What we were told in their newest video and stream are in direct contrast to this respec fee that they doubled down on (or perhaps changed to lower but didn’t bother to tell us. Won’t know for sure). They keep saying end game contents are designed to push your builds to the limit and that you have to constantly finetune your build while in the newest video, they claim that the players are able to play their classes the way players want. They need to make up their mind. Do they want us to have freedom in how we play or do they want us to be restricted and play it their way as they have claimed ‘players will eventually want to level another character rather than respec’ in the past?
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Allowing multiple “Build Tabs” to be available via gold purchase would be a good compromise. Some players swear they won’t change their build … but what if they find a Unique that totally would change up the play-style … wouldn’t you want the option to change your build on the fly to that new play-style and give it a go?
Your argument was playing one build is less boring/repetitve than playing multiple builds.
I disagree for obvious reasons.
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Yeah, they’ve claimed you’ll have more fun with the same 6 buttons than swapping up your 6 buttons for weeks now 
Given I’ve grown tired of the abstract-level the discussion on it has been and the one constantly discussing at that level didn’t even know barbarian skills when I pointed to them weeks ago …
… I’m curious what actual concrete examples they can give of builds & scenarios where the weaknesses of the builds don’t actually matter.
Interesting new interview.
I really dont agree with “in the middle” as a design goal, that is usually how you end up with a bland game nobody wants, but in any case, relevant for these threads where people have talked about compromises, Blizzard clearly see this as the middle ground option.
Most positive part of the quote here is mentioning increasing the price if it turns out it is too low compared to the gold acquisition, as that definitely seems likely.
https://wccftech.com/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-diablo-iv-customization-respec-progression-crafting-systems/
Circling back to the respec costs in terms of how that affects customization for each class, you said it’s closer to free upfront, but I’ve seen deeper into the Paragon system where refunding a point is 40K or something like that. I’m wondering if your vision is for people to create multiple characters within the same class and then go all the way out into the endgame Paragon system, or is it still cheap enough that if you really want to change builds, you can go all the way back and then all the way up again for totally different builds? In Diablo II, you were making a hard choice, but in Diablo III, it was free.
Adam Jackson: I would say our vision is somewhere in the middle. A lot of the ways that we think about our design problems is this idea that everything exists on a spectrum where you’ve got one end that’s completely one way of doing things, and the other end is completely the other way. A lot of times, our answer is somewhere in the middle, and then, depending on feedback, we may move up or down that slider of where it is. In this case, you could think of Diablo II, where it’s on the extreme left side, where it’s like, hey, you can’t respec at all. You could get it via quest and do it very rarely.
And then Diablo III is where you could do everything and change it around at any time, do whatever you want. Both of those sides, typically, with everything that we decide, have come with obvious pros and cons. If you can’t respec your character forever, then that means that you’re really committed to your fantasy, and you’re really rewarded for thinking about your build and planning that out. Every time you restart the game, you’re actually motivated to go through it again and try this new, completely different way of playing. There’s a lot of good rewards there, but it comes with the cons that you’re very scared to do your build until you planned it out and you can mess up. And then, if you mess up, you got to start over, right? And that’s not very friendly to newer players.
The other end with Diablo III, that style is really friendly to this idea that you can just experiment around and do what you want, and it’s very free form, but it comes with some downsides of the attachment that you have to your character and your build and your fantasy isn’t nearly as strong because I can switch on a dime on what I’m actually playing and doing. We’re trying to find the middle ground there. That’s why, as I said before, we’re trying to make it really easy early on because we know that’s the period of time when players can make mistakes and we don’t want them to be afraid to do that. Later on it gets to be a little bit more painful and expensive to do it.
As far as our vision of, do we want you to remake a character from the ground up every time that you want to change your build? No, not really. I would say our vision, we want it to be a real choice, so there should be some pain behind it or some commitment to the idea that if you really want to switch, you can, but you’re going to have to really invest in it. It’s a meaningful choice to do it as far as the exact costs and values. We are a live service game. I’m sure that those things will change over time; we’re just picking where we think the good starting point is. And like I mentioned on that slider, maybe we’re too far and it’s too expensive in the late game, we have to make it cheaper. Or maybe it’s the other way around, actually, and based on the gold acquisition rate, it’s not painful enough.
We’re going to find that out, I think, over time through player feedback. But the idea is that we want it to be a meaningful impactful choice to switch later on. But I don’t think we want you to give up and reroll your character if you put a wrong point somewhere. That’s definitely not our vision of what we want Diablo IV players to do.
Which is fair. People like different things.
You can do that with the current system though.
Pain behind respeccing - as opposed to just having it be a fun, exploratory option. This is my whole issue with this. The devs want you to feel pain when you pick up a new legendary and want to try it, or want to try a new build. So they’re going to do everything in their power to ensure that, while yes, you can do it, it’s going to be a painful thing. I think that’s literally ridiculous.
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Just because there is cost doesn’t mean you don’t have freedom. No freedom would mean your talent points couldn’t be refunded at all.
Pain is not the word I would use, rather Consequences or lasting impact. But making sure choices made in a game has consequences definitely seems like good design.
We should be able to respec, but the cost should ensure that it can’t be done very frequently. Or at minimum, if we do respec frequently, that it itself has other consequences, through the gold cost, such as not being able to spend that gold on upgrading items etc.
But “pain” is the word they used … which goes back to what we’ve said is from an antiquated design that we believe is a mistake to carry forward.
Now, you have continued to say that “it should be that way” …
… and stated that the reason why is because you can swap to a build for content where that build’s weaknesses don’t matter …
… but you have yet to stop the high-level, abstract talk and give actual concrete examples where that is the case …
… Class & Build vs what content?
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They also give you limited item slots, limited inventory, limited stash space, limited enchants and gambling and upgrades and skill and paragon points. They limited the rate you find legendaries, uniques, and even good rares. They want the decisions you make about how to use each of those limited resources to be painful. It is a word used to convey the idea that there is an actual tradeoff.
“But what if I find a cool item that isn’t for my build and I want to try it?”
Then try it. You can swap 6 skill points around or make a new character around it. I mean, what if the cool item was better for a different class? Should you be able to swap your Sorc into a Barb of the same level for a bit to try it out?
The issue here isn’t that swapping builds trivializes content (though it does that in multiple obvious ways), it’s that the whole mindset around free respecs is that it is only fun to play the game at max level. Free respecs mean people spend a lot more time on max level characters, which means people want a lot more content for max level characters and faster leveling so they can play at max during seasons, which means that devs spend less or no time on content for lower level characters and all progression comes from changing your build instead of making something new.
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Blizzard used the word “painful” in reference to respec costs. I like to play video games for fun and entertainment (and obviously not for adding pain to my life).
Wow this thread is still going…
This day and age, not sure if punishment mechanics work really. Punishment mechanics were very big in the late 90s and early 2000s as a lot of video games had them and a lot of video games copied each other.
Running back to your body
Losing gold when you die
Respect cost that eventually will make you roll a new character.
Ect….
Now some of these are fine if they’re implemented in a correct way, but if they are detrimental to the game to a point where a player will quit and or needs to make a new character and spend 100 hours on that character, then there is a big flaw.
And guess what, young people this day and age aren’t going to put in the time. They’re just gonna quit and walk away and maybe come back at a later date but who knows.
One thing I can guarantee is most people will not re-roll a new character if it becomes detrimental.
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After 1492 posts, you would think that everything that needed to be discussed has been discussed - and that all opinions that needed to be shared have been shared. But then there’s post 1493. And that’s this post. To quote the late, great Stan Lee, “'Nuff Said.”
Yeah that crazy guy in post 1493 said it all
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The rate at which those items drop isn’t “painful”. There is no cost/punishment/etc… Those are the things that people few as “painful”.
The point of something being “painful” is to provide deterrence. Those things are not providing deterrence.
Just think about the carrot and the stick.
- The carrot is the “reward” which promotes behavior
- The stick is the “pain” which deters behavior
(1) Blizzard is claiming it takes a considerable number of hours to get a character to max level
(2) This ignores the build mismatch scenario I’ve highlighted that can occur when playing in multiplayer where some builds are just not [as much] fun to play together such as:
- thorns builds with minion builds
- very fast builds with very slow builds
- builds with non-stacking/-overlapping skills such as shouts/curses/etc. so now you have less than 6 effective skills
The last one can at least be remedied for a cheaper cost though with partial respec.
I’m not sure I buy this as the motivation given that Blizzard is giving us an option to “Skip Campaign” with all our characters once we have beaten the campaign once.
I see another person claiming its obvious how respecs can trivialize … so I’m again curious about actual concrete examples of builds & scenarios instead of the high-level, abstract claims.
What other use could skipping the campaign have than to allow you to have fun playing a lower level character?
Having separate builds for farming vs bosses vs multiplayer for each of those is an example of trivializing content.
Instead of making a character that is well-rounded, you make two separate builds, then complain about all the skills that are useless because they don’t fit a specialized build. Tweaking a character to be good at both things simultaneously is fun content that this is trivializing.
Instead of making a character to play with your friends, you make a character with a build optimized for single player then complain that it doesn’t complement the builds your friends made. Coming up with complementary characters and getting the whole team to high level is fun content that this approach is trivializing.
Instead of building a character around a cool idea you had or a cool item you found, you swap your already high level character to the new build / item, then either complain that there are no cool builds because your idea is less efficient at level 100 than an optimized internet build. Or your idea works fine and you play it for a bit, but you’ve done all that stuff already so you look for some new build to swap to until you are frustrated because you’ve tried all “good” ones. Finding builds that are both effective enough and interesting enough to be worth playing to high level is fun content that this approach is trivializing.
Getting to the endgame, in general, is fun content that is trivialized by swapping around skills when you’re already max level.
It was described as painful choice. The point of a painful choice is that you give something up either way. All the systems I mentioned involve painful choices. Do you want a specific item? Gotta grind to acquire it. Do you want 7 active skills? Sorry, gotta eliminate one. Those choices create the fun of the game by defining what is actually rewarding.
Pretty sure Elden Ring was also bought by, and enjoyed by, young people.
This isnt an Age thing.
Besides, I have never tried any of those games, but ‘Survival games’ seem fairly popular among young people, and those games, as far as I know, have stuff like taking other peoples items, permadeath etc.?
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People are going to be shocked to find out you won’t need multiple builds to do everything in the game. They will also realize that you can get gol rather quickly if you know what to do, which is not a secret only a few will know. I literally had 2M gold after leveling 5 classes to 25.
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Good grief … those weren’t builds … you not only stayed at the abstract level, you went more abstract.
I’m quite curious what you’re definition of “trivializing content” is as well. You claim all sorts of things trivialize content but don’t define what that is or how they are trivializing it.
You also made several strawmen where you claim things I/others complain about … which are things that we didn’t complain about …
… except for the builds for multiplayer in which I think it’s naive to suggest I have a character that I only play with specific friends as that
- assumes only one group of friends … now I need a multiplayer character dedicated to each such group?
- assumes we have schedules that overlap considerably … so some characters that just aren’t played that much?
- assumes each friend always wants to play the same spec when multiplayer
You’re idea of pain and mine are vastly different.
Again, I’ll give you the simple definition …
- pain is something that attempts to deter behavior
Killing enemies to get loot is not deterring behavior.
You are grossly working in the abstract and trying to encompass all sorts of things in umbrella terms that they don’t belong in.
I’m with Shadout on this … just like with the arguments around casuals vs non-casuals, this one about younger vs older gamers is pretty dumb.
I’m a middle-aged man with a wife, 4 kids, and a full-time job. I want the free respecs because I don’t think there is a negative cost to it and I see multiple scenarios (which I’ve laid out countless times now) where having them be free is beneficial. I don’t want to waste my game time because some people think it’s cool to say “I play a [build] [class]” instead of just “I play a [class]” … even though, with/without free respecs, you could technically say “I play these [builds] of this [class]”.
But, hey, as I’ve also said countless times … we’ll see once it’s out because if the cost is negligible enough, then it’s practically the same as being free.
I’ve played the older games that required massive time-sinks. I’ve played some of the newer ones ported from Asian markets to the US that also did the same. I’m of the opinion that time-sinks are just that and eventually drive away players and that the main things that hold onto players are:
- the community they play with
- content
Having something you enjoy doing, even if it’s on repeat, and having people you do it with, even if it’s only part of the time you play that game, are what keep people playing a game as they keep them engaged.
All the other stuff doesn’t hold a candle to those two things and if you’re trying to hold on to players any other way, then you’re missing the mark.
If you’re doing stuff that impedes players’ abilities to enjoy those two things, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
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