daowaceMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
If they don't give out a free respec once more paragon paths are released people are going to flip out, myself included.
I've already lost 5 points in a feat that doesn't even work (as have other people), don't have the disposable income to respec yet; not sure when I will.
I think that the Zen shop should be focused on the vanity items and the "I can't wait" items. But you should be able to buy these things in game with gold or Astral Diamonds. And they should be easy to find. And then you can say to yourself, okay, I don't want to wait for 250k AD to pile up in my bank, Im going to get that now, whip out my wallet, go to the Zen store and go for it.
I can tell you, being completely new to this game, trying to figure out how to get anything that involved Zen was a trip into a Brave New World in a haze. Took me a while to comprehend Astral Diamonds. Felt very strange that the ingame gold I accumulate is pretty useless, except for pots and various small items. I couldn't find out how much Zen cost without registering. I couldn't find out options to finding items without Zen. The auction House is horrible. You can't simplify your findings. You can't sort them according to level or price or buy out/bid. And God forbid I should try to get an answer in Zone chat. Oh my god. That is near to impossible.
It is my opinion, this needs to be simplified and made much more transparent. You may think it is a brilliant marketing scheme to trick people into spending real money for things, but in the end, it is a very poor scheme, leaving people feeling like they have been bled.
I don't mind spending what I would have spent on a subscription each month in the Zen shop, but spending hundreds of dollars to obtain services that should be written into the game (like respeccing points), fancy gear, and mounts is not what I will do, due to my restricted cash flow.
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ausdoerrtMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
Once again, I don't see ~200k AD as being too expensive for a respec. Just think when you build.
If you want free respecs, then go play another MMORPG that charges you $10 to $60 to buy and own the game, then possibly spend another few $10 to $60+ for all the expansions, and then start paying $15/month!
Or, you could play NW for free, and whenever you need a respec, you spend a puny little $5, respec and get it over with! Even if you did respec 4 to 5 or maybe even 10 times! 10 respecs = $50 !!!!!!!!!!! That is still nowhere near the amount of money you will spend playing a subscription based MMORPG! Or even Guild Wars 2! You gotta pay $50 for GW2! It's not free!!!
I don't care about the costs of other games. I'm not playing them. I care about the cost in this game. Any game that punishes you for experimenting is shooting itself in the foot, and if you truly cared about the game, you'd realize that practices such as this are only going to hurt it in the long run.
A rich rogue nowadays is fit company for any gentleman; and the world, my dear, hath not such a contempt for roguery as you imagine. - John HAMSTER
I wish it did not cost real money and an arm and leg to respec. I respecced ALOT when I played Rift so I can try out different combos and loved it. Wish they would make it easier here too.
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gruffleenMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 3Arc User
edited May 2013
I guess I'm just not understanding the $6 is a reasonable price for a respec crowd, just as they don't get us. Sure you can get 10 respecs for $60...but for that $60 I would like a whole lot more that just tweaking one character to an optimum point, considering its the price of a new game. Do you really think 10 respecs has the same value as a brand new game? It's not like respecing is the only thing that costs AD.
How about the cost to unbind runes? Y'all think 12k AD is a reasonable price to unbind a level 4 enchantment? What is it for level 5's and 6's? So now it's $6 or more just to unbind most of a set of enchantments? That's really my point. In a vacuum, paying $6 one time for something might be reasonable...but not when combined with everything else you also want to spend $6 on, each of which occurs regularly on a monthly basis (every 2-4 levels if you want to keep in decent gear for the enchantment thing). How about getting your hands on crafting components? I had to pay 1500 for a sword thing for a guard. How much more of that do I have coming? I'm sure it gets worse the higher one gets. It is the combination of ALL of the things in game you need AD for that make $6 for any one of them ridiculous. Many FTP games survive on cosmetic enhancements; it's the money grab for things that many games consider part of the actual core gameplay that seems excessive.
So to get a single respec, I have to grind dailies for 15 days to the exclusion of doing anything else with them. To get the mentioned 10 respecs, I am looking at 150 days of grinding...yep, that's value.
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sargon6Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 4Arc User
edited May 2013
Since no one has said it.. Guild Wars 2 has a more or less "free respec".. its a few silver which at level 80 really isn't that hard to get.. I don't see how a reasonable respec has broken that game in anyway, and I completely agree with the poster that its hampering the community because people get bored and leave... There are a lot of ways to make money.. this just happens to be a poor one.
after I've made BIG mistake on my cleric, I was expecting at LEAST 1 FREE respec but no i had to pay.... its just stupid and really greedy () but I was expecting it , its PWE anyway, the master of kid casino
Once again, I don't see ~200k AD as being too expensive for a respec. Just think when you build.
What does "think when you build" even mean? Are you implying people are willy nilly clicking the powers and feats? What are they supposed to use as a reference when thinking, their experience with all the other feats and powers?
Has any DC tried a non-astral shield healing build? Are the other top tier encounters and dailies useful? Who would know because everyone is playing it safe and using builds that trickled out of alpha and beta. For example, I know there is a temp hitpoint healing build in that feat tree somewhere but I'm not going to spend $6 to find out and then another $6 when I see it doesn't work as well, and then another $6 after the next round of balance adjustments.
Charging for respecs discourages experimentation. There are games out there that charge reasonable in game currency for a respec, if they charge at all (Tera, Rift, LotRO, EQ2, TSW, GW2). I don't care if a game is b2p or f2p - those are just marketing terms - I've spent as much money (or more) on this game getting setup as I did with GW2 or TSW. Having no upfront fee is not an excuse to nickel and dime for every piece of the game.
There is plenty of room for monetization in the game, including traits, that respecs don't have to be prohibitive and discouraging. They could sell "role slots" for $10 each and then sell respecs for gold or AD at a much more reasonable rate. The 200K AD is ridiculous. At a 350AD conversion rate it's nearly $6 itself.
I think that doesn't support your counter-argument. If taken further then I would point out that having spent $60 on a founder pack in this game and $50 in Zen that I'm getting far less for my money than GW2, or TSW, or LotRO, or Tera, or (in another 2 weeks) Rift.
I don't think there is anything wrong with monetizing specs/roles, but the current implementation is excessive and discourages experimentation with character and combat mechanics. That's the sort of thing you want to encourage in a game. It creates a sort of meta game engagement, much like the foundry.
I would like to post some constructive criticism here without the typical rage found in most of the other threads.
The way I see it is this:
1. One major factor that keeps players playing a certain MMO is class experimentation, and finding new ways to play.
2. Another major factor that keeps players playing is the diversity in content (PvP, PvE, etc).
3. Players like to (try to) excel in said facets. Doing your best typically includes speccing your character for each style of play.
Now, what Neverwinter is doing here contradicts all three points above. Instead of encouraging these things:
1. We are punished if we want to experiment with our class.
2. We are punished if we want to spec our character for PvE.
3. We are punished if we want to spec our character for PvP.
While I understand a F2P game needs to support itself, this (in my opinion) is doing the complete opposite. I believe you'll have potential long term players not being so long term if they're intentionally screwed via the wallet every time they want to try something new, or if they simply want to play both PvE and PvP.
How would I fix it? I would add something to the Zen shop for $20 or so that would allow unlimited respecs for one character.
Remember Cryptic/PWE, people enjoy games and stick around when they feel happy to play (and spend), not the other way around. Make money by making gamers happy, not by forcing them to do so to play.
Just my 2 cents!
It's an open beta. If you don't like this game, stop testing.
I think the system is perfect and not expensive at all.
First...as stated...if this was any other game with free respecs, or cheap in games ones you would already be out $50 for the game, 25-50 for each expansion and atleast $15 a month. $6 for a service I want when I need it..thats fine with me. Compared to other F2P games, $6 is actually very cheap.
Second. It DOES use in game currency. Yes you CAN buy Zen, if your lazy. If your not...as stated...get some AD, an in game currency, and exchange it for zen. I actually just did this a couple of days ago. Open up the exchange, I typed in 600 Zen at 325 each and a few hours later someone sold Zen at 325 and for 195000 AD I had my respect with currency acquired in game.
Third. Maybe it is their intent to NOT make respecs easy? Before the WoW casual gamer crowd respecs were retardedly stupid to get. in DAOC a single spec respect, as in one tree, was expensive as hell. To get a full respect...there was 1 dragon in the game, that dragon took a raid of ATLEAST 30-40 people, usually 100+, and it dropped ONE full respec stone. This was before the days of instancing too. There was really ONE dragon that spawned every so often that dropped this for every guild on the server to compete for.
That system worked. Even in a game that you had to pay every month for..i think it was like 7 or 9 bucks...the average back then for a sub. If I wanted the same type of a character for 2 different roles..you rolled 2 characters lol. Why do you think FOTM class nerfs happen SO often now a days and didn't happen nearly as much years ago? Its because back then an OP spec usually only had a handful of people that either made it, or would actually reroll a character to max level to utilize it. Now, a new build gets made, abused, and before you know it 75% of the people playing those classes are using that ONE spec which then causes a huge balance issue.
Having one character, made the way you want it for the purpose you want it, is more fun to me. You have more of an attachment to your character when you have to actually look up and research what you want to do in the future and make sure you plan your skills correctly.
Plus Im against the every class can do every role as good as the next way of thinking that is SO common today. I WANT A ROGUE. BUT IT HSHOUDL OUT DPS EVERYTING!@!! BUT WAIT, IT SHOULD ALSO BE ABLE TO OUT HEAL A CLERIC IF I WANT IT...OR ATLEAST ALLOW ME TO SELF HEAL..ANDD!! I ALSO WANT IT TO TANK EVEN THE THE MOST EPIC BOSSESS!!
With respecs being a bit costly you make a toon, you learn it, play it, and build a reputation as someone who can fill a role it was intended for. Back in the Dark Age days there were some runs you would rather take one guy over the other with. The two guild mates may have had the same class, but one was specced to be more efficient for the purpose of this particular quest or party.
So in the end..QQ on.
I would like to see a Test server. If there was a test server to atleast test your spec before you buy a respec you could respec every 2 weeks and still be ahead of the game money wise then a P2P game. Or..farm some AD and not pay anything. I personally don't see a reason to respec more then that anyway. If you have 2 roles you play that often..make 2 **** characters lol. Leveling is usually the quicker part. Its getting the gear for the 2 builds that takes time, and that time you need to take regardless of if its one toon with 2 specs or 2 toons with 1 spec.
Also, I think people would be much more happy with the game if they STOP thinking of it as Beta. "Beta" ended with closed beta. Think of this as more of a soft launch. I think Beta is used only because the expectation now a days is for a game to be PERFECT at launch. If its not, ie Age of Conan, Rift, Aion, Warhammer, regardless of how they improve it later, they lost the player base. Beta is just security for them to fix what is needed before they put the final seal of approval. People forget how many bugs and glitches WoW had. Hell, you couldn't even find a party in the game at launch...there was no search system at all.
I think the system is perfect and not expensive at all.
Cryptic's current system is functional. To say it's perfect is ridiculous. The entire line of debate in this thread is distburbingly binary; either the respec model is great and doesn't need to be tinkered with or it's awful and needs to be scrapped. I don't know if it's just because people's blood is getting up or what, but it can be (read: is) more nuanced than either/or.
What a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that the entire FTP model is still fuzzy; I can't think of a single FTP or "freemium" game that has honestly knocked it out of the park. Every game is bumbling around trying to figure out what works. It's a finely-tuned balancing act.
So that brings me back to my first sentence: Cryptic's current model is functional. It works. I don't kow if it'll continue to work. Maybe it should be tinkered with a little. I think making respec'ing cheaper, i.e. not free could be a good thing. It's simply hard to say. But don't tell me Cryptic is either entirely right or wrong--there's no way to know that.
It'd be interesting to see how much money they actually earn from respecs. 6 quid a pop is pretty extortionate for what amounts to simply rearranging some numbers, so I can't see it being a regular money spinner. It's the sort of thing that early adopters/theorycrafters would buy a few of, devise optimal builds, and then everyone else either follows one of the optimal builds, or (if they care enough) waits till 60, buys ONE respec, and then never respecs again. And of course not everyone reaches 60 and thinks "this is totally a character I'm gonna keep grinding away at for super optimal play, so I'd better pony up -rest of post mysteriously deleted by the forums???
On one end I understand that Cryptic needs to make money off Neverwinter. On the other hand this is BETA. During a BETA we should be afforded the opportunity to respec infinitely in order to find out what is or is not working. I, for example, have spent probably about $100 in respecs alone in an effort to categorize and figure out the mechanical ins and outs of GWF. Which I have shared freely with the GWF community.
Did I *HAVE* to do that? No. Do I regret doing it? No, not really. Should I have HAD to do that to begin with? Most certainly not.
I have mixed emotions about it. On one hand it's essentially me PAYING $100 to Cryptic to do their development teams job FOR them. On the other hand it was a lot of fun doing it.
Where I do think some of the store prices are pretty crazy, I'm ok with the majority of it. However, having the only option to respec being to pay $6 is pretty ridiculous. Until they officially take the game out of open beta, all respecs should be free.
This! ^^^^
we need an easier way to respec, period! (even when it's out of beta)
the respec aspect of Neverwinter is a game breaker.
Wanted: Hero *Lil Chubs*
Foundry Search: Wanted: Hero Lil Chubs
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hobieoneMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
what i don't understand about the repec is why in cryptics other games like sto everyone gets a free respects at a certain point in the game chars career but not in the this game. now i can see an occasional free one and charge for additional ones. but the cost they want to charge for one is too much. for what they are charging for one repec you should receive at least five repec tokens not one. if anything 100 zen is more than fair price for a repec token.
Charging for respecs discourages experimentation. There are games out there that charge reasonable in game currency for a respec, if they charge at all (Tera, Rift, LotRO, EQ2, TSW, GW2). I don't care if a game is b2p or f2p - those are just marketing terms - I've spent as much money (or more) on this game getting setup as I did with GW2 or TSW. Having no upfront fee is not an excuse to nickel and dime for every piece of the game.
There is plenty of room for monetization in the game, including traits, that respecs don't have to be prohibitive and discouraging. They could sell "role slots" for $10 each and then sell respecs for gold or AD at a much more reasonable rate. The 200K AD is ridiculous. At a 350AD conversion rate it's nearly $6 itself.
I can say one thing about this, this will ultimately be the reason I leave this game, and remains the reason I do not like free to play games that do not have a monthly fee option. I would rather pay a flat $15 a month to have access to everything in game especially respecs with how involved the classes are, and I want to try everything, but then I have to pay for bags, but then, I have to pay for character slots if I do not want to keep switching accounts, and THEN I have to pay for mounts, if I want those, or I have to pay for companions...good lord, how much are we up to now?
seriously, **** being nickled and dimed to death, give me a flat rate and let me have access to everything with currency that is earned in game while I play (not while I waste every minute of my game time hawking the auction house instead of playing)
THESE are the reasons I detest free to play games. THESE are the reasons I will leave for something I can pay a flat rate for. I am an adult, with finances and children and a full time job. I am not some ****er with my daddies wallet and endless summer hours doing ****ing nothing with myself but staring at a broker in game waiting to sell items so I can try a new spec, or refine the one I have been working on for myself.
I would love to have the possibility to remove single points from my ability (for a AD cost of course), is not the cost of a total respec that worry me, is just the possibility to put the a point in the wrong skill for mistake when I put them back and so have to pay for a second respec to fix the mistake... again is not a problem about price, just about practise.
a price of 20k AD per point in power to change would be honest (would be around 1,2M AD to change everything) and more player friendly for all.
That's my 2 cent.
OP is being overly dramatic when he says that we are being "punished." It's been stated over and over that no one has to pay real cash for a respec if they so choose. You can sell ADs for Zen and use that for the respec token. However, the naysayers continue to ignore that fact. Is 200K really that much that it is "punishment?" Also, the rate of zen/AD will continue to fall until it reaches a more stable rate.
OP is being overly dramatic when he says that we are being "punished." It's been stated over and over that no one has to pay real cash for a respec if they so choose. You can sell ADs for Zen and use that for the respec token. However, the naysayers continue to ignore that fact. Is 200K really that much that it is "punishment?" Also, the rate of zen/AD will continue to fall until it reaches a more stable rate.
Then I can call you "overly fanboi"? (Wich I'm not, since I prefer not to resort to belittling other people's opinions.)
It's a beta (according to Cryptic).
Made for playtesting and finding bugs/exploits and broken mechanics. Who can honestly defend them charging real money (or lots of game hours spent working toward AD) for us helping them polish their product for them?
Then I can call you "overly fanboi"? (Wich I'm not, since I prefer not to resort to belittling other people's opinions.)
It's a beta (according to Cryptic).
Made for playtesting and finding bugs/exploits and broken mechanics. Who can honestly defend them charging real money (or lots of game hours spent working toward AD) for us helping them polish their product for them?
Firstly, I'm so relieved that you're not calling me a "fanboi."
Did you even read the prior posts or mine completely? You don't have to pay real money for respec. How is it that you keep ignoring that fact?
Comments
I've already lost 5 points in a feat that doesn't even work (as have other people), don't have the disposable income to respec yet; not sure when I will.
PC specs: http://forum.daow.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4#p99
I can tell you, being completely new to this game, trying to figure out how to get anything that involved Zen was a trip into a Brave New World in a haze. Took me a while to comprehend Astral Diamonds. Felt very strange that the ingame gold I accumulate is pretty useless, except for pots and various small items. I couldn't find out how much Zen cost without registering. I couldn't find out options to finding items without Zen. The auction House is horrible. You can't simplify your findings. You can't sort them according to level or price or buy out/bid. And God forbid I should try to get an answer in Zone chat. Oh my god. That is near to impossible.
It is my opinion, this needs to be simplified and made much more transparent. You may think it is a brilliant marketing scheme to trick people into spending real money for things, but in the end, it is a very poor scheme, leaving people feeling like they have been bled.
I don't mind spending what I would have spent on a subscription each month in the Zen shop, but spending hundreds of dollars to obtain services that should be written into the game (like respeccing points), fancy gear, and mounts is not what I will do, due to my restricted cash flow.
Lol 2 cents... Cryptic doesnt want 2 cents they want 6 dollars! I'm not paying for a respec when some of the feats aren't even working well at all.
I don't care about the costs of other games. I'm not playing them. I care about the cost in this game. Any game that punishes you for experimenting is shooting itself in the foot, and if you truly cared about the game, you'd realize that practices such as this are only going to hurt it in the long run.
Feats , it costs 150k AD to respec which is a very fair price
How about the cost to unbind runes? Y'all think 12k AD is a reasonable price to unbind a level 4 enchantment? What is it for level 5's and 6's? So now it's $6 or more just to unbind most of a set of enchantments? That's really my point. In a vacuum, paying $6 one time for something might be reasonable...but not when combined with everything else you also want to spend $6 on, each of which occurs regularly on a monthly basis (every 2-4 levels if you want to keep in decent gear for the enchantment thing). How about getting your hands on crafting components? I had to pay 1500 for a sword thing for a guard. How much more of that do I have coming? I'm sure it gets worse the higher one gets. It is the combination of ALL of the things in game you need AD for that make $6 for any one of them ridiculous. Many FTP games survive on cosmetic enhancements; it's the money grab for things that many games consider part of the actual core gameplay that seems excessive.
So to get a single respec, I have to grind dailies for 15 days to the exclusion of doing anything else with them. To get the mentioned 10 respecs, I am looking at 150 days of grinding...yep, that's value.
GW2 is B2P, not F2P.
What does "think when you build" even mean? Are you implying people are willy nilly clicking the powers and feats? What are they supposed to use as a reference when thinking, their experience with all the other feats and powers?
Has any DC tried a non-astral shield healing build? Are the other top tier encounters and dailies useful? Who would know because everyone is playing it safe and using builds that trickled out of alpha and beta. For example, I know there is a temp hitpoint healing build in that feat tree somewhere but I'm not going to spend $6 to find out and then another $6 when I see it doesn't work as well, and then another $6 after the next round of balance adjustments.
Charging for respecs discourages experimentation. There are games out there that charge reasonable in game currency for a respec, if they charge at all (Tera, Rift, LotRO, EQ2, TSW, GW2). I don't care if a game is b2p or f2p - those are just marketing terms - I've spent as much money (or more) on this game getting setup as I did with GW2 or TSW. Having no upfront fee is not an excuse to nickel and dime for every piece of the game.
There is plenty of room for monetization in the game, including traits, that respecs don't have to be prohibitive and discouraging. They could sell "role slots" for $10 each and then sell respecs for gold or AD at a much more reasonable rate. The 200K AD is ridiculous. At a 350AD conversion rate it's nearly $6 itself.
I think that doesn't support your counter-argument. If taken further then I would point out that having spent $60 on a founder pack in this game and $50 in Zen that I'm getting far less for my money than GW2, or TSW, or LotRO, or Tera, or (in another 2 weeks) Rift.
I don't think there is anything wrong with monetizing specs/roles, but the current implementation is excessive and discourages experimentation with character and combat mechanics. That's the sort of thing you want to encourage in a game. It creates a sort of meta game engagement, much like the foundry.
It's an open beta. If you don't like this game, stop testing.
First...as stated...if this was any other game with free respecs, or cheap in games ones you would already be out $50 for the game, 25-50 for each expansion and atleast $15 a month. $6 for a service I want when I need it..thats fine with me. Compared to other F2P games, $6 is actually very cheap.
Second. It DOES use in game currency. Yes you CAN buy Zen, if your lazy. If your not...as stated...get some AD, an in game currency, and exchange it for zen. I actually just did this a couple of days ago. Open up the exchange, I typed in 600 Zen at 325 each and a few hours later someone sold Zen at 325 and for 195000 AD I had my respect with currency acquired in game.
Third. Maybe it is their intent to NOT make respecs easy? Before the WoW casual gamer crowd respecs were retardedly stupid to get. in DAOC a single spec respect, as in one tree, was expensive as hell. To get a full respect...there was 1 dragon in the game, that dragon took a raid of ATLEAST 30-40 people, usually 100+, and it dropped ONE full respec stone. This was before the days of instancing too. There was really ONE dragon that spawned every so often that dropped this for every guild on the server to compete for.
That system worked. Even in a game that you had to pay every month for..i think it was like 7 or 9 bucks...the average back then for a sub. If I wanted the same type of a character for 2 different roles..you rolled 2 characters lol. Why do you think FOTM class nerfs happen SO often now a days and didn't happen nearly as much years ago? Its because back then an OP spec usually only had a handful of people that either made it, or would actually reroll a character to max level to utilize it. Now, a new build gets made, abused, and before you know it 75% of the people playing those classes are using that ONE spec which then causes a huge balance issue.
Having one character, made the way you want it for the purpose you want it, is more fun to me. You have more of an attachment to your character when you have to actually look up and research what you want to do in the future and make sure you plan your skills correctly.
Plus Im against the every class can do every role as good as the next way of thinking that is SO common today. I WANT A ROGUE. BUT IT HSHOUDL OUT DPS EVERYTING!@!! BUT WAIT, IT SHOULD ALSO BE ABLE TO OUT HEAL A CLERIC IF I WANT IT...OR ATLEAST ALLOW ME TO SELF HEAL..ANDD!! I ALSO WANT IT TO TANK EVEN THE THE MOST EPIC BOSSESS!!
With respecs being a bit costly you make a toon, you learn it, play it, and build a reputation as someone who can fill a role it was intended for. Back in the Dark Age days there were some runs you would rather take one guy over the other with. The two guild mates may have had the same class, but one was specced to be more efficient for the purpose of this particular quest or party.
So in the end..QQ on.
I would like to see a Test server. If there was a test server to atleast test your spec before you buy a respec you could respec every 2 weeks and still be ahead of the game money wise then a P2P game. Or..farm some AD and not pay anything. I personally don't see a reason to respec more then that anyway. If you have 2 roles you play that often..make 2 **** characters lol. Leveling is usually the quicker part. Its getting the gear for the 2 builds that takes time, and that time you need to take regardless of if its one toon with 2 specs or 2 toons with 1 spec.
Also, I think people would be much more happy with the game if they STOP thinking of it as Beta. "Beta" ended with closed beta. Think of this as more of a soft launch. I think Beta is used only because the expectation now a days is for a game to be PERFECT at launch. If its not, ie Age of Conan, Rift, Aion, Warhammer, regardless of how they improve it later, they lost the player base. Beta is just security for them to fix what is needed before they put the final seal of approval. People forget how many bugs and glitches WoW had. Hell, you couldn't even find a party in the game at launch...there was no search system at all.
Cryptic's current system is functional. To say it's perfect is ridiculous. The entire line of debate in this thread is distburbingly binary; either the respec model is great and doesn't need to be tinkered with or it's awful and needs to be scrapped. I don't know if it's just because people's blood is getting up or what, but it can be (read: is) more nuanced than either/or.
What a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that the entire FTP model is still fuzzy; I can't think of a single FTP or "freemium" game that has honestly knocked it out of the park. Every game is bumbling around trying to figure out what works. It's a finely-tuned balancing act.
So that brings me back to my first sentence: Cryptic's current model is functional. It works. I don't kow if it'll continue to work. Maybe it should be tinkered with a little. I think making respec'ing cheaper, i.e. not free could be a good thing. It's simply hard to say. But don't tell me Cryptic is either entirely right or wrong--there's no way to know that.
On one end I understand that Cryptic needs to make money off Neverwinter. On the other hand this is BETA. During a BETA we should be afforded the opportunity to respec infinitely in order to find out what is or is not working. I, for example, have spent probably about $100 in respecs alone in an effort to categorize and figure out the mechanical ins and outs of GWF. Which I have shared freely with the GWF community.
Did I *HAVE* to do that? No. Do I regret doing it? No, not really. Should I have HAD to do that to begin with? Most certainly not.
I have mixed emotions about it. On one hand it's essentially me PAYING $100 to Cryptic to do their development teams job FOR them. On the other hand it was a lot of fun doing it.
I dunno.
This! ^^^^
we need an easier way to respec, period! (even when it's out of beta)
the respec aspect of Neverwinter is a game breaker.
Foundry Search: Wanted: Hero Lil Chubs
Agree!!!Nothing more to add...
seriously, **** being nickled and dimed to death, give me a flat rate and let me have access to everything with currency that is earned in game while I play (not while I waste every minute of my game time hawking the auction house instead of playing)
THESE are the reasons I detest free to play games. THESE are the reasons I will leave for something I can pay a flat rate for. I am an adult, with finances and children and a full time job. I am not some ****er with my daddies wallet and endless summer hours doing ****ing nothing with myself but staring at a broker in game waiting to sell items so I can try a new spec, or refine the one I have been working on for myself.
The paragon feat, and it the future the paragon paths are what define your role.
As a Guardian, being a tactician, conqueror or protector is completely different and changes my roles bigtime.
I don't care if you have 11 unspent power points at 60, you still lack about 60 feat points.
a price of 20k AD per point in power to change would be honest (would be around 1,2M AD to change everything) and more player friendly for all.
That's my 2 cent.
Then I can call you "overly fanboi"? (Wich I'm not, since I prefer not to resort to belittling other people's opinions.)
It's a beta (according to Cryptic).
Made for playtesting and finding bugs/exploits and broken mechanics. Who can honestly defend them charging real money (or lots of game hours spent working toward AD) for us helping them polish their product for them?
Firstly, I'm so relieved that you're not calling me a "fanboi."
Did you even read the prior posts or mine completely? You don't have to pay real money for respec. How is it that you keep ignoring that fact?