Way less feedback due of respeccing costs....

Hi,

changing skills cost too much...consequence nobody try new spec and change build... -> you will have way way less feedback and dynamics to have an idea about bugs and how to balance stuff...

Solution: No money for respeccing in Pre-Alpha (...if you want more and better feedback...)

Bye

 

Perhaps they're trying to test the economic effects on skill progression.

 

What - by making everyone so poor they can't train their skills? =P

Example from yesterday: I managed to kill an ebon champion after a bit of a struggle. I got a lot of XP, immediately went up a level. But the only loot it had was 5 gold and a rusty sword. So I haven't really leveled because I can't afford to train anything. I am currently sitting on about 40 skill points I have no way of using due to the enormous disparity between XP gain and loot.

When the game goes lives there will be alllllllllll the taxes and gold sinks on top of that that people here have been pushing for which would make the problem worse. So they really need to look at balancing rewards at some point.

 

Exactly, maybe now you have to find other ways of boosting your income, perhaps more crafting and selling your wares, i.e. does crafting versus pure fighter lead to an imbalance in skill progression?

 

Forcing everyone to be a crafter is not a solution.

 

Even if you find the way to make big money it has no sense having to pay for respeccing in pre-alpha...I wanted to test several builds for PVP-PVE....and I will not of course....and like me also a lot of other players would like... -> instead of finding a bug/unbalance in a day we will need to wait for months...

 

My main point is that what the players want to test and what the developers want to test aren't necessarily the same thing.

 

Are you telling that after all this talking about how crappy ,unbalanced and incomplete the combat system (PVE and PVP) is they still do not have it as a priority?

 

Devs stated before that easy and cheap respec is in fact not helping with testing. Players used to buy skills and discard them right away if they didn't like them. They want us to stick to the skills that we choose for at least a little while longer so they can collect more data about using them. Simple as that.

 

Do you expect anything different in R20, with this switching skill cost, than people playing mainly the build they find out worked for them in R19?

 

Yes because a) they did play the same build whole R19 and they might be bored (there were even threads asking for advice what to try this release), and b) everyone knows there are many changes and balancing in R20 that makes people try stuff they didn't like before (archery in this release is a great example)

 

At first I felt that way, but then I got into what was going on. Sure we all want to be tough right now and have it all right now, me too, well at first, but then I realized we ere getting a true taste of the game, what it is to work and develop our characters and stop the mad rush. There are shortcuts of course with guilds probably etc. I am just getting into it. We have 3 months to play without a wipe, well perhaps and we really never know, but 3 months sounds good as a goal for me. And I am finding plenty of bugs anyway. If I run out of cash while training thats all the tougher I get to be right then. That is how the game will be. Well just my thoughts this release, I love it.

 

I think this argument is flawed...you don't make people using a skill that they don't like because they don't have the money to respec....you make them use it fixing it...that's way later you made the example of archery....people don't start using it because you force them to use it but because they improved it and now it is more effective for PVE...

 

You do realize that the skill fixes come mostly from the data collected from skill usage, right? They need to compare the statistics with different skills. The simple "people don't use this skill" doesn't make it easy to fix. They need data about when people use it, in what situations, how much damage/heal/something it does compared to other skills the players use, etc. It helps them understand why players decide to drop it and HOW to fix it properly (just the right amount instead of guessing blindly and possibly overpowering the skill).

 

They don't need data for that...when? in every PVP o PVE situation....there is no need to change tactics against monsters....I don't even look at what I have in front of me....how much damage/heal? ....well if they need data (and if they need...come on how much?) to know how much on average the spells/heal that they created do we are in big trouble...

 

They do know the actual amount it heals/damages etc. because they coded this in themselves. It's more about the actual usage and seeing what other skills players prefer and why. Some things are not obvious on paper, especially when you have 100s of skills to manage. Putting such data on nice charts makes it easy to pinpoint and fix problems.

 

You contradicted yourself in 2 important points:

1: First you say they need the data to see how much damage/heal...and than you they do not need that...
2:Than you say they have high switching skill cost so people are forced to stick to them....than you say that is important to gauge "what other skills players prefer and why" and that of course is less evident if you "force" them to not change easily to what they prefer...

Now I'm confused....

 

Heal/damage and the entire skill system itself is gonna have an overhaul soon.

The cost currently is annoying at first, but will be irelevant soon. There will be a whole new way to make it difficult for you to swap skills at will.

I like it, it's making it difficult to min/max.

 

Without arguing about min/maxing (I think that who want to do it still will whatever the rules/dynamics, and the harder it gets to do it the better the reward to do it...) it will be way more wiser to make it difficult in official release to swap skills not now when we have to test and "balance" everything...

Moreover the more difficult it will be to swap skills in official release the more people that are playing alpha will be heavily advantaged....I like it...

 

Sorry for beeing unclear. I have hard time explaining what's on my mind
High switching cost doesn't mean that players can't switch to other skills. It means they use the skill they buy more before they change it and therefore both provide more data about it and have a chance to get the know skill better, possibly learning that it's not as bad as they thought.