I don't like paid respecs. In fact, I think respecs should be straightforward, unlimited, and free. A bright future for all respecs! Allow me to explore and adore your game's many intricacies without starting multiple playthroughs! Viva la build! Unfortunately, Tim Cain, the OG lead on Fallout and a longtime CRPG (and MMORPG) developer besides, has ruined me.
The weapon? A perfectly reasonable argument from a seasoned developer explaining the pitfalls of free respec systems. Curses. That's per a recent video on his YouTube channel, where he fields questions from budding game developers.
To be clear, Cain doesn't say that respecs are good or bad—ending the video with the assertion that it simply "depends on your design goals." But he does spend a lot more time talking about the negatives than he does the positives, a fact I will concede is probably because critique is more complicated than praise.
Speaking of, he says that "players who like respecs like it because it lets them try a whole bunch of different build configurations." So far, so correct.
He also makes the savvy observation that it's a more user-friendly replacement for the old-school bite of de-levelling—wherein old MMOs and RPGs would level you down as punishment if you died too much. "You'd have to replay the game to regain them, but a side-effect of that is you could rechoose different things … It acted like a very rough proto-respec."
Also, "For some players and designers, respecs are great, because they give the players more choice and therefore, in some points of view, way more agency." Then he rolls up his sleeves and clocks me in the face with facts and logic.
Luckily, he starts with what I find to be the weakest argument, that respecs "lessen the impact of player decisions … knowing that anything you choose to do on your player can be undone at any time basically means that those decisions didn't matter in the slightest."
And sure, this is technically true, but I think that only matters in a game like Disco Elysium—where your build choices actually reflect on the story. When it comes to whether I deal 5% more poison damage to shielded enemies, or 12% more on backstabs, I don't exactly care.
But an over-reliance on respecs can mess up design, too: "for designers I've seen respecs be a bad thing, in the sense that it encourages very 'loose' design.
"I've talked about dead levels, where you go up and there's not much to buy—but who cares, maybe people respec at that level, so there's still choices they can make. I've talked about dead-end builds that can't finish the game. Who cares? You can just respec, and now that same character can finish the game with a new build."
He finishes this rhetorical combo with a wink-wink nudge nudge to World of Warcraft, which saw fire mages told to go sit and spin in Molten Core back in the day—turns out fire elementals are resistant to fire.
"All these things—why worry about them? Why worry about your game design at all, knowing that there's a button the player can press and just respec their character … It turns it into a player problem. When this bad thing happens, I've given you something to do, so it's not bad anymore."
And, like—I mean—ugh. Alright. He's got me. Fine.
I don't think Cain's even really coming after designers, either; most developers want to make the best game they can, but if respecs fit into the game's ecosystem, then by golly are they gonna let certain things slide because the respec system buffers it up. Deadlines are tough and they've got a job to do.
Sometimes it's even a good thing—tinkering with your build to overcome a specific challenge is, like, 99% of the reason Armoured Core 6 is good (the other 1% is my boy Rusty).
"Especailly in online multiplayer games," he continues, "you frequently find people saying 'we need this type of specialised healer', so then you have to respec, not because you want to, but because you find it hard to get into a group."
This is also true, though given how hardcore raiders are sometimes, I know they'd just pressure those same people into rerolling new characters entirely. But, alright Cain, well played. I guess paid respecs can stay. But you're all on thin ice, RPG developers—I'll be waiting, watching. And when you make me pay 300 gold I can just pickpocket off an old skeleton, thus defeating the point in the first place, I will be there to have my revenge.
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