Goblin Squad Member
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First of all I apologize if this has been asked and/or addressed in another thread. I'm not sure I've found the answer to this question in any interviews or blogs, but I may have just missed it.
Does anyone know if they plan to offer the option to ReSpec a character? That is paying a fee (in-game currency or RL currency) to wipe and reassign skill progression? Maybe it's irrelevant to the type of skill system they will be using? I don't know, enlighten me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I imagine the release of new classes might respec's might be allowed, that and major changes to the skill system.
I'm not totally adverse to Respecing being available, but I don't think it should come cheap or be readily available. Maybe a limit to the number of times a character can be respec'ed in a given period of time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm against being able to respec. Valkenr is right; if you want to pursue a different set of skills then just start learning them. There is no limit to what you can learn. The only thing a respec does is break continuity and immersion. It made sense in WoW and other theme parks, but not with PFO's skill system.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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To be clear- are you using 'respec' to mean 'I lose all of my trained skills and instantly gain different trained skills' or 'I lose some of my trained skills and change my attributes so that I can train other skills faster'.
'I lose all of my trained skills and can train other skills' is no better than just training the other skills (since the devotion system replaced one in which gaining certain skills or abilities was undesired).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks for the good responses guys. I agree that it probably wont be necessary in a continual skill learning system. For instance, I spend the first year playing as an adventurer, then I want to settle down and start a smithy. At that point I just start learning to craft.
However, I also see the other side of the coin. This game is going to attract a variety of players, not just the hardcore persistent world RPers. Being is right, people are going to want Respec options.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As I see it, The Secret World is a comparable situation. Classless, leveless system, where you invest your points to learn new skills. It has no respec system, and other than some beta/pre-beta grumbling, I haven't heard much of a call for one. You keep doing what you're doing, and start putting your advancement in a different skill tree.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am against respecs for anything other than major game mechanic changes...period.
Choices should be meaningful. So if you are a level 20 fighter...you cant just become a level 20 wizard. you CAN however multi class and start learning to be a pure level 20 wizard by not slotting any fighter things.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As I see it, The Secret World is a comparable situation. Classless, leveless system, where you invest your points to learn new skills. It has no respec system, and other than some beta/pre-beta grumbling, I haven't heard much of a call for one. You keep doing what you're doing, and start putting your advancement in a different skill tree.
In the Secret World if you play for 5-10 hours you can have enough AP to make a new build. We might potentially be looking at year+ for some things in PFO.
The Devs WILL make changes to skills/abilities/systems after the game goes live. These changes can, and probably will, change up how characters and builds play and perform. They should allow respecs to alleviate the problems caused by this.
I am not saying that it should not have a substantial cost attached. Maybe cost skymetal or be a cash shop item. CoX had a pretty interesting mechanic for it. You had a very long and tough quest chain that usually required a full team to even have a hope of completing. The reward was a respec. Maybe there could be a super dungeon out there in the River Kingdoms with a fabulous gem of transformation hidden at its heart... haha or something.
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Goblin Squad Member
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CoX had a pretty interesting mechanic for it. You had a very long and tough quest chain that usually required a full team to even have a hope of completing. The reward was a respec. Maybe there could be a super dungeon out there in the River Kingdoms with a fabulous gem of transformation hidden at its heart... haha or something.
I had to run that trial about half a dozen times before I managed to complete it. Definitely would want something as challenging in PFO.
I would be averse to respec'ing skills or changing race through game mechanics (although, if you want to have it available at a RL fee, I would consider arguments in its favor), but I support resetting "class skills," or whatever mechanic lets you train certain skills faster than others.
There's just no good reason to respec your skills or race from an RP/immersion viewpoint, but if you wanted to pay to do it as a player, basically "killing" your character and creating a new one, I suppose I'm not particularly opposed. I just don't really see it as a necessary option, at least not right away.
I do think you should be able to change which skills level quickly for you (however that is maintained) to reflect a change in character focus, but this should require some kind of effort to accomplish.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sespec'ing probably once a year. But you don't respec your skills. you respec your stats. The only thing stats do is say how fast you can train skills. So it would be useful if you coulf from time to time or for a small fee or real money respec your skills. I don not want to have stats for eg. trading forever as i want to switch to cleric skills after a year or two.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I support gradual attribute re-mapping.
I am entirely opposed to any form of character respeccing. Your choices on what you train should be meaningful. And EVE system almost entirely kills the idea of flavor of the month when there is as much build diversity and as long of training times as there will be in PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why respeccing when you can learn all the skills you want? It just takes time, some money to buy the new skills and you put in some more time to train them.
Basically you can do whatever you want in a sandbox whenever you want it.
I totally agree.
Also it doesn't make any sense in a game like PfO that someone spends years maxing his druid build and suddenly one day he just forgets everything about being a druid and suddenly becomes a wizard instead.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In PnP Pathfinder, anything can be changed... except your class levels. You can be reincarnated as a totally different race or be polymorphed into a candlestick, but your class levels and the skills and abilities derived from them never change. There's a reason for this and that reason is the same in PFO. It would be like suddenly removing someone from existence and replacing them with someone totally and completely different, there's just too much of a continuity break.
I know the arguments for it, and I can relate. If you decide to make your character a Wizard and then find out that spells like Fly, Teleport and Wish are not anywhere near what you expected (which, btw, is likely) and you aren't having fun because of that, you will want to play something else. Because it possibly took you 5-6 months to realize that you didn't like being a wizard you want to have that time refunded and applied somewhere else so you don't fall behind everyone else. Your dream was to be one of the first to complete a class and now that's impossible without a refund. Well, that's not what this game is about. I expect that very few people will take a straight shot all the way to the level 20 merit badge in a class, even among those who intend to do that when they start. I expect that it will be more fun to grow your character here and there as you find out more about the game and hone in on what you want to do. There will be skills that people learn that at some point they stop using, but the journey they took learning those skills contributed to their knowledge of the game and the experiences they will draw on in the future. Besides, versatility is an amazing thing, and if you can't decide on a class and take a few levels of 4 different classes you'll be that much better able to handle a wider variety of situations. This is going to be a classless game, so have fun with it and stop worrying about min/maxing so much.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No respec! In games i played with respec problems, its just people who want the path of least resistance to make their character more powerful.
This is basically what respecing means to me:
"Screw role playing, character identification, immersion, creativity and unique play style adaptation right? As long as I can respec to the relatively current best build. And double screw the people who worked hard making a semi-functional skill tree work until it was fully implemented, i get to respec into their tree now without all the hard work."
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Goblin Squad Member
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THe only reason I'd like to see Respeccing in the game is to support mechanics changes. If they ever add Erastil to the game, I'd like to be able to re-roll or at least re-orient my soon to be cleric to worshipping him.
I don't know if there will anything to train for Races, but if there is then people should be able to switch over as more races are introduced.
I don't mind at all if these are introduced with some kind of real world fee or with a major questline. I did that quest plenty of times in CoX.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It was mentioned a couple times, but the way the stat system works out I would be in favor of being able to occasionally re-allocate the stats of a character. Since stats are only used for two things, resistances and learning speed, you should be able to switch them if you decide to change the direction your character wants to go. In EVE you could do this, though I forget the actual specific mechanics of it. Basically, play a Wizard and learn Wizard type skills until you get to a certain point and since you have lots of Intelligence your Wizard skills went up a bit faster. But now you want to switch to a Rogue because you want to be sneaky and Invisibility isn't doing it for you for whatever reason, so you want to re-allocate your stats so that Dexterity is the dominant choice. If you can't do that, then your Rogue skills will go up much slower than your Wizard skills did because your Dexterity was treated like a dump stat.
If you allow players to re-allocate stats maybe once every 4-6 months, you'll allow people to make these changes when they need to. Even if they can only do it once a year that would be fine.
Bottom line: I'm 100% against skill respecs, but I'm for the occasional stat respec
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Goblin Squad Member
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People will want respec.This is one of those cases where the players want something that is detrimental to the experience, without understanding why.
Example: Diablo 2 vs. Diablo 3
For most of its life, Diablo 2 had no way of respeccing your character. Diablo 3 on the other hand has no permanent choices.
Which one of these games were dropped by most players after the first play-through?
While I also would prefer not to see a respec system, your example is terrible - the failure of Diablo 3 had much more to do with the auction house and the economy essentially killing the "wow" factor of getting cool drops (which is basically what made Diablo 2 interesting for most people) than being able to change your build regularly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It was mentioned a couple times, but the way the stat system works out I would be in favor of being able to occasionally re-allocate the stats of a character. Since stats are only used for two things, resistances and learning speed, you should be able to switch them if you decide to change the direction your character wants to go. In EVE you could do this, though I forget the actual specific mechanics of it. Basically, play a Wizard and learn Wizard type skills until you get to a certain point and since you have lots of Intelligence your Wizard skills went up a bit faster. But now you want to switch to a Rogue because you want to be sneaky and Invisibility isn't doing it for you for whatever reason, so you want to re-allocate your stats so that Dexterity is the dominant choice. If you can't do that, then your Rogue skills will go up much slower than your Wizard skills did because your Dexterity was treated like a dump stat.
If you allow players to re-allocate stats maybe once every 4-6 months, you'll allow people to make these changes when they need to. Even if they can only do it once a year that would be fine.
Bottom line: I'm 100% against skill respecs, but I'm for the occasional stat respec
EVE lets you reallocate all your stat points once a year. There are occasionally things that give you bonus respecs that can be used in addition to that. You also started with a couple respecs for free.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Found an actual statement on Respec'ing by Ryan Dancey (albeit a brief one) in another thread:
Thread on Character Customization
EDIT: Sorry it's about a third of the way down the page. Not sure how to link directly to posts.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I despise respecs in games. If you want to follow a different path, make a different character.
That being said, I hear everyone saying that it doesn't matter because you can just train in the new skill you want. Does that mean that after many, many years you could theoretically get level 20 in each of the class archetypes?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Want to be a crafter instead of a fighter? No problem, just respec "swinging sword" into "craft stuff" - done.
In PFO there are no classes and thus a "respec" would be a "re-class" and I think we can all agree that this would be stupid.
Wouldn't the merit badge system prevent this? As I understood it would be impossible to make a switch like that because unless you did some serious planning and playing against your class, there is no way that you would have the required merit badges unlocked that would allow you to convert from one class to another.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm against respecing period. Now in this game there are always other options that could be implemented. Such as paying a wizard to polymorph you into something else. Wish's to change your stats. Or dying then have someone reincarnate you with the random chance of being something you dont want. All those could conceivably be entered into to this game. But would might have to wait till someone or yourself knows them then pay the cost. In this case it would not be respecing but a game mechanic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ICEruseseyes, I think you're asking in the wrong forum. I'm not really familiar with the forums outside of the Pathfinder Online forum, but it looks like you'd want to post in the Advice forum.
Good luck!
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Goblin Squad Member
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What if you want to be a halfling, but since gnomes won the Crowdforging vote... halfling isn't a choice when the game opens. When halflings get added later, do you have to start all over and be "behind" everyone else?
I think it came up quite a lot back then, and it was indicated that, at least for the core races, there would likely be a way to switch to the newly-available race. Until then, you could just make your name, looks, and roleplaying match your intended core race as closely as possible.
For those who want drow, an inverse-colouration elf may be as close as you get, since drow aren't a core race, which is about as far as the plans I've seen extend.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see respecting allowed when significant changes are made to the underlying skills or in game mechanics.
Something similar to the talent respecs WoW keeps doing every time they redesign there character talent system from scratch.
Lets face it, EE is going to be a beta test.
GW is not omniscient.
They will make mistakes and ned to do balancing changes and the players who supported the game via the kickstarter shouldn't be forced to suffer for GW's mistakes without some form of recovery mechanism.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see respecting allowed when significant changes are made to the underlying skills or in game mechanics.
Something similar to the talent respecs WoW keeps doing every time they redesign there character talent system from scratch.
Lets face it, EE is going to be a beta test.
GW is not omniscient.
They will make mistakes and ned to do balancing changes and the players who supported the game via the kickstarter shouldn't be forced to suffer for GW's mistakes without some form of recovery mechanism.
One thing to factor in however when it came to things like WoW. Your total skills are finite. IE say when a change adds in a new skill, and you've already spent all of your skill points, you CANNOT get that new skill without a respec. In addition of course respecs were common nature of the game. IE if you wanted to be a PVP warrior and a PVE warrior. The skills needed are drastically different. A PVP warrior in PVP, would die on the first AoE or the first time he took agro in PVE, and a PVE warrior would live indefinently in PVP, but his damage would be so low people wouldn't bother to attack him.
PFO on the other hand, if they add in a new skill, your character may absolutely train that skill and keep the skill you took, and in the hypothetical event that the changes they made, turned a skill completely 100% useless, at the very least, it is a bonus to the relevant attribute.
Admitted without kill based XP, my biggest pet peves with respecs is gone. (IE it ticks me off in games when say build X makes levels 1-50 super easy, build Y is best for the long run, and people who use build X are rewarded with build Y despite picking the easy way out).
The greatest issue I do see with respecs in PFO, is how can a respec handle a non-defined blur of classes.
OK we've changed wizard skills.... everyone playing gets to chose from scratch? IE a high level wizard overnight can become a high level barbarian, sounds silly
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see respecting allowed when significant changes are made to the underlying skills or in game mechanics.
Something similar to the talent respecs WoW keeps doing every time they redesign there character talent system from scratch.
Lets face it, EE is going to be a beta test.
GW is not omniscient.
They will make mistakes and ned to do balancing changes and the players who supported the game via the kickstarter shouldn't be forced to suffer for GW's mistakes without some form of recovery mechanism.
EVE never provides Respecs. If they remove skills completely, they give you the credit back. I don't see GW treating a game that's similar in design to EVE as something like WoW that is completely different.
Also, EE is not going to be a Beta. Try again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think people are forgetting that there won't be any sweeping changes to the skills. Since progression is actually time based, there's plenty of time to make sure the skills are right before they're added to the game. Nobody will be able to power level to the top of their skill tree. So the need for Respeccing (completely re-allocating acquired skills) is not needed.
With the addition of new races we will be able to change races...just not the skill package we've already accrued. Any changes in base stat's due to race change will be re-calc'd and plugged in as base amount's for your existing skill's.
Also I vote for NO repec's...not needed with the skill system we'll have.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Kryzbyn
No you won't...your character will be the summation of his life experiences (good choices & bad choices)just like everybody else. You'll be able to talk about the week you decided to try out being a miner..but decided it wasn't for you. You won't have the option of acting like it never happened, ie, replacing that week of Mining experience with Wizard experience.
You won't be able to play for a year and then use all the experience that you, as the player, have acquired to completely re-do all of your skills. That's the ludicrous extreme of Min/Maxxing.
Remember, the base skills will probably be all that are in the game when EE starts. They can better spend their time working on other portions of the game instead of skills that no one can get to for 6 months...because experience is real-time based. Respec's are not going to be needed...honest. Unless you want the crazy Min/Max thing to actually be "a Thing".
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Goblin Squad Member
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That doesn't change the fact that in a competetive game like this, if options you've picked were in error, suddenly changing track to put points in different skills (skills that may not have even been available prior) puts you pretty far back, and you're no longer up with the leaders, due to no fault of your own.
It also doesn't change the fact that no matter how you spin it, that previous real-life time used was a waste.