Can you respec?

[Elerond]

 

1) "They've avoided trap choices".

 

I think you will understand my skepticism here. I can't even count the games (computer and tabletop) where the designers claim they've "avoided trap choices" and the like, yet, when you actually play them, they've got plenty of them. And yes always the fans of the game will say "Oh that's theoretical rubbish!" until two months post-release when they're writing an angry post about how unbalanced Ability X is!

 

If they've achieved it, awesome, and the whole issue will become merely "how well did we explain abilities" instead, but like, I'll believe it when I've seen it.

I've seen it. I just haven't been able to make a character that's anywhere close to unplayable, other than the ranger in one of the BB's which was because the ranger class was borderline unplayable.

 

Again, there are plenty of balance issues there for sure, but nothing close to genuine trap choices à la quarterstaff specialization in IWD or, say, Toughness, Great Fortitude, a couple of Skill Focuses and CHA 18/STR 10 for a D&D3 fighter. As far as I can tell anyway.

 

 

You can build characters that aren't fun to play and they are awful in every aspect of combat, making them just burden for rest of party.  

 

And I disagree you with ranger, as ranger is pretty good class, even though they aren't necessary best in what they do, but they have some quite fun aspects on them and they work fine as somewhat passive ranged damage dealers if you take bit care how you use their pet.

[Namutree]

There's another problem with respec being available that I haven't seen anyone address yet. How easily it could be exploited.

 

Player: The enemies in this dungeon all attack my WILL defense. Better respec my two tanks to focus more on their INT and RES. *Easily massacre's dungeon due to using the respec to hard counter the dungeon*

 

Player: Why is this dungeon so EASY!? This game is boring!

[Voss]

 

1) "They've avoided trap choices".

 

I think you will understand my skepticism here. I can't even count the games (computer and tabletop) where the designers claim they've "avoided trap choices" and the like, yet, when you actually play them, they've got plenty of them. And yes always the fans of the game will say "Oh that's theoretical rubbish!" until two months post-release when they're writing an angry post about how unbalanced Ability X is!

 

If they've achieved it, awesome, and the whole issue will become merely "how well did we explain abilities" instead, but like, I'll believe it when I've seen it.

I've seen it. I just haven't been able to make a character that's anywhere close to unplayable, other than the ranger in one of the BB's which was because the ranger class was borderline unplayable.

 

Again, there are plenty of balance issues there for sure, but nothing close to genuine trap choices à la quarterstaff specialization in IWD or, say, Toughness, Great Fortitude, a couple of Skill Focuses and CHA 18/STR 10 for a D&D3 fighter. As far as I can tell anyway.

 

Stuff and nonsense.  There are a lot of trap choices, and the blatantly bad builds like your fighter example are obviously present.  Take, for example, an 18 con/17 Per wizard with one handed sword and only circumstantial defensive and utility talents.  The talents alone are absolutely brim filled with genuine traps, far more than actually useful stuff.

 

Add in the counterintuitive design and other elements that are intentionally (but stealthily) different from the norm (for no other reason than to be different, from what I can tell), and I can easily see character creation being a trainwreck for the unsuspecting.

 

I fully expect at least one early review to pull out the Admiral Ackbar meme for this one. 

Edited March 21, 2015 by Voss

[PrimeJunta]

Stuff and nonsense.  There are a lot of trap choices, and the blatantly bad builds like your fighter example are obviously present.  Take, for example, an 18 con/17 Per wizard with one handed sword and only circumstantial defensive and utility talents.  The talents alone are absolutely brim filled with genuine traps, far more than actually useful stuff.

Have you tried playing one? I've played the "blatantly bad" fighter I mentioned, and it was a long way from unplayable. Not as effective as a better-built fighter, but he was getting the job done just fine.

 

Add in the counterintuitive design and other elements that are intentionally (but stealthily) different from the norm (for no other reason than to be different, from what I can tell), and I can easily see character creation being a trainwreck for the unsuspecting.

 

I fully expect at least one early review to pull out the Admiral Ackbar meme for this one.

I guess we'll see when we'll see.

[Luckmann]

 

Stuff and nonsense.  There are a lot of trap choices, and the blatantly bad builds like your fighter example are obviously present.  Take, for example, an 18 con/17 Per wizard with one handed sword and only circumstantial defensive and utility talents.  The talents alone are absolutely brim filled with genuine traps, far more than actually useful stuff.

Have you tried playing one? I've played the "blatantly bad" fighter I mentioned, and it was a long way from unplayable. Not as effective as a better-built fighter, but he was getting the job done just fine.

 

I have yet to see a game that becomes unplayable just because you take a trap choice. A trap choice is anything that does nothing to improve the character's abilities or capacities, or makes them actively worse. This doesn't mean that the character becomes suddenly completely and utterly useless.

 

The fact that the game can still be completed with sub-optimal choices doesn't mean that it's balanced. Just because a Talent or Attribute doesn't eat your hedgehog and set fire to your living room doesn't mean that it's not a trap choice.

[KingNee]

I'll just quickly add that if one misreads the topics as "respect",

then all the hell no! negativity can be real puzzling at first.

 

R.E.S.P.E.C....C.. find out what it means to me. 

[Ohioastro]

There's another problem with respec being available that I haven't seen anyone address yet. How easily it could be exploited.

 

Player: The enemies in this dungeon all attack my WILL defense. Better respec my two tanks to focus more on their INT and RES. *Easily massacre's dungeon due to using the respec to hard counter the dungeon*

 

Player: Why is this dungeon so EASY!? This game is boring!

That's a problem with infinite free respec, not one with having it at all.

[PrimeJunta]

I have yet to see a game that becomes unplayable just because you take a trap choice. A trap choice is anything that does nothing to improve the character's abilities or capacities, or makes them actively worse. This doesn't mean that the character becomes suddenly completely and utterly useless.

Quarterstaff-specialized fighter in IWD. The only magical quarterstaff usable by a fighter is the Staff of the Hand, which is random loot and does not always show up. This is close enough to "completely and utterly useless" in my book.

 

Again, IME the less-than-optimal choices in P:E character mechanics are nowhere near this level.

[ddillon]

Also not a fan of respec. I remember the very first time I played NWN2, and heard about Khelgar's quest to become a monk, so when leveling him up I did all I could to make that viable. Then he got monk and woo, complete respec. I felt gypped.

Can't sympathize with you there: You were metagaming based on spoilers. Almost seems a case of "just desserts" imo...

 

Been a while (a long while), but iirc: Without the option to respec, Khelgar's class change would have more-or-less required metagaming to be a viable choice, and that strikes me as very poor design.

 

What might have been nice: Instead of gaining directly selected ability increases during level ups, his ability increases could have been assigned based on which path you influence him towards during conversations. Then when he is presented with the choice to become a monk, he could naturally have appropriate stats if you've influenced him towards that path.

 

Or just cut the whole class-change bit because it doesn't work well under that ruleset.

[PrimeJunta]

 

Also not a fan of respec. I remember the very first time I played NWN2, and heard about Khelgar's quest to become a monk, so when leveling him up I did all I could to make that viable. Then he got monk and woo, complete respec. I felt gypped.

Can't sympathize with you there: You were metagaming based on spoilers. Almost seems a case of "just desserts" imo...

 

On the contrary. I did not know a full respec was involved. I assumed that Khelgar would eventually become a monk as he kept going on about it, so I tried to build up to that, whenever it would happen. It's actually one of the few things that genuinely interested me the first time I played it, and I actively looked for temples, monasteries, and what have you to help it along.

[Meretrelle]

I seriously hope there will be a respec mod.

 

It would be nice especially considering that this crpg is pretty complex which is a good thing in my book. I know that quite a few players don't like having it in single player RPGs and they probably think it should be only in MMORPGs but as for me I just don't see the harm in having this feature available.Sometimes I did wish it was there when I was playing old gold-box series CRPGS and others back then

 

 In my experience there is nothing worse than taking this or that ability and learning that they are not that good or utterly useless in ur current party setup sometimes to a point where you have to restart the game. And unlike good old days when I was a student I just don't have enough free time to waste on this anymore.
The more complex the game in regard to RPG mechanics the higher the chance of fraking things up. Especially when playing a new game coz no one really knows what's what.

 

If you don't wanna do respecs and it makes you feel somehow superior and all old-school and sh-t then simply don't  do it. Problem solved.

 

I've been playing all kinda of CRPGS starting from the ones made pre-1990 and having respec in a role-playing game doesn't bother me and I consider it as a nice bonus.

[Luckmann]

On the contrary. I did not know a full respec was involved. I assumed that Khelgar would eventually become a monk as he kept going on about it, so I tried to build up to that, whenever it would happen. It's actually one of the few things that genuinely interested me the first time I played it, and I actively looked for temples, monasteries, and what have you to help it along.

This happened to me too, so I call bogus on the metagaming accusation. I had no idea that my choices would suddenly be invalidated.

Edited March 21, 2015 by Luckmann

[Stun]

I have yet to see a game that becomes unplayable just because you take a trap choice. A trap choice is anything that does nothing to improve the character's abilities or capacities, or makes them actively worse. This doesn't mean that the character becomes suddenly completely and utterly useless.

 

The fact that the game can still be completed with sub-optimal choices doesn't mean that it's balanced. Just because a Talent or Attribute doesn't eat your hedgehog and set fire to your living room doesn't mean that it's not a trap choice.

I completely agree with this. And this is an argument I used to make to Sawyer all the time.

 

There is a HUGE difference between a bad/sub-optimal build and an unviable build, and I wish people would stop using the two concepts interchangeably. A bad build can and does happen all the time and is typically the result of the player's lack of knowledge and experience with the game's mechanics and rule set. A game can still be beaten with a bad build. On the other hand, an unviable build is an extremely rare thing that I personally have never seen in any game I've ever played. When it does occur, it is the developer's fault. If a build is unviable it means that the game cannot be beaten with it.

 

 

Often times, when Josh Sawyer and his disciples criticize The IE games, or D&D, they make claims of "trap choices", and they argue that you could mis-build a character/party in those games and end up dead ended. They literally suggest that you could find yourself in a situation where the game is uncompletable because of your build choices. This is, by definition, a false claim. A demonstrably false claim since all conceivable build options have been done in the IE games on every difficulty, and have resulted in the player successfully beating the game.

 

Playing Icewind Dale with a quarterstaff-specialized fighter? Of course it can be done. You start the game with a quarterstaff. Shops sell quarterstaves +1, then there's the quarterstaff +2, and Splendards Protector (which I'm pretty sure anyone can use, but I could be mistaken), and the Staff of the Hand. In fact, in Icewind Dale, quarterstaves are considered Blunt weapons, which means you'll be doing full damage against all undead with the quarter Staff +1 that you can buy from Conlan in Kuldahar.

 

Not that it matters. Contrary to popular belief, Fighters can still use weapons they're not proficient in. in fact, if your Quarterstaff grandmaster quaffs a potion of speed, then quaffs a potion of Heroism, then quaffs a potion of storm giant strength, then uses a +2 dagger (with no proficiencies in it), his THAC0 will be ZERO, he'll have 2 attacks per round, and he'll do upwards of 20 points of damage per hit against Belhifet....the Game's final boss. He will of course, do quite a bit more damage per round if he does all of the above with a +2 quarterstaff. And even more if he's got a cleric, bard, or Mage in his party to further Buff him up.

Edited March 21, 2015 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

[Edit: NVM, not getting into this discussion again.]

Edited March 21, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Been meaning to replay IWD1 for a while now. Think I'll create a Fighter specialising in Quarterstaffs to see this so called 'trap choice'. Should be fun to test this out.

[PrimeJunta]

[Edit: NVM, I'm not getting into this discussion again.]

Edited March 21, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[Meretrelle]

"Unplayable" is almost certainly taking it too far. "Unenjoyable," though, I will stand by. This is subjective, of course -- you appear to enjoy the extra challenge of having to deal with poor choices you made in good faith; I find that unfair, frustrating, and unenjoyable.

 

Yes, thank you. Exactly this. "Unenjoyable",  not challenging but rather irritating and "sadistic"

 

Respec could be actually made pretty interesting not just "pay X money to a trainer and get ur skills reset". It could be a separate speific quest with procedurally generated missions or even a series of missions.

[Stun]

Quarterstaves are arguably better than Daggers in Icewind Dale (they do more damage). Still, lets not pretend you can ever powergame a fighter with either one lol. And you can't use a Shield when you're wielding a quarterstaff, which IMO is the real weakness of quarterstaves. A good AC is a huge deal in IWD, and you'll wince in pain....repeatedly, whenever the game drops an amazing Shield that could instantly transform you from a weak squishy to an impregnable tank....and then it dawns on you that you can't equip it.... because the quarterstaff you're wielding is 2-handed.

 

BUT...Icewind dale is a party based game. Which means if your fighter is weak, it doesn't really matter. Because your Druid, Mage and Thief can just step up and pinch hit for you.

Edited March 21, 2015 by Stun

[PrimeJunta]

Last time I played IWD, Stabby, my main damager, was dual-wielding daggers, switching to single-wield + shield when tankiness was required. Since good daggers are so plentiful in the early to mid-game it made that part a lot easier.

 

(FWIW, I find that I care less about powergaming the endgame than getting ahead of the curve early to mid-game. By the endgame I'm likely to be so powerful anyway that it doesn't make much of a difference, and I have lots of options. Whereas an extra attack or two points of THAC0 -- or AC, for that matter -- can make a fairly dramatic difference early on.)

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Rolled up my new party and off to see how 'bad' this quarterstaff fighter is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Stun]

That's..... a really good party. You've got 5 fighter-types, 2 healers, 3 nukers, a rogue that will have an excellent backstab, and a character who will be able to wield Pale Justice.

 

 

And Damn. There's that Urge. I think I'll start a game of Icewind Dale right now too. There goes my Saturday.

Edited March 21, 2015 by Stun

[redneckdevil]

Proud member of the "got my ass handed to me and wiped from the what seems like 15 goblins right outta the gate" club.

[Gromnir]

 

don't use it.  can your game be trivialized by the fact that Gromnir or  fenwick or any other player used respec?

Annnd, there it is again, that strawman. Just can't bear to let it go, can you? You really have lost this debate, haven't you?

 

Weren't you quite supportive of Josh's attempts at eliminating most broken game mechanics resulting in easy but dull exploits? You do realize that "don't use it" is the lazy (and invalid) counter-"argument" against that too. Rest-spamming? "Don't use it." Etc.

 

As to the "but the bugs!" argument, we already addressed that. Bugs should be addressed by patches, and, as an ultimate last resort, the console, not by adding features that make the game worse.

 

ps pj we also forgot to mention pj's obvious naughty.  respec, by its very nature, leaves most choices and consequences resulting from player actions and dialogue untouched.  skip the fight with Bert the Bucolic, but got labeled as a coward in Kustak Village?  respec don't change that.  is only the future consequences and choices resulting from altered character-building choices that is gonna be impacted... which is kinda the point.

Thing is, those choices and consequences are every bit as central to my experience as role-playing choices and consequences. It's the other side of the coin: the impact I've had on the world, and the character I've become.

 

Weak, Gromz. Weak.

 

1) you clear don't know what strawman is.

 

2)huh?

 

first, there is no strawman in pointing out that if an OPTIONAL feature destroys your notion o' choice and consequences, you need not use that feature.  am not sure what previous non-existent argument Gromnir created and then destroyed as is contained in your quoted material.  regardless, it is axiomatic that an optional feature need not be used. duh.

 

as for the second bit o nonsense, we say again, "huh?" you make no sense.  respec would not alter any o' the ways in which you impacted the world before the respec.  none o' your choices is changed.  one motivation for folks to restart a new character instead o' respec is to actual go back to square one and play the game more in-line with how they imagined their character would impact the game world.  a shortcoming o' respec, for some folks, is that in spite o' developer error, a player is stuck with all the consequences o' his choices before the respec.    nevertheless, is a balancing decision.  with respec in the game, a player gotta decide if fixing her character and moving forward is better than restarting-- such a choice is necessitated by the fact that respec does Not alter the choices and consequences o' choices made Before the respec.  again, duh.

 

so, pj has now learned that respec is an optional feature, and hopefully that his understanding o' strawman is flawed.  hopefully he has also learned that choices and consequences from before the respec is unaltered, in spite o' the fact that many such choices and consequences are not what the player reasonably envisioned when he created his character.  because o' bugs,  ambiguous feature descriptions and changes to the game after patches, a player may discover after only many hours o' gameplay that their choices were perverted, albeit unintentionally, by developer error.  

 

stun's doozies o' the day:

 

"And yet, you have advocated that the mere presence of bugs is reason enough to not even buy this game until a year from now."

 

yes. precisely because bugs is inevitable, it is in a person's best interest to wait six months to a year before playing new software.  we has also noted price drops as a reason for waiting.  near the end o' one o' josh's recent streaming videos, he noted that his recent play o' the game on hard showed him that many things in the game is still not working correct.  he also noted that balancing efforts would be continuing for the foreseeable future.  josh knows that stuff will need fixing.  for folks who have not bought the game through kickstarter, wait is the best plan.  but again, your slippery-slope nonsense has u adding no features to the game 'cause o' fear o' bugs, and that is ridiculous.  any feature can be bugged, and is naive and myopic to believe that poe will be bug-free.  can respec be bugged?  sure, but as an optional feature, the absolute worst that can happen is that it don't work and the player is in the same situation as they woulda' been without respec... so they needs start-over, wait for the next patch, or endure.  

 

is actual kinda a no-brainer.

 

"I'm truly sorry for trying to rain on your optimism, but I have bad news for you. A respec feature will not fix broken talent descriptions - painlessly or otherwise. It might, however, allow you to replace one broken talent with another. So rejoice in that! "

 

yeah.  that is precisely the point.  again, duh.  what is with you and pj?  

 

*shrug*

 

respec will not fix the broken talent.  however, if the player knew the talent were broken, would they have chosen it?  a significant % o' folks woulda' chosen different. respec fixes a wrong and returns meaning to the player choice.  a choice that would never have been made save for unforeseen developer error can be corrected without needing wait for a patch, restart the game or endure.  

 

am baffled by you two.   you say ridiculous, and Gromnir is then forced to do nothing save repeat.  

 

however, we do note that pj echoes silent winter's observations about the cost v. benefit o' adding such a feature.  is nothing insightful seeing as how silent already addressed the issue.  'course Gromnir already replied... so once again we would be repeating self.

 

*shrug*

 

there can be considerable frustration from playing a broke character, from having your character development choices subverted by misleading feature descriptions and hidden aspects o' the mechanics and from simple bugs. am not genuine knowing what is the cost o' adding such a feature, but am certain that the cost to players who suffer frustration is high.  pj pointed out to us just how vital choice and consequences is to him, and many folks feel similar-- user error should not invalidate player choice.  respec is an imperfect fix for what even josh seems to recognize is the inevitable incomplete nature o' poe at release.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited March 21, 2015 by Gromnir

[PrimeJunta]

1) you clear don't know what strawman is.

A strawman is when you misrepresent an opponent's argument and then attack that misrepresentation, usually because you can't find a way to attack the actual argument..

 

In this case, you are (again) misrepresenting my argument as one based on caring how other people play the game, and then ridiculing that. It is a classic strawman. You've done it so many times by now that I'm pretty sure it's not just poor reading comprehension but actively dishonest. Do you do that in your professional work as well?

 

2)huh?

 

first, there is no strawman in pointing out that if an OPTIONAL feature destroys your notion o' choice and consequences, you need not use that feature.  am not sure what previous non-existent argument Gromnir created and then destroyed as is contained in your quoted material.  regardless, it is axiomatic that an optional feature need not be used. duh.

Ah, but that's not the strawman. That's just dismissing my experience: i.e., that the very presence of respec cheapens the experience for me, whether I make use of it or not. It's the same reason I dislike broken mechanics which lead to easy but boring exploits. This may not bother you, but it bothers me, which is why I'm arguing against it.

 

Nice attempt at misdirection though. Again, I no longer believe you're honestly misunderstanding me; rather, you're lying about what I said to whoever might be reading. I do not have much respect for that.

 

as for the second bit o nonsense, we say again, "huh?" you make no sense.  respec would not alter any o' the ways in which you impacted the world before the respec.  none o' your choices is changed.

Annnd... here you go again, lying about what I said. This really is a pattern. Are you a natural talent, or did you learn it in law school?

 

I said: choices and consequences are crucial to my experience of a cRPG. One side of the choices is the impact I have made on the world. The other side is the impact the world has made on me: namely, my character-building choices. The possibility of respec trivializes that other side. I never said that respec would change the first side of the coin. That would be stupid.

 

(Snip rest of incoherent ramble since it's pretty much a furious attack against this new strawman Gromz has built.)

 

Also, if you're so convinced the game will be that broken, ask for a savegame/character editor rather than in-game respec. I have nothing against those.

 

This, by the way, is the last message with which I will ever engage with you. I'm thoroughly disgusted by your blatant dishonesty: it is the kind of thing that poisons the atmosphere on entire forums. If you're this desperate to have the last word, then, by all means have it. Goodbye.

[Stun]

Ok, Respeccing is cheating.

I just watched an old stream of PoE, and Josh was exploring the mega dungeon. He came across a trap that was blocking a passageway. His character couldn't disarm it, because he had built her to be more athletic and stealthy than mechanical. So he had to deal with the challenge as the game presented it to his character. And he did. That is what good RPG's do. That's what they're about.


But here comes Gromnir. In this situation, Gromnir would whine, and whine, like a casual modern gamer. He would come on the forums and beg for a respec feature so that he could redo his build choices, so that he'd be able to disarm that trap, instead of having to *think* and come up with an alternative.


Screw the [people who people who want to dumb down the genre] of the gaming world. You guys are the reason why developers have had to dumb down RPGs over the years. Your definition of "Fun" has been nothing but a terminal cancer to the Genre.

 

Cant EDIT:  Removed the reference of a specific member from the phrase starting with 'Screw.'

Edited March 21, 2015 by Cantousent