Please see my post above yours on this page, use of the method proposed by the OP will delay the proper development cycle of the beta due to reasons outlined there.

It's pretty clear that the pro-SP-respec folks have already made up their minds in believing what the OP believes. No amount of valid evidence can make them change their minds. They are entitled to their own opinions, just not to their own facts.

.... the ISK spent on purchasing the skillbooks. This will kill or at least maim a number of problematic birds with one very large stone.

Pros

- Newbs spend their SP unwisely at the start, give them a chance to play the game and fix their errors.
- This is a BETA, we are your testers, but the equipment we can test for you is limited to what we can use in battle. This would greatly expand our ability to test stuff and give feedback.
- This is BETA and you have said this is likely to happen at some point anyway.
- This is BETA and a great many game features are missing, this gives those getting bored of lobby play a reason to stick. "Well well well, I can be a heavy for a week???" etc
- We don't have a market to trade and sell. HOWEVER we do have piles and piles of loot we cannot use. Allow us to respend our SP and voila! We can start tearing into our stockpiles of proto gear we've picked up despite lack of market.
- Give ALL players a better feel for the game as a whole as they would now be able to completely restyle their play every week.


Cons

- A handful of people whining that the game is a long term "spend your SP wisely like I did" types who forget it's a BETA and this is gonna happen anyway.

My suggestion, do it every Wednesday until full release. Toons who do not want the refund should be able to "decline refund" at character selection. <-- Edited

Soozu

How about a respec token costing a few thousand aurum. That should keep it at as an emergency "oh crap i screwed up" button.

You are still ignoring the most important point of all - if you can just reallocate all your SP, no one will ever test out the lower level weapons, so you won't be testing everything, as this entire proposal's point is based upon.

Furthermore, every single player does not need to test every single weapon in the game. There are a million+ characters who are already testing every single thing in the game between them in probably every single combination - you do not need to do this personally.

All the weapons we currently have available have been around for many many months and have been pretty tested to death. These are no longer CCP's primary focus for the beta. Release sounds likely to be in the next 6 months, in which time they will need to have a functional and tested player market and integration with EvE, as these are key elements of the core game design.

Finally, as has already been stated, there will be no more resets, so you are stuck with your build as is. That is not to say you are not allowed to spec into other things, you just have to work your way up the levels and will be forced to play with the lower level gear as you do so. This is as intended and actually works wonderfully as a testing system because it means even the crappier stuff will get tried out.

Personally, If there isn't a respec at release, CCP can forget ever getting another dime out of me. Either we're in beta and testing different elements of the game, or were released and decisions have consequences. Pick one; You cannot have both.

I think your "most important point" has been rightfully ignored as it is obvious who tests the lower tiered items. Just maybe not to you.

It's pretty clear that the pro-SP-respec folks have already made up their minds in believing what the OP believes. No amount of valid evidence can make them change their minds. They are entitled to their own opinions, just not to their own facts.

Who in their right mind would run anything other than proto gear if they could just focus on a single different thing every week? What incentive would there possibly be for people to use lower tier gear?

There would still be plenty of low-tier gear being used.

Yes, and their would also be plenty of nerf this nerf that threads.

So a lengthy speech ends the discussion?

Personally I don't see this as being anywhere near as bad as people are making it out to be. Instead of discussing this and iterating on it to maybe make a small gem of an idea, we get responses like: "Heyul naw!!!"

If the respec was a player choice and not a once a week event then we get two things from this:
- People respec and have fun with new gear and see what happens when they try a different playstyle.
- Playing the game differently allows more diverse feedback from more players choosing to play differently.

This idea is great when considered like this as CCP will get more diverse feedback on many things (and let's not forget they don't have to listen to "QQ something is OP"). Add to this the fact that people will stay interested in the game for longer allowing CCP more time to get real stuff done, means that CCP get more money.

Great post, especially that last part which I hadn't even considered. The time between builds can get quite lengthy and with all the limited content while in beta it's easy for players to lose interest that they may have moved on by the time the game releases.

Great post, especially that last part which I hadn't even considered. The time between builds can get quite lengthy and with all the limited content while in beta it's easy for players to lose interest that they may have moved on by the time the game releases.

Also, completely ignores all the extremely good points raised in the 'lengthy speech'.

Which was entirely tl;dr for someone with a life to live right now, maybe I'll give it a look when I have nothing better to do. You could also address the points I raised but are instead trying to be funny.

The main point I am raising is to try and find something workable in this idea, because skill respecs are something that the more casual players want and also what we should be entitled to. Like it or not, casual players will be the main source of income and publicity for this game.

And please correct me if I'm wrong but there actually is a respec in EVE, just not for skill points. You can respec your attributes (twice a year?) to get training times faster in certain areas. This could easily be applied to Dust and give all players a chance to respec in some form of time constraint that would be considerably shorter for the beta.

Edit: Not everybody was able to get into the closed beta, and the current build doesn't accurately reflect much of what happened therein. Please stop saying "you had your chance in the closed beta" - thanks.

A respec? Really now? You would think a complete reset would make far more sense...

There is a respec system in EvE but it certainly is nowhere near every week and you can't respec absolutely everything, which is what this thread suggests should happen. There is absolutely no advantage to CCP to have a weekly respec. Zero.

I'm not trying to be funny. None of this is funny. It's a bad idea and should not even be entertained by CCP.

And you are completely wrong about casual players being the main source of income to this game - that would be true of a boxed FPS but with free to play games casual players tend to put very little if any money into playing. It is the hardcore player-base that actually pays real money into F2P games.