Originally Posted by Beechams
Yes it is a serious question because your original statement said that these changes should be relegated to Story Mode and anyone who wanted these changes should only be allowed to play in that mode.

Yes I know how difficulty levels work in video games so I know that they do not all work in exactly the same way, e.g. hard mode in one game is not exactly the same as hard mode in the another. Some games, such as Solasta, have set difficulty levels while also allowing the player to tweak various elements to get things how one wants.

First of all - I did not say that they should only be 'allowed' to play in story mode. I'm not the video game police running around telling people what they can and cannot do. I said people cannot be labeled as gatekeepers when a game already has a mode that makes it super accessible to everyone and that no one is criticizing that modes existence in the game. I do not think that unlimited respec should be available in the regular game mode or in tactician in this game - if it is there should be a cost associated with it that aligns with the difficulty setting. That doesn't mean people are not "allowed to play in those game modes".

Originally Posted by Beechams
One does not 'beat' a game, one completes it. It is designed to allow you to complete it, not to stop you completing it. From what you just wrote it would appear that some 'newbie' 'beating' the game on the same difficulty as you is an affront to your masculinity or self-esteem.

This is an incredibly odd thing to say and it seems you are rather upset about something. First you think I am saying people are not ALLOWED to play certain difficulty modes and now you are trying to turn me into some person who puts all of their self worth in video games because I have an opinion on how respec should be handled. You can use the term beat the game, finish the game, complete the game or whatever else you want. It doesn't matter to me how you describe it. Nor do I tie up my self-worth in video games.

I personally played on the regular difficulty setting in DOS2 and a modded version with added some health to the regular version because I didn't find tactician to be appealing - because the crowd control mechanics got to be a bit much for me. I guess I don't see how that makes me any better or worse of a person, any more of less of a man than someone who spends way less time playing games and played easy mode or who enjoyed tactician and beat it.

I think free respec for higher difficulty levels is a bad idea and bad game design, especially in the hardest difficulty as it seems difficult to balance and hard difficulty settings tend to encourage min/max. I think changing an already pretty easy system in multi-classing to the point where it might be just flat out better than not to be bad game design (if that is really what ends up happening, Larian could have implemented this well, we haven't seen the finished product yet). I also think it doesn't make sense to let us completely recreate origin characters when some of their backstories are completely tied to their class, where as some other companions/characters it does make sense for them to be more flexible.

If you think that means I have low self-esteem or that I believe my masculinity is being questioned then I think it is more a problem with you than with me.