That very much is my point.
Which makes it just a matter of which rules we want to have. Instead of this nonsense about “freeeedoooom”.
Yes, we already have limits not to mention gear costs and limits so there is no need for an additional penalty.
We will never agree. I want to play self found and change my build to try different gear and I don’t want to pay a penalty for doing that.
2 Likes
It is the quality of limits, rather than the quantity, that matters.
If I had to choose (which isnt exactly needed) I would definitely have respec cost over gear cost.
Exactly.
@Shadout and I have had this conversation over at
We came up with a compromise concept to eliminate the gold cost for respecs. Instead of costing gold, once a skill or paragon node has been refunded, the player gets a debuff that lowers multiple things:
- Experience from killing monsters.
- Gold drop rates
- Item drop rates for items above magic (blues).
- Other currencies (obols, the FoH fragments, etc.)
- Some other yet to be determined thing people might abuse
We disagree on how long the debuff should be, but this would take care of many of the cases against free respecs, while giving people the freedom to experiment with their build and not get stuck on something they don’t feel comfortable playing.
Been considering making a topic about this, but I’d want to hash out more of the specifics, first.
1 Like
Tbh far better system is still having to grind the talent points back you just refunded. Giving a debuff doesn’t feel like the right thing to do.
Having to grind the talent points back would make it so that rather than being more powerful after respecing, you’d be weaker for a while before being at the same or better power a while later. This way respecing wouldn’t be done for efficiency, but for exploration.
I dont even consider it a compromise concept, since it is just better than a gold cost.
I have said it many times before, but gold is the second worst type of respec cost system.
With the worst being “free”.
Imo, from best to worst:
-
Last Epoch style, or Somniums version above, where you gain power/efficiency as you play. When respeccing it resets back to zero. That can be direct skill power as it is in Last Epoch, but it certainly also can be indirect through efficiency modifiers such as XP, Gold, Magic Find etc. I consider those two systems essentially equal, though I understand that some people dont like losing power (as in Last Epoch). In terms of efficiency cost, they are the same though.
-
Respec token system, where you can only hold a few respec tokens at a time. Preventing inflation, and the cost becoming meaningless over time (which is the big issue with a gold cost). The respec token should have more uses than respecs, such as buying efficiency buffs, like 1 hour Magic Find buff etc. so you still have that opportunity cost balancing that comes from spending gold (less gold for other stuff) or by resetting your buffs in concept #1
-
Probably various other respec systems
-
Gold cost. It works. Somewhat. But gold is just a terrible currency to use. It never stays relevant long term, as devs will likely make you earn more and more over time. And it lacks a cap.
Plus, it is regressive, the less gold you have, the more reason you might have for respeccing, but the less you are able to pay for it… In general that is not good design imo. One of the good parts about #1 is that if you are already “at the bottom”, as in your power/effiency has been reset, then a second respec costs nothing. -
Free respecs. Just dont do that!
1 Like
This is functionally the same, but lets you get a better idea of the power your respec gains without getting any kind of benefit that could be abused. If you were made weaker after a respec, you’d have no idea if the respec was fruitful or not. This way, you can respec, go out and test it on some enemies, but not gain any loot rewards by doing so.
One can argue that getting your power back slowly by effort it better than just being less powerful for x amount of time. If it’s time based people will just go afk, if it’s xp based people will be feeling bad for their effort not mattering as much. With you being slightly weaker every mob you kill still matter as much as before.
The thing is to not start from 0 points rather something -10 points from max. So you gain your power back really quickly but still have that small step to go to take your build fully online. You get to feel all the synergies, but missing one or two skill points here and there to do it’s full damage. It could be something really fast even, but exponential towards the end, so if you respec one point it’s not far off from respecing every point in terms of time required.
I’d say free is better than gold. But that’s just me.
You wouldn’t be any less powerful, though… you’d just not be gaining as much exp, items, or currency. It’s like putting your character’s advancement on hold while you figure out your build.
Shadout also had the idea on the other thread that the debuff would diminish over time, so that your lowered xp/gold/etc. gain would come back slowly. The debuff could be proportional to # of points refunded or something.
And if you have an issue with it being time based, what about # of enemies killed? That way, you do your respec, go out and test it on some enemies, and those enemies count towards the required amount before the debuff goes away. And people couldn’t wait out the debuff.
Yeah. In general I would say “gain X back over time” should be XP based. Exactly so it isnt just “stand in town and wait”. Should encourage people to get out in the game world.
It comes with one risk though, the very same risk as a gold cost. Crazy power creep over time might make the XP “income” way too high for what the cost was designed for.
Maybe a mix? It is XP based, but there is some limit to how much XP can contribute within a certain time, giving a lower limit on how fast the power/efficiency can be earned back, even in a scenario where XP gain has gotten out of control later on.
And that is where we wont agree 
I mean, it might be -10, since that doesn’t say much about the cost, but if the cost is small, it serves as little point as a small gold cost. It wont actually help balancing the crazy efficiency gains that respeccing offers. Thus not serving its purpose.
So I would say;
Even if XP based, it should take at least 5 hours to earn the full power back, but it build up over time of course, so after ½ hour, you gained some of it back, etc. Could even be frontloaded, albeit, not so much that it doesn’t fullfil its purpose.
And, you should probably lose at least 50% of your item droprate, gold find, currency income per activity (or whatever measurement makes sense) etc.
Achieving double power through respeccing seems like a very likely thing to happen, so the “efficiency cost” needs to offer a counterbalance for that.
XP imo is better on average, since enemies killed encourages finding easy mobs to grind. Whereas XP is, presumably, somewhat balanced across easier and harder enemies by design.
1 Like
Idk how level scaling affects XP gain. If it does at all. I’d need to see the numbers, but an XP requirement could work. 
Yeah, I mean, an XP gain requirement should of course also scale with your lvl, like the gold cost does, otherwise it would take endlessly longer to get your buffs back at low lvl than high lvl.
(and, to state the obvious, XP gain at max lvl would still count too)
Why 5 though. It should be there to make it so it’s not efficient to respec all the time. But 5 sounds pretty exceeding for that. One would be fine even or if it’s longer then it should be that the final few points take the majority of the time.
One thing with xp though there may be a similar problem to gold is that stronger you are faster you can get it. Gold is poor because you are probably going to find a lot more of it when doing higher nightmare levels and one would think the same applies for xp.
If Blizzard is currently aiming at making it unviable to respec more than 1 time per day, then 1 hour to get the full power back (in which case, even less to get much of it back) is very low compared to the gold cost.
The cost here even have the benefit of not being shared between characters. With gold cost, if you respec one of your characters 10 times, it takes gold away from all your characters. Not so here. Which imo makes it even more reasonable that the cost is at minimum at the same level, but preferably even higher, than if it was gold. Gold was already going too low, due to the negative impact a high gold might have according to some people. Here there is no such impact, and you get the ability to do 1000 respecs in a row, for testing, before starting you earn back your lost efficiency. Again, seems fair to me that it comes with a higher cost (as in, longer time to get the buff back, as well as in the efficiency lost). Even then it is much cheaper than frequent respecs would be with a gold cost (before power creep sets in anyway).
5 hours seems a little unreasonable to me solely because of the variable amount of time different people have to play. 5hrs would be nothing for people who are playing 10+ hrs a day. 1/2 of their play time being spent earning back the ability to advance their character. For people who only play 1-2hrs a day, that’s 3-5 days of no progress…
This is what is simply nonsense.
The various different builds you speak about will be viable as the ones you speak of are content oriented so x amount of people will be using them at any given time.
Forcing costly respec does not in any way shape or form make them more, or less viable nor will it color people choices in using them or not.
Costly respec will simply insure people will chose one build and not try any other til the next season thus what we have been saying making less viable exotic builds less used and experimented with.
Tis not rocket science…people will follow the path of least resistance which will be choose one build and stick with it till the next season.
Remove costly respecs and people are far more like to try their own off the wall builds.
Anyways this argument has become circular and you clearly don’t understand the basic principle or logic of this discussion so good day to you.
Naw it more about boohoo others in the world we sometimes share will not be stuck in a build and have to waste time and do shenanigans cause what build and where and how they change it bothers meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…cry…and that’s all it is about.
Frankly it’s not anyone else business what build you use, when you use it or how many times you change it. It’s all the same ole mmo garbage mechanics or trying to funnel people into a certain playstyle for “reasons” that are frankly garbage.
2 Likes
Respec costs are an unnecessary penalty that will likely be removed in time.
But it would not be No progress. It would just be lowered efficiency. But still very much progress.
If you gain 50% gold, you are definitely still getting gold, and so on.
And even more so, it would not be 3-5 days at 50% gold either, since it would grow toward 100% during that time.
I mean, that specifically is a strength of this system, no matter how much you respec, you wont ever move backward (unlike with a gold cost), at worst you will be slowed down in your forward progress.
That honestly shouldn’t even matter, since X hours played is X hours played. How many real days it is spread over has no impact on anything, right?
Yes, that specifically is the purpose of a respec cost. Even if you are taking it to an extreme with your example, again. But otherwise, yes, the purpose is that people pick a build and stick with it.
It very much is Blizzards business. Literally.
Sure but not yours so you have zero points of reason to advocate for it and the reasons you have given are just bogus like I previously mentioned.
Blizzard has “reasons” to push people into a certain play style and its likely to come back and bite them in the backside if they stick to it. Their reasoning is awful and no amount of copium will make it not so.
1 Like
Thats a cool idea! Keeps the weight of chosing skills but isnt restrictive!