If they are going to continue to change items and their effectiveness, then yes allow purchasable respecs.

Why can't people understand..... There is no such thing as a wrong choice. You will keep earning sp forever. You can't run out of sp which will prevent you from speccing into anything different ever again. Sure, you might set yourself back a few months, even a year, but you can still recover from that. Respecs are not needed. Especially not AUR respecs, that's just ridiculous and people should stop suggesting it.

waah why do players want to play how they want NOW they should have to wait months waah waah waaaaaaaaaah

Cross's early post says it all in a rather firm nut shell. its far too long to quote effectively, but its all true none the less.

live with your choices, dont decide 'oh, i have to undo this' just because something happened to kick you around. its a cheap gameplay mechanic, and not worth it, since a respec does lead to Flavor of the Month abuse, and that would absolutely destroy the game

Yea... because what totally won't destroy the game is having people invest weeks or months into developing a particular weapon or dropsuit or anything else just to find out that after a quick patch and zero warning it's now a worthless piece of crap.

I can totally see loads of players eager to throw away all that time spent and start all over without knowing what will arbitrarily get the hatchet next.

waah why do players want to play how they want NOW they should have to wait months waah waah waaaaaaaaaah

oh stop with the whining already. you want to cheapen the game, just so you can go with whatever is most OP at the time with how you are lobbying for this useless, cheap game mechanic. i would rather hear good things [if there are any with these useless respec ideas] that this could do, because yes, they are tweaking lots of things, but then agin, how will you know if you're getting a good or bad tweak if you just change into something else>

Nope, bad idea.

While I can get behind a respec upon graduation from the Academy, you're supposed to live with your choices. The best way to learn something is through failure.

Also while every player with 1mil SP wishes dearly that they could respec, just think of how broken the game would become if the players with 14mil could just respec into the flavour of the month whenever they wanted.

Good things respecs could do?

How about providing longevity to the game without requiring the torture of the players?

Without respecs and because of how this game is designed you're forced to specialize into one role if you don't want to get your *** handed to you over and over again. So what happens when you get tired of that role or a core mechanic of your role gets nerfed destroying your play style?

Without respecs you're forced to reinvest weeks and months into starting over from scratch investing in a new line of dropsuits and weapons and modules to outfit yourself in a manner that you can actually enjoy again. How many people do you think are going to just say "**** that" and quit when they're told all the work they put into their initial setup is now a pile of fetid ****?

Respecs allow people to experiment, to try something new, to grow bored with the game and have a multitude of new setups available to try out and enjoy all over again.

Good things respecs could do?

How about providing longevity to the game without requiring the torture of the players?

Without respecs and because of how this game is designed you're forced to specialize into one role if you don't want to get your *** handed to you over and over again. So what happens when you get tired of that role or a core mechanic of your role gets nerfed destroying your play style?

Without respecs you're forced to reinvest weeks and months into starting over from scratch investing in a new line of dropsuits and weapons and modules to outfit yourself in a manner that you can actually enjoy again. How many people do you think are going to just say "**** that" and quit when they're told all the work they put into their initial setup is now a pile of fetid ****?

Respecs allow people to experiment, to try something new, to grow bored with the game and have a multitude of new setups available to try out and enjoy all over again.

Fourth and fith paragraph. Please explain why his disagreement is unjustified.

Flavor of The Moth builds... where do i begin?

they are nothing but fleeting FADS, and do not stand up to the real tests that people should see in a long time persistant game. there is a point where shifting about is fine, but a total wipe and rebuild on even a bi-monthly basis would lead to making your build, getting tired of the build, and whining for another respec. and it turns into a painful cycle untill you've tried enough things and then walk away. games that have done that have in many ways, just up and died because of a mass loss in player base.

How many people do you really believe are going to be playing this game for 7.5 years? This isn't an mmo where you have a varied and rich game where people can lose themselves in various aspects and enjoy themselves over long periods.

Dust is not an mmo, it's not the new EVE where people will spend years and years and years playing it. Dust is an FPS, it's complexity boils down to shooting stuff. If suddenly you're nerfed to hell and your ability to shoot stuff suddenly screeches to a halt you don't have many alternatives to fall back on outside starting over from scratch with a new setup. There's no "well I can always fall back on X" or "well I still enjoy the Y aspect of the game" or "well I'll just have fun with Z until they fix this"

Even then an artificial longevity propagated purely by arbitrarily selected point value goals is not a true longevity. If someone really enjoys a game they don't play it for a year because that's how long it takes to unlock their next skill, they do it because over that year they enjoyed it enough to come back over and over again.

How many people do you really believe are going to be playing this game for 7.5 years? This isn't an mmo where you have a varied and rich game where people can lose themselves in various aspects and enjoy themselves over long periods.

So flavor of the month fads don't stand up to the long term experimentation the stagnant builds we have no do?

CCP has a tendency to balance their games, and not just throw their hands up in the air and say "F it!". If it's OP today, you can bet that it will be brought into line. Your gun won't become useless, it will be balanced. TAC AR's are getting attention as we speak, if you think they weren't a problem, or that they've been nerfed so hard that you want to spec out of AR Operations all together, you are kidding yourself.