Only thing I think that needs to be added is a 1 hour refund period incase you made a mad decision. Or heck, make it 30 minutes or whatever. I know I've accidentally skilled into something and realized two seconds later my mistake, or skilled into something and after one match regretted it. Perhaps put a cooldown on such a feature.

Maybe if you'd have waited those 2 seconds before confirming, you wouldn't have made the mistake.

I don't understand why people would want to undo what they've done. If you're unsure about your decision, don't do it. If you do it, commit to it. Want to try something else, save up some SP and branch out. It's not a difficult concept.

EDIT: We already have an option similar to a respec. They're called boosters, and they let you put SP into skills quicker than you normally would.

I don't understand why people think the cons outweigh the pros. Sure, trends will be picked up here and there but builds need to be tested out. If a build doesn't work for someone it will take months to recover/spec into a different build, or more likely, quit.

Okay, picture this. I want to tryout a new weapon, I'll buy the skill, get it to level 1 and then buy it.
I don't like it.
Wasted approx 18k SP.
Get it back in a couple hours.

I still don't see the issue.

Let's say it's a 1 hour grace period. Let's say I've got 4 MIL SP saved up.

I skill into what I want for the match.
Play the round.
Undo all my SP.
I then skill into what I want for the next match.
Rinse repeat.

sometimes, when people try things out like that, they dig deeper and pray it gets better, but doesn't. There goes weeks of putting faith into a build thinking things will get better with higher tier gear. Especially, low meta level gear doesn't do justice to their proto equivalents.

It's not that much trouble to earn and apply skills to a new tree, new players do it all the time, and they have no experience with the game at all.

If you're worried about being competitive, just keep using your current stuff, and apply the sp you earn with it into the skills you plan on branching into, until you've got them levelled to a comfortable level before switching over.

It just doesn't really make sense (I know, I'm venturing into RP territory here) for a character to magically "forget" the skills they've spent all their time learning, and instantly become a fully skilled expert in a completely different area, just because a new item was released or CCP makes some balance adjustments.

It is much more natural and realistic that, if a character wants to learn a completely new set of skills, they do so gradually, over time, IN ADDITION TO the skills they already know, just like in real life.

In the end, that player will be far more versatile and, as an added bonus, will have a secondary skill tree to fall back on, should their current one get nerfed in the future, without having to come back here begging for ANOTHER respec! Win-win!

Edit: that being said, I would not be against adding an "Apply Skills" button when leaving the Skills screen, that would allow a player to add and remove their current available skill points at will, and then lock their choices in when they're done. This would help avoid the "oh crap, I didn't mean to click that!" allocation accidents.

Kind off topic, but speaking of the new player SP dilemma I had a few ideas from debating the issue with many people today.

I think we can all agree that 500k starter SP is very low considering skill costs in uprising. And that leaving the battle academy can be quite a shock to new players.

While 500k is fine to get through battle academy I think it would be a good idea to reward player's 1mill SP upon graduation from the Academy. For intelligent player's they should have a good grasp of where they would like to take their toon by this time. Also assuming that CCP can create a better tutorial system to help new player's with theory crafting their fits.

On top of that new player's should have an extended weekly cap until they hit 5mill SP. At which time they would be granted a ONE TIME ONLY Respec to undue any potential errors in their beginning weeks.