No respec options? No thanks.

"

simnel wrote:

I find it incredibly ironic that the small number of (VERY loud) voices who seem to be the game's biggest fans - the "uber hardcore" seem to want nothing more than for the game to fail miserably.

It's simple enough. Create a league variant that keeps the existing respec rules, and you guys can all play in the uber-hardcore league. And then, everything else gets relaxed respec rules, because FOR THIS GAME TO SUCCEED, GGG HAS TO BE ABLE TO MAKE MONEY. Unless the hundred or so uber-hardcore people are prepared to spend $1000 a month on microtransactions... in which case, by all means, GGG should cater to them.

lol

I guess GGG want the game to fail too, right? Because they actually agree with us and have stated several times that they will never make it much easier to respec than it is now.

This is all your opinion. By the way, it has nothing to do with being "hardcore" or not.

"

Sickness wrote:

No. The options are not "the current way" or "the easy way".
There is a whole lot inbetween.
The hardest part of maxing your character comes from gear anyways.

Agreed. There are also options in between "the current way" and "no respecs at all". My interpretation of the devs' comments is that they lean towards some of these (yet to be described) options.

"

simnel wrote:

I find it incredibly ironic that the small number of (VERY loud) voices who seem to be the game's biggest fans - the "uber hardcore" seem to want nothing more than for the game to fail miserably.

I find it ironic that people assume not having relaxed respec rules implies PoE will fail, while the devs seem to think that respecs need to be harder to obtain. D2 currently requires running 3 Hell Bosses to get the respec option, and it didn't have respec at all for like ten years. I'd say that's clear rejection of implicit failure due to lacking an easy respec option. I find it hilarious that you're drawing lines between "the game might fail because of X" and "people who support X clearly want the game to fail and nothing else".

"

simnel wrote:

It's simple enough. Create a league variant that keeps the existing respec rules, and you guys can all play in the uber-hardcore league. And then, everything else gets relaxed respec rules, because FOR THIS GAME TO SUCCEED, GGG HAS TO BE ABLE TO MAKE MONEY. Unless the hundred or so uber-hardcore people are prepared to spend $1000 a month on microtransactions... in which case, by all means, GGG should cater to them.

Perhaps you'd like to tell us why respec needs to be easier than it is now? Rather than just implying the game will fail without it without any justification.

Yeah, saying that the game will fail without less restricted respec is just as silly as saying that it will fail with less restriced respec.

I do, however, personally think that the game will be more fun with less restricted respec.

"

Anomandaris wrote:

D2 requires running 3 hell Bosses to get the respec option, and it didn't have it for like ten years at all.

It requires you to complete The Den of Evil, and can be done once per difficulty.

"

Anomandaris wrote:

Agreed. There are also options in between "the current way" and "no respecs at all". My interpretation of the devs' comments is that they lean towards some of these (yet to be described) options.

I see no reason to think that respec will become more restricted.

PoE may fail because it isn't accessible enough, not because of its gameplay, but because of the bad design around the passive tree and skills.

PoE isn't hardcore, there's nothing hard in playing this game (like all of you said, you can play the game with a gimped build).

There's nothing hard in doing the right skill tree once you know the content of the game.

It's just a barrier to tell the new players "get the fuck out, it's not for you if you don't spend hours on this game".

You think it may ruin the PvP to have respec, why?
Everyone will have the same options.
You can't adapt to the meta game?
I think may not be hardcore enough then.
Guild Wars has full respec and is PvP oriented, and it's quite a successful game.


You know what's in common in the latest successful games?
Easy to play, hard to master.

Street Fighter 4, League of Legends, or even WoW...
Take LoL for example, their "hardcore" rival, Heroes of Newerth, is biting the dust right now...
I guess it sucks to be on the wrong side of the fence.



Why is it so hard to make something like Titan Quest?
Didn't you all play this game, did you think the respec sucks so much that it ruined your fun?

"

Sickness wrote:

I do, however, personally think that the game will be more fun with less restricted respec.

Obviously, I disagree, but naturally you're entitled to your opinion.

"

Sickness wrote:

It requires you to complete The Den of Evil, and can be done once per difficulty.

I stand corrected, but the specifics weren't really important to my point.

"

Sickness wrote:

I see no reason to think that respec will become more restricted.

I see no reason to think that respec will become less restricted. It might get redesigned though, perhaps in a way that makes small respecs easier or something.

"

Chris wrote:

Regardless of what respec policy we settle on though, we want to make sure that players can't respec large amounts of their character trivially and are encouraged to start a new character if they want an entirely different build.

"

kodr wrote:

PoE isn't hardcore, there's nothing hard in playing this game (like all of you said, you can play the game with a gimped build).

I have no interest in debating the definition of hardcore. Just FYI. Other people can go on about that if they so desire.

"

kodr wrote:

It's just a barrier to tell the new players "get the fuck out, it's not for you if you don't spend hours on this game".

I'm not seeing how being able to play the entire game with a gimped build makes PoE inaccessible or presents a barrier to new players. The skill tree needs some work, sure, but I think you're overstating your case.

IMO PoE certainly does "easy to learn" quite well, but it could probably use a bit of work on the "hard to master" side of things. Well, assuming they buy into the Blizzard ethos, at least.

"

kodr wrote:

You think it may ruin the PvP to have respec, why?
Everyone will have the same options.
You can't adapt to the meta game?
I think may not be hardcore enough then.

I'm not actually against that. I think it'd be a pretty cool mechanic. I'm not sure that's how I'd like to see PoE go, but it could definitely work.
Most of my complaints regarding PvP and ladders being affected by easy respecs stem from two specific ideas presented by others:
1) Some leagues would have easy respec while others wouldn't.
2) Selling respecs.
Obviously, both of those mess pretty seriously with the options being equally available to all.

One objection I do have to easy large-scale respecs in general is that I think people should be encouraged to try different classes, rather than respecing one class all the time, and this partly stems from the way classes are defined in PoE.

"

kodr wrote:

PoE may fail because it isn't accessible enough, not because of its gameplay, but because of the bad design around the passive tree and skills.

PoE isn't hardcore, there's nothing hard in playing this game (like all of you said, you can play the game with a gimped build).

There's nothing hard in doing the right skill tree once you know the content of the game.

It's just a barrier to tell the new players "get the fuck out, it's not for you if you don't spend hours on this game".

You think it may ruin the PvP to have respec, why?
Everyone will have the same options.
You can't adapt to the meta game?
I think may not be hardcore enough then.
Guild Wars has full respec and is PvP oriented, and it's quite a successful game.


You know what's in common in the latest successful games?
Easy to play, hard to master.

Street Fighter 4, League of Legends, or even WoW...
Take LoL for example, their "hardcore" rival, Heroes of Newerth, is biting the dust right now...
I guess it sucks to be on the wrong side of the fence.



Why is it so hard to make something like Titan Quest?
Didn't you all play this game, did you think the respec sucks so much that it ruined your fun?

Past the 3 respecs you have to farm 3 Hell Bosses that will wipe most characters out, particularly Baal/WSK2. Chaos Sanctuary is also no joke either. Unless you're seriously farmed with some mid level RWs, you are not running Hell Baal without a group.



League of Legends hardcore rival is DotA 2, HoN was nothing but a jacked up ripoff. DotA 2 had over 3 million live stream viewers when it was unveiled at GamesCom International, so I seriously doubt it's going to be destroyed by League of Legends.


Two, those games you listed are not easy to play. Street Fighter 4 for instance has characters that require 1 frame REACTIONARY on hit combos. Ryu's FADC into Ultra is basically impossible for most casual players without tons of hours of practice. League of Legends may appear easy, but alot of complex mechanics are absolutely daunting, and the MOBA ruleset in general is not very friendly towards casuals.


Three, plenty of games are successful without respecs. The fact of the matter is Path of the Exile is a game where choice is everything; the developers and many other players do not want you to cheapen the experience. Do you complain that you cannot respec in Skyrim? No. Why? Because it's a game designed around choice. Same with games like Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Path of Exile, and Diablo 2 for years on end. Alot of games SEEM inaccessible, and yet they are incredible fun and popular. Counter-Strike seemed accessible, until you walk into your normal public server and get shot to death every 15 seconds. Games like Quake 3, DotA, DoAC, Everquest, etc. have fairly complex rulesets and hardcore elements, and yet they were quite popular.

All that matters is if the game is good. If it is good enough, you will have customers, period.

"

kodr wrote:

Take LoL for example, their "hardcore" rival, Heroes of Newerth, is biting the dust right now...
I guess it sucks to be on the wrong side of the fence.

Just because LoL has more players doesn't mean HoN isn't succesul, it's still very big for an indie game, and as far as I know S2 makes plenty of money off of it. Maybe not as much as riot but IMO it's the better game so who cares if more people play LoL.

Haven't played in a while so the player number might have gone down a bit, idk, but either way most people who stopped playing didn't do so because the game was too hardcore but because of unrelated bad dicisions by the company. Also a lot of them moved to DotA 2 which will be very succesful and arguably even more "hardcore"

"

allbusiness wrote:

Two, those games you listed are not easy to play. Street Fighter 4 for instance has characters that require 1 frame REACTIONARY on hit combos. Ryu's FADC into Ultra is basically impossible for most casual players without tons of hours of practice. League of Legends may appear easy, but alot of complex mechanics are absolutely daunting, and the MOBA ruleset in general is not very friendly towards casuals.

You don't understand the "hard to master" part, do you? :)
Of course FADC to ultra isn't for everyone, but the first step for the noob will be to do the tutorial so he can do his first hadoken.

"

allbusiness wrote:

Three, plenty of games are successful without respecs. The fact of the matter is Path of the Exile is a game where choice is everything; the developers and many other players do not want you to cheapen the experience. Do you complain that you cannot respec in Skyrim? No. Why? Because it's a game designed around choice. Same with games like Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Path of Exile, and Diablo 2 for years on end. Alot of games SEEM inaccessible, and yet they are incredible fun and popular. Counter-Strike seemed accessible, until you walk into your normal public server and get shot to death every 15 seconds. Games like Quake 3, DotA, DoAC, Everquest, etc. have fairly complex rulesets and hardcore elements, and yet they were quite popular.

All that matters is if the game is good. If it is good enough, you will have customers, period.

FYI, I think Diablo 2 is far more accessible, simply because the skill tree is only 5 level deep at max, and skill levels have a diminishing return, it won't matter a lot in the end if you screw a few points.


As for Dota 2, it will be interesting to see if a popular sequel made from a popular developer will be able to do anything against LoL...

"

kodr wrote:

FYI, I think Diablo 2 is far more accessible, simply because the skill tree is only 5 level deep at max, and skill levels have a diminishing return, it won't matter a lot in the end if you screw a few points.

I don't think anyone here is denying that the PoE skill tree is not perfect, and if you've read the latest beta manifesto then you'll know that GGG intend to overhaul it to make it easier for new players to handle.

"

kodr wrote:

As for Dota 2, it will be interesting to see if a popular sequel made from a popular developer will be able to do anything against LoL...

Personally, I'm pretty confident Valve will pull it off admirably. "Popular" doesn't quite cut it these days when it comes to Valve. Or Blizzard for that matter.

EDIT: Oh, btw, regarding SFIV... Sure it's hard to master... but it is not really easy to learn either. Unless you're into fighting games to some degree, or similarly paced action games, you'll likely get hammered by the AI on normal while you struggle to learn the ins and outs of one character enough to survive. "Easy to get your arse kicked" does not qualify as "easy to learn".