It’s become my firm opinion that any roleplaying game with character customization needs some form of respec option. According to Obsidian’s Feargus Urquhart, however, it’s only crucial to MMOs. Dungeon Siege III won’t have one, and he believes it doesn’t need one.
“If we were making a MMO like Warcraft,” he explained, “and I’ve put a billion hours into this character and I kind of want to do something different with this character — instead of doing PvE [player vs. enemy] stuff, I now want to do PvP [player vs. player] stuff I absolutely have to respec it do that.
“In other words, it’s not like the player becomes less successful with their character because of the game or because now they can play the game in a totally different way. In a lot of ways, it is not as necessary, but it was a hard decision to whether to provide that or not. A lot of it came down to it’s not like you’re making a decision like ‘I played 75% of the game PvE and now I want to play PvP and now I have to respec or I’m not going to be as good as players at the same level.’”
Have to say I disagree. In Two Worlds II‘s single-player, I sunk points into a skill that later turned out to be useless. Without the respec option, I’d have either gone through the game with wasted potential and saddled with useless crap, or I’d have needed to sacrifice hours of playtime to start over. Whether it’s got PvP or not, respec options should be a mandatory part of roleplaying games. Anything less, I feel, is disrespecting the player’s time.
Dungeon Siege III Does Not Have A Respec System, Feargus Urquhart Explains Why [Siliconera]
