I mean, it increases the “cost” of respecs in a roundabout way, so I am not too much against it. But it sure is a silly design.
But if the reason for the respec costs is that you should be more aware of your build and how to skill your charakter you should also spend the skill points accordingly.
Let’s be honest. The majority of the players will just copy some cookie cutter builds from streamers and theory crafters. So this “reason” for respec costs is somehow irrelevant anyway. The costs will just encourage botters to bot and discourage players to try out OWN builds and and experiment a little and that’s a pity to me.
That isn’t really a reason though. At least not one I have seen many people, if any, mention.
The main reason is to reduce the ability to make specialized builds for every occasion. Thus making you have to choose strengths and weaknesses for your build. Even if you copy someones build, that still holds true, you just delegated the thinking part to someone else.
Yep, most people will copy builds. With or without respec costs. But also a non-issue imo. If someone want to copy a build, that is their choice.
Instead they make a character for every occasion. Is that really better? And what’s wrong to HAVE special builds for everything. I think I told this already before. When I talk about respeccing I do NOT mean being able to switch the build by the click of one button so you can react on every type of enemy immediately.
I think i.e. at world bosses where you want players to come with the best fitting build to kill the boss as fast as possible. If I have to pay for the respec I won’t do it just for a boss fight.
It is better yes, albeit not perfect.
Better because lvling a new chaaracter is a cost on its own.
And there are things you cant do with multiple characters that you can do with a respec as it currently stands (mid-activity respecs especially).
But yeah, more should be done there, to ensure it is unviable to use multiple characters as a way to circumvent the respec cost.
Pretty sure most people who want respec costs, specifically do NOT want the above to happen. That very much is the point.
Hopefully basically nobody will. Otherwise the cost is not high enough.
That’s what I specifically excluded with:
It will not take much time that people will find a way to power level twinks. So this is not a valid point for long.
I’m confused. You do NOT want people to have propper gear to play efficient when they join you? I mean in D3 you even were kicked when your speed build for bounties wasn’t fast enough for the group. I can NOT imagine this is what people have in mind when they are PRO respect cost.
I fear that for sure. Still a small cost is more than no cost.
Yes.
Specialized builds for different content is uninteresting.
Well, more people than me have outright stated that is exactly what they wanted.
And yes, bounty speed builds is a great example of how stupid those frequent respecs are.
Just searched this thread for the term “build” and coudn’t find a single one stating the same. Do you have any examples?
Shadout doesn’t want the “meta” builds to be builds that are “optimized per activity”. That has been their argument … the types of builds that will become meta if we have free respecs.
They have argued for a while that they believe that will come about as a result of free respecs as they argue that is all you see in Diablo 3 … despite a bout of digging into people’s accounts and seeing variations just in that small sampling.
They have ignored that we see optimized builds for various activities even in games such as Path of Exile that do not have free respecs (rather far from it) but do have builds specialized for mapping, boss-killing, etc.
They have ignored that we see plenty of non-optimized builds played in the games with free respecs (Diablo 3, Guild War 2, Warframe, etc.)
They have continued to ignore the side-effects of what they are asking for such as how they affect players who enjoy experimentation, swapping between single and multiplayer, etc.
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Not going to look through thousands of posts, you are welcome to do it if you want to. But there have been plenty of them.
Here is one referring to not wanting it at least.
You might also look for the ton of posts talking about how free respeccing changes the game to a balance where you want/need to always be optimized. Same point. If we cant be optimized for each challenge, the challenges wont require that optimization.
Anyway, I likely cant make you believe something you dont want to, so Ill just reiterate that, yeah, not being able be optimized for every activity very much is what I want to see in the game. With the natural consequence of that being; in a group of players in some activity, the players should generally not be optimized for it (some might of course, because that activity happens to be what they specialized for, regardless of the cost in other activities).
Yep.
Not at all. But those builds optimized for one activity also have drawbacks when they want to do anything else.
I dont want specialized builds to be useless. They should just be equal to generalized builds, due to not being able to get full value of their specialization.
He’ll also see that was rebutted by the facts that:
- not all players are doing that as there are additional costs to swapping that not all find worth it
- it requires farming, upgrading, rerolling, and managing the items for each spec
- it requires learning each spec and how to use it
And how the power of a build, thus how it fits within the balance of the game, is independent of the ability to respec as the power from a build comes from build = class + level + spec + gear.
- RandomJoe with buildA they respec’d to completes content X
- JohnDoe with buildA they always used completes content X
- RandomJoe with buildB they respec’d to complets content Y
- JaneDoe with buildB they always used completes content Y
If there is a balance issue, its with buildA vs contentX or with buildB vs contentY.
- That balance issue would be because the build itself does not fall within the build power considered in the range intended by the devs
- There is no difference between RandomJoe using that build versus JohnDoe or JaneDoe using it … as the build is the issue … not whether they always used it or respec’d to it.
Why? Not all builds are equal. In fact I’d argue that it’s more common for builds to be unequal. Why should general and specialized be equal? Spoons != Forks != Sporks.
We see more general builds in the games with free respecs … often used by those who don’t want to respec and/or simply find that build to be the most enjoyable for their playstyle.
And these other things that have been ignored again as with previous other items?
Equal in balance, obviously, if that was unclear… Not equal in what they do, very much not that.
And why should a game aim for balance? I hope that is self-explanatory. But if not, because it offers players more viable options to choose between. As well as more interesting gameplay, when player choices are balanced in regards to game challenges.
Strawman. Not literally all you see, but it very much is a common sight. Finding the outlier does not change that.
People generally try to optimize in D3. The game very much asks that of the player.
Just look at Kitchmanns example:
I do hope am wrong, but if the respec ends up being more than few hours of work to do I’ll probably do it if the game is otherwise good… It will likely take what 40 hours with efficient farming, so a weekend to not have to respec as much isn’t that bad.
And what are you evaluating when defining two builds as equal or not?
You obviously don’t know what a strawman is given your misuse above.
Amusingly, you then proceeded to strawman by arguing that it’s “not literally all you see” even though I didn’t say that is “literally all you see”, “all you see” or any derivation of that which you argued against.
The point was that despite the free respecs, one of the very people arguing it would happen wasn’t even doing it nor was I; the very first samples taken.
And, as you just admitted above, “it very much is a common sight”.
So it appears we are getting both optimized and general-use builds being leveraged and enjoyed by the players.
And … you still are ignoring this one … unless you’re counting your admission above that, with respec to non-optimized builds, “it very much is a common sight”
Their efficiency.
How do they perform (how much stuff do you get done in X time) across a wide range of content in for example 10 hours.
=>
You cant make this stuff up 
Seriously.
Talk about being dishonest! Considering his posts about it.
Getting 99% optimization and 1% fool-around builds or whatever, is not the argument you seem to think it is.
Eh, I didn’t quote it since it said the same thing with different words. So the answer is the same as above.
We even have an example merely a few posts ago, with someone sharing how you likely might get kicked from a group if you showed up to bounties without being specialized for bounties.
I cant know what your experience is from D3, but at minimum it seems different from the experience of anyone I have ever played D3 with, and many people who have expressed their experience on this forum.
“Across a wide range of content”, eh?
So the hyper-optimized builds could then be balanced with the more generalized builds then?
That was me saying that you and others had been making the claim that the optimized builds are “all you see”.
The full quote … not clipped short to remove the context in a dishonest way …
When someone says “Shadout claims that is all you see” … that doesn’t mean that person is claiming that is all you see. That is that person stating that you’ve made that claim. There is a difference. It’s an even bigger difference when that person has been disagreeing and stating the opposite.
Want to try to be honest or are we going to clip things out of context some more to try to make them what they aren’t?
He said it was a farming build.
It did not match the farming build on maxroll.gg that he linked.
What’s dishonest about that? Do please elaborate.
You even followed up and stated that “perhaps it was the most optimal for point he was currently at”.
Should I grab the links for you or are you going to try to turn around the narrative again like you just tried just above this with your quoting out of context?
Just curious.
Where are you getting those numbers?
Just making them up?
My experience is joining clans that were created simply for coordinating groups for one activity or another, using them to find groups instead of random PUGs with afkers, and running a pretty large range of builds from current meta build for farming to whatever I had finished playing around with that was “fast enough”.
The times I’ve seen people get kicked are when 3 people have finished 4 of the 5 acts while one person has yet to finish half of their act. That extreme disparity in work put in is what sometimes gets people kicked and it’s most often indicative of being [semi-]afk which is why it irks people enough to bother kicking. But even then it was rare as most just continued flying through the content and got it done and those people didn’t get to stay in the clans for long.
Hence why I pointed out the strawman you were attempting to make.
Are you for real. You made a false claim about other peoples stances, so you could pretend to disprove it with our little outlier case. To make it more funny, an outlier that was yourself describing yourself.
To point out that you couldnt exactly know if it was an optimal build he was using.
How about saying that 1) it was a speed build, for farming, 2) not something he would ever want to use for pushing, 3) saying he spent at least 90% of his time in meta builds, 4) might even have stopped playing because of the lack of optimization.
I mean, it doesn’t really sound like the impressive case of people playing sub-optimal specs for fun as you want to present it to be.
Probably same place as you are.
And your experience is that those clans were happy with carrying you through bounties in a slow push build for example?
Ah, so not a slow push build.
But glad to hear you did experience all the respec jumping. Was starting to wonder if there were two completely different versions of D3 out there.
Anyways, not going to be distracted … you seemed to ignore this … I guess due to not wanting to eat your own words?
So the optimal build from the link that he himself shared for a season that’s been out for quite a while for a game that’s been out a considerable amount of time … but perhaps I can’t know if it was an optimal build he was using …
Uh huh … which is funny because you then went on to quote him saying it wasn’t.
(1) Yep, I stated that he said it was a farming build
(2) I never claimed he used it for GRift pushing
(3) Yep, and he and I already discussed that we believe the poor itemization in D3 really pushes that because you have 5-6 slots taken up by an Armor Set and then you find whatever legendaries further buff the skill(s) that Armor Set is pushing you to use.
(4) Yep, look at the itemization issue from (3)
… looks like an issue with itemization … if you also ignore no skill twigs/trees and definitely nothing close to the paragon boards … I’d throw those into the pile of causes for the issues seen in D3.
What numbers are you referring to? I’m quite curious.
Lol, not carrying.
My experience was that as long as I wasn’t ridiculously slow, so much that they thought I might be afking or doing something other than farming bounties, they had no issues.
I believe I already quantified it that if the other 3 were already done with the other 4 acts, you should be done with your one or close to it … otherwise you were likely afk, chasing Key Wardens or something else.
And this was trivial even with a Necromancer (see: not that fast even at its fastest) running with DHs and Monks (see: S-tier bounty specs)
It’s like raiding in games. Except at the very top level of competition (world-/server-firsts, leaderboards, etc.), people just don’t want you wasting their time when you could simply put in some thought/effort. It’s how average DPS, even new healers and tanks that are learning are still able to get into raids as long as they aren’t constantly causing wipes.
Lol, I was playing what I felt like playing. Sometimes I didn’t feel like respec-ing and so didn’t. Or I hadn’t farmed the gear for it. Or, sometimes I’d be playing with buddies who would want me to just come on and not fool with it as they just wanted to get together and have fun (before wardrobe was added). Sometimes we even gasp would try out random things while farming. I know … horribly … and we should’ve been taxed to high heaven for it because it was neither generalized nor specialized 
So let’s recap that first part since you skipped it in the first post … so I’ll end with it as well.
You measure the balance of a build as “It’s efficiency across a wide range of content in for example 10 hours”
… but you then decry builds specialized for particular content … even though they are trading off to specialize for that one content and thus unspecialized for another content
… otherwise they’d be more of a generalized build
… you even mentioned this trade off made by specialized builds in Path of Exile when I pointed out that specialized builds still exist in Path of Exile, despite it having a far-from-free respec mechanic
Yep.
100/0 might potentially compete with 50/50.
I know, you will answer with something silly like “there are no numbers in that”, but you are pretending that it is a meaningful amount of people compared to the optimization.
Such as not using a speed build.
It likely is like raiding in games. Even if it sounds like your experience again differs a fair bit.
Or maybe it is rose-tinted glasses. Who knows.
I didnt decry anything. Specialized builds are fine. Respeccing to a specialized build for that particular content is not.
As in, that build you did bounties with should be the same you pushed GRifts with. Within that framework specialized builds are completely fine.
But that again means, doing bounties with a push build, pushing with a bounty build etc. for such specializations.
Good. Now let’s extend the evaluation of the builds to costs in time and effort. That is something they take into consideration even in Path of Exile with their far-from-free respecs. the SSF builds and the League Starter builds are the flags generally searched for for such builds.
And also let’s extend it to skill. As a build might be 100/0 in playerA’s hands but 80/0 in playerB’s hands as we have builds with different skill floors/ceilings.
When you do that, you can see far more balance as more tradeoffs/decisions are being made between builds, how many builds you manage, which builds you manage, when you manage those builds, and so on.
There’s already a very nice mix to it.
This, I believe, is why you do not see the free respecs being an issue in other games like Guild Wars 2, Warframe, etc.
Heck, there are all sorts of builds for each class in Guild Wars 2, but you need to get the gear for them, understand how to play them, and be able to play them while doing the mechanics of the content you’re playing them in. That seems easy to many, but I can tell you I have seen plenty of others that struggled.
That struggle, however, was worth it, as they didn’t have something trying to push them away from respec-ing and trying other than the items I listed above. And once you solved those, your reward is a build that you can play at least effectively if not optimally.
Yes and no.
Giving a number is definitive, stated like a fact.
“So it appears” is saying that something seems to indicate/suggest. It’s not definitive nor a statement of fact.
As far as a meaningful number … it appears to be in Guild Wars 2, Warframe, etc. when I was playing each of those … even in raiding in Guild Wars 2. You don’t see people complaining in those games about having to use the optimal specs, loadouts, frames, whatever you want to call it in the games with free respecs.
Meanwhile, in the games with costly respecs, you do see quite a few threads on it. Path of Exile is a great example since it is costly and an aRPG.
Nope. Already covered that I’d use any number of builds including some slow Necromancer ones. As long as you’re intentionally doing the content, you get it done fast enough that people don’t think you’re afk-ing or doing other stuff that only benefits you while they carry the bounty completions.
Maybe I do have rose-tinted glasses. Hard for one to detect that for ones self 
But I also have 2 decades of raiding experience in MMOs ranging from server-firsts, to having the raid content on farm, to participating in teaching raids, to just being in casual raids.
Only in the server-first type raiding were our specs under much scrutiny as we were trying to squeeze as much performance out of them as we could. I actually found it fun since there was a good bit of experimentation involved in that as well.
All the other types of raiding were far more relaxed as you had more wiggle room provided by the group’s experience, gear, etc… As long as you weren’t causing wipes, didn’t matter. And that’s simply because people don’t want to take time out of their lives to fail because derpy over there can’t pay attention. It’s more to do with the player and less their spec … though a spec can compensate for a derpy player … low skill req builds and all that jazz.
Maybe decry is too strong a word, but if you scroll up just a bit, I mentioned how you did not want specialized builds to be the meta and you agreed.
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