Final Fantasy 3 does one thing that I *really* don't like; it ties HP gains at level up with the job you have at the time of level up. In other words, you are punished long term for deciding to use a scholar rather than, say, a knight. It basically means that a character who has been a fighter will have more HP as a magic user than vice versa, but there's no similar mechanic applied to other stats. In particular, a character who levels up in a job with high vitality will be strictly better than one who levels up in a job with low vitality. (One random fact: In the original version, the magus job actually does have high vitality; combined with the ability to cast Quake, this job is the best for late game power leveling. That is no longer true in the remakes.)

The DS remake, unfortunately, did not fix this issue. (IMO, it should have.)

Final Fantasy 5, fortunately, does not have this issue; your HP is a strict function of your vitality (taking into account job, but not equipment) and your level. It's one of my favorite RPGs, and it lets you completely respec your characters anytime you can access the menu (that is, anytime outside of combat or cutscenes).

I don't buy this, all fictional settings, even fantasy andf sci-fi settings, have their own "reality" which is based upon rules and restrictions of what is and isn't possible. Just because a setting has magic and the supernatural, doesn't mean that those things don't have their own rules just like our world has the laws of physics and so on. It's not so much "realism" as internal consistency.

Let me ask you something, if there's a fictional setting and in this fictional setting it's possible to magically "download" information into the head of anyone (basically take a dumb peasant and make him an expert mage in an instant) then why don't they do that for EVERYONE? Why isn't everyone an expert at everything? Respeccing essentially kills internal consistency in one fell swoop, unless it's done in some extremely restricted and lore-friendly way that is.

Huh. This is actually kind of nice, not being forced to start completely from scratch for any new characters.

My way of thinking as well. I would like to know if the people that despise the notion of respecializing never had run into a situation where they had to change things around in order to still enjoy a game or to advance in it.
If I only restarted a character anew because I want to play a game again anyway or the story would different enough to make up for it, I wouldn't have the feeling a respec option would be necessary, myself. And I also see the potental benefit of more intense gameplay, when you're stuck with your decisions.

Most of the times I respec my character is either because I don't know the skills I'm picking well enough and just need to try them, because the game gives too little info on them beforehand, or because skills get patched in a way that makes them useless or less optimal for the task I've picked them for originally.
I remember people complaining about... was it Dante's Inferno? I can't remember. There was a Light and a Darkness skill tree of some kind and you needed a Light skill on order to win the final battle. The game never told you, so the folks that only picked the non-Light skills couldn't beat the final boss after putting almost 10 hours effort into getting that far.

Further, I can't name even one RPG that tells me at the start of the game how many level ups, attribute and skill points I get, so I could plan accordingly. If I know I have only a few points left I would rather finish the skill tree branch I've started instead of mixing it up with another, new one, making the current one more efficient. But maybe having skills from another branch is also beneficial during the final battles of a game.
I can't make those decisions easily without having accurate information, I sure could read on it on the internet, but you can't always, speaking of DRM-free, and I honestly don't want to interrupt the gameplay in a critical phase.

It would be great to have more transparency provided within game, tell us what we can spend and give us the means to judge its usefulness, by showing it off in little movies or by providing test scenarios for specific skill sets, Have your level up system fair and well-designed, basically. Or you could give us the option to respec. If you think it is too powerful, put some limitations on it, regarding costs, place and time.

Also don't make the process of skill choosing overly complicated.

You have 6 attribute points and 2 skills points, In order to learn this you need atleast 4 points in that category, 3 in another one and have a minimum dexterity of 32, where you currently have only 25 points invested. But remember, you need this skill in order to be able to choose the other one that seems totally unrelated, which is one you wanted, originally. Watch the prerequisites for that, too.

I would write down everything and plan the path I need to go, before I'd choose anything. (I do, really.)
Why not make it like Civilization when picking techs to explore? Let me pick the skills I want and let the game do the math. I realize, some people like said math and I realized as well that I am not one of them.
Game, I tell you what I want and you stop telling me that it isn't possible to get anymore, 30 hours from now.

So, yeah. Until everything above mentioned is permanently fixed by developers everywhere, I still want a respec option to be available just in case.
But, a reminder: Don't go the Dragon Age Inquisition route, give me atleast the option to pick my attribute points manually.
Options are good, people. They make sure everyone can enjoy his game the way he wants to at a given time.

Heyho.

Midoryu
_______________________

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
André Gide(1869-1951), French author

Edited 58 minutes later: Wording. Corrected playtime of Dante's Inferno

I can see the benefit of more intense gameplay, but it, IMO, only works for shorter games; that way, you are only stuck wth the decision for a shorter time.

Torneko: The Last Hope, as I mentioned, has the warrior's skill selection reset after every dungeon, and a dungeon would likely take a few hours at most to complete. (In fact, if you aren't playing on an emulator, there's one 99 floor dungeon in which it is not possible at all to make an interrupt save if you are a warrior.)

Furthermore, the other two classes don't have these sort of choices. The mage could have a choice of which spell to write in their spellbooks, but this requires a specific rare item (does it even appear in that 99 floor dungeon I mentioned?), and even if you have such an item, storing it in town will erase the spell in it, allowing you to write a new spell in it. The merchant (only class available before beating the final boss) doesn't even have any skills to use; the only decision to make is what items to bring into the dungeon (if the dungeon allows you) and what items to keep/use while in the dungeon itself.

Depends. If the the skills you pick have an influence on how the world reacts to you or how the story goes, I could still see a benefit. But yes, if you're being forced to stick to a less enjoyable build for a great amount of time it easily could turn out overwhelmingly punishing, especially if you can't estimate future skills and equipment availability. Naturally, this is heavily dependent on the player type.
I myself don't really seek the optimal route for everything, but I still try to avoid wasting points.
The advantage short games have is that they motivate you to try a different and maybe more risky approach, as you don't lose that much progress. Also it's easier to get to know all the skills, I guess.
For short games the question is: Will the next playthrough turn out different enough to keep me interested?
Whereas for longer games it is: Can I make it this time? Because they likely are no next playthroughs planned.

Then it's a difference of taste. For me, a huge part of any RPG experience is designing my own character/party. Before I even start a new game, I do some research to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the classes and skills offered, to see which ones would suit my playstyle the best, and to be warned of useless classes and skills. Then I stick with my build and see it develop until the end.

That's why I prefer the rigid class system in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons to the fluid "master of all trades" system of The Elder Scrolls. The "role" in roleplaying games is the most immersive for me when it is just a role. That is, each character plays his/her own role in the party, contributing with the appropriate skills. When someone has mastered all the skills and become the head of all the guilds, that seems unrealistic and ultimately boring. Like when overprotective parents design games for their kids in which "everyone is a winner". Sometimes losing is a part of the experience too.

I think it comes to having an option. Player should have an option to grow past various limits. This is one of the reasons why I prefer mostly JRPGs to WRPGs - they don't have such absurdly low level caps as most of WRPGs and they have special challenges to those who level up past whatever is needed to finish the game (or rather main story). That's part of the reason why many people prefer RPGs over other genres - to see how their characters grow from weaklings to overgods.

This is also one of the reasons why I adore Might and Magic games, especially VI and VII - they have interesting skill system, which looks restricting at first, but then your realize that there is no level cap (there is technical one) and that there are other sources of skill points than just leveling. Player might pretend that level cap is 100 and ignore horseshoes, genie lamps, etc., but there is always an option for other players to continue empowering their characters. That's what I call - "play your way".

Well, I like games that require me to make interesting choices. In RPGs the most interesting choices are usually those concerning character development. This is especially true for ARPGs which are often pretty linear story wise. In those games spending skill points is usually a welcome strategic layer in the otherwise action orientated gameplay.

However: choices I can undo at anytime without penalty aren't really choices, right? So these games tend to bore me as they feel shallow and pointless. I'm not completely opposed to respec options though as there is a learning phase to every game when you can't really make informend choices. Not being able to make up for mistakes which aren't your fault isn't fun either. I think every game has to find some good middleground between being too punishing and too forgiving.

Speaking about elemental gear, it made me remember Diablo II. I was starting Hell and realized that there are too many Cold Immune monsters for my Cold Sorc, and her fire spells are too weak to cut through monsters' regen. I'd say that sometimes choices aren't even choices, and what worked greatly for the first 20-30 game hours might suddenly become completely useless. No respec usually means using cheatcodes in situations like this...

Didn't read all the responses so it's probably already been said but...

First of all, I don't think anyone is going to change your mind. I don't like strawberry ice cream, and no amount of convincing is going to change that. People have different likes and dislikes and if you don't like not being able to re-spec, then that's who you are. Just like I don't like strawberry ice cream.

But for me, I LIKE forcing my decisions to be important. If I can undo any decision I ever make at any time, it makes making the decision less important and more of a "just for grins" thing. I like where a character is put into a situation where s/he must make a choice and than live with that choice. Life is like that in a lot of ways.

Maybe I'm miss remembering, but doesn't Titan Quest allow you to fully respec? I remember that you could recover your skill points, one at a time, with the price for each slowly increasing until it hit a max of 50k gold.

And searching with Google reveals that Grim Dawn functions exactly the same, unsurprising seeing how it's made by the same people that developed Titan Quest.

I haven't played it enough to know from experience, but my understanding was that it's similar to Grim Dawn. In that game, you can recover skill points spent on skills, but not ones spent on class mastery, and attribute points can't be respecced at all.

I agree with that one. I take extra pleasure to see where my choices were wrong and I have to figure out a way to make it work with the decisions I made. That is same in Baldur's Gate, Diablo 2 or Final Fantasy games.