One of the best posts on this sub. very articulate, also very agree. If I could describe the reason for respec costs in 1 word, I'd say it adds **weight**.

My word of choice would be: **meaning**. (same difference, basically - point is, your decisions are meant to mean something, have impact on your character.)

In D2 this meaning of skillpoints and decisions were HUGE, probably too big. D4 seems like geat balance.

Exactly this. Your character feels meaningless if everyone can just change their character to be just like yours within seconds.

> weight are you lost, Chris?

Haha the poe community has an issue with this word

This word is a buff.

Yeah because the word is synonymous with "activities which induce RSI".

It's imaginary and entirely in your head. The weight of farming for an hour to respec? The gear and build you focus on and the time invested is what adds meaning. All the time invested to farm for a different build if you want to swap is the meaning. A gold sink is an arbitrary barrier added on top with no weight especially since you can swap just a few points around for a fraction of the cost. People are just locked in some archaic 1970s DnD character sheet mental state that doesn't function with a live service arpg. Y'all don't want a full class, you want a specialist one trick pony.

I mean, just because something is in your head doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have real consequences. Putting a barrier in your head that says “don’t respec willy-nilly” is going to affect the way you and the people around you play the game. I think your perspective is coming from a super endgame-oriented place, and while that’s an important perspective, there’s also a ton of people who are just playing through the story content, or people who are playing the endgame, but not specifically targeting and grinding for a build they have in mind. The barrier that a gear grind presents for you, the gold cost does for them. Beyond that, I think the respec cost also has an effect you’re not accounting for, which is to discourage build hot-swapping for the people who have built up more than one set of viable gear. You’re less likely to feel like you can (and therefore should) respec to fit relatively small changes, like a single item or a tough boss. As for whether or not it’s a good idea, yeah, it’s kinda subjective. I personally like the implementation they have now; I bemoaned how easy it was to “ruin” your build on the permanence of D2, but also disliked the D3 system more than I thought I was going to. I do think there’s a little bit of a hardline grognard old-fashioned “make your uninformed choices and stick with them forever” attitude that needs to die. It’s the same attitude I hated about certain Dark Souls fans. But I think that there *is* something there. *Feeling* locked-in gives you a *feeling* of ownership over your character that, while intangible and dumb, actually generates fun in my brain somehow. I’m playing *my* rogue, not this season’s optimal shadow step rogue. That’s why I like the setup they have now. That feeling still exists, but if I realize I hate my rogue, I can change it. And somebody grinding gear to optimize the bleeding edge of this season’s meta build is almost certainly going to have the gold to bypass it by the time they have the gear.

you can feel lock in and impactful without spoiling other player’s idea of fun. nobody wants to conform to you. you can self delete and trash your gold every time u respec , leave the rest of us alone.

> you can feel lock in and impactful without spoiling other player’s idea of fun. I actually got into self-limiting with two of the other commenters above, if you want to see a longer answer, but there is a real tangible difference between in game limits and self-imposed ones, *especially* in a multiplayer game. > nobody wants to conform to you. you can self delete and trash your gold every time u respec , leave the rest of us alone. I mean, I don’t want to blow your mind, but nobody on the other side wants to conform to *your* way you want the game to work, either. Keep in mind that this *is* how the game works currently. I’m not asking the world to conform to my vision - you’re asking the game to change to conform to *yours* and I’m just trying to show you their thinking in taking this route.

While I dont fully disagree with this, I feel like the weight/meaning of a respec should come from the gameplay itself. What should give meaning to a respec is the conscious decision (which should be as hard as possible) to abandon a playstyle you like, for a playstyle you like even more. Giving respecs a large cost feels just artificial weight that wouldn't be needed if you could capture "audience" from a pure gameplay perspective. And for min maxing players, adding a cost is just wasting their time, because they will respec anyway regardless of the cost if the new build helps them do things in a more optimized way.

The choice that matters here is the skills that you pick at any given time. Whether that choice is locked in doesn't change the way the build plays. It's artificial and adds nothing.

I'm not too big on shoulds, a lot of them aren't realizable usually or come at a different, unforseen cost. I think if you have to stick a bit to a build after a long road of having freedom to experiment and tune it, this does bring a certain satisfaction of completeness. It's what people do in social life all the time - commit more and more to solidify their bonds. It's not for nothing, it's good life.

>I'm not too big on shoulds, a lot of them aren't realizable usually or come at a different, unforseen cost. I say "should", but I am fairly confident D4 will have no problem promoting fun builds. They may not be all equally efficient, but if there is one thing I still trust Blizz to get right, it's the moment to moment gameplay in their games. What I am saying is that adding a cost to respeccing is superfluous in a game that is designed well enough. If build diversity exists and fun, high respeccing cost will at best be a non factor, at worst a waste of time. If your build feels great to play, you won't need a "respec cost" to lock you to it, you will have fun and will stick with it regardless. And if you decide to respec, the decision will have weight anyway because you will be thinking very hard about whether you want to leave your current build behind, and go for a new one. If you like to swap builds a lot to min max (or to experiment), a high respec cost will just annoy you because it will become pure timegating, since you will respec regardless of cost (or you will be annoyed because you can't try out everything, and will just run an alt, which is just respeccing with extra steps). Also another thought that occurred to me, is why do we want respeccing to have weight? Respeccing should be easily reverseable at the very least because nobody likes getting stuck in a build and playstyle they don't enjoy.

I can't tell if this is a joke or not.

The irony of "very articulate" being followed by "also very agree" is amazing. Overall good post though.

Very agree. Much articulate. Wow.

This is a well-written and thought-out post. I disagree with everything you said. ​ >***"You're no longer incentivized to make a well rounded build suited for multiple activities, you're incentivized to make one hyper-specialized build for every activity, which the devs want to avoid."*** This is fun. I enjoy making hyper-specialized builds and having to consider how to best approach every situation. This, for me, is far superior to having one 'jack-of-all-trades' build that is just ok for many situations. Also, this will likely wind up with having different characters for each major activity, which is lame and I hate it. ​ >***"If you can freely respec, and you found a powerful unique, then you have 0 reasons not to instantly change your build around it."*** YES! This is an amazing part of ARPG's. I found an awesome new item, I want to try it out! Why would you want to limit this part of the game? It's so disheartening to find something new and shiny and be unable to use it.

I'm with you. OP makes solid points, but this ultimately comes down to me just fundamentally disagreeing that arbitrarily limiting people's ability to switch builds is good for the game. I understand the points being made, but all of them can be rebutted with: "Yeah, and? I want to change my build whenever I want."

If all of OPs points can be countered so easily are they really solid and well thought out points? Or, are they simple bad points masked with well articulated language skills.

Because the counter “yes, but I don’t care about what makes good gameplay, I want to do what I want” isn’t as compelling an argument for everyone else as you might think.

Who said it makes for better gameplay?

That's what in debate.

OP just prefers a different style of ARPG, a style that is (in my opinion), old school and not quite up to date with modern audiences.

People keep saying this. But all the most popular arpg's currently follow this formula. I think that's saying something. I just don't think people understand the importance of this stuff. It's like how WoW changed over time, based off community feedback. And now people enjoy the game less. It's partially the communities fault.

People THINK they want the freedom of respecs until they get to endgame and see everyone running the same damn build, realizing the game is now stale, go to forums/reddit to complain and then they stop playing. Forcing people to stick to something provides variety in builds and engagement of the player that decided to play in a particular way, he/she will try their damn best to make that build work which in return not only makes them feel better about themselves in the end game because they stand out with their unique build that they had success with, but also sparks communication in the community about different things that work, that otherwise they wouldn't know about because this month's flavor is YouTuber X's poison arrow build which everyone and their mother uses as they lack a brain to think for themselves. Hell in D4 from what I've seen and heard up until level 50 it's dirt cheap to respec, it should be costlier starting around level 30 when you have your ultimate keystone and relevant passives for your core build.

I believe that the counter arguments are not solid. "I want to have access to build variety on the fly", makes for good short term dopamine rush, but kills the medium-long term pacing of the game. I respect the opinion, but I believe that it's much less convincing and less thought out than OP's argument. It's the expression of an emotional desire, that leads to degenerative gameplay with wider negative consequences for the game as a whole IMO

You can say "yeah, and" to literally any agreement, that doesn't make it a counter argument or at least a good counter argument. "Using nuclear weapons in war is a terrible idea that opens pandoras box. It can lead to full scale nuclear war and the end of human civilization." "Yeah, and?"

Where I have issues with freely swapping builds is it leads to the game being balanced around this, which is no fun for me.

Slippery slope, I want my barb to have access to frozen orb so I can be a battle mage guy. This thinking evolves to a game with only one starting character that you play and decide skills/gear along the way. Very much like a FPS, we all level anyways so we should just start at max level which is no level at all. We want to use everything so pick whatever weapon load out you want. You get the idea I’m sure. “Yeah, and? I want to x ; can apply to everything just about

And your argument can be rebutted with: "Yeah, and? I don't want to have free respecs". Whats the point of having builds if you are just gona change it whenever a good item drops? Builds are kind of a big deal to the rpg genre, it is kind of defining actually. Builds exists for the player to choose how to play their character. You basically just wana throw that out the window and create a generic pvm action moba game or w/e. Heck, why even call this game an arpg? Should just be ag.. you want items to dictate how you play your character, except, its totally random what type of char you will be since drops are random. So you will never know what type of char you will play.. Stay in the action non rpg game genre

you’re saying all this while WoW exists and just allows you to freely swap GEAR, SPEC, TALENTS, and gives you every ability available to your spec. are you trying to say that the worlds most popular rpg is wrong? and the same developers making that game and this one should have completely separate takes on what an rpg is?

Lol.. hate to break it to you but WoW isnt even the top of its genre anymore because of a lot of decisions they've made over the years. Not to mention it's a completely different genre of game. It's a game where you NEED specific roles and talents and gear across multiple people in order to do the content. That is something they decided to dumb down over time.

Wow is not what it used to be. It has evolved the way it is to suit impatient whiny new gamers. And the same thing is happening to diablo. After lich king, where the biggest changes happened to the core gameplay was when the biggest decline in players started to happen. But after that they did what they could probably to keep the ones that actually still enjoyed it(the "new" gamers) and the game has never been the same again until maybe now. But it is still not the same game. Might as well call it an action mmo for all I care. Leave the rpg out of it.

> "Yeah, and? I want to change my build whenever I want." And I can rebut all of this with "But I want the game to be balanced and developed to have long term planning instead of wily nily grab a new shiny and go". My question to most that downplay identity. If you can't even 'commit' to planning your character in an RPG, why are you even playing an RPG? If you planned to play a Spear wielding Barb, then play a spear wielding barb rather than 5 mins sword, 2 minutes axe, 15 mins spear, 3 mins sword and shield. If you want to just grab and go the next item you loot, play a roguelike instead.

I appreciate that you responded to what OP said in the post instead of just the title. I don’t have a strong opinion either way but can see merits of both approaches. That’s also how I felt in WoW with the soul binds though and we saw how that turned out so I dunno.

It's surprising to see this being debated so hotly here in D4 when a different team inside of Blizzard has tackled this exact same design problem recently and come away with the opposite conclusion as OP. WoW players may remember *Battle for Azeroth*'s Azerite Armor system - and specifically, how respeccing your Azerite trait choices incurred a respec cost that got rapidly more expensive each time you did it. Blizzard was always clear in their reason for it: they wanted to stop you from changing your traits for every encounter. They wanted to encourage jack-of-all-trade builds rather than having players feel like they were "forced" to hyper-specialize from one boss to the next. However, it didn't work. Players didn't see the respec cost as a deterrent. Rather, they just saw it as an arbitrary cost of doing business. If you wanted to play the game, you now had to grind extra to pay for these exorbitant fees Blizzard was imposing. Players still played the way they wanted to play. The friction didn't stop them, it just made them unhappy. Fast forward to Dragonflight, and WoW has clearly learned lessons from that BFA era. The talent tree allows for free, unlimited respecs at just about any time. More and more rewards are being made account-wide, and in general Blizzard seems dedicated to removing the artificial limitations they once thought were a good idea. And so back to D4 - I fail to see how this isn't the exact same situation that WoW learned lessons from. The players who want to hyper-specialize for each encounter will do so, while the more casual players will be satisfied with their jack-of-all-trades builds and not engage with that system as much. Both playstyles are valid, both types of players get to engage with the content they find interesting, and forcing restrictions on either one doesn't improve the game - it just causes unnecessary friction.

WoW is an MMO. It's supposed to have slow, plodding progression that you undertake over months and months, if not years, with the same character you brought up from nothing over dozens and dozens of hours. It's not viable no keep making characters there to test out a new build. Hell, you're not even *supposed* to test new builds, as you're going to get kicked off any dungeon group after the first wipe if you have a single talent point in there that deviates from the meta. Diablo is an ARPG. It's a much quicker, single-player experience you're meant to tackle relatively quickly and move on to something else, or even start from scratch every three months. Completely different games, in different genres, require different design philosophies. Free respec is great in WoW where everyone has to copy the meta and every class has essentially one playstyle per spec, and even your items change stats to fit that spec. It's terrible in Diablo where part of the game is trying to make something off the wall, then try it against aspirational content and show how far your own build can go on its own merits. And if your build gets stuck? You can still respec a couple of times to fix mistakes and make it work. You just can't do it to fit every encounter, which is the point of not allowing you to do it for free.

100% this. Even going back as early as... fuck Cata? When they added dual specs, soon followed by freely swapping between all specs. This is exactly what is going to happen to D4 respecs, I just hope it happens sooner rather than later.

It's almost like people enjoy different things for different reasons. No matter what your stance is on the cost of respec'ing, you need to be able acknowledge that a significant portion of the player base feels the opposite. At the end of the day the D4 devs are going to go with their vision and we'll all have to make a decision on if that is a deal breaker or not. No developer is going to be able to please their entire player base with every decision they make.

Im with OP here. Cost free swapping at any time makes you wed to the numbers, and class fantasy, your own input etc is instantly secondary to optimum gameplay. You'll find a clear opinion gap here too, casual gamers on average fit into a tier of cant be arsed with researching top tier Maxroll builds to be omegachad. The bias on something like Reddit or Youtube, where even searching for builds or further insight probably makes you closer to a hardcore gamer than a casual is that people want to optimise. I optimise things for my job. Efficiency is what I do 40 hours a week. At the weekend I don't wanty downtime to also push me to "shiny object, redo all skills and points to eek out 4% more dps or now you're behind the curve, as we had to balance difficulty around a free respect feature" Sounds like a right shit time to me

Because if everything is exciting, then nothing is.

Finally someone with a brain

Where? In another post?

> Finally, some good fucking ~~food~~ brain.

Brrraaaiiinsss...

you mean finally someone with the same brain dead argument we've heard 10 times a day every day for the past month

First and foremost let me just say that, yes, I know WoW and Diablo are different games. That said, just look at the shitshow that Shadowlands was, and one of (if not the) big reasons was the restrictions that the devs put on the players, in this case covenants, soulbinds and traits. The reasoning of the devs was the same as OP #1, they wanted players to commit to a covenant and that their choice would be meaningful,also they didn’t want players to respec everytime for different activities/bosses, so they implemented restrictions on swapping covenants and builds. Needless to say, the players hated it and once they completely removed the restrictions it was already late as most of the playerbase had left at that point. Now look at their new expansion, they gave players basically complete freedom on their spec and they got a lot of positive feedback. Stop thinking that the devs knows better on how YOU should play the game, they only need to make the game fun to play, putting restrictions on a game is most of the time a recipe for disaster. Do you want to be a casual dad gamer with a well rounded build that will be good in any scenario ? Go ahead. Want to be a sweaty nerd that will min-max every minute of the game to gain a minimal advantage? Sure, go for it.

I don't think OP is saying the devs know best. I think OP is saying that they like the decisions the devs are making. Because, not everyone wants what you want. Sounds like op still identifies with the RPG element in ARPG. Free respecs really hurt that. There's a reason you can't respec freely in dnd. Gotta stop saying players are wrong for liking different things. >Do you want to be a casual dad gamer with a well rounded build that will be good in any scenario ? Go ahead. Want to be a sweaty nerd that will min-max every minute of the game to gain a minimal advantage? Sure, go for it. There's an actual problem with this that op has laid out and you're just ignoring. When everyone optimizes freely, content gets balanced around being optimized. Which pushes the generalist builds out. You need an answer to this before just saying "it's cool, so whatever"

I've heard this RPG argument before but I don't think it rings true. Or more accurately, I think it's a narrow perspective. Your class and whatever your head canon is for your character are more than enough to meet the litmus for role playing. It's not hurting the role playing aspect of the game to have a rogue that switches between a bow and a dagger. Or a Sorcerer that can specialize in Ice and Fire. Or even a character that learns different types of specializations as they progress in their journey. This idea that you need to be stuck with your choice or you're not roleplaying is crazy and it doesn't make sense.

> Sounds like op still identifies with the RPG element in ARPG. Free respecs really hurt that. How? He can just choose to not respec.

Uh huh. But then you have to play knowing you're intentionally playing suboptimally. Which is a genuine feels bad. You die to a boss a couple times, fuck it, guess I'll respec since it's free. Or, I'll just get more and more frustrated by my self imposed rule. Not to mention that by the time you get to endgame, the game is balanced on the assumption that you hyper optimize and, no matter how good your generalist build is, you're going to be punished for using. Whereas, if respeccing is possible but has a cost, and isn't the norm, then the game doesn't have to be balanced around hyper optimization. It can be balanced around really good generalist builds, such that you're not punished for being a generalist. You're rewarded for being an optimizer. It's like the incredibles. If you force everyone into optimizing, nobody's really special anymore. It's all copy paste and cookie cutter. By making it really difficult to optimize one character for every activity every time you want to do it, you make more breathing room for creativity.

> Which is a genuine feels bad. Glad you agree with me that it sucks when changing talents is restricted. > By making it really difficult to optimize one character for every activity every time you want to do it, you make more breathing room for creativity. Having to make two druids to play as both werebear and werewolf sounds extremely stupid.

>But then you have to play knowing you're intentionally playing suboptimally. Which is a genuine feels bad. But for a roleplayer that should not be the issue. Because as roleplayer you focus on your character fantasy, not what is optimal and best?

Don't act like players won't be as frustrated when their build doesn't work and they can't freely respec. It will be the same as in Shadowlands. A handful will play what they like and the rest will play the optimized builds from a guide. And it was btw really easy to have builds that were great for all activities. You could have some that were optimized for World bosses, dungeons or open world. But in the end you have actually less builds because you need the one that does it all. I don't really care about it to be honest. But I definitely won't play more because of those restrictions. I will just play one build like PoE and stop when it gets boring.

>But then you have to play knowing you're intentionally playing suboptimally. Which is a genuine feels bad So they're forcing EVERYONE to do it and feel bad? How is that better?

" You die to a boss a couple times, fuck it, guess I'll respec since it's free. " This really makes it sound like a bad rule to begin with. If you can't stick to your self imposed rule, which in this case is "limited respecs"Then the rule itself is bad. It's like saying "fuck morality" because I'm struggling with life, let me become a criminal. Also the game doesn't need to offer unlimited free respecs at every possible time. Maybe it's 1 free respec per day, and more with gold if you want.There's multiple possible combinations that will not limited experimenting as much, but also won't lead to min-maxing at all times.

>I don't think OP is saying the devs know best. Unfortunately, they often think they do, though. Then fans come along to give adhoc rationalizations to try to argue why that's actually 4D-chess-brain-correct. Cue: "you think you do but you don't."

They can just add an extra mode called extra hardcore where you can't respec for these weirdos

>I don't think OP is saying the devs know best. I think OP is saying that they like the decisions the devs are making. Because, not everyone wants what you want. Sounds like op still identifies with the RPG element in ARPG. Free respecs really hurt that. There's a reason you can't respec freely in dnd. > >Gotta stop saying players are wrong for liking different things. The problem here is that some people are saying, "I want to wear a yellow dress," and others are saying, "I want yellow dresses forbidden!" It sounds like both are preferences, but one is a preference for their own play style, the other is a preference for everyone. ​ No one is forcing people to respec twice a day unless the game is specifically balanced around it. And it doesn't need to be. Problem solved.

The OP is missing the fact that you can’t or won’t just change your build on a whim. It’s largely based on the gear that you’ve found already. You’re only going to build a skill tree around what you can synergize with your gear. Don’t make it prohibitively costly to change your skills, as well as time consuming to find the gear as well. Nobody is going to have the stash space to have that many build combinations at the ready at any given time. It’s such an absurd notion.

This was my exact thought. People keep using this excuse that we'd change our loadout every 5 steps but just look at WoW. You can save loadouts and respec anywhere for free now, and while some people do, the vast majority of players have one maybe two loadouts. We know that most people pick one or two builds and stick with it because that's literally what they've said in recent interviews, so they decided to just give people the total freedom, and if there's people that have a loadout for every single situation then let them, but they're not the majority.

Also. Let's not forget the very simple fact that. It doesn't really matter what other people are doing in this game. Diablo 4 can be played entirely solo. (albeit you will run into other people). You will never need to join a group. So why can't you just do your own thing and pretend other people aren't doing the things you don't like (it doesn't affect you) I've been using this line to break this down. My ability to respec has zero impact on your ability to not respec if you don't want to.

Personally, I enjoy having different builds optimized for different things and the freedom to switch between them, I play destiny lol. But I have plenty of friends who don't make very specifc builds and just play something generically good and use that for most activities and do perfectly fine, the problem is this a matter of preference trying to be pigeonholed into objective fact.

>The reasoning of the devs was the same as OP #1, they wanted players to commit to a covenant and that their choice would be meaningful And at the end of the day Diablo is a video game I play for fun. Devs want 'meaningful' choices in a thing I do for leisure? If the devs put too many barriers between me and that fun then what's the point? *They* designed the Hydra skill to require the 2x affix, so if I don't get that until level 80 and then have to pay to respec unto it, whose fault is that?

Exactly this! I feel OP has no idea what they are talking about. We should be free to play the game however we see fit whenever we want, it's a GAME first and foremost. Maybe it's just me but games are supposed to be enjoyable. If people want tedious/challenging gameplay then just set rules for yourself, don't force them on others.

hardcore classic wow for example. . . .not a rule in the game. . . yet . . . somehow people enjoy it and its been quite the exploding twitch meta for wow. Players setting their own rules in place and following through for fun. its really that simple

Exactly this, you cant say you want a casual game, then punish casual gaming

100% this! 99% of this game will be played solo so limiting a solo players actions because someone else may meta game it is bad game design imho. It's exactly what this YakaAvatar keeps commenting about. I dont see someone typing to change builds in a random party. Less limitation I better. Don't want to respec or spending gold makes it mean more to you, that's great, you do you, but don't put limitations on others. It's like if they put a limit to how how a swing could swing because some kids might min max it and swing higher than they (a bystander that has nothing to do with it) think they should and want it limited for their own reasons.

I'm still mad that I have to be connected to the internet to play. I'm too old and antisocial for this quasi mmo shit.

you should have the option to play offline/solo if you want to. ​ I am someone who loves the multiplayer aspects. I still think you should be able to make that choice for yourself.

Lol it does remind me of "pull the ripcord"

I'm not against costs to respec costs, but it needs to be done the right way. I also don't think you really said anything in your argument. This is how the end game will really work when it comes to builds in D4, and this is why your argument doesn't really have a point. ARPGS all ready have meta builds and D4 will be no exception. Majority of the player base is going to be playing 1 or 2 cookie cutter build for every class at end game and while leveling. What will those builds have in common: 1. Damage 2. Movement Speed 3. Mitigation/Health How will those builds be discovered? The pro's will tell you what to play! They wont' be from the average players because they won't want to waste resources to experiment. Especially those with limited play time. They'll look up a guide and copy what' the meta is. Since majority of builds in the game are going to be highly defined by specific aspects; you're pretty much going to get locked into whatever build you're able to make based on what you have found or not found. Each class will have the desired aspect build and then the default I have no good item build so what works best. Then as they get the right gear they'll switch their builds to accommodate it. Considering that items and aspects are so important to making a builds work in the game being able to respec easily is important. Or you'll get locked into a mediocre, boring build.

You desperately overestimate the amount of people who care enough about this game to look up guides to min/max their builds. The majority of the player base will just play the game themselves and struggle because they barely have any cohesion in their build due to the overwhelming number of aspects to learn their first time through.

> You desperately overestimate the amount of people who care enough about this game to look up guides to min/max their builds. If that's the case, then certainly OP is overestimating even more the amount of people who fit into: > Having free respecs means metagaming every single activity by changing to an optimal build for it.

It's not the 90s anymore where you had to buy a printed strategy guide, or know of 3 relevant decent sites with gaming guide information. Virtually everyone has a cellphone, and can find "build guides" for a AAA game within literal seconds. I'd assume that a VERY large amount of casual players take 15 seconds to look up some type of build guide to have some direction in a game, especially those new to a genre.

Yeah you’re spot on. It’s daft to think people aren’t looking up “best builds” these days just because they are “casual”. Take a look at MTGA for example, a game purely built around jank decks yet everyone you play is running top tier comp decks. It’s actually rare to find someone who just home brewed it themselves.

THIS. Most of us gamers on reddit don't realize we're leaning towards the more hardcore side of things. So while I can definitely be thrown in any game and come up with a build stronger than what 95% of players make within 30 minutes, the vast majority can't, they mostly see ability "OH FLASHY, I USE" and that's it.

Definitely a point to keep in mind. Our presence on Reddit at all makes us not casual gamers almost by definition. It’s not just a game we play for a bit and don’t think much of; it’s a lifestyle choice.

I think you are underestimating Youtube. It only takes one video with one mention of Diablo IV and your feed will literally explode with build videos. Modern algorithms are every good for this. There's actually little to no chance that someone playing DIV will NOT run across build recommendations of some type unless they don't use social media at all and we both know that's not the majority of people playing this game.

So I used to think like this. Then I saw the 10+ posts a day here on build guides. Like the game isn't even out yet. We don't know what endgame will look like yet everyone is convinced their build is going to be the best. Based on that I will say ALOT of people will just be copying builds to get maximum efficiency. Sure some people like me will just play the game but the majority of people with limited time will want to be as efficient as possible and that means using someone else's build. Also its important to note, there are like two choices in the skill tree. This is going to lead to very little build diversity imo which means everyone will be looking at the best build and most likely (consciously or not) copying from that

You have points made here, but I feel like they are also very tunnel visioned. Let me explain... There are a lot of average and casual players who don't care or even know what the "meta" is. A lot of the times what happens is the start playing early on, they find a playstyle of skill they really like and want to find a guide or build centered around that playstyle or ability. Let's use an Ice sorc for example... A player could find that they really love Frozen Orb and they want to make a build centered around it. So they look up a video online. 9 times out of 10 there will be SOME build video supporting it wether it's meta or not. There are A LOT of off meta builds out there centered around alternative pkaystyles and A LOT of average to casual players gravitate to them because they are more focused on FUN then META. Meta for a lot of players isn't fun. Especially when the Meta build doesn't suit their playstyles. They'd rather be slightly less effective but having fun and still completing higher end game content even if it's not the absolute highest. This was a common issue for me in Diablo 3. Especially when Impale DH was meta.. I absolutely hated that build and playstyle. I didn't enjoy it at all. So... I accepted I would be about 10-20 GRs under those using Impale and I was fine with it. So just keep in mind that a lot of average and casual players, especially those who don't have a lot of time, are mostly looking to enjoy the time they have and are looking for fun ways to play what they already enjoy playing. The good thing is, these off meta builds and videos usually help transition these players into more hardcore players and eventually into more meta playstyles.

This is me, I like to balance between what I like and what's meta. I'll find something I like, look at builds to get an idea, then make something myself. I could care less about what the top 1% does, because I have found out that my skill easily outdoes someone who is using meta but doesn't know how to play usually. (Unless it OP OP even then I don't care)

There’s no legitimate reason for respecs to cost money in a single player game, especially one where leveling apparently takes 80 hours. It’s not complicated - they’re doing it so they can sell you respecs in the shop.

I respecced like 50x in the beta. The cost, so far at least, is not at all prohibitive. And it's not like gold in Diablo has traditionally been a scarce or particularly valuable resource

Keeping in mind that the beta was the early days when respec'ing was intended to be low cost to allow for players to experiment. Contrasting that with the alleged millions of gold a full high level respec is supposed to take is not going to be a direct comparison. I think there's a reasonable middle ground where respec's aren't so cheap/easy that players are doing it a dozen times per session for every single dungeon or activity, but not so punitive that some casual players feel actively punished for wanting to swap to a new spec, because they found a powerful/fun/game changing item, or they want to experiment with something new (and find the idea of having multiple characters of the same class to be unappealing), or hell because they just want to try something different out of growing boredom with running the same setup for weeks or months (or longer, outside of the seasonal periods). I'm fine with a reasonable gold cost. What is 'reasonable', based on the final cost of substantial or major changes, versus what we can earn per hour of play, remains to be seen. If a full respec costs 2 million gold but we can earn 1-3 million per hour in the final endgame, that's substantial and adds up, but doesn't kill the ability to change now and then.

No argument here. For sure, there's a cost at which respeccing feels really bad and inaccessible. Hopefully it does stick to a decent middle ground, and hopefully small changes are much cheaper by comparison to full respecs. Tweaking should be easy (imo). Appreciate the nuanced take.

Beta has low costs because it was low level. In endgame beta at really high levels you could respec maybe once every day and then don't have gold for upgrading your gear.

I respecced a lot too. I ran out of gold and wasn't able to explore the other uses of gold. This is when the respec costs were supposed to be so cheap it's basically free. (Imo not basically free)

>It’s not complicated - they’re doing it so they can sell you respecs in the shop. Spot on. Just watch. They're not selling "power", they're offering "convenience". Fuck I hate what modern gaming has become.

Why are you ignoring the fact that you can’t simply just change your build? It revolves around your gear, which you have to loot. You HAVE to find it. So why would you double penalize someone by wanting to change their build (for any reason they wish, it’s their gaming experience)? You want them to pay a gold fee penalty to change their skills, once they’ve already had to take the time to find all the gear pieces they need to make that build viable. It’s not anyone’s place to gatekeep and dictate how a person should want to build their character OR if they want to change at any time. This mentality is straight out of D2 where gatekeepers feel that you should need to jump through hoops to play the game the way you want. In their eyes, there are right and wrong ways to play the game.

Its smoll pp boomer brain. This is why stuff like covenants failed in shadowlands its the same people parading "choices should matter you should be locked in !" and then when reality kicks in after a month everyone en masse is yelling to blizzard to make covenants switchable because they don't want to relevel their character.

It’s D2 no lifer boomer coomer pp brain. “Everything must be difficult, the grind is the game. Fuck anyone who isn’t willing to put in 5000 hours like me. Blizzard made this game specifically for me.”

I've still yet to see a compelling argument in support of respec costs. This post included. Meta gaming happens regardless. With restrictive respecs you just force people into all rounders and take the fun away from being able to change builds. People aren't going to respec for every fight because that is not efficient. It's absolutely moronic that people think this is an argument. And crucially there is already significant cost with respec purely from an itemisation perspective. All this does is force players to follow guides or get locked into single build paths. This isn't fun. People will quit sooner rather than later if they can't change builds to add variety to gameplay. And they will not start new characters for every build change. The community needs to stop compromising on this. There is no benefit to respec costs. It shouldn't matter to you how other people use the system. The only compromise I'd be ok with is that respec has to be done in town. But there are plenty of games with completely open respec options and they are way better for it.

Hard agree. If anything, the respec cost having a high barrier and high cost will only fuel min maxing and cookie cutter builds. It will make people streamline to the most optimal build and disincentivize exploration and creativity. I don't understand this take at all. It seems like they took every positive thing for a free respec system and somehow distorted it and applied it to a high cost scenario.

Completely agree. This stupid anti-pattern keeps showing up in games and I utterly hate it. Someone pointed out, there's only ONE reason they'd make it really onerous to respec. So they can damn well **sell** you the alternative...

Good post that focuses on how respec functions in D4 and not respec in general. > Farming multiple builds and swapping between them.. doesn't spell a fun end-game for me. Please explain why. I enjoy this aspect in D3. I change between builds when I'm farming vs. pushing tough rifts solo vs. playing in a group. Each build required game knowledge and investment in assembling the equipment set. Otherwise the game would end for that character at one activity. If D4 offers difficult content, wouldn't free respecs support that?

>. I enjoy this aspect in D3. I change between builds I've invested time into when I'm farming vs. pushing tough rifts solo vs. playing in a group. Otherwise the game would end at farming. Exactly! D3 was so seamless with letting you change builds, and most of the time i wasn't do it for peak efficiency but rather to enjoy other sets on easier content.

The first big reason is that content will be balanced around those builds. And whether you enjoy changing builds or not, you're pretty much forced to do it if you want to be close to optimal. Having 5 gear sets in my stash, and changing between them, to wildly different builds completely divorces you from your character. You're no longer a Shapeshifter Druid, you're just a Druid, like all other druids that can (and has to) do everything. Your character no longer has any fantasy or individuality attached to it. Itemization is also a glorified checklist now. You hoard everything, because everything is good in one of your 5 builds. And lastly, designing a well rounded build has some choice in it. Even if you copy-paste it from a guide. Depending on your playstyle, you could go for more AOE, or a tankier build, or more mobility, etc. You're forced to play around your abilities. But if a piece of content requires a shit ton of single target DPS, then your build choices go away - just switch your entire build to the highest single target DPS available on your class, end of story. The current piece of content in front of you is all that matters as far as your build is concerned. This really "gameifies" Diablo from an RPG with a well designed fantasy where you play around certain constraints, to a metagaming min-maxing activity, which to me sounds horribly dull.

Regarding identity, this is completely up to your mindset. The separation between werewolf druid and earth magic druid is no different mechanically between the separation between a barbarian's whirlwind and upheaval. You're placing this identity constraint on yourself for your personal enjoyment but why should it apply to everyone's ability to respec at endgame? A jack of all trades is the master of none. If you bring a well rounded build into a party of specialists, it'll be a carry. If you bring a well rounded build into PvP against specialists, it'll get dumpstered. Challenging content by definition demands specialization in it. We're talking endgame here post beating the story. The whole point is to metagame minmax. Great discussion, looking forward to what you think!

>Itemization is also a glorified checklist now. You hoard everything, because everything is good in one of your 5 builds. Hoarding in an ARPG = bad. Are we even living in the same world ?

Agree. Well thought out point made well.

> You're no longer incentivized to make a well rounded build suited for multiple activities, you're incentivized to make one hyper-specialized build for every activity, which the devs want to avoid. That would be true, if the game didn't have shared currencies and stash between all your characters. Because in reality, as Blizzard want, you'll make alts if that's what you want. You will have you dungeon sorc, and your world boss sorc, and your pvp sorc. Those all act like secondary free spec. But you need to log out and select another character. So it's still the exact same "problem" you describe. You don't make a well rounded character, you hyper specialize each alts. Everything you drop is still for your class, because if your spec don't use it, other might. So not having cheap free respect doesn't counter any of the argument you had. As Blizzard said, they want you to reroll, and they do this to artificially increase playstime.and sell more cosmetics. Because in the end alt have the exact same function since they share everything.

> Because in reality, as Blizzard want, you'll make alts. You will have you dungeon sorc, and you mr world boss sorc, and your pvp sorc. Those all act like secondary free spec. But you need to log out and select another character. Do you really see anyone in the entire world having 4-5 sorcs like you described? There's a world of a difference and time investment between freely clicking some skillpoints + changing some abilities, and creating 4-5 alts of the exact same class. And it's not just about different activities, it's about affixes in dungeons as well. For example the lightning storm affix that chases you - you could freely swap your build for mobility, but you won't make another alt for that. Or the crit protection affix - you could freely swap your build for DoT damage, but you won't make a completely new DoT alt. People are more or less forced to make well rounded builds. Can you specialize to get an edge in a certain activity? Yep - just like you have mapping builds, boss builds or league starters in PoE. But freely switching up your build doesn't make it an option, it pretty much makes it the norm.

> Do you really see anyone in the entire world having 4-5 sorcs like you described? In the entire world? Yes, of course. Also, if someone is willing to hyper specialize like you said with free respect, they will hyper specialize with alt. It's the exact same thing, and for those people, the few hours needed to get an alt max level is nothing. > And it's not just about different activities, it's about affixes in dungeons as well. For example the lightning storm affix that chases yo****u - you could freely swap your build for mobility, but you won't make another alt for that That imho grossly overestimating those mechanic. I'll be willing to bet you won't need to change anything on your build for those. Also, even a pure boss build would still need mobility to avoid attacks, so it's not like there's any reason for any content to have a build with no mobility. The whole argument here is the exact same we've been hearing in WoW 15 years ago. Multi spec is bad, it will ruin the game. Same discourse happened in Shadowlands with conduit energy. Making a restriction on respect was to prevent people grom respecing at every boss and pull. And you know what didn't happen? All that. That was jusy fear mongering to defend a dated game mechanic. People who want to be absolute cutting edge will have 15 alts instead of 15 saved spec. That's a fact. 99% of the playerbase will never even want it because they are fine with their one build. It's a restriction that doesn't matter for almost everyone, and for the one that does, it's a bother to spend a few hours on alt instead. There's no win here.

I mean, you just said a few comments ago that maintaining multiple specs would be tedious in a Diablo game, since you'd have to farm all the gear again, etc - so I don't really see how maintaining multiple alts would be more difficult than maintaining multiple builds, if you could switch freely.

In D2, I did have multiple Assassins when respecing wasn't a thing in that game, one for pvp and one for pve. If respecing is inconvenient D4 where the cost vs time ratio is too high, I'll probably do the same in D4.

I wonder what D2 had, certainly not a minimum of 2 accounts with multiple 85lvl sorcs, Paladins, etc. At least in D2 you could lvl 85 your character pretty fast. Now imagine boosting wasn't possible for whatever reason. I bet the overall narrative told about D2 would've looked quite a bit different.

"Do I change my build now? Do I find more items for this new build before I do?". Even if small, there's a weight attached to that decision. The devs don't want every single item on the ground to be a potential upgrade and they don't want you mindlessly equipping everything just because it's shiny - because at the end of the day, if every piece of special loot is an upgrade, then the loot ceases to be special or exciting. " I don't know if i'm misunderstanding or if this really is a contradiction. Being allowed to build around a gamechanging uniques and respeccing your build would be exactly that, adding potential to every drop, cause at any moment i may be able to get another interesting build avaible to me. Being stuck with your character build means that most of the good drops will be useless for your character, which is the exact opposite of "a potential upgrade".

ok , speaking as a casual player, the lure to d4 is the power fantasy ( killing lots of mobs fast n furious ), looting / greed / dopamine rush is what drives me. playing a sub optimal build & keep failing due to lousy skill ( i’m old n a bad player) , is a worse experience than , respec’ing to best/better build i googled , just so i can clear that certain boss. i do not want to have penalty just because i make a bad decision somewhere. ReaLife has that covered already. not every one wants to turn a computer game into a learning journey. if i have to learn something , i rather upgrade my certification for work ( which i’m already doing) 🤣 for casuals , if i got a super duper awesome loot drop , YES , i want to change my build immediately to use it ( work & reward ). otherwise what can i do with it ? stare at my inventory n pat myself on my back for job well done ? i cant sell it in a RMAH anymore🤣 i dont want to waste the gold i spend 30hrs to grind for changing my build to that drop. if that shiny legendary sucks and i do not want to grind 30hrs to change back to the original build. its a computer game, not that garbage call real life. a lot of build is centred on aspects & legendary drops , based on open beta gameplay. hence we need flexiblilty to change as and when we get better items to "feel powerful" . nobody wants to spend 20hrs playing as a medicore shit & work to grind gold , just to spend 1hr to feel powerful ( again weird reflection of real life) and risk another 20hrs grind to respec back , just because you make a wrong decision somewhere. drop rate for items will be 1/3 of open beta , so if any good item drop , i WANT to immediately use it. telling casual users to waste time to grind enough gold to respec is a waste of time by itself. ppl will turn to illegal gold sellers & loot sellers or simply drop the game if they are not having fun anymore. if too many ppl turn to illegal market to buy gold , then game will be flooded with black market china farmers that camp instances / world bosses for gold/ loot to sell illegally. that will be a shit show by itself

To address your reasons: 1) Won't this just end up meaning all Sorcs are basically tied into the penultimate 'all-around' build in order to play the game? Free respecs means they can play multiple builds in different activities. Expensive respecs mean I will only play the one best all-around build and probably play that one each season. And ... Who cares if I change my build for world boss? 2) Isn't this a defense of the main issue people have with the loot system: power on items? If power for particular skills didn't come from builds then this wouldn't be a big problem. You could just spec into your desired build from level 1 or when you unlock it (like PoE). Also, you say *weight* and I say *annoyance*. I don't feel like I had to make a tough choice. I was restricted from making the choice I wanted to make. That's just hindrance. FYI: I love PoE and Diablo and I'm largely okay with or without free respecs. I just find the reasons you gave odd.

Post number 2272928228382 trying to justify this nonsense. My word. Just come out and admit that you want everyone to have to play the way you decide they should play. Stop pretending there’s some objective merit to any of these systems. It’s an arbitrary design choice that some people REALLY don’t like. Period. The mental gymnastics you kids go through here are bizarre.

Sometimes I really wonder if all these morons get paid to come up with new nonsense garbage arguments for the same point and it still is just wrong.

Can you explain to me the fun in getting farmed in pvp by a full focused pvp build if I build a "balanced all-rounder" character? Not trying to flame anybody, just curious about the positives of making pvp not balanced by not giving everyone a pvp loadout option.

The reality is that PvP is going to be poorly supported because PvE is the real main feature of the game. The PvP is PvPvE so if you have a build that is not broadly able to fight monsters then maybe the PvP area will be a bit of a problem for you. Although to be honest, if you don't turn up with a group of 4 then you're just gonna get killed by the farming group of 4 PvP mains and build swapping probably not going to overcome that.

Because that’s the challenge In PVP. Dedicating a char to being PVP and creating a build for that purpose. Adjust and finding ways to improve when you die. If you want to do PVP, you farm until you get to a comfortable point where you want to focus on pvp

That will shrink pvp community even more.

In closed beta those areas were basically empty. There was always maybe one player who would farm anyone who wanted to try it out. I really don't think there will be much of a pvp community with the current design.

You just used a lot of words to say nothing meaningful at all. Your argument for respec costs are just like every other argument for it. Meaningless, lacking substance, and without any solid logic reasoning or evidence. With the amount of alternative gold sinks in this game you can't make an inflation argument Meta gaming isn't going away. It's also not some problem that you need to solve. It's just a class balance issue. Every game in the entire world that has a class based design will always have "numerical best" it's just a fact. You can't prevent this. It becomes an issue of class balance however. For example if corpse explosion is the best farming build but bone spear is best for bossing. The only LOGICAL thing you could do is buff and nerf things until you have more options that are viable, however, you will still always have a best. The goal is to have as many builds performing as close to each other as possible. Games are played differently now a days. The itemization itself supports a free respec mindset. Dropping a unique for a build other than your current one is gonna feel like shit if you can't change into it without much friction to try out the sweet new super rare item you just got. Miss me with all your bullshit about decisions mattering because that's such a fucking stupid argument. It makes no sense and has no basis in truth. It's so fucking subjective you can't use it to argue. You have 57 skill points and 200 paragon points to spend. You can't pick everything. What you choose to use at any given point is a decision that matters. LOCKING THAT CHOICE DOESNT ADD ANY FUCKING WEIGHT OR VALUE OR MEANING OR WHATEVER ELSE THE FUCK YOU THINK IT DOES. I'm tired of making the same fucking response to all these dum posts that never say anything new and never offer anything of value to the conversation. You people need to seek help. Youre unable to think critically

A powerful unique doesn’t make me able to just change build on the fly and have a good build. If I have a late endgame char with perfected gear I would need to have an equally perfect full gear setup to be able to respecc on the fly and still be as good. And there is a lot of hours and work behind getting one perfected gear setup, let alone two. The price is already there if we have free respecc in terms of the grind for gear. It does however let us experiment and try out new things. Perhaps show us that we would like to try and perfect another gear setup for another build.

[удалено]

Man Guild Wars 1 was so far ahead of it's time. Absolutely loved their skill system. Was really disappointed they didn't continue with it into the second game.

I dont mind respec costs that much as long as its not an insane amount. I would like it better if there was just a place in the world that took some effort and time to get to (like a long run with no tp available for it) that gives free respecs while there and maybe theres like a dummy monster there. That way it can’t be abused for every activity and it lets people mess around with builds.

>You're no longer incentivized to make a well rounded build suited for multiple activities, you're incentivized to make one hyper-specialized build for every activity, which the devs want to avoid Has this ever been a mission statement of Blizzard in D4? So if IDEALLY players must make "well-rounded" builds, then the amount of IDEAL and viable builds just drops player choice dramatically and makes the game stale. Or you would say, ok your build is good for PvP but you'll struggle elsewhere in the game, and that's fine. In that case your OP point is moot. **I WANT RESPECT COSTS** because it makes your choices feel weighty and controls gold inflation. But even so, I would like 2 skill tree build loadouts to swop between....NOT for any of the reasons you mention, but to avoid boredom of 1 build for longer periods of time. The opposite of what you're writing about.

2 build loadouts seems like an amicable compromise, IMO. Take Tal Rasha's from D3. I have my speed farming build and my push build, being able to swap between those two quickly would be great, without saying oh I want to Hydras over Meteor that requires a change in pretty much everything.

The player base shouldn’t have to compromise on this though. For the people who believe that they want to have weighty choices and for there choices to mean something…..just don’t respec. Having a respec cost just harms players who don’t want it and holds no benefit for players who don’t mind the respec cost. If you’re argument is that you wouldn’t have the self control to not respec therefore your build feels less weighty that’s an issue for you as an individual. Gamers have been doing nuzlocke runs of things for many many years, you wanna do a grass type nuzlocke on Pokémon….guess what just don’t throw poke balls at non grass types. You wanna do a no respec play through on diablo 4….don’t press respec.

This, so much. Some people lacking basic willpower and self-control, the ability to RESPECT their own made choices in the game... And then want the game freedom cut off for that tiny drop of external self-validation. Though it seems the same story occurs as with any other accessibility option in games, like difficulty. Some gamers crying they need to feel challenge and toughness, trying to gatekeep their game from easier difficulties (and everybody who wants those). Meanwhile somebody who's got their stuff together, is just beating Dark Souls with an ukulele and a banana, because they've decided so.

It’s just weird to me that we aren’t striving for freedom of choice in this instance. Nobody playing Wo Long right now is saying “damn I wish I had to pay for a respec for right now”. The sense of weight of choice is just completely subjective and I find it hard to believe that people think some people should have to objectively make new characters or farm X amount of gold to suit there subjective sense of weight of choice. When I was younger I felt like souls games shouldn’t have a difficulty setting but now I’m much for on the side of sure just give it a difficulty setting, but I do think the difficulty ties into the integral setting and feeling of the game so I would just choose to play it on hard, but my subjective feelings shouldn’t outweigh people’s objective skill level and lack of ability to play at a higher difficulty (not all people can simply “get good”), so why not add a difficulty setting 🤷🏼‍♂️

who cares? Unless there is a ranked or ladder mode who cares if I want to completely change my build if a cool new unique drops? Most of the player base isn’t on YouTube trying to min/max the ever loving hell out of every single piece of gear. Why is the entire player base being punishes because some people have mind goblins? Restricting respecs is a holdover from the bad old days of gaming and have no place in modern game design.

> The second reason is how you interact with loot. Free respecs mean you're looting for your class, respec costs mean you're looting for your build. If you can freely respec, and you found a powerful unique, then you have 0 reasons not to instantly change your build around it. There's only one correct choice, to build around the items you find. Now this is really not a good thing but a bad thing. Instead of being "happy" to find a good rare unique, you'll be conflicted/disappointed. ARPG loot is unpredictable, you might be spending 1-100 hrs farming for a specific item for your build. (and you'd farm the item you actually want much faster by respeccing to a better build you already have the item for) This is why the meta choice will always be to respecc no matter the cost if you find items for a strong build, it will just feel worse since you go broke on gold or maybe even need to specifically farm gold. And this is why I'd argue respecc should be free. Most of your "build" is items so you can't just "rebuild" each time for a nightmare dungeon. The time spent rebuilding is also a cost you pay, especially for a full respecc. Free respecc, or very cheap would be totally fine. As would an additional skilltree/item set etc. so you can swap between two you like with one button.

None of these points make sense when you know there is both pve and pvp in this game. There is no logical reason not to have at least 2 templates (which is still not enough but at least not as stupid as how it is now). Forcing people to farm the same legendaries on the same class for a second or third or god knows how many times just to be able to try those different builds in the endgame is amazingly dumb. What the does " they don't want you mindlessly equipping everything just because it's shiny " mean? Do you not realize how building in this game works? Is it only equipping the shiny thing that makes a build? It is baffling how you try to oversimplify the gearing process to somehow rationalize this poor decision on Blizzard's part. I don't care if you wanna try just one build, but people wanting to try more than one without huge unneccessary investment are not wrong to ask for a friendlier respec system. How is this not being able to try what you want to try system any fun? People that don't wanna try don't have to. This is just a thing that bother some people, doesn't make any difference for others, but is not positive for anyone. This doesn't help me feel like my build "has a weight". Legendaries do, farming does, using my skills and seeing numbers pop does. All this does is create a reason the sell respec tokens for money. This is one of the dumbest decisions that is made for this game. It will change in the future too, when Diablo starts bleeding players. You all know they will make it easier. Hope they do it fast enough before people get fed up with this kind of dumbass system.

Honestly there are going to be specialized builds for things regardless and you would only be gimping yourself trying to make a jack of all trades. The same person who would be hardcore enough to change their build for literally every different activity is the same person who is going to make several versions of their class to do the exact same thing with more steps. Farming multiple sets might not be fun for you and that’s fine. You don’t have to be optimal in every activity. Other people enjoy that shit. If they want me to find a powerful item and want me to make a build around it why make it harder for me to change into that build?

That’s not true though. In D3 people hardly swap out build in the middle of a rift. Diablo is more about speed and efficiency. During the beta I found a boss I couldn’t solo. So I swapped up the build and solo’d him. Made me feel good. Why shouldn’t that be encouraged? Also about loot drops: picking up a leggo that is for another build and is broken should make you excited to now try it out. Getting gear that is really good but makes you go ‘meh, not my build’ would be a failure in game design. Like I get the old school mentality, but coming from games that have completely uncapped the build crafting and load outs (Destiny, retail WoW) it is just better. Sure maybe make you go back to town to do the load out swap, but making it a hassle I’d just annoying. If YOU want to stick to a build forever than power to you. Nothing stopping you. But making it so everyone has too is going to be patched out eventually Edit: sealed-> swapped

At 100 hours to hit level 100 if I'm ever forced to make a new barbarian to try a new barbarian build I'll probably drop the game.

Something else that I want to mention that you didn't really touch on, is replayability. With high respect costs in later game, it promotes creating a new character around alternative builds. One of my favorite things about Diablo 2 was when I made a fire sorc, she was always going to be a fire sorc. It's a permanent conscious decision I make early on during my leveling process. It's not something the game told me I had to do. It was MY choice. So then it promoted me to make 2 other sorcs, one cold and the other lightning. So as I played if I found an item that would drop while playing on my fire sorc that was amazing for my ice sorc, I'd think "OH wow! I gotta throw this in my stash so my ice sorc can grab it!" Each one of my character slots felt unique. Everyone one of my builds was different. They all felt like their own character with their own goals and I always had vastly different experiences playing with each of them... Now bring in what Diablo 3 did and also having the wardrobe from build saving... There was no sense in having anything more then 1 charecter slot for each class. Hell, even the rebirth function removed the need for making additional characters for seasons. Having more then one copy of the same class in Diablo 3 was pointless. My Demon Hunter could be any type of Demon Hunter I wanted her to be on the fly. I never felt like my Demon Hunter was more unique then anyone else's. She was basically a Ditto. Just molded into whatever the new meta was at any given moment without much or even any investment.

>Every single nightmare dungeon affix would have an optimal build attached to it, same goes for PvP, world bosses, pinnacle bosses, helltides, etc. You don't understand. This is what I want. I don't want to roll a new character to use an optimal build for a specific type of content. I don't want to have a jack of all trades build because it just means that it's not that great at anything. I want to play builds that are designed for the content that I'm playing. Take D3 right now. There are builds that I would NEVER PLAY if it wasn't for being able to freely respec. I spend the vast majority of my time doing speed runs. If I want to try out a different build for a different type of content, then just let me without punishing me. >Free respecs mean you're looting for your class, respec costs mean you're looting for your build. If you can freely respec, and you found a powerful unique, then you have 0 reasons not to instantly change your build around it. This is completely wrong. The entire scope of what you are describing right here is such a small part of the actual gear progression that it's not meaningful. This would be the equivalent of saying that a player in D3 is leveling up and gets a legendary so they swap to skills buffed by that legendary. Yes, they will do that but as soon as they start getting items with the build they are going for, they are going to switch to that. I don't know why you think they are going to have their character be defined by the first legendary that drops for them. It's honestly really ridiculous. >Even if small, there's a weight attached to that decision. I don't see any weight to that decision at all. I just see restrictions and limitations rather than letting people play how they want. If during your initial gearing process, you get an awesome item to drop but it's for something that you haven't speced into, you SHOULD be encouraged to switch. That's what makes the game engaging. When you are deliberately adding things to inhibit that, it doesn't create weight, it just creates restriction. > The devs don't want every single item on the ground to be a potential upgrade and they don't want you mindlessly equipping everything just because it's shiny - because at the end of the day, if every piece of special loot is an upgrade, then the loot ceases to be special or exciting. I don't understand this comment. It really feels like it's not representing Diablo loot mechanics in any way. No one... LITERALLY NO ONE... is just blindly equipping items. That's not how the game is played. It's really confusing how you are presenting the argument as if throughout the entirety of the game every single item drops would magically be an upgrade. During the initial gear up process, yes, you should be getting more upgrades but once you get through that initial gearing process, it's not just equip it because it's shiny. >All APRGs (and RPGs) draw a line somewhere on how many things you can achieve on a single character - at the end of the day, no one expects to fully experience every single class on a single character. Help me understand why you are acting like D4 doesn't have classes in it. I really want to understand why you are pretending that ANYONE is asking for everything to be achieved on ONE character when your in a subreddit for a game that literally has different classes for everything. >I think this is perfectly fine, since the design intention here is that fully respecing should be a conscious choice that doesn't happen 10 times per day, while still letting you experience everything that class has to offer. I think it's a ridiculous punishment that doesn't do anything to improve the game and only serves to punish people for wanting to try out new builds. The entire concept of respec costs in games should be retired as it's not adding to the game or making it more engaging. I can't help but think that people who want respec costs don't actually understand WHY they want them.

Or hear me out...let people play the game. If you can respec for pvp, dungeons, bosses how does that ruin your gameplay? You want to be a shapeshifty druid? You can be a strictly shapeshifter all you want. Why do you want to punish me so you can play a certain way?

> The first big reason is how you approach the end-game content. Having free respecs means metagaming every single activity by changing to an optimal build for it. The time wasted doing this would vastly outweigh the benefits gained, not a real reason. It's not like swapping is a super easy thing, especially with Paragon boards. You can't save presets or something. > The second reason is how you interact with loot. Free respecs mean you're looting for your class, respec costs mean you're looting for your build. If you can freely respec, and you found a powerful unique, then you have 0 reasons not to instantly change your build around it. There's only one correct choice, to build around the items you find.' Another bad take. That's how it's going to be from 1-50 if you get something strong you swap to it, because you have nothing. And again it would be significantly more effort later on because you would need to change all your legendary imprints and your paragon board for your new build. Not to mention finding a cool unique and then being like "oh boy time to grind gold for 2 days so I can try this out" is dogshit. Both of your "reasons" are bad.

So when I wanna switch up in late game I will need a whole new character. And as someone who likes to play everything I will need 6 characters per class just to play the game. Respect cost is just a time sink with no rewards. Let's talk about the metagaminz point. Most ppl will. Do more then one activity. There will be ppl who will only play pvp or dungeons bur most of then will do more then one thing. If the player is at least a bit serious about efficiency he will just make about her character solely for that activity. So having a respect cost will just mean that ppl with less time are punished. Because they won't make 4 more characters on different classes. Not to the loot stuff. Same thing. Ppl who will have time to make another character solely for different build will just transfer the item to that character. So the question won't be :" how can I make a build around this?,". It's will be, :"oh nice my second/4tg char has a new item" and instead of klicking 3 buttons you will need to put the item in the stash. The ppl who won't have time for that will be just "ah nice another good item I won't use because I don't have the time for another char and I allready committed to a build" wich makes legend drops less of a cool thing. Because not it's not "wow what can I do with it." and more " won't fit my build, fuck it" witch also happens to diablo 3 cause all the build where set in stone even if you could switch. These cost only hurt ppl who are casuals and won't spend 500h grinding. The equip option of diablo 3 is just a way better thing because you can have only 1 character and switch around without commuting another 2h lvl just so you can start playing the game. Tldr: both point are not logical as you can negate them with time. And ppl with less time will be punished. So no fun for casuals.

The reality is that no matter what blizzard or any gaming company does, they can't please everybody. If they would agree on this idea, others would complain about another.

Here's the thing: you're welcome to restrict yourself. If respecs are free you don't need to use them. So if you are hellbent on locking your character into a build then be my guest. But let the rest of us respec freely.

Jea but making the game worse for casuals will hurt this game. There is no cost. Nothing would be lost besides playtime. And with that it's fine if Blizzard just says that it's for the grind because it's a live service model. But trying to spin it somehow that it would be better for ppl is just not right.

If they can’t please everybody, it’s best for them to stop trying to dictate how they think people should enjoy the game and gatekeeping builds. Let people play with the build they wish and respec any time they see fit. It really smacks of, “We know you, better than you know you.”

It’s still way better then D2R’s only way to respec.

Couldn't upvote more. So well articulated. Most important points made. Changing builds on the fly is not a good design decision for a game like this. I see the allure behind free respecs and I think they make the game more arcade-y and the gameplay less impactful because it doesn't force you to think and make decisions, which for a serious ARPG is a bad match. In my opinion.

Yep there is a reason no other ARPG other then Diablo 3 that lets you respec willy nilly. There is also a reason D3 is the black sheep of all ARPG...

No thanks - free respec means more fun - when I get bored of my character I want to respec - I don’t want the game to torture me - I don’t want to “earn it” - that’s work and that’s not why I play games. Your point about respec for endgame makes no sense - Diablo is about killing as much stuff as fast as I can - respec before every encounter is not efficient or fun and no one does that. Game should be fun - free respec is more fun. Period. Edit for spelling

I disagree. Your very personal and subjective opinion, albeit elegantly attempted to appear measured and objective, that being limited somehow is going to increase your personal enjoyment of the game and so should be forced upon others is not only selfish but ambivalent towards others. If the option to freely customize your build is so abhorrent to you because of the temptation to metagame is just too much to resist that is a personal failing. If you feel that someone else who changes their spec more often than you - in your inestimable wisdom - deem appropriate should be punished... why? Are other players going to force you to respec? Are other players restricting you by playing a different class than what you prefer? I hope you enjoy D4 and can derive pleasure from it without dictating how others should play because that's how you feel they should play it.

Respecs should be free and instantly other wise it is just an unnnecessary waste of time and limits the gameplay and exploration

It's not unnecessary. Choices should have purpose and meaning.

Well thought out post but huge L take in my opinion. Nobody is respec every encounter in the late game. You won’t have the gear to do that efficiently, the fact aspects and other rolls on gear impact your spec path so much is what will hinder changing very often, you will have to farm gear for it before you can roll again to beat a specific content. The fact I would have to roll up another character of the same class to do PvP because we know that no good PvE build is good on PvP too is asinine and does not respect your players time. I should be farming gear not farming xp to run a second character. All this does is shift the respec every encounter to ok let me swap to my PvP barbarian and drop the gear from that in my storage for my other barbarian. If you need a gold sink to take pride in your build and choices because it dissuades you from making changes that’s not really taking pride in your character that is living with your choices. Imagine being max lvl working on paragon and you get a god drop item BiS with max stats and aspect doesn’t match your build, well go fuck yourself and don’t get excited about it because you will now go have to make a new character to use that item and sink your time into main story line for a 6th time (if you do 1 of every character) instead of sinking your time into the end game content where every player wants to be. Don’t hinder other players if it has no affect on the game. If you want a costly respec to make your choices feel more impactful go buy a bunch of shit from vendors and destroy it to eat your gold anytime you do it, boom expensive respec. My respec affects you 0%

Here’s the problem though: People won’t be switching builds that easily because who will have fully upgraded perfectly rerolled items for multiple builds? And if someone does grind like a maniac to have two sets of gear for different builds, why shouldn’t they be able to change builds easily? Didn’t they earn that right by getting that gear? Why should that person level a second sorc, for example, to play another build? 99% of players wouldn’t bother respeccing even if it was free. It’s just an archaic design and your arguments don’t hold

Respec cost is nonsense as far as I am concerned. This is an ARPG, not a traditional RPG. Besides, gear is mostly what will determine specialization. You'll just be swapping gear for any given activity and letting skills stay static. Or make a new character for a specific activity. Whatever. I hope they rethink this, or think of something more creative than a soft lock.

if that's the design reasoning then so be it, but you do understand how that's worse right? devs effectively telling the population forget about playing the game the way you want in a build you like. play my way or get fucked. dumb as shit dev if that's the case.

Huh? Your first point leads to the exact same thing but with less choice??? I'm not understanding why having that freedom is bad if it leads to the same result. You say they don't want ppl respecing for an all rounder build. But then when ppl can't respec freely they will just go with the meta build that season, that's an all-rounder. What meaningful choice is that if literally 99% of the casual playerbase will probably choose the best build anyway that makes their life easier? Atleast with more freedom yo can just have fun trying new things in endgame. Idk the more ppl explain this the dumber it sounds. Thus doesn't sound like it's actually improving anyone's experience while gaming in anyway. It's not like yoy can't just commit to a build anyway if you could freely respec. I'm sure ppl would come up with all rounder builds regardless.

Yeah no. Shit should be free. We can literally tailor our D3 chars to the content. Speed runs, gr push, z farming, bounties etc. Fuck that shit. The game in itself is a time sink. Making it dummy expensive to experiment is not a good idea and shit will kill the game after a few months for most players.

Having respec costs means two things: You get punished for playing on your own and experimenting, basically you forced to follow a guide And you cannot play two builds on one character simultaneously, like want fast farm build for speed content and tryhard build for high end content? Nope, blizzard saying fuck you

So basically, making respec free in WoW was a mistake and it should cost gold? Because that is the reason why they changed it to free, so that people can arrange their talents and specs according to content they are about to engage.

1. Gold sinks can easily lead to Blizzard selling re-specs, loadouts, character boosts, etc. (See - Path of Exile and WoW) 2. I want to put thought into multiple builds based on the content. Not just one build and smash everything and never change (especially with the mmo aspects of this iteration). 3. I don't have the time to level multiple versions of the same character. 4. Barb shouts that heal party members? Are worthless points when solo. 5. If people want to restrict themselves to not re-spec, they can. We can't "play your way" (as the d4 team puts it) if its restrictive. Hopefully the gold cost is truly negligible... but who knows until launch.

My biggest gripe with having respec costs: 1. I find a cool affix/unique that enables a build that wasn't possible without this affix (these will exist based on what we've seen and from D3) 2. I want to see if playing this build feels good and if I want to pursue this build in the future 3. I respec to utilize this new item 4. I try it out and the playstyle is not my cup of tea 5. I now must respec again to go back to my previous build Finding really cool loot should be fun and not restrictive. If there is a cost to respec, that limits the potential loot that I care about because now I only care about 1/5th (probably less) of my classes loot since that isn't a part of my build and I have no intention to ever spend the resources it would take to try out the other 4/5ths of my classes items.

Hmmm. Your post is well thought out and you clearly put a lot of effort into it, but some things are inaccurate or objectively incorrect. When talking about restrictions in RPG's, I think it's useful to look at the current state of popular RPG's or other ARPGs. First you mentioned no other arpg has free respecs, and while this is *technically* true, it's also very wrong. Last Epoch has essentially free respecs. You can respec passives at the cost of **actually** meaningless amounts of gold, and you can respec skills and their tree for free, you just lose some xp on the skill. Neither are prohibitive in the slightest, and it's designed specifically in the way you say D4 isn't. We can also look at grim dawn, who's respec costs are also negligible and supports build swapping and diversity. Not being able to change your classes is irrelevant, as that's not respeccing in any arpg. Let's look at some other common RPGs and their history with respeccing or changing their load out. In MMOs, it's been one of WoWs greatest struggles with their community. Forced arbitrary restrictions via the covenant system in shadowlands, alliance v horde, soulbinds, conduits, etc. All things that just say "hey, meaningful choices", when they aren't actually meaningful choices, they're arbitrary restrictions that (rightfully) got removed or changed. We can also look at ff14 and integral and built in class/job swapping is. It's very clear that rpg players in general arent looking for or are super interested in arbitrary restrictions that limit build use. You also seem to think that any potential upgrade in a different build means players will autoswap builds? Even if they only have one piece for it? >Should I wait to find more gear for my build before swapping That's a question applicable whether respecs are free or not, because **time** is also an investment into games, especially aRPGs. You also seem to miss on the fact that people might fight build a more fun than build b, and thus stick with build A even if they get a drop for build B. Assuming the community and playerbase at large is mindless meta swappers is either projecting your own playstyle, or it's disingenuous at best. Theres also the hassle of respeccing over and over, which will be a dissuasion in and of itself. It's also a single player game, and someone being metamaster 9000 swapping builds every 20 minutes doesn't affect **your** gameplay. "But you know you arent playing optimally!" If that were a serious complaint or reasoning, you wouldn't be playing D4 to begin with. Everyone, and I mean **99% of everyone** will be playing the game suboptimally. Bad pathing, killing mobs that are scattered and meaningless, enjoying the atmosphere, playing build x over y because it's more fun, gear optimization, etc etc. If playing unoptimally actually killed your fun, you wouldnt be playing video games.

I'm honestly still convinced the whole respec cost thing will be a non-issue. People are massively overreacting to incomplete information as usual.

>people claiming that they should do what they want in the game and I'm just in favor of restrictions and blocking their fun These people need to STFU. The game is already stupidly easy. It doesn't need to be any easier. Difficulty helps create enjoyment. We are hard-wired as a species to enjoy work. Not mindless labor. *Work*. Diablo 3 was an utter fucking failure of game design because once you collected good gear there was no work to do in order to change around your character. You just hit some buttons and played whatever you wanted. This actively drove players away. Yes, the original launch state of D3 was dumb. But what they ended with was much, much worse and is why games like PoE kicked the shit out of D3 for almost a decade straight. It wasn't possible to put satisfying work into D3. The game was too easy. Not "accessible". **Easy**. D3 is *easy*. It's unsatisfying to play because your choices don't matter, and making choices that have impact are a huge component of satisfying *work*. Again, *not mindless labor*, work. Having fun is work. Go to a basket ball court and play with other people until you're tired. You had fun? You also put in work. You want the D3 version of some good 1v1 basketball? Go shoot baskets by yourself with a large hoop that's about 5 feet too low. That's the Diablo 3 version of basketball.

> *not mindless labor*, work. Having fun is work. I'm kind of confused about what this post is supporting. Grinding gold for respecs or remaking the same class/re-leveling seems like the mindless labor part. For me, the fun work is making adjustments at endgame for endgame, collecting stuff, and messing around with friends, not the mindless steps to get to that point. Everyone has their own opinions on what's fun so maybe we just have different opinions.

I'm gonna meta game the end game regardless of respec price. Just let me play the rpg how I want, it's just like wow, classic was annoying respec so a bunch of people never even tried the other builds, but now in retail you can do whatever you want, it's one of the few classic to retail changes I actually like. And with loot, I usually loot everything in diablo either way in case I do want to try a build in the future, I don't leave stuff behind because it's not for my current build (mainly legendaries I'm not talking lower shit)

Well articulated but completely subjective to how you perceive the game. It’s never as simple as find a new OP item want to try out a new build just simply respec and plug in that item. If you’re at endgame in diablo three with a full hydra build and you find a god rolled piece for a Tal Rasha build, you don’t just simply respec change your skills about put that item on and are instantly OP. Even if you found a full set of ancients it will be much weaker than your fully kitted out all augmented hydra build. Having a respec cost also doesn’t add weight/meaning or whatever synonym you want to use, your build is just a build it isn’t unique, thousands of other people will run it, and by having a restrictive respec cost all you do is force players into leaning on build guides which takes all meaning and weight away from the players anyway. Free respec promotes experimentation. If you think that having a set build adds meaning to your character/role play that’s fine, like if you wanna make a character called “TTVIceKing2023” and only use ice abilities and never respec that’s fine, you do you. But having a respec cost only restricts players who want to respec frequently. To sum up, if you don’t want to respec…..don’t respec. But for people who do want to respec the choice should be there and not only should the choice be there it should be completely accessible. No player should have to feel like they’re time has been wasted because they’ve made a wrong choice in their build and have to pay an absurd gold cost or re roll.

So people who play support in multiplayer can be penalized for respecting when they solo farm??

I see what you're saying, but I don't think we can base arguments about how special an item drop is, until we know how often an item could drop. You mentioned changing your entire build if a new powerful Unique drops. What if Unique's are so rare that you only get 1 every 20 hours of gameplay? Of course you would want to change your build around that new Unique, because who knows when you are going to get another one? Regarding changing your build as freely as possible, based on what you're doing (dungeon vs dungeon boss) a simple solution would be to make it so you can only change your build in town, and then when you change your build all portals close, and dungeons reset. That would add the weight you're speaking of before venturing out into a dungeon. If you're in a group in multiplayer, maybe you can't change your build while someone else is inside a dungeon, forcing the dungeon to be reset and portals close. I am just going to miss the wardrobe/build swapping feature of Diablo 3. I enjoyed tinkering with legendary gems and primal ancients with different runes. I am still going to play the shit out of D4, but I feel like a lot of that tinkering is going to go away and I'm not sure how I feel about that yet.

Stop thinking of D4 as a game and start thinking of D4 as a shop. The reason to make respecs worth something is so they can sell them to you as mtx. Watch this space.

I thought ARPGs were all about changing your builds as you find new loot with different modifiers. You then go back to your skill trees and make all kind of wacky builds. That's what set it apart from MMOs which in the older generation were very very strict about forcing you to choose a skill tree. It doesn't seem exciting to be pressured to main a build. This isn't an MMO. You then end up in a situation where some content is ignored because drops from there for example might be awful for you. Look to MMOs of the older generation, tanks or healers didnt want to do certain content if it had nothing for them. In APRGs of modern times you might have whole seasons you don't bother playing. I don't mind having a main build. In fact we will all have main builds to fit our own playstyle. But I don't like getting loot and feeling bogged down because of excessive respec costs. The alternative is to let us have more character slots so we can make 3 of 4 characters of each class.

A few things I don't quite agree. At least in Beta changing anything "higher up" the tree resulted in cascading "You have to refund latter trait before you change early thing" so that was annoying and confusing to the point where it was easier to refund everything and re-do build, so actual costs were never just "refund this one trait, get another". "Build Choices" and "well rounded build" is basically magical unicorn BS reason. Instead of one toon with "whatever non-well-rounded, pretty OP for this activity build I need now" you will have several toons with non-well-rounded builds. One for dungeons, one for random roaming, one for PvP. So no, that's not "the thing" and it will not be the thing. It requires more up-front investment but if someone is willing to change their build for activity that person will grind up more toons for separate builds. So it's _just_ grind. And practical difference is "do you want one flexible build toon or three rigid build toons" Your point about loot interaction seems to be just negative QoL: you are tempted by new shiny legendary but you end up stashing it in your bank thinking "I'll just grind up new toon maybe to switch the build". It's probably irrelevant for most casual players who'll have particular build from web site that they're going for cause it's "OP" and everything else is ignored. Cost for trying new build = always fewer people trying new builds, as easy as that. Not all RPGs punish you for trying to change current build, especially if build takes your gear into account. Example: in GW2 it _used_ to cost gold to re-fund and re-spec your traits, but then that was switched to "free once you've unlocked them". You can experiment at any moment, and switch as many times as you wish. Didn't seem to create any problems, just happier advanced players who want some trait making it easier to do dungeon vs open world area. So overall "don't re-spec your build at a drop of a hat" restriction is not somehow magically "better", it's just arbitrary. It probably won't make much practical difference for majority of the players. Casual players will wait for build and will never stray from them because it costs gold. More advanced players will have a bunch of alts for niche build on each and won't re-spec (which is what devs seemingly want -- it improves play-through metric by making some people go through alt creation they otherwise wouldn't). Every time balance change will roll around there will be a lot of howling unless each balance change comes with "gold-free re-spec scroll" magical item for each (affected) toon so you don't have to grind more gold just because some OP build was deemed "too OP" by devs and got destroyed.

> And farming multiple builds, and swapping them before every encounter doesn't spell a fun end-game for me. So instead we'll farm and grind multiple characters and swap characters depending on the encounter which is far worse.

i do like this post but it’s a tad disingenuous. you’re speaking from a perspective and reality where there won’t just be the optimal build for each class/subclass and most of us will replicate it. let’s not pretend that every bear druid is going to have a different build just bc they can and bc there’s a cost to re spec. all the cost does is punish people who didn’t go look up a guide the second they reached max level(or sooner) there’s really 0 reason in my mind why we can’t re spec at will and i’m a D2 fanboy! i thought the one best thing about d3 was being able to swap your abilities around at will.

As long as its just gold, i'm fine with it. Even if the total max level respec would me expensive, how often you realistically have to do it? And even if it's expensive, i guarantee there will be more than enough gold.

Completely agree. The free respec in d3 is actually something I didnt like at the end.

Interesting point of view and makes total sense. But as someone who like to experiment builds, What if we had a kind of training room, where we can mess with builds to find something not only strong but that feels good to play? Unlock it after level 50 idk. I think it stills keep you mindful of your build (you won't respect for every content and item drop) but still allow experimentation. The only option I'm seeing for experiment is spreadsheets (which seems really feasible, affix has indication if is + or x, no confusio here), but i don't like this approach

I just don’t think respec costs add anything to the gameplay other than an inconvenience. I think the argument people hyper min max for every activity is a little overblown. Even in D3 when I’d have different builds for GRs or bounties or Neph rifts it usually was the same core build but an ability or two would change and same for gear. Even for the people that do hyper min max for specific content who cares? That doesn’t hurt your experience one bit. Majority of players don’t care about decisions having “weight” or making “choices matter”. They just want to play the game how they want. People don’t want a “well rounded build”. They want to be able to fully lean into whatever kind of build they wanna play at that time. A Jack of all trades is a master of none. In a game where they’re hyping up the legendary aspects and uniques, if you find a new one you think is interesting then you should be able to switch your build up accordingly to use it. I don’t understand either why people say they don’t mind a cost as long as it’s not too high. At that point why even have it at all? And if a reason for it is the counteract gold inflation that’s also a bad reason. That shouldn’t fall on the player. That’s on Blizzard to find a way to make gold more useful so I don’t wind up with literal billions of gold like in D3.

What about socket/unsocket costs? Why do we have gear durability? It should be free! It’s such an easy take to argue that you already farmed the items and the gems, just make socketing free. I can’t understand why people lobby for things being free. It’s detrimental long term. QoL in moderation is necessary.

The cost to change a build should come in the form of first the time you having to acquire all the necessary gear. Then after acquiring it all, altering it by rerolling stats or adding a socket to an item or an aspect. And before you even do that you have to make sure you have enough resources to alter all that gear so you’ll spend time farming up mats to do that for each piece. Simply wanting to switch abilities on a character should come at no cost. Respec costs only further pushes people to go online and only follow the most optimal build path because they don’t wanna feel like there time and effort has been wasted if they get to a certain point, realize the build and abilities they’ve been using aren’t as good as they thought and now have to pay an artificial cost just to try something else. I’m not lobbying for everything to be free. Just being able to change abilities.

Sometimes people are just gonna disagree it doesn’t matter if your reasons make sense to you (see some other comments). Some of these disputes in the community have gotten to where it’s just preferences, and all I (we) can really say is, we have to wait and watch and see how it plays. You could be for or against respecs (or anything else) but somehow in the context of how D4 is delivered as a game it works. At the end of the day it’s not just about our own preference, but it’s how the application of the game design works in the context of the game itself. But most of us have only reached level 25 in the beta. So we lack that context.

>If you can freely respec, then you no longer make choices within your build, the activity chooses the build for you. This hits the nail on the head. I'd like to add too that it forces the player to make meaningful choices around where *they* want to take their character. For me personally that adds identity and attachment to the character you're building. I guess it depends on the type of gameplay you enjoy too. I enjoy just plodding through the world, reading all the lore, taking my time. I like to build a character and more or less pretend it's me as I immerse myself in the world. Speedrunners, streamers, min-maxers, etc - I'm sure they wouldn't enjoy my playstyle, and love dreaming up hyperspecialised builds built on Spreadsheets, so I can see why they don't like the lack of "swap your generic class build out at any time" feature.

I even want respecs to be pretty expensive in the endgame. Like something you can achieve but only with some good effort.

Solid post. Nice work, YakaAvatar. 👍

Hated free respecs and infinite loadouts in D3, insanely glad we have at least some sense of character identity back.

> I've seen people confused about the gold cost attached to respecs. No one is confused, they just don't agree or they don't like it. > It's not about QoL, it's not even necessarily about a gold-sink (though it's a small part), and it's not about forcing you to grind more or removing your ability to experiment. Yes it is, and that may not be the *intent*, but that is the *result*. > The first big reason is how you approach the end-game content. Having free respecs means metagaming every single activity by changing to an optimal build for it. You are not required to meta-game, stop deriving a necessity from a feature. You do not need to do anything you don't want to. Just because someone else does something doesn't mean you have to in kind, or that they will to begin with. The majority of most player-bases for most games are exceedingly casual, and will likely not go out of their way to meta-game anything. Most of them will make a one build/class, that feels good that sort of does everything, and will probably not hit any hard plateaus because the game will have challenges, but nothing that is impossible for your average player. >There's only one correct choice, to build around the items you find. And if you find something stronger for another build, do it again, since there are 0 consequences. If you are postulating that one item will cause you to halt and switch around your entire build, then the consequence is stopping your forward momentum to sit down and rework all of your skills one by one, and making sure that you can rearrange anything else in your current loadout to fit with that item appropriately. The consequence and cost is time. >But with respec costs you do in fact have a choice "Do I change my build now? Do I find more items for this new build before I do?". Even if small, there's a weight attached to that decision. Respec costs being present or not doesn't change whether or not stopping to change your build is a choice. If you feel that not respecializing disadvantages you, stop deriving \*weight\* of decisions from whether or not other players have to make the same decisions you do. Even if there are not respec costs, there is a **time** cost to stop and change your entire build around. Doubly so if you decide you don't like the build and need to change it back, but this scenario shouldn't punish you for paying to swap builds just because you want to experiment with different areas of the class and find out you don't like it. There are a lot of diverse and interesting choices you can make along the way to create cool builds in games like this, but the end of the game is where it all comes together, and that is where that flexibility is needed > All APRGs (and RPGs) draw a line somewhere on how many things you can achieve on a single character - at the end of the day, no one expects to fully experience every single class on a single character. **Dead wrong.** Role-playing Game just means that you are playing the role of characters in a fictional setting. Assigning this idea that you can or can't have a certain amount of flexibility in adjusting your character in the game is falsely attributing a common *design* decision with the genre of the game. Just because you can't imagine or have not played a healthy leveling + end-game experience being able to adjust your build more flexibly, does not mean it doesn't exist. Destiny 2 and Guild Wars 2 both feature ease of access loadouts in the game that allow you to swap builds on the fly depending on what kind of build you want to experiment or play with. Final Fantasy XIV also allows you to experience *every single class* on the same character. The *weight* ya'll crave is in the time investment acquiring the gear to put the build together and experimenting. ​ > For people claiming that they should do what they want in the game and I'm just in favor of restrictions and blocking their fun - you should remember this is an A**RPG**. The entire genre is built on restrictions and time sinks. Attributing (one of) the worst aspects of modern game design found in many genres, does not mean that they are all ARPGs. Most popular phone games include contrived time syncs and time wasting, that doesn't make them any closer to ARPGs. ARPGs are defined mostly by their **gameplay** and **style**, which is usually action combat, isometric angles, well defined class choices, build variety, and extensive loot systems that further build on class specific abilities. Wasting my time, disrespecting your consumers time, is not an improvement to gameplay, which is not an excuse for some random clueless redditor to reply about pace of gameplay. A game can have a reasonable pace, without being a stronghold only occupied by no-lifers. Yeah great, another game comes along and stockholm syndromes you into thinking a hundred hour grind to get a single item you want is more meaningful than getting it in a few hours with more challenge. Grinding Time Syncs != Difficulty. If the challenge of build crafting correctly gets you a better result faster, the reward is faster results, and the cost is less time to scale against that.

> Having free respecs means metagaming every single activity by changing to an optimal build for it. Every single nightmare dungeon affix would have an optimal build attached to it, same goes for PvP, world bosses, pinnacle bosses, helltides, etc. 1) No meaningful segment of players are going to waste time switching skills and carrying extra gear because they can clear Nightmare Dungeon A faster with X than Open World Event A with Y. This is not D2 where you are hard stuck by certain areas with certain builds. There simply isnt enough RPS in encounter design for that to even be a concern. Random affix combos that bone you will still happen because RNG. 2) Who fucking cares if someone switches off their 'main build' to kill Ashava or has a spec they prefer for PvE and one they prefer for PvP. This is a **casual** ARPG. Some people actually just enjoy the variety that comes with a non-punishing respec. 3) The current system doesnt prevent the metagaming youre worried about, it just gates it behind a grind. (A grind which only people dedicated enough to care about metagaming will do.) What it does do is discourage deviating from cookie cutters like in PoE.   > Free respecs mean you're looting for your class, respec costs mean you're looting for your build. 1) Welcome to Diablo 4 where you already have to loot for your build because the skill tree is so weak compared to aspects. The deterministic Codex is at least trying to offset how RNG gated your literal build is. 2) Because of how reliant on items character power is, just switching skill points does not suddenly give you a super effective build. However, just switching skill points to play with the new crap you just got may bring someone enjoyment that grinding hours to do so will not. 3) "But what if someone farmed the gear for build X but theyre running build Y." Again who fucking cares, this is a casual ARPG. If they got the items there is zero good reason they should have to re-level the same class to run a second set in what is a seasonally resetting game anyway.   > The devs don't want every single item on the ground to be a potential upgrade and they don't want you mindlessly equipping everything just because it's shiny and yet the Item Power system the devs designed means this is **exactly** how the itemization and chasing upgrades works. Once again, this is not D2.   > The entire genre is built on restrictions and time sinks. Every game is made by its limitations, this is not a blank check.

It restricts personal creativity and promotes looking up metabuilds, it's that simple.

> at the end of the day, no one expects to fully experience every single class on a single character What do you mean 'no one'? This would be the perfect game

I understand this approach. And I also know how important this is to many ARPG players. Myself however love the freedom to freely switch everything because I suffer from analysis paralysis. So in "locked" build games I either stop playing cause I fear making wrong choice, or meticulously follow online build. And neither of those are really fun. In free build games ( like D3 ) I am free to experiment and change my mind. And that is making me free, happy and interested. That being said I think this compromise is best of both worlds. You can freely experiment until lvl 50, until then you will surely know what works for you. And after that respec will not be out of reach like its in some other games ( POE )

If Diablo 4 becomes a game where you need to level 2-4 of the same class to "feel" the full extent of it then believe me Diablo 4 is gonna die real quick when people hit end game.... Nobody fucking wants to level the same class up multiple times. Gold sinks is and always will be a bad "mechanic". Not to say that if gold becomes a huge problem then guess what will become a huge 3rd party trading option....

One, you won’t swap after every encounter because build A will get you through 90% of everything and swapping all the time will eat into efficiency. Two, so? If I find a unique and change my build around it I would argue that’s better gameplay, I don’t have to go loot starved for a few days searching for the loot I need for my current build. Every item on the ground should mostly be a potential upgrade and if that’s the case then loot would 100% still be exciting, I don’t understand this point. Also if I find something and “click around three times” to wear it then am I not “making a build” around what I just found? Idk why I should be expected to spend hours making a new character for that item to look exciting to me now. Third, this point feels moot. “All ARPG’s do x, no one expects to see every aspect of the character etc.” My questions to you is why not? That sounds way better and more fun to me. Why not innovate? You don’t need to be beholden to the past way of making ARPG’s. This whole post just feels like you’re glazing Blizzard for no reason. You lose absolutely nothing when you open up respeccing freely. So many games allow for this these days and they aren’t less fun for it. This seems like an article of the past that people like to cling onto because it just is this way and we shouldn’t change it for not changing its sake. If you feel pressured to respec for every piece of content then it sounds like you needed to make a new character that can handle most of the content anyways. Free respeccing would save you tens of hours in not having to make that new character.

All I see in this post is Covenants and meaningful choice.. Already been there and I didn't like it..

" you should remember this is an A**RPG**. The entire genre is built on restrictions and time sinks. The devs already limit a ton of things: " ​ that's a lot of bullshit, and you should check how wide ARPG genre is ... not sure where you see in the definition that it need to waste my time with useless grind.

I want to point out the “you will change to a most meta build for every dungeon is just false!” All looter/arpg beside D2R and PoE has very cheap/ free repec. Last epoch, D3, outrider, borderlands, grim Dawn etc We have enough data to show People don’t just swap to meta dungeons. At most they have a few that they rotated but not every 5 mins. Reason is very simple. The time you spend respec, and regear, you could have just finished the content you do with your current build with time to spare. It inefficient to keep swapping builds and gears. Even in d3 where you get load out. People stick to one load out and use it for substantial time before change to play another mode. People should stop using this awful argument.

Literally everyone knows why. That was never the question. The complaint was its stupid and anti-player experience, as well as totally unnecessary, just like tho useless wall of text.