The min/maxing stage itself results in a continuous series of minor adjustments. These addup.
EDIT: Furthermore, new players have no real idea on how they want their end game toon to look like (no offence to any who might be reading this :P). After all, it’s a continuous process of finding a playstyle you’re good at/enjoy as well as the items you self-find.
Restricting their ability to explore the lovely mechanics GD has to offer IMO restricts them from understanding the real depth of the game. Perhaps the cost should not be lowered insofar as the rate at which the cost increases.
That’s true, especially with the fact that you can’t change mastery choice. You will need to adjust just some few skills to try different things.
And the cost is trivial, almost none-existent when you make your first changes. I had to double check, and it’s 25 Iron Bits at start, then 50 after some good changes, then 100, then 200… etc
The character I modified many times, changing entire skills have that 200 cost… So I imagine 15000 is unrealistic cost, you must have made a thousand change or something to reach this. If you need that many adjustment and still can’t be satisfied, then something is obviously wrong, just start another character already! (As I did)
What actually happens is that you end up with players having a single high level char they simply re-spec into whatever build they want to try at that moment and thus they miss any depth of the game and building a char from scratch instead of creating max level char xzy.
Not only that but if re-spec is too cheap then players will be able to change their build to suit the boss they are about to attack and thus the game will have to be balanced around players being able to re-spec to the most advantageous build to suit each encounter and that’s totally against the idea of the game…which is that all classes can clear the game, not that you have to be this build for this boss and the swap to that build for that boss.
Grim Dawn isn’t about having a single max level char and simply swapping from possible build to build on the fly.
Believe you me, in the process to make my unorthodox breaker beat gladiator 170 with no buffs, etc. - I did change things at least a thousand times.
Say I equip an item, and I want to compare maxed maivens vs maxed ABB. I do crucible once with maxed maivens. I then move those same 10 points back into maiven and do curcible again.
But something feels a little off. Ok. Perhaps my devotions. So I tweak it there (which btw involves me removing points from my tier 3s first. I can’t willy nilly shift points how I want to - and that’s fine in my book, it’s just pricey). This process can therefore take maybe 15 - 20 refunds.
Day 2. I think I’m onto something, but want to compare this new devotion path I have with my previous gear. This process repeats itself.
Yes, I think I can quite easily achieve 100s if not a thousand refunds in the min max process given my objective to beat crucy ‘naked.’
And you know what? That’s totally fine. That’s on me. I can accept that cost.
But it’s not fair to new players who don’t have a large item pool or resources.
Wanting to try crazy (and perhaps even inefficient builds) is all part and parcel of the learning curve. I just don’t think the rate at which this refund cost increases is fair.
Jaknet, Elnawawi and me - we are all seasoned players.
Just take the word of worblehat who’s relatively new to the game. Surely his perspective must count for something.
That’s completely backwards, but then again as a long-time Borderlands 2 player of course I’d say that. Huge respec costs mean that I miss out on much of the depth of GD. I’m not going to level two characters of the same class - I don’t have that kind of time. So if a particular class has multiple potentially interesting build setups, I’ll do one and that’s it. If respec costs were sensible, at some point I’d move a ton of points around and try another.
For example, my first character is a S&B cadence commando. From what I see in the Build Compendiums, forcewave commando is also a thing and might be interesting, but it’s not worth thousands of iron to find out, and many more thousands to switch back if I prefer the S&B build (which I probably would).
I’m assuming here that money is actually an important resource. I’ve seen multiple posts along the lines of “I had a ton of money, then I did some crafting and now I’m broke again”, so that’s why my impression is that burning a ton of bits on respecs is to be avoided as much as possible. If that’s not the case and money is a mostly meaningless number, objection withdrawn.
I think the UI would do a lot to discourage the kind of encounter-specific respecs you’re talking about. It would be worth it (cost permitting) to try a new skill or experiment to see how things actually work, but not IMO to get a slight advantage over That Boss Right There.
My preference would be for the cost to scale with level only, with no cumulative lifetime respec cost increase (I’ve never seen this before in other games, but cost proportional to level is quite standard). Let low level characters move their skill points all over the place as much as they like to experiment, see what works, how it works, etc. And high level characters could do a major respec but the cost would not be completely negligible (but also not punitively extreme). I’d consider c*level to be pretty reasonable, with the constant c somewhere between 1-10.
Speaking of things that aren’t going to happen with respecs, it would also be nice if the AoM ability to respec points out of the mastery bar would be retrofitted into the base game. That screwed me a bit on one of my characters for a few levels…
Strongly disagree with this. Studying up on mechanics and stuff is fine, sure, but if from the very start of the game you follow in the footsteps of someone else, you’ll never make the mistakes they did and will not have the opportunity to learn from them as they did. Very often do I see people who’ve been at the game for dozens or even hundreds of hours who do not know how to craft their own characters because they’ve simply been looking at build guides from the instant they bought the game.
It’s perfectly fine to muck up your first character. My first seven characters were abysmally bad. But there was more to learn from leveling them than can be gleamed from any guide published to these forums, my guides included.
It takes a whole damned lot of respecs to get to that point. Anyone with complaints about the respec cost isn’t worth considering really. The system itself is there primarily for noobs to fix mistakes and do some light experimentation. It’s extremely lenient when used as intended. Experienced players who know what to expect from the game will almost never respec except for Devotions. For my part I’ve only ever needed to respec skills rarely, usually if I happened to change my mind about what I want to do early on. If you’ve gotten to the point where it’s costing you thousands to respec 1 point, well then, you’ve been a busy little bee now haven’t ya?
If you are a “noob” doing “endgame” tweaking/fine-tuning… you are at a point in the game where you can both afford the costs and recoup/regain the costs very easily which imo ends any possible complaints on the issue.
Let low level characters move their skill points all over the place as much as they like to experiment, see what works, how it works, etc. And high level characters could do a major respec but the cost would not be completely negligible (but also not punitively extreme). I’d consider c*level to be pretty reasonable, with the constant c somewhere between 1-10.
Okay. Fair assessment, and one I can get on board with.
Very often do I see people who’ve been at the game for dozens or even hundreds of hours who do not know how to craft their own characters because they’ve simply been looking at build guides from the instant they bought the game.
Couldn’t agree more here.
In addition, blindly following the a guide will result in a MASSIVE waste if time - why? Because most of the guides posted on this forum are extremely item specific. Often times they rely on stonehide of kings, MI rings, etc. etc. etc.
The purples alone are going to be hard af for any new character to get.
What then happens is hours of investment into a toon which is lackluster, not because the toon itself is bad, but because it lacks the necessary items to shine.
Players will then repeat this process and find another guide start this process all over again.
As such, the player will spend more time levelling than building up a solid item pool.
The exception is some rare items called “Moster infrequents” or “MI”, which are moderately good items dropping from some specific bosses or monsters, and are okay for leveling, not top end game though.
WHAT! MI’s with baller affixes are literally BiS for MANY builds.
Agree, but success is progress as well. For those who hate “studying” mechanisms and prefer to learn along while playing and experiencing the game, it’s good to find a tested build and play along your first few playthrough. Or prefer to limit the unknown factors and narrow them down, until they get hold of the game, before theory crafting.
It’s perfectly fine to muck up your first character.
True, but I don’t like that, first character is too early for me to theorycraft. If I wanted to go deep unprepared, I’d get game at launch. But as I waited couple years to get it, people have experimented a lot, and I like to learn from them, no shame to have the way paved for me for couple playthrough.
Though I still experiment within the build, making my own modified version as go, but my own unique builds comes later, not at first. It’s just a different approach.
That’s why build Compendium have a rank for gear dependency for every build (G1, G2, … , G5). Plus you don’t have to follow the guide blindly as we discussed earlier, people can make their own adjustment while following a certain concept. Some are forced adjustments, since they would have diffrent items than the build owner, while some will be preferences, like someone loving a devotion proc over other.
In the end, you don’t need to be 100% optimized to be efficient. And not everyone play hardcore.
WHAT! MI’s with baller affixes are literally BiS for MANY builds.
Sorry, my wording isn’t perfect. I mean all the MIs players will get tons of while leveling, the ones without these certain specific exact affixes, which are most of MI? New players shouldn’t bother farming for these affixes anyway. They most likely don’t know the whole thing, that’s for top level optimization.
There are a number of exception ofc, like ABB Frostburn Blademaster would always find the one handed MIs from Undead to be best in slot from level one until he finds a Crescent Moon. Or some of the MIs added/modified with the expansion, but I’m trying to keep the OP simple.
If you strongly believe this will lead to misinformation, please let me know and I’ll rewrite that part.
If you strongly believe this will lead to misinformation, please let me know and I’ll rewrite that part.
I think it might mate. Putting in a few words to clarify things like, ‘Without the proper affixes, most MI’s in the game are moderately good items dropping from some specific bosses or monsters, and are okay for leveling, not top end game though.’
I can sort of see this, but let’s say I want to respec my L100 Conjurer petmancer into a Vitality Conjurer. Yes I can respec all the skill and devotion points, but the deovtions are going to be completely different from what a petmancer needs. So I assume (since I don’t respec much anyway) that all the new devotions are going to be at L1 - doesn’t sound much use to an L100 Vitality Conjurer facing Ultimate foes, heroes and nemesis.
And by the time I hit L100 I was halfway through the Asterkarn Valley so not that much of the game left to play with a new build.
It’s not that difficult to get to a decent level quickly after a full respec, with the aid of the xp potion and a few dungeons. You’ll be maxed out well before you complete that Alkamos ring set
Ah, but I’ve never found/seen that potion and I don’t tend to venture into the dungeons very often - too dangerous! Is that potion available in Normal and Elite or only in Ultimate. If the latter, again seems too little to make much difference.
And why would you need the potion anyway if you’re already L100? It’s not going to gain you any more XP.
@OP - the last bullet point about faction rep might also benefit from a few words about nemesis rep. As my first character approaches level cap it looks like few if any enemy factions will naturally reach nemesis, and thus that the player should continue picking up convenient bounties even after reaching all-revered rep with the friendly factions. But maybe I’m missing something; I’m sure experienced folks will chime in if so. I’d be tempted to ignore nemeses, but I’ve read that they’re one of the better ways to get blueprints.
Actually, you just made a pretty convincing argument that I should go ahead and do exactly this sort of wholesale respec. My first character has been super-slow lately because the third cycle through the content treadmill is extremely boring (I really wish this subgenre would design around only two playthroughs per character instead of three…). But switching from S&B commando to forcewave commando would mix things up and add a bit of novelty, plus that character’s trip to BoC resulted in a Shar’zul’s Worldeater which looks rather good for such a build (and is a useless but decorative trophy for the S&B build).
Not too worried about low devotion proc levels. The devotions for the S&B build are almost all maxed out already, so why not put the xp to work on a different set of devotions? The xp reward from quests in ultimate is high enough that the new ones should bump up to reasonable levels quickly.
Um. :undecided: All my devotions are already maxed out except for Will of Rattosh which is 14 of 15. So not going to gain anything there. Guess it depends on how quickly you reach Revered to be able to buy the potion.
My Conjurer didn’t do many bounties and he’s got 8 Revered factions and 4 Nemesis on pretty much a straight playthrough. 3 factiions do have bonus rep on them. Worst of all is Cronley’s Gang who is still only Despised level and that is with doing some Rover bounties to be able to get the Mogdrogen shrine quest at Honored in Normal difficulty.
Going by my suggested change from a petmancer to a Vitality Conjurer say I changed when he hit L100 - he would have had the remaining part of Act 4 to do and then the expansion. What am I going to do with him after that - bearing in mind I don’t farm since it’s boring as hell for me. Rerun Ultimate again with no quests to do? Boring again. I don’t think I’d particularly enjoy changing a toon so late in the game, much more fun to make a new one and start all over again. But these things are always a personal choice and I can see how respeccing can appeal to some people who don’t want to take the time to do that.
The other problem for me personally is motivation to continue to play a toon after hitting L100. This is something I’ve never come up against before since being a TQIT fan it’s a lot of work to reach that game’s level cap. My Conjurer is L100 and I still haven’t actually finished GD yet. He has the last few quests to do in Malmouth, but I’m finding myself saying what’s the point? I’m not gaining XP, more skill and devotion points, etc. My toon is done, finished, nothing I can do to improve him now so why continue? If I used an XP potion I’d reach that point even sooner and not sure I’d want to continue once I did. For me this is a concern with a second expanion on the horizon, given that we’re not getting any increase in level or devotion points.
Huge respec costs mean that I miss out on much of the depth of GD. I’m not going to level two characters of the same class - I don’t have that kind of time. So if a particular class has multiple potentially interesting build setups, I’ll do one and that’s it. If respec costs were sensible, at some point I’d move a ton of points around and try another.
Is that potion available in Normal and Elite or only in Ultimate. If the latter, again seems too little to make much difference.