I support a once-per-PSN respec, and it should only be available when you graduate the Newb Academy.

Once a player realizes that they shouldn't have put all that SP in Corp skills ect, I feel that they should get the opportunity to change their SP choices. It will be a one-time offer, and it will allow for mistakes to be adjusted after a player gets used to the SP tree, the game mechanics, and has a feel for what they want to spec into. It will not allow the players to choose when it will be used as I envision that upon graduating they will be presented with the option, that will be valid until they play their first non-academy game.

Anything other than this is would be bad for the game.

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.

also, if you rely on those that respec all the time, they will always either cry OP or UP, because they spec into someting, whine about how bad it is, then whine that the choice they made before was killing them so effectively it does get nerfed. we need to keep solid numbers and figures in this game.

thsoe spreadsheets are courtesy of EVE players that did not want to have to worry about a respec, so they came up with something that works reletively well here in DUST, so that way you can actually plan ahead and reduce the likelyhood of mistakes. it adds to some of the longevity, and what people might think of doing after they have added enough to what they've chosen.

this is going to be a LONG TERM game, hopefully long as EVE got to recently, and running a game for so long will take alot of tweaks, shifts and fixes. you are probably one of many that make mistakes in the game, and think that to have fun you actually need the best things. hell, i made mistakes too, but i chose to live with them, because i knew i could fix what i was lacking in. i see why others want Respecs, but i honestly cannot support it.

Long term thinking, its what CCP is doing, its what alot of the good players are doing, i'm afraid you need to think that as well, and work at it. but have fun with what you've got, that way you know what you can and cant do effectively as you go.

I hate to say it but I have come to believe this feature is needed for DUST. If this were EVE I'd say absolutely not, no way, never, but this is a very different game with a very different crowd.

I could talk a lot about the similarities and differences, but instead here's my basic suggestion on respec options.

First: There would be a respec limit. By that I mean 2-4 times a year or something like that.

Second: For the cost..... Simple, just make it cost like 20% of your current SP pool to respec.

That way the option is there pretty frequently, there is a penalty to doing it, so one wouldn't want to do it often, and there's no real money involved!

Even if just temporarily it's desperately needed in a game as incomplete and imbalanced as this.

Slap a price tag on it, hell make it cost aurum if you want to be a **** about it. Even toss on a time limit so someone can only do it once a week or month or something so it isn't abused.

Even at this "release" stage of the game there are too many missing pieces of critical equipment and items that may be nerfed into oblivion one day or buffed out of it.

Forcing your players to either gimp themselves waiting for an addition/update that may never come or punishing those that invest just to find that next week they've wasted everything is just a **** move. There's enough grinding in this game as it is, people shouldn't be needing to grind even more to make up for trying to enjoy the game before a new addition takes a crap on all they've done so far.

Someone wants to try playing as a logi or a heavy? Well they're going to have to invest a load of sp into it just to get to a point where they are actually built like one just to find out that they're horrible at it and now get to either quit the game in rage or play a game they hate until they can dump more sp into the next specialty just to toss the dice again.

Quit dicking around and playing with these partial respecs already and just add a self respecing system.

Honestly, people are replying to this post saying it's "dishonorable" or "not new eden". Bullshit. If DUST 514 is going to compete with other games, it needs replayablity. Since people keep demanding new items added to the game, why not have a different solution to hold off the needy customers... respecs. So many games have them, and I know people say: "New Eden isn't for COD noobs" or something along the lines that Dust isn't easy. Yeah even with respecs your going to have people it proto suits and another 20 mil SP holding them up. Honestly thats never going to change. Maybe adding a feature to the game that will make people want to play after reaching their weekly cap, is a good thing to the game as a whole, and maybe it will hurt the "vets" a little because "noobs" will have a standing chance. Honestly people grow up and stop complaining about a damn game mechanic ...

How about a partial respec? every 6 months, you get to reset 25% of your SP. they would have to add a menu where you can choose the skills that you want to back out of however, up to 25% of course

Ok ok, not to be ignorant here but where are the resources for me that actually explain what I'm spending my sp on? I feel that until ccp does a really good job of explaining all the details of my sp purchases than respecs are needed. Not every player is gonna go read pages and pages of wiki data to research one sp purchase. I don't feel there is enough IN GAME information explaining the details of dust skills and equipment to yield no sp respecs.

How about a partial respec? every 6 months, you get to reset 25% of your SP. they would have to add a menu where you can choose the skills that you want to back out of however, up to 25% of course

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.

10,000,000 ISK
Available once every 720 hours
No skillbook refunding

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. Adding timers or diminishing returns isn't going to help or change that. As new things come out everyone will have an equal opportunity to skill into it, no need to respec your entire character.

To those still supporting the OP and general respecs please read and respond to in detail my posts #19 & #92.
There's a lot of ground to cover and the issues presented within those two posts (as well as other posts not by me) really do require an address before any such idea should be considered for adoption into the game.

Cheers,
Cross