CCP 33 pages of support. with only 4 people against a respec. DUST fiend even made a video for god's sake. just confirm it. we all know you want to.

Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where else will I get my daily dose of HTFU if you end the thread. Should be DUST Bastard.

Shhhh, don't fight it. It will all be over soon

Instead of demanding respecs demand balance on all fronts first, because unless there is balance a respec is a very short term fix.......... to a problem that will remain in this game for the foreseeable future.

i also think the sp for corp leadership should be returned if a person is no longer a leader of a corporation.
theres no reason for me to keep mine when im no longer a leader.
its sp a man like myself can indulge in and spend on something useful.

Instead of demanding respecs demand balance on all fronts first, because unless there is balance a respec is a very short term fix.......... to a problem that will remain in this game for the foreseeable future.

^This

The huge pendulum swing of mechanics in Dust needs to stop. We need consistent graduated tweaks and polish not massive overhauls that untimely introduce new problems in the place of the old.

Everyone remember when the TAR could be used for AV?
Now even Proto AV struggles to be used for AV against Militia HAVs and an OB won't even scratch the paint when their hardeners are active.

There are a host of examples like the one above and that's the heart of the problem. A respec won't solve the problem and offering them consistently (even 1-2 times a year) will have many negative impacts on the game, a big one being making it vastly more grind-fest/repetitive as 'everyone' migrates into a single role/fit following the trend of excessive re-balances.
The lack of diversity will hurt the game, the massive swings in who's spec'ed into what will cripple the implementation of a true player economy, and the NPE will be essentially shot in the face as new players will lack the game knowledge to Proto the current FotM OP build... and even if they have a friend who can show it too them they won't have the SP so they'll still have to spend months with minimal fighting chance before they get to actually try and play the game.

Respecs are not a solution to a problem, they are a symptom of a much lager problem, and that's what needs to be addressed.

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Until CCP can show us that they are dedicated to providing a persistent experience, respecs are necessary and do no damage to the game. Your choices have no meaning when they are altered for you on the most fundamental level.

Until CCP can commit to their own rhetoric, they need to put customer satisfaction before roleplaying appeal.

Just say no to respecs.

common 35 pages here we come. if we break 50 pages. repec is garunteed. robot devil can help with that. lets argue some more

And that's all well and good, I want the game to achieve a state of balance too, I think we all do. No one likes these constant back and forths.

However.

Until CCP can show us that they are dedicated to providing a persistent experience, respecs are necessary and do no damage to the game. Your choices have no meaning when they are altered for you on the most fundamental level.

Until CCP can commit to their own rhetoric, they need to put customer satisfaction before roleplaying appeal.

Why i just never achieve the proper con of RESPEC by anyone who is against it?!
For now its mean there is basicaly nothing what is bad on RESPEC.

I don't disagree with the fundamentals of what you're saying here, however it's also "chicken and the egg" because offering consistent respecs is just a band aid obscuring, and feeding into, the larger problem(s) which create this situation.

I play support, which means that if the preliminary numbers/changes hold I'm getting double (or triple, depending on how you look at it) nerfed when 1.8 comes out. As a support player I have over 20 million SP into dropsuit upgrades for my equipment fittings etc, 20 mill and I don't even have any points into damage mods yet, and now some of my support fittings are going to be crippled by the changes to the point where I'll need another frame, or proto in each race (or both) just to provide the same supporting roles I do currently and I won't be able to do it as well even then.
Meaning it'll take me months of grinding SP just to be able to almost provide the same support on the field that I do now... and even then it's going to come at a higher average per match cost.

So am I happy with the upcoming prospect, am I content with how things stand, was I able to make a meaningfully informed decision regarding the investment of my SP? No to all of the above.
That being said a respec still has negative impacts on the game, it homogenizes the meta for one thing and that reduction in diversity is also a reduction in fun factor on several fronts. We don't need less content in Dust (and effectively it is less content if fewer types of suit and build are being deployed). What we do need is a better balance method from CCP, more Dev Blogs providing solid information, more transparency, and a stronger focus on the NPE (PvE wouldn't hurt either, but that's another matter). You're right, we're not able to make informed meaningful choices right now, not as much as we should be, and that is what needs to change. Until it does, respecs or no, the frustrations et al will remain.

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The answer to that is far to large for a single post, but here's a quoted one with links that will make a good start on the subject.

Can't resist

Must type long winded three dollar word posts.

I am too busy thinking about how I would implement PC to be bothered by this thread but first I am going to find a fat girl to follow around to stick my needle in.

I don't disagree with the fundamentals of what you're saying here, however it's also "chicken and the egg" because offering consistent respecs is just a band aid obscuring, and feeding into, the larger problem(s) which create this situation.

I play support, which means that if the preliminary numbers/changes hold I'm getting double (or triple, depending on how you look at it) nerfed when 1.8 comes out. As a support player I have over 20 million SP into dropsuit upgrades for my equipment fittings etc, 20 mill and I don't even have any points into damage mods yet, and now some of my support fittings are going to be crippled by the changes to the point where I'll need another frame, or proto in each race (or both) just to provide the same supporting roles I do currently and I won't be able to do it as well even then.
Meaning it'll take me months of grinding SP just to be able to almost provide the same support on the field that I do now... and even then it's going to come at a higher average per match cost.

So am I happy with the upcoming prospect, am I content with how things stand, was I able to make a meaningfully informed decision regarding the investment of my SP? No to all of the above.
That being said a respec still has negative impacts on the game, it homogenizes the meta for one thing and that reduction in diversity is also a reduction in fun factor on several fronts. We don't need less content in Dust (and effectively it is less content if fewer types of suit and build are being deployed). What we do need is a better balance method from CCP, more Dev Blogs providing solid information, more transparency, and a stronger focus on the NPE (PvE wouldn't hurt either, but that's another matter). You're right, we're not able to make informed meaningful choices right now, not as much as we should be, and that is what needs to change. Until it does, respecs or no, the frustrations et al will remain.

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A respec gives a signifigant gain to vets over new players. If a new player poorly spends more than 1 mil SP... I honestly have little sympathy, it's how we learn make better choices. Did CCP do a **** poor job of preparing them? Hell yeah, and they should be held accountable, but a respec is a temporary fix, give it a month and people will demand another and another. Taking a slow build up approach over straight into proto gives everyone the opportunity to see if they really like what they're skilling into.

If CCP gives a respec now, assuming there are no skill tree changes, these respec requests will never end and people will come expect them. Bonuses will continue to change, new content will be added and rebalancing will continuoly be done.

If someone knows they can't ever spec out of something, they'll spend less time bitching about how useless it is and spend more time giving constructive feedback to balance it out.

The fear of FoTM is a fear of CCPs inability to balance their game. It's going to happen within the first few weeks, with or without a respec. This is all but guaranteed. The respec doesn't cause this issue, CCP does with their lack of foresight and inability to create properly balanced patches.

That ignores the question of magnitude. Will FotM happen even without a respec? Sure, of course it will.
Will FotM happen anywhere near as much without a respec? Nope, not even a chance.
Removal of the diversity of fits and gear on the field, as a respec will feed, causes other balance implications and problems as well within a rock-scissors-paper set up. Am I saying things are properly balance in the current game state? Nope. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't get worse or that consistent respecs won't feed into the underlying problems.

It's worth mentioning however that a one time only dropsuit refund with the new suits coming out does make a fair amount of sense, but that's not the same thing as offering respecs (it's not repeated, and it's not plural, plus it doesn't give everyone the option to dump all their points into the new "I Win" weapon).

Offering respecs doesn't cause FotM, but it does make it more pervasive, thus making all of the problems with it bigger.
Respecs also don't solve the game balance issues, even if they make them less bothersome to a portion of the player base there by drawing attention away from the core problem.

Not having a solid, and yes balanced, skill system guts a huge part of Dust, and offering repeated respecs effectively cuts most of that system out of the game. Does the current iteration of the system need work? Absolutely. Are respecs a solution to that shortcoming? Absolutely not.

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What it boils down to is this:

If CCP feels it's alright to withhold basic content, as well as randomly switch around the roles and usefulness of things we've long since spec'd into, then it only seems reasonable to allow players to use their accumulated SP how they want when the backlogged content is released, and major changes are made.

For me, it's a business decision. Do I want to support a company that takes my money, then alters the product I pay for? Or do I stay with a company that takes my money, and honors that investment when they alter what I purchased?

Worst case, no respec and I take a few months away from DUST. It doesn't bother me, I barely even play anymore as is. For me, this entire thing is about principle and little more.

For now, I'm done with this "topic"

Lord Neckbeard awaits.