But it comes with the cons that you know, you’re very scared to do your building.”įor him, Diablo 3’s completely freeform approach isn’t the answer, though. “And every time you restart the game, you’re actually motivated to go through it again, and try this new, completely different way of playing. “If you can’t respec your character forever, then that means that you’re really committed to your fantasy, and you’re really rewarded for thinking about your build and planning that out,” Jackson said. This is something he wants to emulate in Diablo 4 - only without the fear of making a mistake that discourages experimentation, or hampers learning the game, early on.

Essentially, he loves how invested a Diablo 2 player will be in their hyper-specific build and play style, both in terms of optimizing it and buying into a specific fantasy. Jackson explained what he saw as the pros and cons of Diablo 2’s and Diablo 3’s respective approaches. “But we also want them to feel free to customize their characters and explore and try different builds and fantasies and ways to play.”ĭiablo 4 is getting a surprise open beta before launch “We have to balance this idea that we want players to commit to a fantasy and a character and have actual weight and meaning to their choices,” Jackson said. But after that, as you sink into Diablo 4’s endgame, it gets much more expensive. Early in the game - to all intents and purposes, for the length of the campaign, which should take you to level 50 of 100 - respeccing your character is “very, very cheap, to the point that it’s essentially free,” he said. The last two mainline games in the series have espoused very different philosophies: Diablo 2 made it very difficult indeed, while Diablo 3 did away with not just respec costs but skill trees altogether, and allowed characters to be reshaped on the fly.ĭiablo 4 is cautiously picking out a route somewhere between these two, as lead class designer Adam Jackson described in a roundtable call with press, which Polygon attended, last week. Respec costs - in other words, how difficult it is to respecialize and change your character build - are an emotive issue for the Diablo community.

Diablo 2 infinite respec