DarkWalker

I was referring just to the overall difficulty - in the post I was responding to, the author seemed to imply that the game being easy was not a good thing. This part of my post had no relationship with respecs.

We are quite different. I actually like respeccing, to the point I'm more inclined to try any game that has unlimited and free respeccing - heck, I got a lifetime sub for Free Realms just because that game let me change classes on the fly (though the fact I got the lifetime sub for $15, with 2K in their store cash left after the purchase, had something to do with it; it's also one of the few viable MMOs for when the player have just 5-10 minutes to play), got GW mostly because of the free respecs, and after GW2 launches I'll most likely immediately get it.

If playing exclusively on the test server was actually viable and granted me unlimited respecs, I would be there. No doubt about it.
I don't think playing exclusively on the test server is much viable, though.

I'm also going to take a look into how hard/easy it's to come up with 150M influence in the almost 7 weeks until my time card runs out. I'm still not sure it will be enough to keep me playing, but depending on how much time farming that much money can take, I might reconsider.

The part about preparation might be interesting for the devs to take into account for the new F2P business model. Plenty of players should be coming on impulse, with no preparation whatsoever. Adding something in the game's page, or even inside the game, to guide new players towards good builds might be a good idea.

After all, making it easier for players to end up with a workable character is something most MMOs do nowadays.

What I wanted is just to provide feedback. Tell the developers why I'm not sticking with the game, even though I mostly like it. They can take the feedback any way they want.

I agree with you that, the way the game currently works, too easy respecs could be problematic, since they allow players to basically unslot and rearrange their enhancements. Free, unlimited respecs would have the same result as enhancements not being locked anymore when used. Which is exactly why I posted it here, and not on the suggestions forum; unless the devs already have some bigger change planned for the way enhancements work, I don't really expect easier respecs to be implemented in the lifetime of this game.

What I expected? In truth, to be ignored. The community surprised me, in a positive way. If it depended only on the community, I would surely stay.

Are the respecs that already exist enough for me? No. For me to enjoy a game, I need to be assured that respecs are unlimited, and obtaining one - including all required farming - is fairly easy; it doesn't need to be free, but obtaining one should take a couple dozen minutes, perhaps up to one hour. Otherwise I get frustrated too easily with my character, which leads to me leaving the game.
In CoH, though, the limited availability of respecs seem needed to control the availability of high end enhancements (given the way respecs currently work). So, while the only way for me to keep playing the game would be to have much easier access to them, I'm not sure it would be the best for the game.

What was the point of the thread? Mostly providing feedback to the developers why I wouldn't stay. I like to at least attempt to provide a feedback if I enjoyed the game or ended up liking the developers - who knows, they might take it into account and make games I enjoy even more

I never had a recurrent plan to this game - I used the trial, new game codes, and game time cards to play. So, I was never given a chance to tell the developers why I left before, and will most likely not have a chance this last time too; this specific forum seemed the best place to post it.

BTW, unless you want the game to cater to a very small niche, a MMO better be fairly easy; most of the players out there are casual and not very skilled players, who will change games as needed until they find something they can enjoy a reasonable degree of success. Does not mean everything in the game needs to be easy, just that even an unskilled player needs to feel like he isn't forever stuck, like he can accomplish things.

Sales history right now:
160,000,000
133,333,333
133,333,333
175,000,000
133,333,333

Which is the reason I never started playing CO. I made an account and went to research a few things while it downloaded. As soon as I found how respeccing worked, I deleted the client install and never looked back.

The game developers work on the assumption that players shouldn't make big changes to their characters. I tend to avoid games where this is true.

I knew about all of them (including that post; I did read it before I re-activated my account). There is still a limit on how many specs it's possible to get for my real character (i.e., not taking into account test server respecs) with a reasonable effort (and paying 150M influence for a respec recipe is not something I consider a reasonable effort) and without paying real money for them.

It's also a psychological issue for me. There is a limit on the number of respecs I can get before having to spend real money on them. Even if this limit were quite high - say, a hundred or two respecs - the fact it's a limited number would still feel stifling for me. More so because I consider easy access to respecs to be almost as important to my fun in the game as being able to rez my character - and I don't think I'm going to be able to change this. My current attempt at playing CoH was also an attempt to see if I could bring myself to play a game with limited respeccing, and it failed miserably.

I don't want to belittle you, but I did a big amount of research, got Mids, learned to use it, read mostly every builld topic on the forums for the AT I was thinking about using (and a few for other ATs that featured powers I wanted to know more about), read every single piece on the Paragon Wiki about Enhancements, did some more research on the wiki and forums to decide on what IOs (and, thus, spec) I should end up using, created a spec, to only then re-activate my account and make a new character.

At the time, I though that would be enough to get over my problem with respec restrictions. Unfortunately, it wasn't. In a few days I couldn't bring myself to level my character, even though I wanted to continue the quest lines.

Games that restrict respecs are just not for me.

I'll admit that my standards have changed since I started playing MMOs, though. Before my first contact with easy respecs, I accepted games without respecs, or with limits on how many respecs a player may use; after I became used to easy respecs, I actually look at the respec process before trying the game, and for the most part I won't even try a game that tries to limit respecs, or charges real money for them.

As for easily fixing the problem, how?

By planning the characters beforehand? I change opinions during the leveling process, and often end up wanting to do quite different builds than when I started. It helps me last a few extra levels before wanting to respec, but that's it.

By paying real money for a respec? A respec is something I will absolutely not purchase, no matter how cheap it is. If I'm already paying a subscription, I flat out refuse to pay anything extra for things I consider really essential to my gaming experience - and respecs is something I consider essential. I would (and did, on previous occasions) leave the game way before even considering purchasing a respec.

By purchasing respec recipes? Last time I looked at them, they were just too expensive to even consider purchasing. The time needed to farm for them, or for the influence to purchase them, is just too high to be classified as "easy".

By waiting for a free respec to be granted? No, thanks. Takes too long and is not reliable.

I used Mids this last try (and, I believe, either it or a pre-made build as a guide my previous try, 2 years ago). Without help with trying to plan the spec I wouldn't have lasted half as much. Didn't pan out as I had expected because I became intrigued with different ideas, saw that I wouldn't be able to try them, and became frustrated.

I'm not the kind of player that reacts well to being so restricted by all his previous decisions. Not in a game, at least.

It's not even that I need to respec too often. It's something psychological. I need some assurance that, should I want to try other play styles through respecs, I will be able to do so, and to change back if I don't like the new spec; I need some assurance that, no matter how often I mess my build or how much time I take to discover an error, I will still be able to correct it. Without it, even if I don't actually need to correct some error, any choice when leveling up starts becoming so hard for me to make, I end up leaving the game in frustration.

Also, when given options, I like to experiment, create, refine; I like to try all options, tweak them as I go, document results, almost reverse-engineer them. I'm the kind of player that abuse save games so I can see all possible outcomes of an encounter, to the point I could rebuild the dialogue trees; being denied this kind of freedom drastically cuts my enjoyment of the game.

My worst case wasn't even with CoH; it was in DDO. Akin to this game, DDO offers respecs as either random rewards for high level content, or as items to be bought from the cash shop, so for all effects I treat respecs there as if they didn't exist at all. And it has simply too many options when leveling up. I reached a new level (not sure if it was 2 or 3), spent an hour uselessly trying to decide how I would want to level my character, gave up, did a few more instances, came back to level my character, spent another couple hours without being able to decide, and uninstalled the game.

If I know I can change my previous choices with a minimum of fuss, without any limit to the number of times I can change them, I don't have any problem leveling up. Knowing I can redo my choice any time lets me pick whatever option I think is the best without any frustration, since I know that, even if I did choose poorly, I won't be bound by the choice.

As you said, CoH seems to just not be the game for me. At least with it's current design goal of making the speccing decisions important by making it hard to keep respeccing.

After Invention Origin Enhancement Sets were introduced, yeah, it's a quite complex system. More so because enhancements are such an integral part of a build - and obtaining them has too many random elements.