respec

[jrmunch]

Not sure if this has been proposed before, but I would love the ability to redistribute talent / stat points.

[itastelikelove]

I'll second that - I've been playing an alchemist lately, and both the alchemist and the golem have attacks that will injure the other. And those seem to be their favorite attacks...whichever one i control, i'm always getting smacked around by my "partner"

[Final Master]

Why?

[itastelikelove]

Why should we be able to respec? Because it's easier than starting a whole new character and bringing it all the way up to the same level, because you decided that a talent you spent several points on earlier in the game just isn't as useful as it could be. It would help out new players a whole lot, but even people who have been playing for a while can make bad choices, especially when trying out new classes or talents (antimagic). It would also let you test the effectiveness of different builds without starting over from level 1.

It wouldn't have to be easy, or cheap, but I think having some way to respec would be helpful for newbies and encourage experimentation.

[Postman]

Kind of disrupting balance. Situations require different talents, ad respec would cause minimaxing of talents for current continent or even cave/quest. Some compromise solution would be special quest for one-time limited points redistribution.

[marchewka]

The idea itself is EXCELLENT.

However, to prevent tactical minmaxing of talents, the redistribution should burn some resource. It could be money, it could be time. It could for example require one to bring (1+floor(level/15)) artifacts to the Wizened Old Hermit.

Or maybe the hermit would be sitting in his shack atop a mountaintop, the entrance being a single no-teleport map being a random walk along a mountain path, with road blocked my mountain lions (RUSH/BLINDING SPEED), skeletal treants (normal treants just with TORMENT talent + HARDENED + WEATHERED) and ice drakes (ICE CLAW / ICY SKIN).
At the end of the path, there's a predefined vault - a house basically, with three polar bears in the porch. (the entrance is also 3-tile wide, so all 3 can get to you once you open it). Past that, there's only the hermit, who asks for artifacts, and allows to "withdraw" up to <number of artifacts brought> talents?
Of course levels of monsters on the map would increase with player levels.

[jrmunch]

For beta testing purposes I would like to respec at will.

For post-beta I would like a system smilar to what Shadowbane implemented (In that game there was a similar problem - if you could just remake your entire build every 5 minutes that would be game-breaking).

The cost to respec a single talent point would be in gold.

The cost would double for each point respec'd.

The cost would be cut in half every 6 hours of real-world time.

Stat points and talent points could be respec'd but were each on different timers.


In this way if you are just changing a point here or there you can do so at nominal cost. If you are changing your entire build at once the cost is essentially impossible to meet all at once, but you could do so at a manageable cost with the tradeoff of waiting for time to pass.

[Sirrocco]

I'd make respeccing a component of easy mode and possibly adventure mode. At that point you can make it a reasonably easy thing to do. That way, people who are going with the philosophy of "play, die, learn, play again" have their choices being permanent, while people who are exploring the game and want to be able to recover from their mistakes can... recover from their mistakes.

[ikarius]

I appreciate Sirrocco's ideas of tying respecs to difficulty level. I'd like to see a limited number of respecs allowed in Adventure mode, similar to the lives system, probably allowing fewer respecs than lives. I think 1 @ birth, and half the number of respecs gained over levels as lives? Some folks might use the respecs tactically, but many others would benefit from this by easing up "choice paralysis", where they are afraid to spend points as they are uncertain of the comparative utility of various talents.

[yufra]

If we want to tie respecing with the discovery and adventure modes maybe it could be offered by the Eidolon? It could make sense thematically (if it can rescue you from death, why not have the power to respec you), the cost is obvious (you have to spend a life getting there) and strategically (if you find yourself in the middle of a battle that your current stat/talent distribution make difficulty you immediately get to test a new build).

EDIT: Fixed typos.

[Grey]

That certainly works well thematically.

[madmonk]

Why should we be able to respec? Because it's easier than starting a whole new character and bringing it all the way up to the same level, because you decided that a talent you spent several points on earlier in the game just isn't as useful as it could be. It would help out new players a whole lot, but even people who have been playing for a while can make bad choices, especially when trying out new classes or talents (antimagic). It would also let you test the effectiveness of different builds without starting over from level 1.

It wouldn't have to be easy, or cheap, but I think having some way to respec would be helpful for newbies and encourage experimentation.

I don't like this idea, this opens up the possibility of people redistributing points from talents that were useful in the early game) to more useful stuff now. That sort of abuse would most definitely occur...

Consider the scenario where a mage invests in Freeze heavily in the early to mid game. Say she maxes it... So now I can use the respec facility to reduce my 5 point investiture in Freeze back to 1 point (I don't use it anymore) and redeploy it to more useful talents.

[yufra]

I don't like this idea, this opens up the possibility of people redistributing points from talents that were useful in the early game) to more useful stuff now. That sort of abuse would most definitely occur...

Do you dislike the idea of tying this to the discovery/adventure modes? I can understand not wanting it in the roguelike mode.

[madmonk]

Do you dislike the idea of tying this to the discovery/adventure modes? I can understand not wanting it in the roguelike mode.

If the potential for abuse could be solved then I would be quite happy to have it in any mode as long as the conditions mentioned above were adhered to.

It's a great idea I just don't like the abuse possibilities...

[itastelikelove]

I kind of like yufra's idea (assuming it works the way I think it does) - one chance to respec per extra life. I was thinking earlier about giving the player a chance to respec each time they die, but it's even harder to abuse if you have to spend an extra life without using it to resurrect first. And it could be made to work for Roguelike players, too, if they have the Blood of Life or the Ring of Death. Maybe those Items could only be used to buy a respec in you deliver them to some sort of shrine to the Eidolon (no drinking the Blood "just in case", and then using it to respec later).

Additionally (or alternatively), it could be made to function by removing all talent points spent on just a single tree. Narrowing the scope of the respec should help reduce the ease of abuse a bit.

Another idea: Without tying it to lives, you could limit it by having it only remove the talent points from the last talent you bought into in any given tree. And not for the same tree again, until you buy into the next talent further along. Thus, if you put any points at all into Tidal Wave, you can never get your Freeze points back...but if you give your golem Pound and realize that you're spending three out of every ten rounds dazed and damaged, then maybe there's something you can do about that.

OR! (sorry, i kept thinking while i was typing...bad habit, i know...) every five levels, you get a chance to remove one talent point from anywhere, on a use-it-or-lose-it basis. If you hit level 30 and decide you're done with Freeze, you can still get those points back, but it'll take you twenty levels.