Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Free respec is gamebreaking, casual and bad design

I am still waiting for one person to make a NON-STRAWMAN reason why the respec is breaking their own game even though they are not using it.

Spoilers for Bukki: Your "what about a 9999999 damage spell" is a STRAWMAN argument and therefore is worthless.

I think I have over 300 hours in Skyrim? Give or take. All of them with Fast Travel disabled though.
I didn't like it and felt that it ruined the scale of the gameworld (still do, even in DOS though not to the same extent).
So I installed a mod to remove it, and never looked back.
Actually, I lie; I installed a "auto-travel" mod. Basically, if you took the travel cart, it would travel along the road automatically. It wouldn't fast travel, and it would travel at cart speeds. xD
I'd sit in it, and chill.

However, it never even occured to me to try to get the devs to change a game mechanic to suit my preferred playstyle .. in fact, I never even considered how other people felt about it. I didn't like it, so I didn't use it. I literally gave it no more thought than that.

Another bad example.
Insert coin(s) to try again.


You see it as an exploit. I, and clearly many others, do not.
In fact, I'd actually place you in the minority.

Some people even consider multiple saves to be an exploit: and sometimes it finds its way into video games, e.g. Fable where they tried to force choice and consequences to be a certain way. In my opinion it was a really artificial restriction and it was rather annoying to make manual backups so that I actually had multiple save points.

I can see the point in some sort of honour mode and can therefore also see the point of removing the respec system in the same mode or at least restricting it; but it's annoying for everyone else. For me personally, all of this planning and strategising and poring over figures is a bit close to the day job and I prefer to focus my gameplay on story and exploration, so I guess I object to any suggestion that I should be railroaded in a direction that makes it less fun. But as it does have different gameplay modes, it should be possible to satisfy everyone (well, other than the minority to want to meddle with other people's gameplay and I don't care about what makes them happy, but hopefully that excludes present company).

Free respect must be limited by levels. Some around once per 3-5 level will be fine i think.

The point about using Civil abilities in a crazy way with respecs makes sense, it is unbalanced. It's the good kind though, old school cheese tactics of manipulating game mechanics in a clever way.

I know that usually people saying "dont do X" if you don't like it can be annoying but its not like a certain ability that is really powerful, its you going out of your way to do something convoluted in order to maximise your gold. It works in this instance I believe. It's not hard to get absurd amounts of money without doing it anyway so does it really affect the game to such a huge degree?

You can't roleplay a career change or "fix" a value auto-assigned when you told a potential companion you were looking for someone who belonged to a particular class? After all, the game didn't give me the opportunity to explain to Fane that I needed a wizard willing to use his bony digits as a skeleton key. As far as my roleplay is concerned, Fane was always inclined to fiddle with locks. There was just an error in the official record of his abilities.

I love free respec in this game. In addition, would encourage it in just about ANY RPG game.

And not because I want "ez mode" or anything stupid like that. It's because, I love DISCOVERING new abilities as I naturally progress through the game. I think that researching every ability in the game before you start playing really kills that enjoyment of discovering.

But in a difficult, punishing RPG without a free or cheap respec option, the player is forced to research builds before starting and plan their build out the entire game. Or, more often, pick a cookie cutter build from a forum or something. If they don't do this, they will almost always have a crappy or at least suboptimal build and will have to either restart, or just be stuck with it.

This absolutely KILLS that enjoyment of discovering new skills, or experimenting with a new unorthodox build just to see how it performs.

With the ability to respec however, I can actually experiment with new ideas. I'm not stuck with some cookie cutter crap just because I don't want to waste 40 hours of my life leveling a crap build, only to find out its crap after 40 hours.

I kind of love the fact that the two people in this thread in favor of removing the 'imbalanced' free respec are both parroting the EXACT SAME ARGUMENTS. And none of the arguments really hold water. At the end of the day, it really IS just a matter of them not liking something that's potentially abusable for a small percentage of players, but a valuable convenience for literally everyone else.

Let me make this absolutely clear, kids: There. Is. Nothing. Wrong. With. "Casual." Mechanics.

Get over yourselves.

I've been sitting here this whole time trying to figure out who would actually take the time to go back to the boat and respec over and over and why. Like would people really go back to the boat so they can get persuasion success on every single dialogue? That sounds boring. Why would anyone do that? Who cares if you fail a persuasion, it's part of the game and part of what makes each playthrough a unique experience. It's part of your story.

Unlimited money? I don't know about you, but I already don't have a money problem, so I'm not sure how this would really affect my game much.

These are the only two points I've seen against free respec and neither of them are very convincing. Perhaps you need to use your free respec to put some more points into Persuasion.

I'm also trying to imagine myself being upset about others utilizing either of the above and it's not working.

I suppose I'm inclined to reiterate what seems to be the problem with "casual": it's a bit of a moving target but there's definitely an element in RPG playing circles who view studious analysis of the mechanics and exploits thereof as the correct means of gameplay and everything else being contemptible. Personally I would like to enjoy my games as a more complete and immsersive environment, of which combat and its mastering is just one part and actually I think that an excessive focus on combat rather detracts from other elements such as the story, roleplay and exploration, which for me are equally important things that make the Divinity series what it is. And yeah, I am saying that combat mastery isn't necessarily compatible with roleplay and might be inclined to contend that it is even less so than arbitrary respeccing.

I dunno, "casual" is just one of those words that's tossed around far too often and doesn't really mean anything useful. It's about as welcome in discussions like this as "entitled" and any of the other usual suspects. People have different playing styles: one isn't better than another. Hopefully games can endeavour to accommodate a variety of them.

Alright, I'll admit that the thread title is hostile without reason.
Having players force themselves through a game over 100 hours long with some kind of error in their build is unreasonable. Also, the player has to get through fort joy in the first place to be able to respec.

I still think the first game did it more with more elegance, whatever.

Regardless, being able to cycle through civic skills is kind of silly. The devs stop you from pickpocketing an NPC multiple times with the same character. There is an obvious intention here to stop players from doing this multiple times.

I want to reply to the OP's contention that the ability to respec for free "breaks" civil skills because you can just go back to the ship and respec to have whatever you want.

Okay...so just imagine you get rid of any respec in the game. There are only 7 civil skills, and you can get a minimum of 6 party members...exclude telekinesis and there are just 6 civil skills. Just max one civil skill on each character and then whenever you need that civil skill, put said char in your party.

OMG CIVIL SKILLS BROKEN!!!

Except they aren't. And you know why? Because doing this EVERY time you need one of those skills is a pain in the butt. This is the same reason why free respeccing does not "break" civil skills. Because I don't want to have to go through respeccing EVERY time I need a diff civil skill.

nothings broke i tested it alot you cant farm steal anything

If you abuse teleport pyramids, then it is not particularly time consuming to respec every time. Also, no need to rotate the 6 characters, if 3 are enough.

Most people in this thread completely missed the point of OP's complaint. He is complaining about civic skill abuse, not respeccing combat abilities.

Also, casuals keep saying "fun" is more important than "balance", but they miss the point that for some people, you cannot have "fun" without a balanced game. If some people want a casual, easy and exploitable experience, there is an explorer mode just for them, so they can have their "fun".

Why do people who do not want challengening games think the word "casual" is an offense? There is no shame in playing easier difficulties if you don't want an "stressing" experience.

Perhaps devs should relabel difficult settings, where "easy" is relabeled as "Very Hard", normal relabeled as "Balls of Steel" and hard relabeled as "Soul Crushing".

As far as I know, literally nothing, I mean *nothing* forces you to use the mirror in the first place? So what exactly is the problem here.

If a player does not wish to use it, then you simply ignore it. What I'm trying to say here being able to respec or not changes very little. If a player wants to cheat they will find ways to do so and there is *nothing* you can do about it. I guess having the mirror in the game is more for players that thought they made a grave mistake and gave them the option to a respec if they chose to do so. It's more for min/max than anything else.

Also one must not forget that it's 2017 and not 1997.

Didn't read all these pages but here's my thoughts.

It's optional. Just like a mod for godmode is optional.

The respec option is there mainly for people who want to try different skills and builds to experiment or simply do not have the luxury of time to respec. Not everyone is a no-lifer with 10 hours a day to play (coming from me who actually is a no-lifer with 10 hours a day to play).

If peple want to ABUSE IT, then it is literally NO DIFFERENT from a person using a mod or cheat to become immortal/godlike. Most people do not enjoy abusing such things and for those who DO want to abuse it they have the option to - it doesent impact other people either way. If people enjoy abusing it to cheat and enjoy it why do you care?

Leaving only the remaining people saying "I can use this to cheat, so I will use this to cheat because I can and I hate it! Why did Larian put this in the game? They are forcing me to cheat...". If I even have to start at how idiotic such people are in their reasoning I give up :P

When you start an argument by basically saying something is "designed for casuals" and "bad design" you have already cemented your position as a Forum Troll.

Because you are MOCKING and INSULTING casuals, saying that anything designed for them is a "bad idea", "poorly designed", the list goes on and on.

So what if an aspect of the game is designed for casual players? That is not "bad design".

Bad design is stuff that leaves the majority of the players unhappy.

Bad design is things like a UI that you have to struggle with, one that is cumbersome and clunky. That is the kind of things that deserve to be considered "bad design".

Creating options for a certain style of players is NOT "bad design".

Using 'casual' as a pejorative makes you come across as a condescending ass. Like "oh that's so cute, you're a "CASUAL."" That's why the word is offensive.

And that's why any argument that uses words like 'casual' or 'casualizing' is ultimately going to fall flat.

The list of things you need to abuse in order to be able to run into your 'issue' is getting longer and longer.

(1) Abuse save-game mechanics to gain a priori knowledge (aka IC omniscience) and to circumvent dialogue lock-in.
(2) Abuse teleport pyramids to circumvent travel time, breaking game flow.
(3) Abuse the mirror to adjust your build to suit the a priori knowledge from (1), breaking immersion and any semblance of RP your RPG may still have had after (1) and (2).

At what point does it stop being the game's fault and start being the gamer's fault? The way you play it, it's not even an RPG (= role-playing game) any more, it's more of an automaton that you feed with flowchart analysis results. I mean that's okay, if you want to play it that way, it's your choice, but seriously, calling it an 'issue' that panders to 'casuals' is putting the horse before the cart. I do not see any fundamental difference between that gaming style and loading up a cheating mod that cuts out (1) to (3) to just give you the result you want (i.e. pass the persuasion check). The only difference is the amount of mouseclicks and time required to obtain the same results.