Thursday, September 3, 2009

No respec for you

There is an interesting situation brewing over at Champions Online. On launch day they released a patch that among other things, made balancing changes to a number of powers. That is pretty normal, but the strange part is they did not provide a free re-spec (or retcon in CO terms) to its head start players.

There is an in-game system for respecs but it seems a bit broken. You can change skill choices with the cost getting more expensive the farther you go back. It seems the cost is nearly impossible for players to afford though. It may just be a math bug then again it could be working as designed.

Isn't giving players a respec when you make big changes to their class (or powers in this case) standard operating procedure? Seems it is not for Cryptic, but why? The game is still only a few days old, what is the harm in giving the players a respec?

Are they saving full re-specs for their newly launched micro-transaction store? I don't think they would be that greedy, but I guess you never know. I think it is much more likely that there is a bug in their current re-spec system and when it is fixed the costs won't be a big deal.

As a future player this does worry me a bit and I'll be watching to see how it unfolds. Cryptic, just give your players a free re-spec.

4 comments:

Especially considering free respecs are the norm in the last Cryptic game whenever they make a major change. Bloody odd.

I agree that Cryptic should have given players a free Retcon with the release day make the game super hard patch.

Personally I like the way the Retcon is setup, but it seems that the forums are full of players who want full respecs at a super low price. Personally I think they are just the power gaming min/max players who want the flavor of the month powerset.

well, I agree that they should, but there's probably a lot going on behind the curtain so we cannot judge how they ought to use their resources at this time very well. Launch is usually chaotic and stressful for these companies. Adding one more thing to do, no matter how small, is prolly asking too much.

The day I pay 15 bucks a month for a subscription fee AND get nickle-and-dimed through micro transactions is the day I delete the game from my hard drive. Further, I will likely not play a game from said developer for a long time for such a stupid and greedy decision. Cryptic should tread carefully with their micro transaction store and what is offered in it.

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