They will have an advantage because they will not have to "pay for their mistakes".

I'm not concerned with any new players becoming competitive -- that already happens with great frequency -- but I am concerned with being given a respec as it is not fair to those of us who used their SP wisely.

To flip this around a bit and using your logic, why not give an unlimited number of SP refunds? They will have access to the same skills as everyone at the same SP prices, right?

Wrong. Because our choices should matter, and SP refunds mean they don't matter.

Which is, essentially, what I'm saying.

Your choices do matter. They still matter.

Things change. Everyone complains about OP/UP in a hundred threads a week in GD alone. There will be continual balances of fittings, things will change. The fact that this gun got buffed, or that suit got nerfed isn't that big of a deal. If it's a minor change (which they usually are) it's nearly irrelevant. If something was so OP that it got the nerf bat, then you knew it when training that item, and should have known it was going to get the bat. If something you trained into got extremely buffed and then nerfed back, well, you're probably still in a better position than before.

The only people I see wanting a respec seem to have this "grand plan" on what they'd do with the SP, were they to get it back. You can see it in every thread. I'd take this to 5 and that to 5 and this over here to 5 and finish that. What do they always seem to skill into? The things that were most recently buffed.

Look, I wasn't thrilled with the way the ADS got hit this time around. I have so many LVL 5 skills in vehicles that I can't use the way I used to before. That doesn't mean the points are useless. The ADS will get looked at 10 more times before Legion and it'll get hit with the bat again and buffed again and hit with the bat again, etc. I still fly my ADS, I just lose them more often than I did before.

Just because something got changed, doesn't make you skill point investment pointless. I means you need to reevaluate your play style. Adapt. Figure out something new. You might just stumble upon something you truly love that you wouldn't have seen before you were forced to.

You see that tons of us would love to get some respecs, and as many say, it might even out the playing field as far as proto stompers... I just would like to know why you are so reluctant to give us a respec with so many of us wanting one. I also understand that you have given respecs in the past for massive changes to the game, and hotfix delta wasn't that big. But it seems to be one of the largest changes to Dust in a while. If you could just give us the option for a single respec until maybe into project legions life time, it would make me and many others happy. Thank you for your consideration though.

But they're not "changing things on a whim".

They are changing things to introduce new content and improve balance....

...just like every FPS I've ever played in the past two decades....

...and just like Dust has been since closed beta.

So, either you can recognize that and plan accordingly or you can continue to cry for respecs and argue that those who disagree make no sense.

The choice is yours.

If you have all those Proto items and haven't maxed out your preferred role, that's your own fault.

I certainly wouldn't infer that about you, Cuse....but some of these posters sure have me scratching my head on what's driving their request -- thus the question about specific examples.

And in fairness to Rat, the latest rounds of balance hotfixes has been much better than the OHK nerhammer that was used on the Logis, active scanners, TAR, Flaylock, or other much more impactful nerfs that the vets like you and I can recall like they were yesterday. Said a bit differently, crying about a respec because the latest nerf to the Assault Scrambler Rifle, the damage profile of the CR, or the starting gun on a Frontline suit is far different from crying about a respec after they nerfed the Flaylock to oblivion a year ago.

But really, both arguments for respecs fall on the deaf ears of this clone:

Our choices should matter.