Vhex

If you see this coming wall of text and think tl;dr, go ahead and skip to the last paragraph. Realized a summary might be in order for this freaking essay...

Anyways...


You're assuming farming gold is hard. It's not. It's a half hour spent doing mindless, boring, repetative, unchallenging content. It's the same argument we had against the absurd nature of consumable use and thankfully that got toned down. Being flat out REQUIRED to do boring, unfun content for an hour to enjoy something else is -always- a bad idea. _ALWAYS_.

Respec costs act as a major deterrent for another thing. I raid holy, I have a different pvp holy spec, and I usually spend the 4 off days as prot PL'ing twinks or generally goofing off. I get literally dozens of tells while prot asking me if I want to go heal this or do some pvp or etc...

Now granted paladin is an extreme case, but you get the idea. There have been weeks when I've spent upwards of 400~500 gold on just respecing to fill the needs of my friends and my desire to have a good time. And anybody who's spent time farming gold as a Paladin knows just how unfun that is. Luckily I have an army of alchemy/tailor alts pumping out gold by the bucket so I don't have to let, "Sorry, can't afford the respec cost..." get in the way of having a good time.

Like it did pre-tbc. I played a shadow priest but people needed holy priests to heal for groups. I passed on hundreds of groups simply because spending 1~2 hours farming the gold to do a 1~2 hour instance run or ~3 hours of pvp just wasn't worth it.

It's silly and needless and punishes people for playing the game. Much like the nonsense that is durability hits.

Anyways...

Another issue that Adoriele brought up is character identification. The notion that what you spec is who you are. While this is all well and good for some people, nothing is stopping you from being that paticular spec. People naturally gravitate towards a playstyle that suits them. This can be seen in games with free 'respecing' of sorts. Look at TF2. I'm willing to bet large parts of my favorite organs that the vast plurality of people have a class they play obscenely more then any other. For me, it's the medic. I enjoy playing a support role 99.9% of the time.

Likewise in WoW my first 3 level 70's were all healers (holy spec'd paladin, priest and resto shaman). I enjoy that gameplay, I enjoy it more then any other. But I also like a change of pace now and again.

Look at pretty much any game where you're presented with this choice. Anecdotal I imagine, but my brother typically takes the more melee orientated classes in any game he places. He prefers up close combat to everything else. Whenever I play Command and Conquer I almost always play Nod simply because I enjoy being an evil bastard more then anything else. Etc...etc...

I mean, let's take this one step further. Not only are you Adoriele the Balance Druid, you're Adoriele the Balance Druid who never leaves the Arathi Highlands. Using rolepaying (which is what you're doing, honestly) as a justification for high respec costs just lends itself to all kinds of silliness. Why does your fantasy come at 0 cost when my dream of being "Zehn the incredibly multi-talented Paladin" have to cost several hundred gold a week?

Honestly, given the chance, I would go one further and not only make respec'ing less painful, I'd also introduce part of the job system from FFxi and let you change -classes- after certain conditions have been met. Nyx that counter-argument of, "WELL MAGES CAN'T SPEC TO TANK NOW CAN THEY...SUCK IT UP PALLY BOY!" argument right in the bud.

To me, my character's name and in essence my name are far more important then what spec I am that hour. Probably because "Zehn" has been a wizard in EQ, champion in lotro, doomsayer in SB, monk in FFxi, necromancer in EQ2, paladin in WoW...and that's just MMO's. First incrantion of Zehn was as a blackmage in Final Fantasy 1.

Anyways...

So how would I fix it?

Change the hall of heroes/champions or whatever in Orgrimmar/Stormwind to include a second subsection with trainers. Add a similar micro-instance to the other cities as well. Add one to Shattrath you can purchase entry to for a sum of gold (voluntary gold sink #1).

You can lock in a spec. This locked in spec costs nothing to switch back to. You can change your spec free of cost every 1 hour. It costs ~30 gold to reset the timer. The timer does not start until you actually leave the hall of heroes. Add a few target dummies and banker so people can play with abilities and see what they're like and how they compare.

And here's the gold sink to make up for no respec costs (or durability costs for that matter).

Then, add gaming rooms to Orgimmar/stormwind/whatever. Games of skill that reward you with tickets. Tickets you can turn in for a variety of prizes. Not crappy useless darkmoon faire level prizes either. It's pretty trivial to create items people want and will dump tons of gold on while not impacting PvP or PvE. My brother sold an azure whelpling for 700 gold. That kinda stuff. Pets, clickies, clothing, single-use consumables with unique effects, etc...etc...etc...

Then add games of chance. Higher bets increase your odds of winning various stuff. Same concept. Non-pvp/pve items. Super rare epic mount at the high end, a few mana pots and whatnot at the low end.

The casino in EQ was an -incredible- money sink. Problem was it was a very unintuitive interface, very bland, and by that point plat duping was rampant.

Anyways...

We had a ridiculously long similar argument on fohguild.org about this, complete with cursing and nonsensical circular arguments. I made basically the same post there and we got into a huge derail about multi-classing. My threat to punch anyone in the throat who says, "IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, REROLL!" seems to have been rather effective as well.

Anyways...

Summary!

Long and the short of it is that WoW has, from the beginning, always been gradually moving towards more convenient gameplay. Bigger backpacks, more bank slots, guild banks, linked flightpaths....heck, remember during Beta when every crafter used Cosmos for the 'create all' option because the original tradeskill UI didn't do it? It was unfun, annoying and stupid to have to sit there and click 'create' 50 times. So Blizzard fixed it.

The only -remotely- valid argument for respec costing gold is to limit people doing it on a whim. However, gold costs do not cause that. It just punishes you for wanting to enjoy more of the game then your little slice of the pie alotted to you. A cooldown on how often you can respec is a much better idea in every term of the word. There are much better ways of doing gold sinks too for that matter.

 

Mideci

So again, the infinite well of wisdom at Blizzard has been very friendly to the WoW player base over time, It has realized that the world of repcraft would be intolerable if every rep grind was Timbermaw and, in fact, none is so hideous as that once was. It took out endless consumable farming with the alchemy "nerf." It brought an arena-gearing system that allowed comparable-to-raiding iLvl gear to be obtained in short periods of time.

These arguments about how something near to "Freespecing" shouldn't be allowed or are anathema to the game simply don't hold water. It's finally possible to enjoy the game more thoroughly in less time.

Unfortnately, some people are in a position where to fully enjoy the game they have to morph their character one or more times per week at 100g per trip to do it. And some people don't. And the notion that the status quo is reasonable is bizarre. Ask a prot warrior how much he's having in arena.

But the problem is deeper because, quite frankly, raid-spec warlocks are not competitive in the arena and really most PVE spec characters are steamrolled by people with arena specs due to specific talents being so essential in the arena.

The solution of "doing dailies" when the regular raider is already committing 10-30 hours per week to PVE that the arena-only player is not, aside from being offensive, flies in the face of the direction Blizzard has fortunately taken WoW.

Our goal set is simple here:

(1) We want to be able to freely switch between specs of our character, at least 2 specs, perhaps 3
(2) We are willing to go somewhere to make the swap, not do this in the wild; the class trainer seems logical
(3) Any meaningful cooldown on this becomes punitive, but if necessary something like 30-60 minutes is certainly acceptable
(4) We are willing to engage in a quest chain, one-time gold expense, etc. to make the multi-spec available
(5) We are willing to continue to pay the respec costs of the "sub-specs" that single-spec characters pay
(6) We are willing to have everyone get multi-spec for free, of course
(7) Having repeated payments to switch specs is not what we're after. A "bulk fee" for the month is not a solution that's appealing, despite the posts above. That's a version of the existing system; we're after 2 or more fully maintained co-equal specs that are available via a magic "incantation" at the trainer.
(8) Even if the existing framework were changed and capped at, say, 10g for a respec, we need a "talent stable" to maintain dual specs (or three) because the main reason we want this is to swap between 2-3 fairly static specs, not to constantly spec differently. Most of us would probably prefer a one-time fee of even 1000g to a 10g cap on respecs honestly.

 

Zifna

There's another possibility too... I know people who respec every time they go PvP. As for myself, I don't PvP seriously enough to justify that, but I wish I could sometimes. But when I do go PvP, the people I run with often fit in a few games after one day's raid... maybe a few games Saturday... finish out what we haven't finished on Monday/get a few games for the people who haven't gotten any yet this week. And I don't have the money to do it 3x a week for sure! Now, you can say "you should all get together long enough to do it all at once and not need to do it anymore later," but that's just not very feasible, and really turns casual arena into a "hardcore or not at all" option.


What I am getting at is, if I could pay 150-200 a month to swap in between PvE/PvP specs at will, I'd be sinking *more* money in than I am right now. Some people--the hardcore PvPers--would be putting less in, but a lot of people who weren't paying anything would start paying something.



EDIT:

I'd also like to say... there are people who like to make gold just for the sake of making gold. The process of watching our gold supply go up is fun for these on an inherent level, even if they have no immediate use for their earnings.

However, these people are not the majority. The majority of people make money when they need to, and don't make money if they don't need to make it. For example, I know a number of people who did 10 dailies when trying to get their epic mount. Nowadays, I know very few people who do 10 dailies each day. Most, after getting their epic do "The cooking and BG daily" or do "the BG daily sometimes."

I feel that there is a very real argument that if people have fewer costs, people will farm less.

 

berg

I like the idea of having the option of paying a flat fee to get as many respecs as you want.

Having a fixed pve/pvp spec sounds great if you can easily settle on 2 specs. I think many classes can easily come up with 3 or more specs that are very appealing to them.

Best soution:

• Trainer sells a soulbound item with 28 day duration For 200g.
• If this item is in your inventory you can respec for free.
• Implement the 'Talented' Mod into the base UI to make the swaps painless.
• You would still need to go to the trainer to respec.
• 10 minute debuff on respec to prevent overuse.

I think there are a lot of Pally/Druid/Shaman in the same boat. They have their main spec and have picked up enough tokens and non set pieces to have very respectable gear in their non-raid specs. But paying a 100g round trip makes dabbling in those specs seem stupid. If a game mechanic conditions you against trying other things then it is a bad game mechanic.

 

oldmandennis

This would run into trouble based on the stated goal of bliz to make outdoor pvp much more important.

They have a real design problem here - either specs should be flexible and fun to play with, in which case they cost too much right now, or they should be semipermanant, a cornerstone of your identity in WoW. The cornerstone was their original thought, but the major problem with that is Arenas have nearly completely replaced BG's as WoW's PvP. As a feral druid, there are ton's of things you can do in a BG, and you are an ideal flag runner. I'm sure most non arena viable specs can find a couple things they can enjoy doing in a BG. Unfortunately since BG's are no longer the serious PvP and do not deliver top level rewards, people are forced to respec. If they want talents to be a cornerstone, they need to make sure every major spec has a talent build that delivers competitive performance in both raids and in top level PvP.

It's not anything new, but I think that 2 talent sets, 1-2hr cooldown on changes, and a much stiffer (200g?) fee to change one of your sets sounds about right. 90% of people would use their 2 sets to make a PvE and a PvP set, which would cut out hyperspecialized respecs from fight to fight. Joe average druid would have a feral or deep resto PvE talent set, and the 8/11/42 or 11/11/39 arena set - if the guild wanted a boomkin for HKM they would have to either recruit one, or pay a much more noticeable penalty for sending one to moonglade.

 

Phlis

So two things. First, why do we have to loose all of our talent points when we respec? Wouldn't it make more sense if the talent trees worked like a wowhead talent calculator, click to add, right click to unlearn(with a dialog box or something sayign I wish to take x points out of this talent). The talent calculator decides if it's legal(you have to work top down, probably a color coded thing) and that frees up those points for use else where. Perfect example of where this is useful, to go from PvE to PvP and back I need to move 1 point around as an elemental shaman. Totem of Wrath to NS, and I'm done. Why do I have to pay 50g to move 1 point?

Secondly, It occurs to me in WotLK there may be an even larger barrier to respecing all day every day. Spell Inscriptions, the new profession they announced but since then we've heard next to nothing about. From what Blizzard has said it's supposed to be like Enchanting for Spells. Which is fine, except it becomes a respeccing tax. If you loose spells from your spell book when you respec, do you also loose the Inscriptions you've put on them? Does respeccing start to cost a lot more for certain class/spec combinations because of this? I don't know but it's something to think about.

 

BoinKlasik

This is exactly how I feel about this. People claim that respec costs "deflate" the economy. They do not do this in any way. Especially with dailies, no money effectively enters or leaves the economy because it is immediately used in a "weekly" respec cost. It isn't money that would be used elsewhere because the people wouldn't do the dailies (and make the money) without the cost/need to respec. Most people I know grind out dailies when they need something not because they enjoy watching their gold counter climb. I know on my characters I try to keep a certain "level" of gold on them, on my main this is about 1k gold and my alts its around 500. If my costs require that I spend that money then I will do dailies to return to that level, otherwise anything i incidentally make goes to my alt guild bank for all to use.

 

• Adoriele

I make no such assumption. Gold farming is not hard, and for the most part it is boring. I did barely any in Vanilla WoW (only farming I ever did was killing tons of Orcs in Burning Steppes for cloth so I could rep up with SW and get a horse), and I don't do much besides the dailies in BC (I fish as well, but I actually like fishing). I don't enjoy it, but I do think it's a necessary evil for allowing money into the system. If live realms had the 5000g vendor that the Tournament realm is getting, the game would be a whole lot more boring. However, the acquisition if gold is only marginally important to the question of respecs. As I mentioned earlier, if the cost of a respec were in time, not in money, the same complaints would be around, just about something else.

And here you make assumptions of your own. I do not play Adoriele as Balance for Roleplay reasons. Yes, I love my feathers. Yes, I couldn't imagine playing her any other way. But the reason is because the playstyle of Balance works best for me. I've tried playing a mage, and I hate it. I would much rather play an armored tank (Panzerkin!) than a glass cannon. Again, this is playstyle, not roleplaying. I can't get my head around keeping an enemy away from me, so I play a caster for whom that is not an issue.

World of Warcraft is an MMORPG. Despite the fact that I don't play Ador as Balance for RP reasons, it would in fact be valid for WoW. The game is meant for you to play a character with a specific role. You have a class which you cannot change, a race which you cannot change, a faction which you cannot change, and talents which are intended to be semipermanent. Even more RPish, you cannot change your appearance (for the most part this will hold true in WotLK). Your character is intended to be static, which was not the intention of FFXI. Your dream of being Zehn the Multitalented Paladin is much the same as my wish of being Phil the Bestselling Cancer Engineer. Blizzard simply does not want one character to be good at everything at all times. You have to choose.

If every single person on earth had 1 Billion dollars, money would cease to be a viable form of currency (See Russia for a historical example). Similarly, if talents are easily swappable, they cease to have any function. You may as well give every talent to every character. In order to avoid this, there must be a cost associated with reallocating your talents. Whether this cost is in time or gold doesn't matter incredibly (although I personally believe gold is a much better deterrent).

And people seem to be overlooking the very simple solution to all of their respeccing problems, the one I've used myself a number of times, which removes the cost of respeccing entirely and can even be worth more money in the long run.

Alts.

 

PSGarak

Extending an example to make a point: Zehn the Multitalented Paladin is strictly more powerful than a dedicated tankadin, which is not allowable in a multiplayer game. However, if talents were set up differently, Zehn the Multitaltented Paladin could chose a tribrid spec that allows him to viably, although not optimally, perform all three roles. It solves the "I wish for a thousand wishes" issue that I currently see with respecs and character specialization. And that, in a nutshell, would also solve the respec problem. The 'necessity' of respecing for arena and raiding is inherently tied into the quantitative, not qualitative, cross-viability of specs, and the viable presence of cross-purpose specs. It's the lack of viable dual-purpose specs that makes people think that respecing is necessary, and gives the false impression that respecing for PvP and raiding is a fundamental, rather than contingent, aspect of the talent system.

Low respec costs are, in my mind, a necessary evil given the current talent design that requires deep specialization to be viable, exacerbated by the presence of arenas. And I hope that the next expansion or two corrects the talent issues, so that talent swaps can raise in price again.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

Douglas

You don't feel that this depends on your definition of "viable"?

Lot's of stuff is "viable" if you're not worried about server-firsts or bleeding-edge content or having a truly competitive arena team. But IMO one of the problems is, a lot of the theorycrafting on the web and in various forums is done by people who do care about those things, and who will say 2% less DPS on a raid boss moves a spec from "viable" to "not viable". Then the hoi polloi will read that stuff and then, like, kick someone out of their non-heroic Ramparts PUG for not having a min-maxed spec.

Not sure how to "solve" that, unless you maybe made respecs "free once a month, but completely unavailable otherwise". Nobody would be really happy with that, but I'd bet a bunch of at least semi-viable hybrid specs would appear in various forums.

 

• Adoriele

Actually this kind of touches on the issue I see right now. In pre-BC WoW, respec costs were semi-prohibitive. 50g was actually quite a bit of money to throw at respeccing. Now, however, it's not. But it's not free, either. So we're caught in a place where the respec cost really is just a tax. Not enough to discourage, but too much to be pleasant. I'm fairly certain that there wouldn't be a large amount of complaining if they increased the respec cost, aside from the deafening initial outcry. Players and guilds would understand that yes, Blizzard does in fact want you to make a decision on your spec and live by it, rather than the half-condoning of multiple respecs that we have right now, and respeccing for PvP would be less rampant, as players would either roll an alt for PvP, or choose a hybrid spec to be able to play both sides. Of course, in order for the second option to be viable, Blizzard needs to make talent trees more versatile in their ability to mix PvP and PvE.

 

• Creediki

I believe you are fundamentally misreading Zehn's post. He is not asking to be tanking and healing and dpsing at the same time. Nor do I believe he is asking to be able to swap specs with a moment's notice out in the field in response to a changing situation. I think Medici did a great job of summing up the argument.

Further, you characterize the use of alts as something that removes the cost of respeccing entirely. If we define respeccing as giving oneself the ability to play a certain class with a different spec, then the cost of leveling and equipping the alt in both time and money are by no means zero.

*** Who Dares Wins ***
"The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation." - Heinlein
"Come and take them!�*" - Leonidas

 

Nezralix

I can see that you have an Armory profile, and yet I'm not convinced that you're playing the same game I am with comments like this.

You must have missed the statements by Blizzard that they want players to be participating in both areas of the game. Remember the PvP cloaks purchased from badges and the PvP gear from rep vendors?

It's a difficult balancing act, and it's one that they don't seem particularly interested in pursuing, given that they've stuck a "PvP tree" into every class that they couldn't figure out enough distinct specs for. Even if they did intend to make every spec viable, it would be a laborious process, and many just wouldn't be even at the end of it. Hell, as far as I know the entire rogue class is fairly unpopular in Arenas, and they've arguably got two PvP talent trees. So what makes you think there's even a shade of hope that they'll make progress in making every class/spec combination viable?

And all of this talk about rolling alts to PvP with is just hilarious. There's nothing like doing everything TWICE, and further eroding any sense of attachment you have to your character.

 

• Creediki

I fully agree with this statement. I believe that it is in Blizzard's interest to encourage people to make alts and play them through existing content again. However, I think that forcing someone to make an alt _of the same class_ is something that would reduce most people's enjoyment of the game and their opinion of it.

*** Who Dares Wins ***
"The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation." - Heinlein
"Come and take them!�*" - Leonidas

 

• Adoriele

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, if the only cost is time, it is the same as the only cost being money. People will complain about it. It does not matter whether he wants to be SupertankhealDPSer or only one at a time, given free ability to respec removes any distinction between the three, and talents become useless artifacts, fungible with the base spells a class is given.

Secondly, a large number of people are asking for a one-time large sum payment ability to give permanent use of two specs, whereby each spec would incur a cost to change, but the cost of swapping between the two is nil. Explain to me how this is at all different from rolling an alt (levelling would be the large sum buy-in) of the same class for the separate role? You gain an extra set of dailies, even, as you now have two reset timers per quest to work with, so you do in fact gain money in the long run. You also gain two more professions to work with. As long as you make the distinction of which toon you prefer to use for each role, and gear up each accordingly in their chosen role, there is no meaningful negative difference to having one toon with two specs.

I enjoy the PvP scene, even if Adoriele happens to suck completely at it. I also happen to have a rogue, who I found I'm actually decent at PvP with. So I levelled her to 70, switched up all my professions to help with cash flow issues, and started running BGs with her (though I'm putting a hold on that for a bit, waiting for the blue gear to hit the vendors in 2.4). She isn't very well geared yet, but she's better off than Adoriele would be given the same amount of PvP time. I don't intend to raid with her, just like I don't intend to PvP with Ador. And voila, the system works.

[edit]
I do, in fact. I was also there in Pre-BC when the respec cost was much more of a deterrent. And while people weren't silent, they also weren't as vocal as they are now. Respec costs are at the threshold of pain right now. People do it because they can, but they don't like it. Make it unfeasible, and people will stop. The only reason there will be major uproar is because people had a shiny toy and Blizzard took it away, not because there's an inherent problem with respec costs.

Players being the operative word, as opposed to characters. You can't tell me that rep gear is more intended for a T6 guild than for a new 70.

Rogues are unpopular in the arena because of a lot of things, most of which have nothing to do with talents, but that's another thread entirely. And yes, I don't trust Blizzard to make every tree viable for both PvE and PvP, especially since they usually follow their 'Talent specs are intended to be important choices' speeches with a variation of 'We want a character to specialize in either PvP or PvE, or be less-than-perfect at both'. And it's a stance I tend to agree with. And one that, once again, is largely solved by creating a new character to play the other side of the game with.

 

Nezralix

Completely and utterly false, and I'm annoyed that this keeps coming up. Talents extend the power of a class, but the number of points available constitute a hard cap on the magnitude of that extension. It's foolish to think that having the ability to switch freely between specs somehow devalues the distinction between them, because those distinctions are extremely concrete at any given time. It doesn't enable a "SupertankhealDPSer", and this point *does* matter. If Blizzard really is concerned about rapid respeccing, then they can apply a respec fee to players who want to respec in a window of less than two hours or the like.

Is this some kind of joke? Your gear, inventory, and reputation states are all important aspects of the game that are totally unshared. This is a thoroughly different experience than spending hundreds of hours leveling and acquiring gear for an alt.

Quite honestly, I don't think anybody cares about the anecdotal situation you've got that happens to work for you. It doesn't matter if it works for you. Nothing would stop you from doing exactly what you're doing if the respec system were streamlined. That you keep bringing up this point amounts to "this problem doesn't affect me, so I'm going to keep telling you it's fine".

 

Mideci

Simple and I'm surprised you don't already know the answer.

A one-time lump-sum of 1000g is nowhere near akin to rolling an alt, leveling it to 70 and then running dailies on it over and over and over. Or for that matter, not running dailies on it, just having it be my "pvp version of Mideci."

I mean these are so entirely unrelated in terms of the investment sink and allowing me to play one character it's not even slightly comparable.

And since people are already respecing weekly or more, the notion that "Mideci" or "Leeo" (my priest) should be just one spec is already out the window. That's a WoW anachronism already. In fact, our guild would've already failed if we couldn't make use of the readily available respec mechanism. It's just a huge punishment for the few.

Again, we'll incur some cost / pain. But an entire re-roll and re-level? To 70 and then 80? Not what we're after. Nor are we after having to rescue the Skettis prisoner 4 more times every time we want to go into the arena.

The time has come. I think most people get that. I'd hope Blizzard's developers' comments indicate they are among them.