That is just it. How is paying for a respec = to pay to win? You still had to earn all those skillpoints. You are not magically gaining some skill that no one without a respec can get. Everything you skill into is the exact same stuff that anyone that doesn't pay to get can still get. In fact they can get there for free and you are paying for it? How is that winning?

LOL, Well I have to agree with all those. However I would sit better with #3 if CCP had put out vehicles for all races at the same time instead of forcing the Amarr and Minmatar players to us another races' stuff.

ROTFLMAO. If they do that for dorpsuits in 1.8 I'll be very surprised. The only reason they did it in 1.7 was because the skills no longer existed. However they are not removing any skills and thus will have no reason for a refund.

I would agree with you except for the problem that you just pointed out yourself above about being force into the wrong suits to begin with. They won't be giving and refunds for that because you can still use the wrong suits even though you no longer like them. So since I know they WON'T be giving us the refund for their mistakes, I am trying to offer an admittedly flawed solution that can make up for it.

Ok, I can concede that there may be a negative effect on the boosters market. However that is why they should be more expensive AND limited to only once every 3 or 6 months or maybe even longer. This would not significantly cut into the booster market. However it usually takes a new player around 5 to 10 million skill points to really figure out how they want to play the game.

As this discussion has changed and evolved, so have my thoughts on the answers to these questions. So I'm going to update my initial answers:

1 - How much should an Aurum respec cost?
2 - How often should they be allowed to happen per character?
3 - Should free respecs ever be allowed again?
4 - Should a respec be "bankable?"
5 - How might this affect the fiction or back story of the game (if we care)?

But I'm also adding in a new one:

6 - Should ISK be allowed to pay for a respec?

1 - I now think at least $20 so the 40,000 aurum is a good start, but more would be ok as well.
2 - Originally i thought once a month was ok, but now I believe that once every 3 months would curtail a lot of the FOTM chasers.
3 - I believe that a free respec should be offered by CCP once all the races' vehicles are added to the game (ie. Amarr and Minmatar). After that probably not for anyone other than newbies who graduate from the academy assuming that they overhaul the academy first.
4 - After thinking about this, the answer should be no. Again to discourage FOTM chasers.
5 - It's easily explained by the fact that the clones are pre-programmed with the knowledges to use stuff in the fiction.
6 - I don't think it will be needed initially. Besides which if players want to work it out themselves, they can always trade ISK privately for other things anyways.

So that's where I'm at for now.

Again, instituting racial parity is the only excuse I would allow respecs and even then you should only get a respec of the items affected.

That's still up to debate. CCP is swapping a lot of bonuses around. For example, many players trained up logis to take advantage of the hacking bonus. But now that Minmatar scouts are getting that bonus instead and it looks like the logi bonus to equipment fitting won't affect the cloaking equipment in particular, many logibros out there would want a partial respec of that suit affected.

Again, only when racial parity is needed would I support a respec and even then I prefer that the respec be limited to items affected. Case in point, the suits and maybe the weapons. But that is up to CCP to decide.

Honestly, I think it's better that Dust should adopt a proper alternative to the "respec on demand" system you're suggesting. That, to me at least, is the skill book attribute system couple with the Neural Remaps that Eve Online has.

In Eve Online, all skill books have two of the five attributes:
Willpower
Perception
Memory
Intelligence
Charisma

Every player has these attributes, but depending on the kind of implants that they have, the number of points within these attributes will vary. If you have more points within Willpower and Perception, than any skill book that has these two attributes will be much easier to train into. But you end up taking longer to train up other skill books as their attributes will have less points in them. Every year or so, Eve players are given a chance to rearrange those attributes however they like.

This is nothing like a traditional respec, however, since no SP is being rearranged. Only attribute points and the amount of time invested into a skill book varies. But once you train up a skill to say level 3 that has high attribute points into it, that skill level is yours forever regardless if it loses attribute points in the next Neural Remap.

This can work well in Dust. The more attribute points for a skill book affected, the less SP needed to train it up. Once trained to any level, that level is yours regardless if that book loses attribute points later on.

Down with this sort of thing. Respecs are for scrubs.

Bumping this again as I still believe that it is a relevant topic. To be more specific, the topic is: Should there be respecs for Aurum. Not refunds for patch changes etc.

No.

/closed

No, respecs should not be made available at all, the only, and i repeat only time that something like that should happen is when they overhaul the skill tree, if only certain skills are being changed then refund the sp in that skill if the change requires it, putting in a pay to respec scheme skips a little too close to the p2w line imo. sp investment is significant, you should not be able to just wipe it away whenever, if well timed it have serious repercussions in a pc battle, it will enable those who pay aur to respec into whatever is the current FOTM gear, effectively turning it into a p2w cycle. an eve saying comes to mind, no sp is wasted, a 100,000 you dump into a useless skill might end up saving you a lot of time if you later decide to switch to a role that gets usage out of that skill.