I know the topic of respecs is probably the hottest a person can raise these days, but I'm confident this one will be met with general agreement.

All I ask is for a very simple confirmation from CCP:

Will you, or will you not be offering SP refunds upon the release of new content, and only for those skills that are variants of that new content? E.g. Amarr Heavy refunds upon the release of the Caldari Heavy, or Scrambler Rifle refunds upon the release of the Combat Rifle.

It must be a tough decision for you folks to make regarding the high demand for respecs. Aurum respecs, earned respecs, time-delayed respecs, nerf respecs, rebalance respecs etc etc. But this one at least appeals most to your intention for players' choices to have weight.

Let me share an example; let's say somebody wants a Minmatar dropship.
Right now they have to decide wether to save their SP, not skill into the Gallente or Caldari offerings, and thereby hinder their current performance, possibly even exclude themselves from the higher levels of competitive play until their desired content is released.
Or spend their SP on said offerings. This way they may reap the benefits of getting as close to their desired content as is currently possible. However, when that new content IS released, they will have effectively lost a significant amount of SP on placeholder skills that they never really wanted.

A confirmation from you can help the plight of people like this. They can make an informed decision, rather than guessing at your intentions for the future. Even if it's a "no" and you earn the scrutiny of many, it will still be appreciated that you improved our ability to make legitimate choices for our characters.

Thanks for your time.

That's for CCP to decide to be honest. They don't like doing respects because of the hassles and train wrecks they cause and they take so many resources to pull off.

CCP will most likely decide when they do it.

As for myself I don't expect it to be given for every new gun or module that comes out.

The missing suits and vehicles possibly but new base or specialist suites are likely not.

That's for CCP to decide to be honest. They don't like doing respects because of the hassles and train wrecks they cause and they take so many resources to pull off.

CCP will most likely decide when they do it.

As for myself I don't expect it to be given for every new gun or module that comes out.

The missing suits and vehicles possibly but new base or specialist suites are likely not.

The missing suits and vehicles possibly but new base or specialist suites are likely not.

^ this

tbh they should just reset the points put into Heavies when the other racial variants come out (in 2032)
No guns, no other suits, no mods, no other skills, just the Amarr Heavy.

I say only heavy because **** you Cal Logi (who use them as assaults) and FotM Core Flaylock users.

Your intentions are good, but what if I wanted to use the Caldari heavy for example, but I didn't like the current Amarr heavy and skilled into something else instead, why should I be punished with no respecs just because I didn't skill into a heavy suit I didn't like?

They treat this game as a beta still and changes everything in every patch, so I fail to see how respecs would be a bad thing to get every patch.

Those who were around during May will know that CCP has sent out confirmation letters that the respec that occurred in May was the last official FULL respec for the rest of the game's development. However, CCP did not rule out any possibility of a partial refund of some skills. If Eve Online is any indicator, changes to the skill tree such as reduced SP costs per level, removing skill books, splitting generalized skills into racial variants, etc. might become grounds for partial reimbursements.

And you're right if they do reissue points back because of new gear its going to be partial only.

For example It would not surprise me at all if they refund all vehicle SP in 1.5

No more respecs. I had to plan and live with my decisions, so should everyone else. Stop crying about your inability to read skill descriptions and weapon attributes. You made your choice, deal with it. I repeat, YOU made YOUR choice, DEAL WITH IT.

No more respecs. I had to plan and live with my decisions, so should everyone else. Stop crying about your inability to read skill descriptions and weapon attributes. You made your choice, deal with it. I repeat, YOU made YOUR choice, DEAL WITH IT.

Refunding is not respecing. 1 skill adjustment, such as the one we got for dropsuits, is not a problem. Allowing huge skill reallocation across multiple skills is a problem.

With this tiny community, if everyone keeps getting respects there will be little diversity in gameplay. Do you really want everyone using the same weapons every time something changes? Bandwagon gaming is not fun or strategic. I've had my gear buffed and nerfed. I deal with it. I adapt and change through good use of my skill allocation as any other decent gamer should. If you misappropriated your skills, let's say into Amarr Heavy, knowing full well that in time the Gallente Heavy would be released, you failed, not CCP. Save your points or spend them on core upgrades. Inpatients is no excuse.

And you're right if they do reissue points back because of new gear its going to be partial only.

For example It would not surprise me at all if they refund all vehicle SP in 1.5

No real reason not to have a respec Option. Your player base is small as it is.why do you want more people to leave?No respec option equal bordem.

I have always been a no respecs person but I am open to calls for partial refunds when racial variants are released - but not entirely new weapons/gear/suits.

For example, when the amarr scout comes out, all people with SP invested into the light dropsuit tree get the option to transfer that SP into the Amarr scout tree instead of the minmatar/gallente scout. You should not get an option to move that SP completely away from scout suits.

One other SP refund policy I agree with is when skills/items are completely overhauled, like in the case of vehicles in 1.5 - that should come with a full and free refund of all associated skills in vehicles but dropsuit, weapon and equipment SP should be left as is.

Should only get partial respecs in the case of racial variant releases, amarr and minmatar tanks come out, you get back vehicle sp spent on caldari/gallenta, minmatar heavy comes out you get sp spent on amarr heavy. OR in the case that they completely change the way a skill works, ie, the HMG skill remake, anyone invested in that should get SP back

I like this idea in theory, but in practice it would be too complicated to apply. CCP would have to code a new category of 'SP that can only be used for certain skills', and convert a portion of spent SP on some characters into this new currency. There is a very high probability that something would go wrong. As far as I know ordinary SP refunds have always gone smoothly, so that's what they should do. In practice this will achieve much the same objective. For instance, someone getting refunded for their SP in Amarr heavy frames is almost certainly going to spend that SP on other heavy frames, as otherwise their millions of SP in heavy weapons, etc is wasted.

Keep in mind that CCP has a history of pulling off complicated changes with the skill tree system. Eve Online underwent countless rebalancing changes as CCP employed an algorithm that was able to unallocate certain skill points for each individual player based on what level of skill was invested in and even able to reallocate some of the skill points for players who invested heavily into the battelships. Very little in the way of problems ever cropped up and things went very smoothly for something as gargantuan as the Eve Online skill tree.

Now compare that tree with Dust's skill tree and you can see that this is not gonna be a problem.

No more respecs. I had to plan and live with my decisions, so should everyone else. Stop crying about your inability to read skill descriptions and weapon attributes. You made your choice, deal with it. I repeat, YOU made YOUR choice, DEAL WITH IT.

The same was said for Eve Online and back then Eve didn't have much of a player base at all. In fact, 10,000 players at any given hour was considered a record for CCP back then. They only had one respec given since their own launch and that was it. To this day, there are still a few Eve players asking for respecs after ten years of no respecs.

EDIT:

PS: CCP would like to have more players. But let's face it. Most players will leave anyways regardless of what CCP does mainly because the game just wasn't for them. The New Eden galaxy is just too harsh for them.

Even if CCP managed to implement respecs into the game, that's still not going to stop scrubs from leaving the game because of other factors such as (but not limited to):

1. Scams, ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, etc.
2. Constant market manipulation via an oligopoly-like control from powerful alliances.
3. Corporate theft and espionage that can ruin years of work with a single push of a button.
4. Losing a $9,000 item in the middle of a major battle.
5. Someone posting a 500 million ISK bounty on someone else just because they hated your thread and now one-fourth of the galaxy is after your ass.
etc.

The harshness of the universe will just be too much for these people even if they get respecs. This is also not including the fact that once we have our own elections and vote in player-elected members for the next Council of Planetary Management, those with anti-respec views (assuming they are the majority) will elected players who will push for the removal of the respec system. If the Eve Online CSM can gain stakeholder influence (they actually do have it), then the CPM will as well.

Don't agree with this. If people knew they could get back the SP they put into the FOTM once it's nerfed, you'd find everyone running around with the same gear (e.g. flaylocks a month ago, MDs now), which would be very boring.

Let your SP pool instead of spending it all right away.

Simple as that. I still have 1.2mil unallocated after skilling into forge proficiency 3.

Vehicle users ought to get a respec for 1.5 because it's changing everything we currently know about vehicles, adding some modules, removing some modules, adding some skills and removing some skills, plus possible changes to the hulls.

Stop wanting a respec to get the next flavor of the month.

Let your SP pool instead of spending it all right away.

Simple as that. I still have 1.2mil unallocated after skilling into forge proficiency 3.

Vehicle users ought to get a respec for 1.5 because it's changing everything we currently know about vehicles, adding some modules, removing some modules, adding some skills and removing some skills, plus possible changes to the hulls.

Stop wanting a respec to get the next flavor of the month.

I'm sure they could do it, the question is whether it's worth the programming effort to do it right. They haven't attempted this before on Dust, and I can't really see why they would bother in the future given, as I say, that pretty much the same outcome is achieved 'naturally' just by the fact that 90%+ of players will not want to say goodbye to the SP they put in complementary skills (e.g. heavy weapons for heavies, vehicle upgrades for pilots).

@tek hound

It depends on what each individual considers to be an option. To me, more options doesn't mean having the ability to respec to try out more weapons. As you can see from the various opinions in this thread, what you consider an option may be considered taboo to another person. And what I consider to be an option, you might see it as taboo.

In regards to DUST being a fps, consider the possibility that the respec may not work in a balanced way even though respecs worked for other games like mag. Case in point, Eve Online and Guild Wars 2. The developers of Guild Wars 2 wanted to adopt the Eve-style market into their take. Since both games are technically mmo games it looked like it would work. But it didn't. The Guild Wars 2 economy failed and was given the worst rating as having the worst economy for an mmo back in 2012. Today, Eve Online still ranks #1 as having the best economy in the mmo industry.

What went wrong? I saw the system and I thought the Eve style market would work for gw2 since it's an mmo, but it didn't. It was a failure and the devs had to rush to at least stabilize it. I don't know how their economy is now compared to then. Now if a feature of one game didn't work in a feature of another game of the same genre, how can anyone be certain that respecs from one fps won't fail in DUST in the same genre?

Begging for a respec IS dealing with it. If your weak game skills can't keep up with us respec champs, you might want to let your Jell-O set a bit.

Daily total respecs fo' life.