What about respec costs?
by Elizabeth Harper 
Aug 16th 2007 at 6:24PM
I've heard a lot of arguments in favor of making it easier to respec your character. After all, a particular talent build may let you get into raids but not solo effectively -- and that's never fun. Or perhaps it lets you grind effectively but gives you no viability in your favorite PvP battleground. The ability to respec lets you switch from one speciality to another and allows you to do many things viably -- but at an increasing cost of gold each time you do so. Currently, the cost for a respec maxxes out at 50 gold, which seems like a high enough amount that it's not a completely trivial choice. However, on the forums, poster Murlourin suggests respecs need to more expensive and difficult to obtain. The argument? With the daily quests available in Outland, the gold to respec every day can be easily obtained, making talent differences essentially meaningless, since an interested player can flip back and forth quickly. And while Blizzard has said that they want careful thought to be put into your talent selections, currently they're telling us that they believe respec costs are still fine. Well, here's the chance to voice your opinion -- is gold so easily obtained in Outland that the respec cost has become meaningless? And if so, is that a bad thing for the game as a whole, or does it just allow hybrid classes more versatility?Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Mainstay Aug 16th 2007 6:35PM
Someone tried to bring this up at BlizzCon as well. And yes the daily quests do give you an option to make more money on a regular basis, but it's 12g per daily, which is only ~120g a day and thats only if you have the ability to do Swift Flight. Not only that but doing all the daily quests as a DPS class takes approximately 2 hours give or take depending on which ones you do. Some would consider this an inefficient way to actually earn money. No, leave re-spec costs as they are, I actually wouldn't mind seeing them a bit lower.
Epiny Aug 16th 2007 6:37PM
@1
You sum it up
Rudy Aug 16th 2007 6:38PM
I think keeping the price where it is is perfect, because I think it's a good idea to kind of force the player (With no money) to learn to play. However, if the said player just wants to farm gold and respec right away, hey, he'll be learning about his class a tiny bit.
Randomdruid Aug 16th 2007 6:40PM
I say be allowed 2 specs, but it takes 2 hours to morph into the spec you're trying to change to
Aldric Aug 16th 2007 6:47PM
I'd like to see respec "slots", like hunter pet slots, or bank bag slots. You may freely switch btwn 2 or 3 different builds (maybe with a cooldown) with a large-ish fee for opening up a new slot, and respeccing an existing slot.
Quixote Aug 16th 2007 6:49PM
I think things are relatively fine as they stand right now, however in my perfect world I would implement something slightly different. In my perfect world there would be both an importance on picking the right talents as well as some flexibility.
I believe it would be of great benefit if every single character had room for two different specs. Treat it like a hunter pet stable where you could have one active spec and a second spec stored with a trainer or some other mediator in each city. Switching between these two specs would be as easy as traveling to a city with a trainer and making the switch.
This would let all classes have a solo and raid spec, or a raid and a pvp spec, or whatever combination fits their play style. Gives everyone two play styles and would greatly ease the burden on holy priests, prot tanks, resto shaman, etc. who would like to have a better time at solo pve while also being able to be effective in a group or in pvp.
So, where does the careful choice in talents hail from? Since you now have 2 specs to choose from, make it expensive to actually change them. Start them out cheap, as is done now, and then scale them up exponentially to be hundreds, or perhaps even up to one thousand (or more) gold to actually change it. So, you have a lot of flexibility within two specs, but it's not cheap if you mess up or decide to change your play style.
That's my idea for my perfect world. Especially considering I mainly play prot tanks and holy priests... so I'm not biased or anything or bitter about having a group spec when trying to solo or pvp. Not at all.
Doug Aug 16th 2007 6:52PM
Having to pay big fees for respec'ing may not be that big of a deal when you're level 70 and can pump out 150 G a day with out too much effort, but what about my level 30 alt mage that I'm playing for the first time. I like to be able to experiment with different specs to find the one I like playing most, and its very annoying when its costing me huge amounts of gold at such low levels. Sure I can always use my 70 main to pay these costs for my alts, but then that becomes a huge drain on his bank account for something that doesn't have anything to do with him. I'd say that up through a certain level, respec's should cost considerably less than they do now.
Quixote Aug 16th 2007 6:51PM
*stares @5*
That did NOT just happen... egads.
Nic Aug 16th 2007 6:51PM
@5
That would be pretty interesting
I think the costs are perfect at 50g
Me Aug 16th 2007 6:54PM
The costs are too high, especially as you'll respec MORE along the road from 10-70. Before 60th, 50 gold is not trivial at all. I've found myself respecced on my 56th lock alone at least five times so far, trying to find the build that I enjoy most and fits this playstyle the best. Others in my guild are just the same.
Perhaps an "allowance" of one respect per two months or even each month would be fine, and lower the max cost to 20 gold. Honestly, respeccing has *no* effect on the wider game itself.
In fact, having easy respecs and cheap ones will encourage ever more people to try ever more builds, rather than just the given flavor of the month for whatever class. You can try that Prot/Fury Warrior build you thought was lame, and maybe it was--so you try a 20/10/20 or something. Maybe you really want to see what an all-Arcane mage can do with just a dash of fire.
Easier/much cheaper respec access will encourage diversity immensely.
Marc Aug 16th 2007 6:57PM
I think that the current cost of respec would be fine IF every class could use one spec to be viable in both areas (PvE and PvP). The most obvious issue is with warriors. If a warrior is focused mainly on raiding, protection spec offers very very little viability in PvP. On the other side you have holy paladins who do very well in PvP or PvE. If Blizz can balance out the specs for every class, then the respec cost could go up with few peoblems.
Armath Aug 16th 2007 7:00PM
It might also be interesting to allow partial respecs - pay a trainer to allow you to un-allocate one or more talent points, which you could then re-allocate. This would make it much easier to fine-tune a build without having to totally respec, and then re-learn all the upper level versions of talented abilities.
schroey Aug 16th 2007 7:02PM
@4
Two hours to morph? That's about how long it takes to do dailys. Go get 'em
Noctys Aug 16th 2007 7:11PM
I like the ideas about having slots for a talent build. The biggest cost though that I see is that you have to repay for skills that are related to your build all over again. When I re-spec my Hunter it usually cost me between 15 and 40gp to learn skills all over again, plus the 50gp to re-spec.
piisexactly3 Aug 16th 2007 7:19PM
How about this:
1 respec with a 24 hour cooldown + respec quest
(Hear me out)
The respec quest can look at where the majority of your talent points are and give you a spec appropriate quest (Ie, if youre resto/holy you have to go someplace to heal an escort quest or whatever). The quests would be similar in time / effort to the swift flight form druid questline, minus the heroic instance run (or round it out at about an hours worth or time and travel).
On the plus side, this wouldn't cut into your daily quest earnings / epic mount savings, yet still it would require effort on the players part... actually more effort b/c your broke guildy couldnt simply ask to borrow 50g to respec to raid, s/he would have to invest time :-). Additionally, if blizz put some time into a solid design like this, the quests could also be tutorials for how to play your freaking class, which is something EVERYONE NEEDS (including me). Imagine a warrior quest where you have to keep aggro off your healer for 30 mins, or a mage quest where any of the multiple mobs will 1 shot you if they touch you.
Braz Aug 16th 2007 7:20PM
I think we have established by now that for anything in WoW that is annoying or inconvenient, someone, somewhere will propose that the annoying/inconvenient thing should be made even more annoying and inconvenient for some bizzare reason.
I agree with those who would like more flexibility in the respec system, whether that is through easier respeccing, or through greater versatility built into the talent trees. I personally have not tried all of the builds for my favorite classes, and I would like the opportunity to do so through an improved respec system.
Rob Aug 16th 2007 7:27PM
I think current system is fine. 50g isn't chump change, but for those who want to raid/pvp at level 70 this makes it not so painful. Further the initial cost is only 10s. Really, this is one of the most strategized portions of the game, it shouldn't be too hard to find the few optimal specs that exist for your class.
Verit Aug 16th 2007 8:19PM
In City of Heroes they give out free respecs for people who have played the game for a long time.
I don't think players should be able to swap specs on the fly though. With my warlock that would be brutal in Arena or BG. certain opponents it would be nice to be demonology spec, or full affliction for other opponents (mages and priests...).
Cowsoup Aug 16th 2007 9:16PM
As a druid I have to respec back and forth a couple times a week depending on what spots need to be filled in the raid.. Healer... Tank....and back again. Put repair costs and flasks on top of that and I probably spend 20% of my time raiding and trying to see new content and 80% of my time being bored out of my skull grinding the same old sh1t again and again to pay for it. Its a game..doesn't that mean Im supposed to have fun the majority of the time?
Bluelightnin Aug 16th 2007 9:22PM
I would like to see a quest chain that ends with a trinket reward that holds a set off-spec build. This would allow certain classes to have a viable pvp and healing build, yet lock you in to two builds. Losing a trinket spot would add a cost adn a cool-down on equiping could prevent on the fly swap outs in arenas or BGs.