respecs
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The Daily Grind: Do you worry about making the wrong choice?
It's generally very difficult to make wrong choices in an MMO. You can make choices that are less than optimal, definitely, and even choices that you later regret, but there's almost always a way to respec and try again. Even if you can't do that, you can always reroll and transfer most of your stuff from one character to another. Despite all of this, as I sat down to choose my first powers in Champions Online, I found myself very nervous that I'd pick the wrong thing for my character. I'm pretty sure that level 5 is far too early for me to have any chance of ruining my character forever, and I can always drop a few bucks and try again if that turns out to be the case, but I still couldn't help but have that fear that making the wrong choices would be disastrous. So what about you? Do you occasionally worry about making the wrong choice with your character, even if you know that most of those choices can be remade if it turns out you were wrong? Or do you forge ahead without fear, confident it will all work out in the end? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
RIFT answers some community questions in time for the holidays
Christmas (or your winter holiday of choice) is right upon us, and the staff at Trion Worlds seems to be in a giving state of mind. The team has just posted a new set of answers to several player questions about RIFT, ranging from the rationale behind some current content implementations to what's waiting in the wings. Whether you're a roleplayer, an endgame raider, or just leveling through the game for the first time, the answers should give you something to look forward to. Among the more interesting updates is the reveal that the team is looking at improving level 50 gear below the top tier; Hammerknell and Rank 8 PvP gear will remain as-is, but the gear along the way will get buffed up a bit. The issue of Ember Isle difficulty is also addressed, the developers explaining that the island was meant to be reasonable for existing level 50 characters, giving it a bit more punch than players just hitting 50 might expect. Check the full list of questions and answers for other updates -- there's a lot to digest, but you've got a holiday break to do it.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The power reset
Respecs are a powerful tool in MMOs. They're a way for you to feel confident that no matter what choices you make when developing a character, you can make better ones further on down the line. Instead of worrying with each character decision that you're locked in to something you never wanted, you know with confidence that you can always back out if turns out that your abilities are actively causing you to die in horrible and unwanted ways. And in City of Heroes, you get three of them. This is the sort of thing that raises a few eyebrows, since having a limited number of choices to rectify your already-limited number of choices is not something to inspire confidence. And I'm not going to lie to you: It's certainly not the brightest decision in the world. But the hard limits on the total number of respecs you get doesn't actually mean you're forever locked in to terrible decisions. The fact of the matter is that for a number of reasons, you won't really care.
The Daily Grind: Should MMOs offer respecs?
MMOs last for so long that you're almost guaranteed to get bored or make a mistake at some point during character development. Most games know this and allow you a do-over, be it through unlearning skills in sandboxes like Glitch and Ultima Online or respecing talent point choices in World of Warcraft. Lest your choices be trivialized, certain games insist on making respecs prohibitively expensive; City of Heroes and Champions Online even charge real money for respecs should you deplete your in-game allotment. But other MMOs simply provide no outlet for a do-over at all, like Star Wars: The Old Republic, which currently locks you into your advanced class choice at level 10, long before you're really capable of making that kind of decision. While the devs are still debating respecs as a post-launch addition, a surprising number of players are vehemently opposed to the entire concept on the grounds that it makes character choices irrelevant. What say you -- should all games have respecs, or are do-overs just another form of "easymode"? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Fallen Earth dev blog talks Alpha County, factional territory control, and more
There's a new Fallen Earth dev blog in town, and it's so big that it requires the input of two devs. Producer Marie Croall outlines the game's upcoming development schedule and even drops a release date for the much-anticipated Alpha County/Progress Towns/combat changes patch. That date is July 6th, and Croall provides a recap for those of you who've forgotten about the fact that the update will raise the level cap to 55 and introduce new resources, gear, missions, and a town to fight over. Croall also hints at upcoming changes to Fallen Earth's fast travel system, and she's quick to point out that the team isn't "dumbing anything down -- just putting emphasis on the features that drive the game." Speaking of features, we learned that a world event system is coming, as is faction territory control. It sounds as if the details haven't been ironed out just yet, as Croall doesn't offer any specifics. She also invites players to ask plenty of questions "so [they] can explore all angles together." GamersFirst's Joseph "Linus" Willmon checks in to update players on the status of the PTS as well as the new monitoring tools that G1 is putting in place to isolate those pesky server performance issues. Finally, there's a quick blurb about skill and faction respec items that have been added to the Fallen Earth store. Catch up on all of this and more at the official Fallen Earth dev blog.
Wings Over Atreia: Milking the cash cow
Although it is so far out on the scale of probability that it is tipping into impossibility, there is a remote chance that some player in Aion does not know about NCsoft's cash shop. After all, we are often assaulted with advertisements for new goodies offered at the NCsoft Store front-and-center on the launchpad; if you have logged into the game any time in the last couple of months, you have seen offerings of cosmetic clothing, exclusive pets, and weapon skins. Now I can understand ponying-up for a character name-change since the user is asking for a smidgen of change in code. Changing gender -- sure, why not? Server transfers definitely involve a bit of work, so making this a paid service also makes sense. Cosmetic surgery, however, is harder for me to accept since I have played a game that offered it in-game as a service performed by a specific class. But what about all of the extra items? The little perks, the fluff, and limited-time deals? Grab your wallet and join me past the break for a discussion on fleecing customers (I mean offering deals, really) and to see some items that I personally would like to implement.
The Daily Grind: How often do you respec your characters?
Ah respecs. My DC Universe Online character had barely strapped on his spandex underoos before I felt the need to head to the Watchtower and redo his power and skill sets. Such is the nature of a new MMO and a relatively complex character development system. It's not just new titles either. I've lost many a gold coin to the respec gods in Age of Conan, and thankfully Global Agenda's neural re-mappings are free of charge. Whether it's gameplay changes, new strategies that compel us to alter our approach, or a forum post that illustrates just how wrong we've been doing it, respecs are an inescapable fact of MMO life. The more adventurous among us may not even need a reason other than the fun to be had in experimenting with different builds, skills, and abilities. For today's Daily Grind, we want to know about your respec habits. Do you revamp your avatars at the drop of a hat or do you prefer to tough it out and make do with a preferred build? In short, how often do you respec your characters? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Behind the Mask: I request a do-over
Respecs in most games are a way to change the focus of your character or a a tool to remove bad character choices. They generally cost a lump sum for a full reset of all of a character's skill or talent points. In Champions Online, respecs are a little different. They cost a small amount of resources to remove individual powers, and that amount scales up as your hero gains levels and gets new powers. The most recent powers are still fairly inexpensive to remove, but powers selected very early in your character's career cost an arm and a leg to replace. We can use respecs in much the same way as we can in other games; a full reset of your character's abilities costs an absurd amount of money, but you do earn enough money during a character's lifetime to get a couple at key points. At level 40, you also earn a full respec, and full retcon tokens (which reset all powers, talents, and advantages) can always be picked up in the C-Store. However, CO's respec system leaves a lot of room for exciting abuses if you're willing to explore them a little bit. Like most of anything nested deep within the gameplay of Champions, it's a little confusing. Hopefully we can clear up some of that.
R-E-S-P-E-C: Find out what it means to Star Wars: The Old Republic
We all know that it's a terrible pain to pick skills on the fly as you're leveling up your character. What if you choose a useless skill or maybe one that doesn't fit your playstyle? Or worse: What if you completely choose the wrong Advanced Class? This has been a major concern for many Star Wars: The Old Republic fans, especially given the vast differences in the Advanced Classes. Yesterday, in a post on the official forums, SWTOR Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller answered this burning question. He confirmed that we will be able to respec our stats within an Advanced Class. However, he had this to say about switching to a different Advanced Class: "You may be able to spec to another Advanced Class, but that is something we haven't entirely made up our mind about as there are plenty of arguments that can be made - pro and con - and future class developments could influence this." It may be possible to change from a Jedi Wizard Sage to a Jedi Shadow, but you definitely will not be able to go from a Jedi Consular to a Jedi Knight because of story restrictions. For more information, visit the official forums and stay tuned here for the latest from The Old Republic.
Breakfast Topic: Is WoW too complex?
As I said the other day, we've talked about the dumbed-down argument quite a few times before, but I think this is the first time I've ever heard the opposite argument put forth so succinctly: Tadaa asks, over on the forums, "Is WoW getting too complex?" Longtime players will probably say no at first glance -- the game has been streamlined a lot since it first game out, and things that took up much of your time previously (tracking quests, looking up quest targets, dealing with respecs, and finding groups) now have systems built into the game that let you get past them easily. But think of what it would be like to step into Azeroth nowadays -- instead of just a chat channel where you can find groups, there's a whole system with terms like "damage" and "tank" in there. On first glance, it might be tough to figure out. And then there's things like resilience and Replenishment (which some experienced players don't even fully understand), and even things we think of as helpful features (getting pets and currency out of our inventory) can be super confusing for new players: where did that pet go that I just clicked on, or that badge that I just saw looted to me in the combat window?
Save your specs with Talented
Respecs have been flying around lately like Prayer of Mending during a Sapphiron fight (healing priests, you know what I'm talking about). Several commenters have expressed annoyance at having to remember where exactly they placed those 71 points, and at having to click each of them back into place again. Heck, I would be annoyed myself, with three level 80s and various alts to manage. However, I don't get annoyed, because I have something that many of you apparently don't: Talented. Talented is an addon for managing talent specs, with several nice features:
Breakfast Topic: Talent changes in Wrath of the Lich King
Here's a question for you: Have you changed your talents drastically in Wrath? With 10 new talent points to spend and a couple new tiers to spend them on, there's a lot of temptations to keep a player guessing as to the exact perfect spec, and I know some people have spent a lot of money picking out and testing specs. It's even easier to do with Hybrids. I know a lot of Protection Paladins are taking the opportunity to try Retribution for a while, and horror of horrors, I've even known a couple Feral Druids who have actually tried Moonkin form, if you can believe it. I find myself strangely unwilling to respec, so I'm sticking with my Unholy Death Knight, Feral Druid, and Beastmastery Hunter for now. How are you doing on talents in Wrath? Have you decided on a build? Are you throwing money at constant respecs? Have you changed your spec 180 degrees from what it was in Burning Crusade?
City of Heroes respecs now available for purchase with real cash
NCsoft announced yesterday that players of City of Heroes are now able to purchase respecs (opportunities to rollback character development decisions they've made in their characters' lifetimes) for $9.99 from a store in the character select screen. The company noted that this feature "does not allow the primary or secondary powerset to be reselected; it functions like existing respecs currently available in game."Players are still able to find opportunities to respec through gameplay, but NCsoft claims that the community has been requesting a shortcut like this.Some sites are characterizing this move as the introduction of microtransactions to a subscription-based game. That term conjures up images of players buying powerful items and stat bonuses with real-world currency. But Blizzard has been charging for character name changes in World of Warcraft for a long time. What's the distinction between charging for what's deemed an expected service, and the microtransaction business model?
Tank Talk: Do you feel lucky, punk?
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and myself (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. At least, that's what the others said they were doing. I intend to use it mostly as a soapbox to complain. Absolute power tends to......something something.Welcome to Tank Talk. I am your bear Druid hostess for this week, with a topic that occurred to me while reading a recent article here on the site. Eliah Hecht wrote that his guild is facing a not-uncommon tank shortage and that he has considered the possibility of leveling a tanking class to 70 before Wrath, or tanking on a Death Knight afterwards. A number of people on my server and in my guild have talked about doing the same thing, or switching mains once Wrath hits. With so many people playing Death Knights, I think it's very possible that more people will discover they enjoy -- or at least, don't mind -- tanking, and may seek to do so in a raid environment without necessarily knowing what they've really signed up for. From those of us who have tanked raid content in vanilla WoW or BC, here are the 10 questions you'll want to ask yourself if you're considering the possibility of tanking serious raid content:
On Tabula Rasa respecs and resolutions
With Tabula Rasa already on the ropes with recent reports of financial failure, the last thing the TR community wanted or needed to have to deal with was the awfully-implemented patch 1.5 that rolled out onto live servers yesterday. Pushed out of testing a scant five days after it was revealed on the public test server, the patch was bugged by resolution issues and big changes to the Spy class weren't accompanied by a respec to make them worth the trouble. Morale among the AFS-faithful was not terribly high this time yesterday morning.Evidently, the developers actually paid notice and took a rare opportunity to break their usual Monday/Friday announcement schedule to address these concerns. They're working on a hotfix for the resolution problem, and suggest in the meantime that players run the game in windowed mode. Not that doing so addresses the fact that the resolution resets every time you load the game, but at least it doesn't crash. They've also revealed that part of their plan in patch 1.6 is to make respecs a more readily available resource. Instead of the crummy awards players currently get for defending and attacking CPs, players will soon be able to collect talent and attribute respec credits for their trouble instead. It's a good idea, and enough of a distraction that most of the doom and gloom has abated, albeit temporarily.
Tabula Rasa takes the unbeaten path
The guys over at Destination Games want you to know that even though most game developers release large content patches over three-to-four month periods, that's not how they plan their patch process to go down. Apparently they don't see much of a point in keeping finished content from their players while continuing to work on new content. Destination Games says their goal is to create a sense of an ever-evolving game where content is delivered to players as soon as it's done. So what does this mean for Tabula Rasa players? It means smaller -- yet more frequent -- builds that deliver new content, features and whatever else the developers can conjure up.Beyond talking about update schedules, this week's feedback friday touches on the status of the 1.4 patch. It sounds like the patch is nearing its final stages with only a few bugs left to iron out. The word is that players can expect one more pass on the test server before the patch hits the live servers. On the subject of the 1.4 patch, clones in Tabula Rasa will now come with reset skill and attribute points. Although players will not have the option of completely changing their character class.Server transfers are brought up, but Destination Games says that it's something on their "do-to list" and not scheduled for the upcoming patch. We'll be interested to see how this higher frequency patch schedule plays out in the future for Tabula Rasa and its subscribers.
Breakfast Topic: How often have you respecc'd?
My mage began her time in WoW as a fire mage, blasting everything in sight. I was in love with blastwave, utterly, but I couldn't seem to deal with crowd control at all, and since I was spending a lot of my time soloing, I respecc'd to frost. That was my first time switching specs. Since then I have respecc'd one more time, this time to one of the frost dps spec's recommended here on WoW Insider's Build Shop. I absolutely adore my spec now, and can't see ever changing it, despite my occasional longing for my Water Elemental by my side. As I was talking over this little respeccing history with a friend yesterday I realized that I imagine that's fairly rare for players. I know in his case, as a paladin, he's had to respec numerous times, depending on the situation. It seems that being a jack-of-some-trades class means that you spend a lot of time and gold at the trainer erasing your talent trees. What is the most number of times you have respecc'd a character? When would you consider enough to be enough?
Respeccing for 2.0
Tomorrow's the big day -- WoW is getting patched and rolling over to 2.0. Bye-bye honor rankings, bye-bye DHKs, hello new LFG system, and new spells and talents for all. Oh, and every character in the game will log in after the patch is applied with a completely free respec.So things will likely look very different in terms of specs on Wednesday (my guild has an MC run planned, and I can't wait to see what happens). Personally, I like my rogue's combat daggers spec, so I'll probably keep it (he's only 50 now, so I'm not real worried about it). My warrior is currently specced protection, but hasn't been getting much play (or DPS) as a tank, so I may flip him fury or half prot-half fury. My priest is staying shadow, but my shaman -- for the expansion, I'm planning to switch him to elemental instead of restoration, so by Wednesday he may be much more deadly with lightning bolts than healing waves (not sure how that will go over in my guild raids, however).If you're thinking about respeccing, Mystic Worlds has posted a nice little commentary on how specs work -- while you should really spec for the talents and abilities you play with, for each class there's usually three or four different ways to set things up, either for soloing (or leveling), PVP, or PVE play. Of course, you don't have to respec on Wednesday -- you could just choose the same talents you have in place now. But since everything is changing so much (even your regular spec will have a few new shines to it), this might be your chance to be something a little bit different than you're used to.
Forum Post of the Day: Cheap respecs make the game more fun
Well, I tend to agree with the sentiment expressed by this thread on the beta forums, which praises the 1 copper respecs currently available to beta players. Of course, not everyone agrees -- there are also those who side with Blizzard's standing opinion on the matter, which states that your talent spec shouldn't be a casual decision, and ought to mean something. And perhaps poster Warrenders hits the nail on the head when he explains that: It would invalidate talent choices and specs as everyone can be any spec they want any time they wanted. Why not just make all talents baseline skills and be done with it then? But regardless of your opinion on the issue, there is some excellent discussion -- from both sides of the fence -- here.
