Arga confirms he plays with himself regularly although an argument is usually involved....

Back on topic, even taking into account some limitations or the inherent limitations of sparks, a respec late in game would be too powerful. Given enough preparation, you could switch completely to a dedicated build with none of the weaknesses which everyone will inevitably accrue as the game develops. That would mean it would become essential to respec, not optional and that is broken.

In a similar vein I am thinking Navigation will get defaulted/removed like stEVE did with learning skills. As soon as it becomes 'must have' for everyone, it isnt a differentiator. Unless speed gets some negatives, it will remain the skill everyone gets to 10. But hey, i could be completely wrong

Yup, unless the devs have something planned where going fast has a drawback, or that going slow has some sort of bonus, every new player will be told by their first corps to get nav to 10.

Personally I would like to see some negatives on bots to further enhance specialisation. If you have spent lots of EP being the best light ewar, it naturally fits that you shouldn't be uber mega in an artillery specialised bot. Put whatever lore you like around it....... After adapting to light combat robots, pilots found themselves unable to adapt well to the heavy artillery classes..

Artillery Mech 1
+10% artillery precision per nav level below 10 to nav level 5
-10% artillery cannon damage per Basic Robotics level above 5

Thus anyone who specialised in heavy bots wouldn't get hit with the negative. Of course back on topic, this concept goes down the toilet if you can RESPEC.

This completely negates the point of no skill cap. I don't see how such a restriction would make sense at all gameplay wise.

The whole idea is that you can, theoretically, become good at everything if you have played long enough. The restriction is that you can only run around in 1 bot at a time per 1 account, so being uber in both a heavy mech and at light ewar doesn't give you an advantage over a player that is only uber in one of those.

Right now you can waste EP (and not get it back) but you can't spend it on something that actively harms your character's capabilities. Even if you do put it all in reducing your weapon cycle times and forget to attend to accumulator usage, you can still wait for more EP in order to fix it.

But if you can spend EP on something that harms your character, then the feature of 1 EP per minute, forever, becomes counter productive.

On the other hand, I support the removal of navigation from the game, and just set all the default speeds at the equivalent of nav 10.

If you wanted to make speed interesting, have a set of skills or modules which provide short, temporary bursts of speed under certain conditions such as slope calculation. I like this idea because it's very terrain dependent. So for instance when going up steep slope levels the speed module increases your speed by 5% but uses 10% more accumulator, whereas on flat ground it increases your speed by 10% but uses normal accumulator, and on going down a slope it increases your speed by 15% but uses 10% less accumulator.

You could also have vampiric demobs that increase your speed while you siphon it off someone else, at a rate dependant on your relative distances, or increase your speed but debuff your armor, etc etc.

No idea if any of this is even remotely technically possible.

So what happens if you put your EP in both ewar and artillery mech specialisations? You would then get a negativity bonus in both...unless the devs set it up so that putting EP in one set of skills automatically closed off another set of skills. And that's counter to the degree of customisation we are currently permitted. It's a backwards step

I don't think you need to add negative bonuses for specialisation to occur. However, I think you are right when you say the devs will always be adding new things, and there will always be something to spend our EP on.

Edit: EP doesn't = instant win right now, and I don't think it ever will. So long as you can pilot one specialisation of robots well enough, which should only take a two or three months, you will always be competitve and have a role in pvp. We went on a roam last night and took two players who had been playing one month and one day. They did fine.

I was okay with everything until this.... Being able to reset, however infrequently makes this possible. I specialised in a certain way, getting to level 10 in uber artillery mega death tank the day it comes out is my 'reward' let's say for being dedicated to a path. In that, I also have to weather the hard times when other classes are FOTM or small balancing changes make my current build less effective. That's okay, I don't mind that.

But with resets, my advantage is lost and my hard times are harder. Made up example...

I specialise in mechs and big guns, this pays off big time 12 months from gamestart when uber mega tank comes out and everyone wants to play it. They all have to wait, I get 'paid' for my dedication by getting in early and offering an advantage to my corps/alliance. In the 12 months however, I have been less effective in small bots.

Someone else specialises in small bots, puts their EP into being the best small bot pilot ever, they have a great time for 12 months benefitting their alliance and corps hugely. When uber mega tank comes out, they still have a role to play but they can't jump in the shiny as quickly or as effectively.

This is nicely balanced. With a reset, the second guy could hint reset, dump all his EP into the right skill set and jump in the same robot as me on the same day. This either leads to everyone 'having' to reset to be competitive or we end up with everyone jumping ship once every (insert EP reset timer here) and everyone whines there are no balanced gangs because everyone turns up in artillery bots for a roam

Bah early morning rant mode off...

Just mysterious enough to trigger a deluge of what if posts to keep me occupied here at work, Dev Zoom delivers again!

My guess on the new change -

For some EP or NIC cost, you can have earth ship you down a new spark, which will let you advance different skills slightly more efficently.

Next.

Edit: I also wanted to add to Kalsius's scenerio, my current situation, where I have been saving toward Indy 10 (watch out Lithus II, I'm coming for you ... muuhhhaaahhaa). This is basically 60 days of EP for level 9 and 10. I don't mind waiting and being 'less effective' for 2 months, but if there was some kind of resetting of EP regardless of the cost, I certainly wouldn't waste time getting anything to 10. Reset could temporarily reduce your effectiveness by having to jam all your EP into the level 10 skill, but then each day you could raise other skills back to 5 and only be ineffective for a fraction of the 60 days.

TLDR; Resetting EP removes all incentive to get advanced skill points.

I don't think we should have "magical reset". It's just not right and it favor the FoTM trend.

However, I do believe it's mandatory to be able to get back the EP you wrongly invested, or to allow you to test different things.

In that regard, I would like to suggest a system where you can uninstall an extension over time, and recover your EP back.
Something like: If it took you 1500 EP to learn this Extension, then it will take 1500min for you to forget it, and recover your EP.

A "Full respec" would therefore be extremely long, and discourage most FOTM, while leaving the possibility for everyone to fix their mistakes in 1 or 2 weeks after they made them.

You can almost tell, just from what people post, if they are going to fit in here or not.

Welcome aboard Paragon