Okay, I've read the thread. I've seen the arguments on both sides. This is my 25 Inf on this.
Also, I'm a newb. So if that means my opinion is invalid to you, just skim along and ignore this.
For those of you who are saying "I've got plenty, I'll never use it". This particular feature isn't for you.
As someone who had to take 4 runs at Terra Volta TF1 to get it (bad teams and people who'd drop the minute they heard the word "Debt"), I think this is a good idea for people whose characters really require a respec and aren't in a position to obtain one readily (newer players). Try telling someone at level 24 that they need 25 million Inf or wait X-number of months or just rebuild from scratch and see what they say.
Also, I've helped found of a company that produces online fiction in a subscription format. And one of our prices is, you guessed it, $9.99. Real research was done to discover that this "magical" number is a barrier price for most people. It's small enough that it can be considered a "trivial" expense most of the time.
Yet, the cost isn't so low that most of the profit gets eaten up in transaction fees. Also, it serves as a barrier of entry to help regulate resource utilization as well. While the actual bandwidth, to you, is trivial for a respec, you're actually making substantial changes in a database that is supposed to be static.
Now imagine everyone in the game making changes to this database on a daily basis. Now, instead of spending whatever money they make on paying for new features, they're paying for equipment upgrades on server back-end.
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In the history of the world, has any merchant EVER priced something high to discourage people from buying it?
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Ask this question of an economics teacher. It's about supply and demand. Priced too low, everyone buys one, and your profit gets eaten in overhead. Then the market crashes once demand has been filled.
Also, people here are griping about how the value of their respec recipies will be impacted on the market. They're still valuable. Just less-so now to someone truly desperate to respec. And the CoX guys never promised you that you'd always be able to profit from in-game marketeering.
Now think about them pricing this at $1.99 or $4.99. Or selling them in a pack of 3 for $9.99. The value of respec recipies would drop to approximately ZERO.
As to the notion that giving ready access to unlimited respec (for a price) "lowers the skill of the player base".
All I have to say to this is "HUH"?
Respec is a tool that allows you to directly apply what you learn about the game without having to repeat everything by building a character again and adventuring from level 1.
As for "skill-less" people who'd use it as a constant band-aid to min-max their toon for every given event. SO WHAT? This doesn't really affect you outside of PvP. And IN PvP, it'll keep you from getting complacent about firing off a canned attack sequence against "that annoying munchkin".
Also, not everyone can be a "Highly skilled, super-dedicated" player. And if it were, it'd be so boring and so insular, that you'd chase away new players. I've actually worked with several gaming communities to help try and reverse this sort of trend. To varying degrees of success.
Also, as noted, revenues from this new feature can be used to fund deeper, more meaningful changes. This is, effectively a little nothing of a change (though the devteams at NCSoft and the CoH guys might thwack me about the head and shoulders for so trivializing their work). But it's a little nothing of a change that won't seriously imbalance the game, and will renumerate the devteam for their work.
Small, easy changes like this are relatively easy to implement (rather than completely reworking some of the back-end systems as some of the suggestions listed here would likely require).
And to address the criticism "Change X takes away Y minutes they could spend on RealImportantToMeChange Z".
Maybe it does.
But the revenue generated from this change X makes sure they can AFFORD to pay the devs for the time spent to build RITMC Z".
And, for the people who say this presents a bad precedent of buying things vs loyalty to the game.
Again, this change doesn't affect you. And not everyone realistically has the time or money to devote years to a game.
Oh yeah, add up how much you've paid on a monthly basis to rack up all those veteran respecs. Now split it by the number of respecs you actually have used. $9.99 looks like a slightly better bargain now, eh?
And hey. Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne effectively bought their way into the superhero-worldbeater club. Who're you to tell Joe Subscriber that he can't?
