#54 - April 26, 2007, 4:23 a.m.
The consensus seems to be throughout the thread that free respecs should be given based on the importance of the changes being made, and not just if the change breaks a talent build or not. I think my original post was a little vague in the first paragraph as well, I didn't hit on a key point immediately which is "if it breaks a build".
So, as far as changing based on importance, does changing a talent from a 1/3/5% to 2/6/10% warrant a free respec? What about 4/12/20%? Do you feel that change is important to that class, does everyone else? What about when a talent with the same numbers for a different class is increased in the same way, but the talent is considered unnecessary by a lot of players. Does it still warrant a free respec? It's entirely subjective what constitutes an important change.
That wouldn't work, it would be a mess, so it's really all or nothing. Free respecs all the time for everyone every time, or choosing to only do so when necessary to avoid buggy/broken builds. It sounds awesome, hey I don't want to spend gold either, but respecs do factor in to a player's expenditures, and continually pumping money into the economy isn't something we would take lightly. Offering a class a free respec every time anything is changed isn't something we agree with. It may seem heartless, but we do need to curb the influx of unsubstantiated monetary gain in the game economy as much as possible.
And so we only provide free respecs in cases where if we didn't the talent builds would break, it's a clear line and it's what is required.