I can only disagree with such a view.
Hence Blizzard apparently trying to make a cost that allows the majority to switch builds once in a while when they want to try something new. But not constant changes.
People who will run meta builds will do so no matter if you have free or zero respecs.
Exactly this.
Doesn’t work that way when new content comes out in x months and it costs too much gold to respec for it.
And at that point, if someone wants to roll a whole new character for that one event? Well, they’ll be unoptimized for the next one.
The current system actually neatly avoids the min-maxing problem for the most part because “casuals” (or most players in general) are not gonna change their entire builds for every new content drop; the investment is too hight to do so.
This will happen regardless…to think otherwise is silly. A majority of the playerbase will go to maxroll and find the agreed upon optimal build and play it. Period.
It wont happen if it literally cant happen. As long as the cost is high enough that you cant respec when going between different dungeons, events, bosses etc.
Then you can look at maxroll all you want, they cant help you circumvent the cost (well, hopefully they cant…)
Okay, so you’re saying that everyone will be willing to farm ridiculous amounts of gold to respec a lvl100 character for every new content drop? I don’t see that happening.
Cause I point you to the part where “At some point, it will be easier to make a new character than pay the gold.”
At best, you’ll have some people that feel the need to be the absolute best, speed runners, and the crowd who don’t mind rolling new characters all the time.
And that last crowd surely isn’t complaining right now.
I will never take what blizz says at face value. What kind of build diversity are you expecting from this game? A look at the skill tree doesn’t provide that much choice and the maxroll gang will find the best builds and people will copy them, point for point.
Every modern (including WOW which isn’t that modern anymore) Blizz game has zero build diversity and handfuls of cookie cutter builds that are most efficient. They aren’t very good at balance of small sets of skills much less the amount of builds that some folks are apparently envisioning in D4. I don’t see it. Maybe/Hopefully I am wrong and the game will have tons of diversity (in builds) but nothing I have seen and nothing blizzard has done historically (post D2) offer confidence in that…
But you concede that people won’t be min-maxing all over the place, assuming it works as we all seem to expect it to?
You’ve moved your argument to build balance
welp.
Lets wait for the gold sellers to do their magic. lots of profit to make now unless blizz gives us the ability to buy gold from them lol.
See I do not think this is true. Please do correct me if I am wrong but their current plans for respecing is at a certain level you are better off making a new character.
That to me will be unacceptable.
They absolutely will sell gold, gold boosters, and/or respec tokens in the in-game store
Which honestly should make this argument for some of ya’ll moot.
I don’t mind people throwing money at it, if they want; it’s preferable to the devs designing the loot drop mechanics around monetization
How do you separate build balance from min-maxing? Lack of builds (which I suspect will happen) will inevitably lead to the efficient builds being mix-maxed.
Like I said, I hope I am wrong and there are tons of builds that offer unique and different playstyles. If that happens, the requirement/need to mix-max, specific builds, will be minimized or maybe even eliminated. I will happily concede/admit I am wrong if blizzard pulls a rabbit out of their (historically evidenced behavior) hat
this alone throws everyone’s argument against free respecs down the drain.
Now we are adding Pay to win aspects due to money – so much for meaningful choice.
In the context of this specific discussion, it’s a separate issue. It’s a moving of the goal post because while the topic is tangential, it’s different at its core.
Infinite respec guarantees power creep is an issue.
The current system theoretically could avoid it.
Build balance is something that can be patched overtime, so it’s not as fundamental a problem.
Lol well choose one:
P2W via gimped loot drop rates that are unlocked via a cash wall.
OR
Paying for gold and respec tokens.
The latter seems infinitely preferential to me since it doesn’t me messing with the core design and is just a QoL feature for those that feel they absolutely must switch.
You seem to be arguing in favor of the former, thus wouldn’t that mean it throws your argument out the water, if we boil this down to which monetization tactics is worse?
there is no options. lol they will make money regardless of what system they have design. if they want more money, they’ll add more options.
respecing or not respecing for free is not the reason for this.
It becomes more clear when you realize the people who want the “hard” systems don’t even want the dirty casuals in “their” game.
Yep, that is an issue that really needs to be addressed.
All other current major A-RPGs are making D4s skill customization look embarrassing.
Yeah 
Gold should be account bound. Or heck, character bound really.
Respecs should cost more than gold as well.
Like Gold + a Respec Token (a character cant have more than, lets say 2 respec tokens at any time).
That would literally be Pay 2 Win.
Not that I think it wont happen, sadly.
Yes, if that happens, everything becomes irrelevant anyway. Better to just close down the game then.
But eh, until D4 becomes P2W, lets not have free respeccing.
They are pretty much the same tbh. You might argue one is worse than the other. But they are both so bad that it hardly matters which one is worse.
Being able to P2W respecs would definitely mess with the core design.
Well, now you’re just evading the topic.
They already promised not selling power, which we can take to mean they’ll not repeat D:Immortal.
They already have the battle pass and cosmetics.
Ergo, this will clearly be a another revenue stream for them and lets them avoid breaking the original promise.
This isn’t a decision made in a vacuum
Idk. While it’d technically be P2W given how many systems are tied to gold creep, I feel like it won’t be that bad.
D:Immortal system was terrible cause it was tied to the loot drops directly, which you know must effect how the normal tables look.
Letting people pay a bunch to optimize their items or builds for that last couple percent of perfomance seems small potatoes to me.
Now, people could theoretically use this as a method to min-max for every event, but I doubt anyone but whales will do so. Let them have their top 0.0001% performance trophies.
Making it hard to respec makes the game way less repayable. If I get to max level with a build and collect the gear I need to make it work that’s it. I’m done. If I can collect different gear for different builds and switch between them that’s a lot more fun and keeps me playing.