DUST Search - (Suggestion) - Respec Mechanic Idea

Maken Tosch wrote:

With the exception of the petitions that were submitted before the 31st of last month, CCP said there will be no more respecs.

Quote:

Posted at 17.05.2013 17:04 by GM
Hello,

This response is being sent to all users who have filed a support ticket in order to request a skill respec.

We would like to acknowledge receipt of your skill respect request and inform you that we have now flagged your account for a skill respec .

The skill respec will be applied to your characters in the coming days once we have completed and deployed changes to the skill tree. This one time respec will remove and refund all ISK and skill points that have been applied to date. Please ensure that due care is taken when spending skills and ISK as we will be unable to reverse ISK/SP spending in future.

If you wish to discuss issues that have not been addressed in this skill respec response, or believe you have received this message in error then please respond to this support ticket and we will attempt to address your issue.

Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Please note that if you are receiving this message you are currently in a queue for a skill respec. Eligible customers who may have been misfiled and would like to request an Aurum account reset should respond to this ticket clarifying their request.

Regards,
Lead GM
CCP Customer Relations | EVE Online | DUST 514

Note the highlighted parts. This is the same message that everyone who submitted the same petition received so it's no secret.


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dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 3	Posted - 2013.06.14 11:48:00 - [1] - Quote After talking with a few friends about the downsides of having an in game respec mechanic. Most concerns focused on it either being abused for PC or being disruptive to any future player-driven economy, unless it's restrictive. To that end this what I've come up with. 1 respec per 30 days, per account, applying to only one character. A 2 part waiting period before the respec actually takes effect. All SP is returned, but only a portion (if any) ISK for Skill Books is returned. A new respec option could be added in the select or terminate menu which prompts a "cue character for respec", yes or no. After affirmation a 12 hour timer is placed over the character during which time it is still accessable. After the expiration of that timer, players must reaffirm the respec a second time, with a pop-up briefly detailing the terms of SP and ISK reimbursement to further emphasize the point of no return. A second 12 hour timer is launched and the character is not accessable while the respec is finally applied. After a character has been respec'd, under the augmentations tab, listed with any boosters is the 30 day countdown until another respec can take place. Now I'm torn on the ISK returned. It could be returned up until a certain point, or a percentage of the total ISK spent. I think it should favor newer players, which leans me toward a cap on the ISK return, however I can easily see how players with a great deal of ISK invested could feel slighted. A possible work-around could be 1 free, all SP and ISK returned respec after major updates. I'm still unsure about the best way to handle this aspect. Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome, thank you.
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 5	Posted - 2013.06.14 23:40:00 - [2] - Quote Shameless bump.
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 5	Posted - 2013.06.15 04:03:00 - [3] - Quote Klash 816 wrote: Dude there are tons of threads just like this one, and no offense but most of them are more thought out Than this one :/ So suggesting a respec mechanic in meant to be difficult to abuse, and less harmful to the coming "we don't know when" player-driven economy in a simple non "read my novelle" OP, that includes a short explaination of how it could be intergrated into the current system without the need for a complete over-all is not thought out. Ok.
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 5	Posted - 2013.06.15 21:03:00 - [4] - Quote Delenne Arran wrote: I'm against any further respecs unless there's a major change to the game. I could maybe be swayed toward one-time skill transfers when the remaining racial variants on stuff comes out, allowing people who want to do, say, Minmatar vehicles to transfer over 100% of their Caldari vehicle skills to that tree. As for your idea- Still not thought out enough. One respec per month is far too frequent for this game, especially since I'm pretty sure it's only supposed to get patches every 2-3 months. That's enough time to swap into what's supposed to be overpowered this patch, decide you don't like it and go back to your old fit, before doing it all again next patch. One respec per month could only maybe work if you only got to keep like 10% of your SP. And at that point, it's not so much a respec as it is making an entirely new character. Transfers would mean skill trees need to be developed to fit one another to avoid one tree having more or less SP then another. That would add a lot of restrictions to the process. We don't know how often new content is going to be released. We know CCP has great plans for Dust, but we also now these plans are going to take a great amount of time to implement. I believe that having the option to respec, under limited circumstances will help to players to get more out of the game in the meantime. As it stands players need to sink weeks and in some cases months into trying something new. That's a lot of time to get discourged with the game. Especially when a player realizes that it's going to take several millions in SP to maximize just one build. At a 2-3 months timeframe, players might not even have chance to touch all the content before the next release. I feel a constant seemingly never-ending grind is not the best carrot on a stick. Fun gameplay should be factored in as well. However in many cases fun for Dust is tied to your SP, because who lives and who dies is often decided by who has better gear. Furthermore the ability to respec also allows players to adapt to weapons or strategies that may come off as dominate. This gives a better gauge as to whether a particular weapons or set up is really OP, and in need of balancing.
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 5	Posted - 2013.06.16 05:01:00 - [5] - Quote Delenne Arran wrote: As near as I can tell, all the Vehicle Command skills have identical SP requirements, unless you get a racial discount? I was referring mostly to skilltrees that have yet to be developed and/or released. They would all need to add up to the same SP value and that is limiting from a design stand point. Delenne Arran wrote: There's a difference between "trying something new" and "being good enough to do Planetary Conquest with a new build." Wanting to try something new is what Militia gear is for. Will you still get killed by blokes in Prototype gear who're doing instant battles for whatever reason? Sure. Can you at least get a feel for what you're doing to see if it's something you want to get better at? Yes. There aren't Militia or AUR for that matter, equivalents to all items. Some items, the HGM for example, take quite a few skill points to even try. I rarely see a lobby were at least someone isn't run around in Proto. Most of the time it's squads of them. And the fact is every SP a person sinks into trying something new, is more time before they'll be on a gear level close to players in all, or nearly all Proto, who have the SP to completely maximize one or more builds. Delenne Arran wrote: If you look at it as a grind, no it's not. If you look at it as "getting better" it's fine. While it's never fun to get massacred because some dude's wearing full prototype gear in an Instant Battle Domination, it also doesn't take much to kill people at the same gear level as you are. Gear can decide the winner, but actual player skill factors in as well and playing with inferior gear teaches you better tactics. As for players not being able to use everything between releases-- Individuals probably won't, but it's not like that stuff's going anywhere. This isn't like World of Warcraft where if you don't get to enjoy your level 80 gear before the next expansion pack comes out, too bad it's useless now. Dust might have reasonably fun gameplay, but the harsh reality of months to remotely level playing field against squads of PUG roaming Protos, only to find out that your plan is less effective then you thought, was changed by an update somehow is, or might just not be overly fun, it hard to call anything but a grind. The EHP buffer alone is huge. That on top of dealing greater damge means less skilled players are often able to tounce lesser gear, higher skilled players. The time spent in Dust to get better gear is even a factor. The game literally plays like no shooter I've played before. Now, I think that's in some ways in a good thing (it's part of what keeps me playing Dust) however it also means that players regardless of general video game or shooter skill are having to adapt to a different system, which lessens the effect of them actually being more highly skilled. Do you have an example to site of better tactics? Most of the better tactics that inferior gear could teach you: don't stay in the open, move with the pack, stay moving - even while shooting; are things most people with even the slightest bit of shooter, third or first person know. True the new content released with expansion is not going away most likely. However I have trouble getting excited about the notion of it being weeks or months before I could try it at even moderate potential. Delenne Arran wrote: It's a double edged sword, but I believe it's better not to have respecs. Not more frequently than once a year, if that, at any rate. At one respec per month, you might as well not even have skill points. Game Players and Game Designers/Developers often think differently, and while in-house testing is great, it only gives so much of a window into how the playerbase will use the content given to them. It also has a hard time mimicking the actual player side gaming conditions, as it's normally run on a LAN type setup, and is often done with Dev accounts which have access to everything from the start. With the time to get into new gear in the weeks or even months, and the potential for new content to be released before the general playerbase even gets into the last round of new content. That means most balancing is either going to have to wait for playerbase to catch up, or is going to be done using almost exclusively the data collected from in-house testing. I feel that not only hinders the balancing process, but also can misguide it.
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 5	Posted - 2013.06.16 05:03:00 - [6] - Quote Artificer Ghost wrote: Like the idea, but seen better. :) Thank you. As I'm always trying to evolve and expand the idea. What made the other ideas you've seen seem better?
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 5	Posted - 2013.06.16 08:53:00 - [7] - Quote Cross Atu wrote: This applies here as well Cross Atu wrote: There's a lot of feedback regarding respec, read this thread on the issue as it's one of the latest in a long line of duplicates. If you want closer to a TL;DR version then start with my post #92 there read and follow along with it's contents. Cheers, Cross You are indeed correct that shocks to the player driven economy are one of the foremost concerns, please elaborate in detail on how this proposal would avoid those shocks. To be blunt I have yet to see any proposal for unlimited respecs (payed or free) which manages to avoid most of the pitfalls I've listed in the linked thread. Yes cool down timers help somewhat in mitigating the rate of abuse but over the course of time unlimited respecs tend to lead down the same road no matter the rate of travel. There have been some proposals of allowing 1 respec per PSN ID with a maximum lifetime SP value for any given character to be eligible (i.e. a character with enough SP to run a Max Skill proto fit would no longer have the option open) or a 1 time only offer of a respec upon graduation from the Academy which cannot be saved. These options are worth some further thought and investigation, but unlimited respec in any form has thus far not been able to avoid the varied pitfalls listed by myself and others in the linked thread. 0.02 ISK Cross I read the thread in it's entirety. It contained some interesting opinions. In theory my purposed idea would allow players to, in a shorter period of time, mold the metagame of the gear used because they were able to experiment with new setups at a faster pace. This would allow for demand of the next big thing, while simultaneously regulating players (more specifically corporations) from abundantly captializing, due to trends being subject to more rapid change. I personally forsee the new economy resulting in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poor. Corps able supply their own gear ascertain substantial gains and turn a massive and scarcely regulated profit. There would be little reason for them not to PUG stomp in full Proto. Not only making more ISK with more kills, but also wielding a greater influence on demand for better gear to compete. However the longer I dwell on the matter the more I wonder how any of us can with any degree of certainty predict whether a respec option will or will not negatively impact the future economy of Dust. Given that it's just that - the future - . I know many Eve players maintain that it will because it would in Eve, however without knowing the interworkings of the economy before it's implimented how could we be so sure.
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 9	Posted - 2013.06.17 03:30:00 - [8] - Quote Maken Tosch wrote: With the exception of the petitions that were submitted before the 31st of last month, CCP said there will be no more respecs. Quote: Posted at 17.05.2013 17:04 by GM Hello, This response is being sent to all users who have filed a support ticket in order to request a skill respec. We would like to acknowledge receipt of your skill respect request and inform you that we have now flagged your account for a skill respec . The skill respec will be applied to your characters in the coming days once we have completed and deployed changes to the skill tree. This one time respec will remove and refund all ISK and skill points that have been applied to date. Please ensure that due care is taken when spending skills and ISK as we will be unable to reverse ISK/SP spending in future. If you wish to discuss issues that have not been addressed in this skill respec response, or believe you have received this message in error then please respond to this support ticket and we will attempt to address your issue. Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please note that if you are receiving this message you are currently in a queue for a skill respec. Eligible customers who may have been misfiled and would like to request an Aurum account reset should respond to this ticket clarifying their request. Regards, Lead GM CCP Customer Relations \| EVE Online \| DUST 514 Note the highlighted parts. This is the same message that everyone who submitted the same petition received so it's no secret. CCP also said that they weren't be adding cash items to EVE but later did anyway. Players convinced them to change their stance on it. Granted they forced their hand with in-game shenanigans, but it shows that CCP can be convinced to change their mind if player demand is greater enough. As such I see no issue with at least discussing some manner of respec. Even if it just a short lived option available only until the game is better able to support informed chooses, gear is better balanced, and more of the racial suits and weapons are unlocked.
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 15	Posted - 2013.06.20 19:30:00 - [9] - Quote Bump for revision.
dday3six Intrepidus XI Omega Commission 16	Posted - 2013.06.20 22:20:00 - [10] - Quote Aikuchi Tomaru wrote: Why do people want to respec every two days? With some patience you get every skill anyways. I still think respecs should only be made available after CCP actually made some major changes, like they did with Uprising for example. And with that I mean actual Balancing changes. Not only "There is a new dropsuit in the game now which I instantly want to try out!" I don't think there is a reason for "Respec once every month" or something like that at all. I've changed my previous stance on the matter to reflect similar. Though it would depend on the situation with the new dropsuits being released. For example, heavies only have one specialized option with Amarr at this point. So it's either not spec into heavy or spec into Amarr. Also some of the specialized dropsuit bonuses are placeholders for the actual bonus they will later get. The Gallente for example are suppose to have a bonus that either lessens or negates the speed penalty of armor plate modules. I certainly don't think respecs should available forever as a permenant part of the game, as I once did. However giving its continual fluctuation state of core gameplay aspects at this point in its development, I see offer limited timeframe respecs as a better player retention option, then telling them "Meh. Don't think of those points as wasted, you'll eventually get the SP needed to play the game how you want."