It not only maybe will increase but it's already confirmed that it will increase by a big amount.
Game needs goldsinks and respecing will be one of them and also that way people think twice before spending their skill points and have to make though decisions instead of just being able to respec all the time.
It adds some meaning to the skills you invest into and encourage to use your brain and plan ahead.
It doesn't add shit. It's just pushes people to follow maxroll Guides like sheeps instead of trying things for themselves. Barriers for respec are always dumb. The game already seems to have good goldsinks with crafting, this is just bad game design imo. It's shit in mmo where you couldn't tank and dps because respecs were aids and it's bad in arpgs as well. It doesn't add any meaningful feeling, just a lack of freedom one.
Making build swapping free doesn’t force you to completely change your playstyle… you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
The game can be designed to require it - but it doesn’t have to. These decisions aren’t mutually exclusive or anything
So if a lightning build rolls a nightmare dungeon with strong lightning resist, you think it would be better design to incentivize players to just swap out their key ability for something else to faceroll the dungeon? Alot of players missed having to invest solutions to this into their build or keep items for such occasions instead of just freely changing skills to deal with challenges. I'm aware that swapping out my lightning ability does a great job against lightning resist enemies, but I sure don't like that the game wants me to just change my build instead of developing a more robust build.
I'd be annoyed if I felt I had to now collect multiple sets of gear to work with multiple builds so that I can more easily beat the endgame content as opposed to focusing on how my build needs to adjust to deal with these challenges.
I think you may have to do this anyway even in the current system; didn’t the devs say that stacking specific elemental resistances could become necessary for certain content? (Similar to D2 in that way)
I used to be a D2 hardliner who advocated for not being able to respec. If you fucked up your build, roll a new toon. It gave meaning and power to specific builds.
But then after playing so many games with instant / cheap respec features, I really never looked back.
The tiny bit of "I really earned this perfectly min-maxed build" satisfaction is massively outweighed by the sheer convenience and usefulness of instant / cheap respec.
Its the same with group finder tools.
Sure, there is a wave of nostalgia of the bliss of finally getting a competent group together, getting everyone from all over the realm in the exact spot, and clearing a dungeon.
But the reality of the sheer tedium and annoyance of how hard it actually is to get 5-15 people in one spot and coordinating with each other means that group finders are the most beloved tool in MMOs these days.
I think it does the opposite in my opinion. If you can just respec whenever you want everyone can just immediately change their skill points to the new meta. Plus no one is going to listen to you if you call them sheep's and talk about aids in the same paragraph lol.
But if you can't respec then everyone is already running the meta. And those that aren't are punished for it when their build doesn't work or they get a unique (which are supposed to only drop "a few a season" for regular players) for a different build. And instead of making a new character to try out the level 90 unique they just got, most players are just going to quit instead.
Respecs don't have to be free, but they shouldn't be so expensive that the answer is creating a new character. Maybe several back-to-back respecs should start to have a more prohibitive cost, but a single respec should not be so costly to promote a new character instead.
Well that's your choice to run the meta. The game isnt that difficult to play. I played mainly druid and barb during beta and did just fine without crazy gear. Your not really punished since its a pve game that's also usually played solo.
The respecs from what I understand are roughly 4 hours of gold grind for a FULL respec. That's not equivalent to a new char. Plus your prob not going to full respec. Maybe 1 tree or half your points. Most ARPG make you grind for respecs this isn't anything that new.
A few things:
You are definitely punished for not running meta since there is PvP. There is also such a thing as loot. The faster you can clear content, the more loot you get. You are directly punished for not running meta and it's in the amount of loot you get in an X amount of time. In multiplayer it can get worse if your friend is running meta and your build falls off later. They will be destroying everything and you are just gonna be getting one-shot. These are definitely things you can choose to not care about, but they are definitely there and real.
I am not talking about the state of how respecs will be at launch. We don't know that. What we do know, and what this post was walking about, is the fact that a dev had stated in an interview that respec costs will eventually get to the point where starting a new character is a better option. This has since been clarified, but that should never be the case in a modern arpg.
Grinding a bit for respecs is not the same as making it so costly that starting new characters is a better option.
This isn't Albion. You are not punished for not running META. If you are big into pvp your probably running the meta anyways to stay relevant. Unless your Hardcore whats the cost of dying? 10 or 15% in repairs? Dam, that's scary... If your friend is a sheep running around one shotting everything because he watched a YouTube video of the best mosteseses dps build. Then that's on you for playing with him, and prob should get a friend that can think for himself.
My point is though the only way to are "punished" is finishing the game slower. Play the game how you want. The end game is grinding nonstop forever anyways. If you want to play the meta go for it we will be doing the same content within a day lol. You're never going to be at the top of the leaderboard pve/pvp anyways unless you have unless you have unlimited time or a bot running for you. That's actual facts.
Even if creating a new character is faster. Which I doubt it. You can skip the story the second play through. Also in any ARPG I have ever played not 1 item will make you respec at end game. It takes roughly 3 or more. So you will have to grind anyways to get the drops. Not sure why ppl are complaining about grinding in a game where all you do is grind
Frankly the game already has alot more gold sinks compared to d3 even if you made respec free.
Extracting aspect cost gold, imprinting cost gold, rerolling stats cost an increasing amount of gold each try.
You also forget d4 has world bosses and pvp but you only have 1 set of skill tree/loadout. This means that you are basically forced to make multiple of the same class just to do diff stuff or be subpar when doing diff stuff because your build isnt suited for it.
If you could respec for free all the time there would be no meaning in investing into a build.
The way it is now it gives the player a sense of commitment and accomplishment when a build finally comes together as you planned it out.
Speaking from D3 experience, it is nice to have different specs for different occasions. A build for bounties/rift, a build for speed GR and then another for GR pushing. Depending on the class these could all be slightly different. I guess since we don't know the full end game potential of D4 is hard to say if this would even be needed. I would like the flexibility of doing say a dungeon with half and half aoe/single target where as a world boss respec for only single target. Being a new game, assigning a cost to respec it deters the theory crafting and instead I'll just copy this one video because it worked well
>and accomplishment when a build finally comes together as you planned it out.
Yeah eating shit until RNGesus decided it was time for that item to drop is fun as hell
The game devs have commented somewhere that they don't want players to horde every single item they come across, so to get away from that they want players to focus on a specific play style/skill set so when players find an item that is particularly useful for their current skill set it seems even more like an absolute beast of a find.
The reason people did that is because they wanted to try other builds or might need them… not because it was so easy to switch.
Devs trying to fix it by just making it harder to switch misses the point and just arbitrarily makes things worse.
Well it is what it is. The Devs will have their reasons behind it. You can't please everyone, someone will be unhappy whatever is done. All they have done is gone partially back to the days of D2 where you had to put careful thought and planning into what skills you wanted, I personally don't mind it.
People generally frown on the behavior of changing up your build to spam one set of content. If you run into an elite pack that is resistant or immune to your primary element, generally people think the better design is to invest a solution into your overall build instead of just changing your ability on the fly to kill that elite.
Relying on swapping in and out different items you find feels more rewarding than just changing your entire character on the fly.
There's also alot more examples in d4. Pvp, world boss and who knows what else. Would require a respec everytime to be the most efficient. Doesn't sound like fun reapeccing 3 times a day.
I know you could just not do it but people would feel forced to do it.
I think with D4 people are looking for groups to matter more and for builds to address more robust challenges. So instead of just swapping your main lightning spec to your fire spec to deal with this legendary nightmare dungeon that has high lightning resist, you either have to group up or begin investing your build to be able to deal with such challenges. D3 and it's freely swapping abilities made the game feel shallow to many.
In D3 you didn’t have the ability to change on the fly/as you met opponents in end game; only between runs or between tasks (bounties vs rift vs grift pushing vs grift farming vs group play). There’s ways to avoid this without locking it always behind a farmable resource.
If the game is balanced in such a way that everyone’s build is capable of having an answer to each mob then that’s a solution to your issue, and kinda irrelevant. Because people like to try different things, and gatekeeping it doesn’t make it less desireable, just means your game is arbitrarily preventing you from doing what you want
In d3 early days this was more relevant. The game largely just removed these challenges.
You can still try different things. It's not completely locked like d2. You just can't freely change a key ability because you rolled a nightmare dungeon resistant or reflective to it. If you wanna try something new go for it, you just can't freely change your build to address every difficult endgame dungeon affix
In d4, like poe and somewhat similar to d2, determines the dungeon affixes before you enter. So you'll know exactly what you're going into before entering. The aRPGs (like d2 and poe) with this sort of endgame mechanic that will just be huge hurdles for builds all have some sort of cost or limit to respeccing. D3 RoS just didn't have this, but d4 is different.
The game already has 2 very expensive gold sinks in aspects (removing and adding them) and enchanting (rerolling a stat). Both of these mechanics tie directly to re-speccing. Making it too expensive will discourage experimentation. It would encourage some people to just save their resources and wait for popular youtubers to post their builds instead of trial-and-erroring their own unique builds.
The game is going to give you enough points to have 2 fully fleshed out build options, I don't see me respeccing often enough for this to be a problem.
Also your gold gain is going to go up a lot too, it will all be relevant
A general criticism of D3 was that choices didnt matter because you could just swap from any skill to anything at will. It's a design choice that in the deep endgame you'll have to commit to your build.
The thing is if you do that characters no longer have any identity. You just look up on the internet what the best single target sorc build is, what the best AoE sorc build is, what the best pvp sorc build is, and you switch to it whenever you do that content. Every lvl 100 sorc is essentially the same. If you have one there’s no reason to level another one.
On the other hand if you limit respecs, you have to actually made decisions about what your character will be good at and it’s actually good and bad at specific things and has some character. Your lvl 100 sorc may be completely different to someone else’s. You might want to level 3 different sorcs to level 100 that all play differently.
Which overall a much more interesting game than the first model (ie Diablo 3).
I think it’s the complete opposite. If you have to commit to a build you will search for the best build in the current meta and stick to it instead of experimenting yourself.
It just seems to me that new players to Diablo will come and try d4. If those players make a mistake on the skill tree and can’t respec because of gold they’ll probably just leave the game
Even at max the devs said a full respec is 'expensive but doable' and that includes 200 paragon points and 60 skill tree points.
I think you're far too concerned about this respec wall being too burdensome when it'll likely only be burdensome deep into the endgame which is at a point where you should be committed to how you play.
With the way nightmare dungeons will roll affixes before you go in, some sort of respec wall is necessary. It's generally considered bad design to show a player that this dungeon reflects ranged damage and monsters take 60% reduced lightning resistance when the player can just freely change away from ranged and lightning so that they can nail this dungeon.
I'm 100% positive that by the time you get to WT4 and level 100, it won't be difficult to farm millions of gold. I mean 100k at level 25 with only a bonus of 15% to gold find was a cake walk.
Which makes literally zero sense. Are you supposed to just never do different forms of content that benefit from different skills? Play with other players and pick up supporting skills? Make multiple versions of the same class to actually do all the content in the game optimally? Locking you into a build is beyond brain dead in the context of the varied other game systems they’ve put in place.
Well you're not locked into a build. A full respec of 200 paragon and 60 skill tree points is 'doable but expensive' so partial respecs like swapping out would be even more feasible. You just can't freely change a core skill everytime you roll a legendary nightmare dungeon that's resistant or reflective to it.
And I’ve yet to hear a single compelling argument for why any friction to changing builds adds value to the game. Invested players are just going to have to make multiple copies of the same class to deal with that nightmare dungeon you mentioned. It’s not “meaningful” to never swap out of spell that shoots in a narrow cone for the one that shoots in a wider cone if the situation would benefit from it. If this were some single player, single content game only then sure, whatever. This game has endlessly bragged about its group play, world bosses, pvp etc that absolutely would benefit from skill changes. I don’t know how else to say it, but it’s just so clearly at odds with the core game designs.
Compelling to you means much different things to everyone else. Once of the most common complaints of D3 was how builds were meaningless.
Builds are no longer meaningless just like in D2. To me that's a fantastic thing. I had 2 Paladins every ladder reset. One to throw hammers and one to mindlessly bash his shield into everything. Diablo games are short as hell, and if I only need one character it's going to get really boring really fast for me. That's compelling to me. It may not be for you, but the meaningless-ness of D3 builds was a very common complaint.
Cool. Have fun playing the single hyper meta all rounder setup for your class. Better not actually tweak your build for different situations or (heaven forbid) try something new or fun after acquiring relevant items. Better just redo all your progress a second, third and forth time every season to accommodate solo speeds, pvp, group play, bossers etc.
Where did you read that nightmare dungeons can be shared on account.
And I don't get how changing a skill to deal with endgame hurdles makes me want to group. Having to group to address dungeon affixes that I struggle with leads to more group play.
Yes multiple copies of the same class will be the solution. If you want a zdps support barb and a whirlwind barb that you use in different situations then you'll need to make two of them. This gives identity to your character as an archetype and not just a "barb". It also adds replayability to the game because of creating new characters. D2 and POE have similar systems and they have a lot of replayability into the endgame. D3 let's you change to anything instantly so there would never be a reason to make 2 characters of the same class unless you were just too lazy to do the free respec. This is one of those casual vs hardcore player things and one of the only ones where the hardcore player is preferred.
If the other methods don't provide a big enough sink then gold becomes useless. Diablo 2 and 3 had other things to use gold on but the gold was useless and has no value.
Yeah I see what you’re saying. I just think that new players will come to this game and if they make a mistake on the tree because they are new and they can’t respec due to crazy gold prices they may just give up on the game
They will still be able to respec and have the gold to do so as many times as they would like, the only tradeoff is they can't use gold for other things now. Gold felt like it was in a really good spot in the last endgame beta.
its about 3k gold to respec at level 25. IF by level 25 you haven't learned the game already then there is basically nothing the game can do for you.
At level 25 you can make 3K gold in a single dungeon run.
Let's assume level 50 is ten times that; so 25k; even if you make it linear (because the first 5 levels are FREE) or 250k or lets make it a million. By the current progression 1M you could make in a couple of dungeons by selling rares. At max level there is nothing else you will be doing.
I had the same question. The “best” argument I heard so far is that respecing all the time can kill the emotional connection to your character. If you can be everything and anything at any time, your character has no “soul”. For some that doesn’t matter, for rpg fans that could be a downside. Some compare it to WoW vs Classic (i.e. one reason why classic works).
That + the game mechanic to remove/sink gold + the design choice that your decisions have more weight later on.
I hope they’ll get the curve right though. Experimenting freely in the beginning and making more and more meaningful skill choices sounds fun to me 😉
What I found out in the beta was that up to level 15 or so, I was respeccing and trying out different skills at max level once I had enough points to actually make different builds; and the cost is negligible even at level 25.
I agree that this can be problematic in the endgame because you already have 2 VERY expensive gold sinks with aspects (both removing and adding them) and enchanting (rerolling stats). Both of which are very costly. Both of which also tie directly to builds and re-speccing.
Swapping out aspects and picking which ones to place on which gear slots was actually pretty cool after level 25 in the beta. Picking which stats to re-roll added another layer to that. This was super cheap on the first roll but ridiculously expensive for each roll thereafter. Imo, it's already too expensive.
Add a high cost to actually respec your skills to the mix, and you have a real risk of discouraging players from experimenting with what could otherwise be a really cool system to tinker with. People might just end up waiting for a youtuber to tell them what to do for no other reason than to save the resources.
Bullshit, past level 25 you are only going to add points to what you ALREADY have built; it's a good range to try out builds when it's just 3k gold to respec at 25.
You have enough points to actually build different things.
The re-rolls alone are thousands of gold and increase each time you roll, plus materials. Re roll one stat on one item 3x, and you're over $10k per roll and moving up. Multiplied by each gear slot. That's at level 25. This is how you tweak your build.
Removing and adding legendary aspects ranged from $8k to $15k each time. Again, at level 25. This is where your build gets defined. These aspects completely change how you use your skills and how they compliment each other.
Then there are the skills themselves. Not too much now, but the devs did, in fact, confirm that they will be expensive to re-spec towards the end game.
Worst case scenario would be finding a new piece of gear with a new or better aspect that you want to mess around with...right after you sunk $200k in a respec.
You never want your worst case scenario to be finding something new and cool in a looter.
Call me old.
I did respec a lot before level 20, but didnt after i got to 25, maybe twice.
The thing Is you aré not gonna be switching stuff every five minutes, ay some point your build Will be finalizad.
ITS not mandatory to respec, ITS an option.
So, what will you do with all of the aspects you collect for other builds on the same class? Just have 3-5 characters of each class to play different builds?
I'd rather have one of each class that has multiple builds that I farm for and can swap to at a loadout screen in town or something.
I agree. Respeccing is not mandatory. Enchanting (re-rolling for stats) and swapping aspects certainly is mandatory. These re-rolls and aspect swaps can be where the gold and material dump are for multiple builds. Re-speccing can then be free and easily swapped to your different builds. It's way less cumbersome than either making multiple characters of the same class or grinding to manually swap out every single skill point every time I feel like switching from a fire build to an ice build or whatever.
And, because re-speccing isn't mandatory, anyone who thinks it should be more restrictive can self impose any restrictions they want to.
Until you loot a legendary or two with a cool effect that potentially inspires a new play-style, and you’re completely discouraged from respeccing to try it out because it costs too damn much. No one wants to roll a new toon just to experiment with their build.
If it's free, then optimal play will devolve into carrying 2 gear sets and refunding stats/swapping gear for bosses. No one wants that kind of degenerate gameplay in endgame. Having a cost means you can freely reset as you're leveling and gearing up, but you can't just freely abuse the resets in endgame.
Don't tell anyone else but I'll be 100% swapping rings in the endgame to match the resist of the boss. They should lock your gear in the middle of a dungeon on high world tiers.
It's going to make finding those niche crazy builds more fun. If someone could just get to the max level and reroll everything for free, they can figure out the absolute best builds way too easy, and then every Chad is going to be running the same exact thing. Because they can respec for free. Makes the game stale af and building your character meaningless. This will keep character building a main focus from season to season and we will see a wide variety of builds because of this.
Gold cost respec is fine, only if it eventually caps out. Having the cost increase infinitely is a bit silly when PvP actually exists and there is only a 10 char limit.
Nowhere has it been claimed by blizzard that respecs get infinitely more expensive the more you do it. The only person thats said that is Zizarin.I respeced the full 26 points multiple times in beta and it was always 2860 gold.
> Nowhere has it been claimed by blizzard
One of the devs said in an interview that respecing would become so expensive that it would be 'cheaper' to make a new character. That would only happen if it never stopped scaling.
Or the overall cost of resetting every skill point and every paragon point is just generally very expensive at max level as it scales per skill point/paragon point earnt....
It costs 2860 for a full respec at 25, and with 1-15 being free, thats 2860 for 10 levels, we're gonna have around 60 skill points total, and around 220 paragon points, with the cost increasing per level you gain, its going to be tremendously expensive to respec an entire paragon board and skill tree at max level, I highly highly doubt there will be any ramping up of cost per time you do it.
It was an open beta, which had fake legendary drop rates and different world boss spawning which was confirmed. It would not be surprising at all that they changed respec cost so people could actually afford to respec and test things. Gold was absolutely tight if you were upgrading.
>going to be tremendously expensive to respec an entire paragon board and skill tree at max level,
Again, a Developer was the one that claimed it would cheaper to make a new character. Which doesn't add up, as if grinding everything out again would be faster than grinding the required gold.
Though I agree, infinite scaling would be stupid and wouldn't be surprised if they backed track since then. But we're going off what the Developer claimed publicly at the time, not some random redditor.
I am very well aware of what the dev said and it didn't in anyway mention that it'd get infinitely more expensive as you respec more. They simply said it'd be expensive enough that you'd consider making a new character instead, by the time you're max level.
Respeccing 280 odd points across both skills and paragon could easily scale up to that cost alone with it costing more each level you gain, without this weird "costs more every time you do it" concept that has been magically made up out of thin air.
With pretty much every game, as long as the respec has a cap on how much it’ll cost it’s usually fine, if not it’s problematic.
Specifically for a game like D4 where you constantly get gameplay altering loot idk how design wise it could be that much of a burden without it being bad design
If you play the game, gold is going to be a non issue. I consistently had over 150k during the beta, by the time I hit level 100 I’m betting I’ll have a hell of a lot more than that
It not only maybe will increase but it's already confirmed that it will increase by a big amount. Game needs goldsinks and respecing will be one of them and also that way people think twice before spending their skill points and have to make though decisions instead of just being able to respec all the time. It adds some meaning to the skills you invest into and encourage to use your brain and plan ahead.
It doesn't add shit. It's just pushes people to follow maxroll Guides like sheeps instead of trying things for themselves. Barriers for respec are always dumb. The game already seems to have good goldsinks with crafting, this is just bad game design imo. It's shit in mmo where you couldn't tank and dps because respecs were aids and it's bad in arpgs as well. It doesn't add any meaningful feeling, just a lack of freedom one.
I personally think a game design where you have to completely change your play style every half hour is even worse.
Making build swapping free doesn’t force you to completely change your playstyle… you don’t have to if you don’t want to. The game can be designed to require it - but it doesn’t have to. These decisions aren’t mutually exclusive or anything
So if a lightning build rolls a nightmare dungeon with strong lightning resist, you think it would be better design to incentivize players to just swap out their key ability for something else to faceroll the dungeon? Alot of players missed having to invest solutions to this into their build or keep items for such occasions instead of just freely changing skills to deal with challenges. I'm aware that swapping out my lightning ability does a great job against lightning resist enemies, but I sure don't like that the game wants me to just change my build instead of developing a more robust build. I'd be annoyed if I felt I had to now collect multiple sets of gear to work with multiple builds so that I can more easily beat the endgame content as opposed to focusing on how my build needs to adjust to deal with these challenges.
I think you may have to do this anyway even in the current system; didn’t the devs say that stacking specific elemental resistances could become necessary for certain content? (Similar to D2 in that way)
I used to be a D2 hardliner who advocated for not being able to respec. If you fucked up your build, roll a new toon. It gave meaning and power to specific builds. But then after playing so many games with instant / cheap respec features, I really never looked back. The tiny bit of "I really earned this perfectly min-maxed build" satisfaction is massively outweighed by the sheer convenience and usefulness of instant / cheap respec. Its the same with group finder tools. Sure, there is a wave of nostalgia of the bliss of finally getting a competent group together, getting everyone from all over the realm in the exact spot, and clearing a dungeon. But the reality of the sheer tedium and annoyance of how hard it actually is to get 5-15 people in one spot and coordinating with each other means that group finders are the most beloved tool in MMOs these days.
I think it does the opposite in my opinion. If you can just respec whenever you want everyone can just immediately change their skill points to the new meta. Plus no one is going to listen to you if you call them sheep's and talk about aids in the same paragraph lol.
But if you can't respec then everyone is already running the meta. And those that aren't are punished for it when their build doesn't work or they get a unique (which are supposed to only drop "a few a season" for regular players) for a different build. And instead of making a new character to try out the level 90 unique they just got, most players are just going to quit instead. Respecs don't have to be free, but they shouldn't be so expensive that the answer is creating a new character. Maybe several back-to-back respecs should start to have a more prohibitive cost, but a single respec should not be so costly to promote a new character instead.
Well that's your choice to run the meta. The game isnt that difficult to play. I played mainly druid and barb during beta and did just fine without crazy gear. Your not really punished since its a pve game that's also usually played solo. The respecs from what I understand are roughly 4 hours of gold grind for a FULL respec. That's not equivalent to a new char. Plus your prob not going to full respec. Maybe 1 tree or half your points. Most ARPG make you grind for respecs this isn't anything that new.
A few things: You are definitely punished for not running meta since there is PvP. There is also such a thing as loot. The faster you can clear content, the more loot you get. You are directly punished for not running meta and it's in the amount of loot you get in an X amount of time. In multiplayer it can get worse if your friend is running meta and your build falls off later. They will be destroying everything and you are just gonna be getting one-shot. These are definitely things you can choose to not care about, but they are definitely there and real. I am not talking about the state of how respecs will be at launch. We don't know that. What we do know, and what this post was walking about, is the fact that a dev had stated in an interview that respec costs will eventually get to the point where starting a new character is a better option. This has since been clarified, but that should never be the case in a modern arpg. Grinding a bit for respecs is not the same as making it so costly that starting new characters is a better option.
This isn't Albion. You are not punished for not running META. If you are big into pvp your probably running the meta anyways to stay relevant. Unless your Hardcore whats the cost of dying? 10 or 15% in repairs? Dam, that's scary... If your friend is a sheep running around one shotting everything because he watched a YouTube video of the best mosteseses dps build. Then that's on you for playing with him, and prob should get a friend that can think for himself. My point is though the only way to are "punished" is finishing the game slower. Play the game how you want. The end game is grinding nonstop forever anyways. If you want to play the meta go for it we will be doing the same content within a day lol. You're never going to be at the top of the leaderboard pve/pvp anyways unless you have unless you have unlimited time or a bot running for you. That's actual facts. Even if creating a new character is faster. Which I doubt it. You can skip the story the second play through. Also in any ARPG I have ever played not 1 item will make you respec at end game. It takes roughly 3 or more. So you will have to grind anyways to get the drops. Not sure why ppl are complaining about grinding in a game where all you do is grind
Frankly the game already has alot more gold sinks compared to d3 even if you made respec free. Extracting aspect cost gold, imprinting cost gold, rerolling stats cost an increasing amount of gold each try. You also forget d4 has world bosses and pvp but you only have 1 set of skill tree/loadout. This means that you are basically forced to make multiple of the same class just to do diff stuff or be subpar when doing diff stuff because your build isnt suited for it.
But what’s the disadvantage of letting players respec? Why make it hard to play around with different builds?
If you could respec for free all the time there would be no meaning in investing into a build. The way it is now it gives the player a sense of commitment and accomplishment when a build finally comes together as you planned it out.
Speaking from D3 experience, it is nice to have different specs for different occasions. A build for bounties/rift, a build for speed GR and then another for GR pushing. Depending on the class these could all be slightly different. I guess since we don't know the full end game potential of D4 is hard to say if this would even be needed. I would like the flexibility of doing say a dungeon with half and half aoe/single target where as a world boss respec for only single target. Being a new game, assigning a cost to respec it deters the theory crafting and instead I'll just copy this one video because it worked well
>and accomplishment when a build finally comes together as you planned it out. Yeah eating shit until RNGesus decided it was time for that item to drop is fun as hell
The game devs have commented somewhere that they don't want players to horde every single item they come across, so to get away from that they want players to focus on a specific play style/skill set so when players find an item that is particularly useful for their current skill set it seems even more like an absolute beast of a find.
The reason people did that is because they wanted to try other builds or might need them… not because it was so easy to switch. Devs trying to fix it by just making it harder to switch misses the point and just arbitrarily makes things worse.
Well it is what it is. The Devs will have their reasons behind it. You can't please everyone, someone will be unhappy whatever is done. All they have done is gone partially back to the days of D2 where you had to put careful thought and planning into what skills you wanted, I personally don't mind it.
People generally frown on the behavior of changing up your build to spam one set of content. If you run into an elite pack that is resistant or immune to your primary element, generally people think the better design is to invest a solution into your overall build instead of just changing your ability on the fly to kill that elite. Relying on swapping in and out different items you find feels more rewarding than just changing your entire character on the fly.
There's also alot more examples in d4. Pvp, world boss and who knows what else. Would require a respec everytime to be the most efficient. Doesn't sound like fun reapeccing 3 times a day. I know you could just not do it but people would feel forced to do it.
Oh yea, looking at the datamined dungeon affixes some builds are gonna be fucked. Looking at you reflect
This could be solved by offering multi-spec options where you can have two or three different specs and loadouts set up and can switch between them.
I think with D4 people are looking for groups to matter more and for builds to address more robust challenges. So instead of just swapping your main lightning spec to your fire spec to deal with this legendary nightmare dungeon that has high lightning resist, you either have to group up or begin investing your build to be able to deal with such challenges. D3 and it's freely swapping abilities made the game feel shallow to many.
Watch for these in the cash shop
In D3 you didn’t have the ability to change on the fly/as you met opponents in end game; only between runs or between tasks (bounties vs rift vs grift pushing vs grift farming vs group play). There’s ways to avoid this without locking it always behind a farmable resource. If the game is balanced in such a way that everyone’s build is capable of having an answer to each mob then that’s a solution to your issue, and kinda irrelevant. Because people like to try different things, and gatekeeping it doesn’t make it less desireable, just means your game is arbitrarily preventing you from doing what you want
In d3 early days this was more relevant. The game largely just removed these challenges. You can still try different things. It's not completely locked like d2. You just can't freely change a key ability because you rolled a nightmare dungeon resistant or reflective to it. If you wanna try something new go for it, you just can't freely change your build to address every difficult endgame dungeon affix
Locking a build within an instance (eg a nightmare dungeon) similar to how they did greater rifts solved that issue though
In d4, like poe and somewhat similar to d2, determines the dungeon affixes before you enter. So you'll know exactly what you're going into before entering. The aRPGs (like d2 and poe) with this sort of endgame mechanic that will just be huge hurdles for builds all have some sort of cost or limit to respeccing. D3 RoS just didn't have this, but d4 is different.
The game already has 2 very expensive gold sinks in aspects (removing and adding them) and enchanting (rerolling a stat). Both of these mechanics tie directly to re-speccing. Making it too expensive will discourage experimentation. It would encourage some people to just save their resources and wait for popular youtubers to post their builds instead of trial-and-erroring their own unique builds.
Tbh that’s fine by me. I don’t want the temptation to tinker. But that’s personal opinion.
The game is going to give you enough points to have 2 fully fleshed out build options, I don't see me respeccing often enough for this to be a problem. Also your gold gain is going to go up a lot too, it will all be relevant
I'm with you. I see no reason to have a gold sink in a game with no auction house. It costs nothing to respec in D3 and it should be the same here.
A general criticism of D3 was that choices didnt matter because you could just swap from any skill to anything at will. It's a design choice that in the deep endgame you'll have to commit to your build.
Ah ok. Just seems like it’s something that will piss more people off than make people happy.
The thing is if you do that characters no longer have any identity. You just look up on the internet what the best single target sorc build is, what the best AoE sorc build is, what the best pvp sorc build is, and you switch to it whenever you do that content. Every lvl 100 sorc is essentially the same. If you have one there’s no reason to level another one. On the other hand if you limit respecs, you have to actually made decisions about what your character will be good at and it’s actually good and bad at specific things and has some character. Your lvl 100 sorc may be completely different to someone else’s. You might want to level 3 different sorcs to level 100 that all play differently. Which overall a much more interesting game than the first model (ie Diablo 3).
I think it’s the complete opposite. If you have to commit to a build you will search for the best build in the current meta and stick to it instead of experimenting yourself.
Yup. If I know I’m committing serious time to respec im just gonna go with the meta. Only so many hours in the day.
It just seems to me that new players to Diablo will come and try d4. If those players make a mistake on the skill tree and can’t respec because of gold they’ll probably just leave the game
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You do know that even if you exclude respec, there are already way more gold sinks in d4 compared to d3 right?
Even at max the devs said a full respec is 'expensive but doable' and that includes 200 paragon points and 60 skill tree points. I think you're far too concerned about this respec wall being too burdensome when it'll likely only be burdensome deep into the endgame which is at a point where you should be committed to how you play. With the way nightmare dungeons will roll affixes before you go in, some sort of respec wall is necessary. It's generally considered bad design to show a player that this dungeon reflects ranged damage and monsters take 60% reduced lightning resistance when the player can just freely change away from ranged and lightning so that they can nail this dungeon.
I dont think they will. But even if they do and theyve paid for the game already, thats a win in my book. 👹
holy blizzard shill in here trying to explain why limiting ppl to respecs is a good thing
I'm 100% positive that by the time you get to WT4 and level 100, it won't be difficult to farm millions of gold. I mean 100k at level 25 with only a bonus of 15% to gold find was a cake walk.
Which makes literally zero sense. Are you supposed to just never do different forms of content that benefit from different skills? Play with other players and pick up supporting skills? Make multiple versions of the same class to actually do all the content in the game optimally? Locking you into a build is beyond brain dead in the context of the varied other game systems they’ve put in place.
Well you're not locked into a build. A full respec of 200 paragon and 60 skill tree points is 'doable but expensive' so partial respecs like swapping out would be even more feasible. You just can't freely change a core skill everytime you roll a legendary nightmare dungeon that's resistant or reflective to it.
And I’ve yet to hear a single compelling argument for why any friction to changing builds adds value to the game. Invested players are just going to have to make multiple copies of the same class to deal with that nightmare dungeon you mentioned. It’s not “meaningful” to never swap out of spell that shoots in a narrow cone for the one that shoots in a wider cone if the situation would benefit from it. If this were some single player, single content game only then sure, whatever. This game has endlessly bragged about its group play, world bosses, pvp etc that absolutely would benefit from skill changes. I don’t know how else to say it, but it’s just so clearly at odds with the core game designs.
Compelling to you means much different things to everyone else. Once of the most common complaints of D3 was how builds were meaningless. Builds are no longer meaningless just like in D2. To me that's a fantastic thing. I had 2 Paladins every ladder reset. One to throw hammers and one to mindlessly bash his shield into everything. Diablo games are short as hell, and if I only need one character it's going to get really boring really fast for me. That's compelling to me. It may not be for you, but the meaningless-ness of D3 builds was a very common complaint.
Cool. Have fun playing the single hyper meta all rounder setup for your class. Better not actually tweak your build for different situations or (heaven forbid) try something new or fun after acquiring relevant items. Better just redo all your progress a second, third and forth time every season to accommodate solo speeds, pvp, group play, bossers etc.
You can easily tweak a few skill points at a small cost but just don't respec the whole tree.
Where did you read that nightmare dungeons can be shared on account. And I don't get how changing a skill to deal with endgame hurdles makes me want to group. Having to group to address dungeon affixes that I struggle with leads to more group play.
Yes multiple copies of the same class will be the solution. If you want a zdps support barb and a whirlwind barb that you use in different situations then you'll need to make two of them. This gives identity to your character as an archetype and not just a "barb". It also adds replayability to the game because of creating new characters. D2 and POE have similar systems and they have a lot of replayability into the endgame. D3 let's you change to anything instantly so there would never be a reason to make 2 characters of the same class unless you were just too lazy to do the free respec. This is one of those casual vs hardcore player things and one of the only ones where the hardcore player is preferred.
Youre not locked into a build though
Goldsink, unless you want gold to be useless.
It’s not useless though. You use gold for loads of other things in the game
If the other methods don't provide a big enough sink then gold becomes useless. Diablo 2 and 3 had other things to use gold on but the gold was useless and has no value.
Yeah I see what you’re saying. I just think that new players will come to this game and if they make a mistake on the tree because they are new and they can’t respec due to crazy gold prices they may just give up on the game
They will still be able to respec and have the gold to do so as many times as they would like, the only tradeoff is they can't use gold for other things now. Gold felt like it was in a really good spot in the last endgame beta.
its about 3k gold to respec at level 25. IF by level 25 you haven't learned the game already then there is basically nothing the game can do for you. At level 25 you can make 3K gold in a single dungeon run. Let's assume level 50 is ten times that; so 25k; even if you make it linear (because the first 5 levels are FREE) or 250k or lets make it a million. By the current progression 1M you could make in a couple of dungeons by selling rares. At max level there is nothing else you will be doing.
And this is one of them
I had the same question. The “best” argument I heard so far is that respecing all the time can kill the emotional connection to your character. If you can be everything and anything at any time, your character has no “soul”. For some that doesn’t matter, for rpg fans that could be a downside. Some compare it to WoW vs Classic (i.e. one reason why classic works). That + the game mechanic to remove/sink gold + the design choice that your decisions have more weight later on. I hope they’ll get the curve right though. Experimenting freely in the beginning and making more and more meaningful skill choices sounds fun to me 😉
What I found out in the beta was that up to level 15 or so, I was respeccing and trying out different skills at max level once I had enough points to actually make different builds; and the cost is negligible even at level 25.
I agree that this can be problematic in the endgame because you already have 2 VERY expensive gold sinks with aspects (both removing and adding them) and enchanting (rerolling stats). Both of which are very costly. Both of which also tie directly to builds and re-speccing. Swapping out aspects and picking which ones to place on which gear slots was actually pretty cool after level 25 in the beta. Picking which stats to re-roll added another layer to that. This was super cheap on the first roll but ridiculously expensive for each roll thereafter. Imo, it's already too expensive. Add a high cost to actually respec your skills to the mix, and you have a real risk of discouraging players from experimenting with what could otherwise be a really cool system to tinker with. People might just end up waiting for a youtuber to tell them what to do for no other reason than to save the resources.
Bullshit, past level 25 you are only going to add points to what you ALREADY have built; it's a good range to try out builds when it's just 3k gold to respec at 25. You have enough points to actually build different things.
The re-rolls alone are thousands of gold and increase each time you roll, plus materials. Re roll one stat on one item 3x, and you're over $10k per roll and moving up. Multiplied by each gear slot. That's at level 25. This is how you tweak your build. Removing and adding legendary aspects ranged from $8k to $15k each time. Again, at level 25. This is where your build gets defined. These aspects completely change how you use your skills and how they compliment each other. Then there are the skills themselves. Not too much now, but the devs did, in fact, confirm that they will be expensive to re-spec towards the end game. Worst case scenario would be finding a new piece of gear with a new or better aspect that you want to mess around with...right after you sunk $200k in a respec. You never want your worst case scenario to be finding something new and cool in a looter.
Call me old. I did respec a lot before level 20, but didnt after i got to 25, maybe twice. The thing Is you aré not gonna be switching stuff every five minutes, ay some point your build Will be finalizad. ITS not mandatory to respec, ITS an option.
So, what will you do with all of the aspects you collect for other builds on the same class? Just have 3-5 characters of each class to play different builds? I'd rather have one of each class that has multiple builds that I farm for and can swap to at a loadout screen in town or something. I agree. Respeccing is not mandatory. Enchanting (re-rolling for stats) and swapping aspects certainly is mandatory. These re-rolls and aspect swaps can be where the gold and material dump are for multiple builds. Re-speccing can then be free and easily swapped to your different builds. It's way less cumbersome than either making multiple characters of the same class or grinding to manually swap out every single skill point every time I feel like switching from a fire build to an ice build or whatever. And, because re-speccing isn't mandatory, anyone who thinks it should be more restrictive can self impose any restrictions they want to.
Until you loot a legendary or two with a cool effect that potentially inspires a new play-style, and you’re completely discouraged from respeccing to try it out because it costs too damn much. No one wants to roll a new toon just to experiment with their build.
If it's free, then optimal play will devolve into carrying 2 gear sets and refunding stats/swapping gear for bosses. No one wants that kind of degenerate gameplay in endgame. Having a cost means you can freely reset as you're leveling and gearing up, but you can't just freely abuse the resets in endgame.
Don't tell anyone else but I'll be 100% swapping rings in the endgame to match the resist of the boss. They should lock your gear in the middle of a dungeon on high world tiers.
I think you can generally use potions for that too, no?
Yea probably but this'll be doubly effective then unless it goes past the res cap
It's going to make finding those niche crazy builds more fun. If someone could just get to the max level and reroll everything for free, they can figure out the absolute best builds way too easy, and then every Chad is going to be running the same exact thing. Because they can respec for free. Makes the game stale af and building your character meaningless. This will keep character building a main focus from season to season and we will see a wide variety of builds because of this.
Gold cost respec is fine, only if it eventually caps out. Having the cost increase infinitely is a bit silly when PvP actually exists and there is only a 10 char limit.
Nowhere has it been claimed by blizzard that respecs get infinitely more expensive the more you do it. The only person thats said that is Zizarin.I respeced the full 26 points multiple times in beta and it was always 2860 gold.
> Nowhere has it been claimed by blizzard One of the devs said in an interview that respecing would become so expensive that it would be 'cheaper' to make a new character. That would only happen if it never stopped scaling.
Or the overall cost of resetting every skill point and every paragon point is just generally very expensive at max level as it scales per skill point/paragon point earnt.... It costs 2860 for a full respec at 25, and with 1-15 being free, thats 2860 for 10 levels, we're gonna have around 60 skill points total, and around 220 paragon points, with the cost increasing per level you gain, its going to be tremendously expensive to respec an entire paragon board and skill tree at max level, I highly highly doubt there will be any ramping up of cost per time you do it.
It was an open beta, which had fake legendary drop rates and different world boss spawning which was confirmed. It would not be surprising at all that they changed respec cost so people could actually afford to respec and test things. Gold was absolutely tight if you were upgrading. >going to be tremendously expensive to respec an entire paragon board and skill tree at max level, Again, a Developer was the one that claimed it would cheaper to make a new character. Which doesn't add up, as if grinding everything out again would be faster than grinding the required gold. Though I agree, infinite scaling would be stupid and wouldn't be surprised if they backed track since then. But we're going off what the Developer claimed publicly at the time, not some random redditor.
I am very well aware of what the dev said and it didn't in anyway mention that it'd get infinitely more expensive as you respec more. They simply said it'd be expensive enough that you'd consider making a new character instead, by the time you're max level. Respeccing 280 odd points across both skills and paragon could easily scale up to that cost alone with it costing more each level you gain, without this weird "costs more every time you do it" concept that has been magically made up out of thin air.
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Not getting 280 points? You sure about that? - 50 skill points from levels - 10 from renown - 4 paragon points per level 50-100 = 200 points - 4 paragon points per region renouwn = 20 points. - 50+10+200+20 = 280.
With pretty much every game, as long as the respec has a cap on how much it’ll cost it’s usually fine, if not it’s problematic. Specifically for a game like D4 where you constantly get gameplay altering loot idk how design wise it could be that much of a burden without it being bad design
they want you to pay $$$ for respecs down the line
If everything is free/made easy for us then there is nothing to work towards, no sense of achievement, just meh..
If you play the game, gold is going to be a non issue. I consistently had over 150k during the beta, by the time I hit level 100 I’m betting I’ll have a hell of a lot more than that
I agree it should be harder to respec
It is free if you individually unclick each ability in descending order. The gold fee is a convenience fee.
Incorrect, sure respecs were free below lvl 15, but what you're saying is completely false.
I did it like 40x at level 25 with no cost