gets reset if you refund another skill/paragon point. Or if there are partial respec costs, the number of enemies needed is added to the current debuff. The debuff can decay at a rate proportional to the percentage of enemies left to kill out of the initial amount.

CONCLUSION

Does this system tick all the boxes of what an alternate solution to the current respec system should take care of?

  • Players are free to respec whenever they want, and aren’t using up a resource that they could potentially use up and get stuck with a broken build.
  • The choice to respec essentially temporarily slows your character’s development, making the decision something you have to weigh if it’s worth that consequence.
  • Players that would swap out skill/paragon points to more efficiently clear specific content would have their efficiency of xp, gold, item, rescource, etc. gain cut by a proportional amount, making the swap pointless for that purpose.
5 Likes
2

I’d rather just pay the gold

5 Likes
3

No.

I read your tldr… just no.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the current system.

Putting up weird barriers to literally stop you from respeccing would kill the game.

You go through all that effort to respec, completely break your build, you can’t kill anything, you’ve bricked your character and have to roll a new one.

Can we please, please stop fear mongering about respec costs. We’ve got enough posts about it, it’s not prohibitive, it’s not a problem, it’s not going to gate anything, nobody is going to have any issues changing their spec unless they’re doing a FULL respec at level 100 multiple times an hour.

Also, Blizzard do not care about suggestions. They want to know how people feel about what they’ve provided. That’s it. They’ll collect that data and figure out what the issues are from that and come up with solutions that work within the parameters defined by other things.

4 Likes
4

You are paying gold, in the amount lost through the reduction in gold gain.

And just paying a gold cost still has the problem of (potentially) being exploited by people swapping builds to trivialize endgame content, since, apparently, the cost is going to be negligible at endgame.

1 Like
5

Any system that punishes people for respecing is going to run afoul of exactly the same issues for those, like me, who dislike respec limitations.

Building a character should be a fun, rewarding experience. And tying penalties to misclicks(or punishing you for changing your mind or wanting to experiment) sabotages that experience, making one of the fundamental facets of the game - building your character - a stressful, unsatisfying experience instead of a fun, rewarding one.

Each person will have their own threshold for when it becomes problematic… but I feel like forcing a person to be ineffective after utilizing the system is probably worse for the majority than a gold cost would be.

Probably the only thing I agree with this poster on - numerous devs and community management team members for various games have stated that the thing they want from us is to understand the things we do and don’t like about the game. Not how we would fix them.

Blizzard, like all devs, likely have hundreds - if not thousands - more ideas about what to put in the game than they can ever implement. They really don’t need ours, unless - by providing our ideas - we make the specific details of the problem we’re experiencing more clear by stating our specific suggestion.

They also have a ton of analytics. They know what we played, they know how much we did in the game, how we interacted with the game, etc. They don’t need that from us either.

The one thing they can’t tell without us directly telling them… is how the parts of the game make us feel, whether positive or negative. And that is what we should be focusing our feedback on - conveying the specific positives and negatives of the game experience from our individual perspectives.

1 Like
6

Full constant free respec is not needed, deal with it.

2 Likes
7

you are proposing a solution to something which is already solved. the problem is not the solution the devs already stated they have addressed in their final decision, that is respec at gold cost is in the game and then they will see how it goes.

the “problem” is some kids crying since they don’t like that. that is, not a problem to anyone, actually, but themselves. since in less than 2 months they’ll just get the game released with those costs and nobody but them could care less about it.

the only problem to others, if you wish, is that they keep crying about it to grab attention, constantly bumping the (multiple) discussions on this, basically constantly pushing down any other discussion on any other matter (which might be of more interest to everybody else).

still, going on making a fuss about what they know that won’t be changed for the time being and has already been discussed and found its solution, is futile attention grabbing. you are in this sense proving them right, since by adding another topic to the list for absolutely no reason you basically help them turn the forum page into a ‘respec costs’ forum instead of a diablo one.

8

Its a video game. Nothing about it is needed. Dungeons aren’t needed. Loot isn’t needed.

Hell the entire GAME isn’t needed. Nothing is ‘needed’. Everything in this game exists solely for optional purposes, not mandatory purposes. So the idea that a feature should only exist if it is ‘needed’ is fundamentally idiotic.

3 Likes
9

Why does there have to be a penalty at all for changing skills? Why must there be consequences for experimenting with builds? There’s already next to no depth in the skill tree. Do people really need to pat one another on the back for playing the game the way they see as being correct?

1 Like
10

Because 18 year olds don’t have enough consequences in their daily life so still need to find consequence in video games. Someday they’ll grow up and get jobs and appreciate the idea that videogames don’t need to replicate the worst part of real life… but for now, they want videogames as a surrogate for the lack of consequences in their real lives.

2 Likes
11

I’ve never heard anyone complain that the game they were playing had too much free choice. The idea of being stuck with skills or else pay the price is archaic. Free skill swapping in D3 was innovative.

If they want to make our choice of skills meaningful, all they need to do is actually make all the skills meaningful. D4 has a lot of dead skills. Nobody playing a necro is going to choose any other generator than Decompose because it generates corpses.

1 Like
12

If you would read the post, you’d see that that’s one of the things this solution solves.

I did say that ideally, they would implement the ability to move around points freely before confirming a respec.

Then what about the beta feedback update?

It’s far from free. Read the post.

If people are still making posts about it, that means that there is still a problem and it has not been solved. And I am under no illusion that the game is going to change between now and release, but the game can be changed.

I would suggest reading the parts of the post under THE PROBLEM and THE GOAL.

13

The TL;DR was enough for me to not need to read the whole OP. Didn’t like it. We don’t need ridiculous compromises. We just need a lenient respec system.

2 Likes
14

They took the feedback that ‘there was too much backtracking in dungeons’, not a specific suggestion to ‘have enemies chase players’. They took feedback that ‘barbarians took too much damage at low levels’, not a suggestion to ‘move the durability out of talents into a passive damage resistance’.

Feedback is important. But specific suggestions are not usable in most cases.

15

I would rather pay gold up front, than deal with debuff mechanic across the board later on. Gold has it’s value and respec cost is also part of it’s value.

That is a No from me.

16

Theres stills posts about it because the same 3 people keep spamming it. It’s not a problem. It never was a problem. Nobody in beta ever felt like it was or would be a problem.

The only problem is speculation at best based on minterpreted words.

Also you literally said that people should have a buff applied when they respec that disappears after killing enemies, so that they can respec again.

How does this “fix” the issue? That actually would BE the issue.

17

Make a dedicated goldfarmer, play that an hour every day… enjoy your respecs :beers:

18

The shear number of posts would seem to point to there being a problem.

You can respec at any time before or after killing enemies. You don’t have to wait until the debuff clears.

That is what this is. You’d be free to respec anytime as many times as you want. The debuff is temporary and doesn’t impact your effectiveness at all, you just don’t gain resources as fast. 50% exp, gold, etc. is not much for a few kills until you get well into the endgame.

19

no. it only means some people are childish and think stamping feet and getting a red face will change anything. it has been solved. it’s just you don’t accept that, as those who keep crying. you don’t want a solution, just like them. you want only your solution, and don’t accept others have taken a decision since it’s not the solution you like.

and since they are doing it in multiple topics, you just added another one to their list. you are like them. no difference. no solution from you. only wa waa. cry more, it’s still only another wa waa topic on the same identical thing which has already been sorted.

1 Like
20

as if its not also “the same 3 people” spamming arguments against free respecs as well…

Most of the threads on this go this way:
One person posts feedback about it. A few other people post that they agree. Two or three people come in to tell them that they should stop posting feedback. The argument then goes in circle as the original few posters feel strongly about it so they feel their feedback should be posted, even if it is unlikely for it to change before launch. But the two or three people continue telling them to stop posting feedback and insulting them calling them whiners.

Maybe these posts wouldn’t be so ubiquitous of the ‘two or three’ people would stop going into these threads and telling everyone to stop posting their feedback. But because so many people seem insistent these peoples’ opinions shouldn’t matter, they feel the need to keep posting about it when, if the trolls had just NOT told them their feedback didn’t deserve to be posted, they’d likely move on after posting it.

2 Likes