List other RPG games with irreversible Gameplay Customization like Covenants

[Cosmic Janitor]

Honestly far as RPGs go, MMOs are an outlier in terms of letting you redo a lot of choices in the name of not forcing you to reroll.

MMOs are obviously different by nature to most RPGs as well though, so that is hardly surprising. Usually single player RPGs don't try to extract money from you in short regular intervalls by offering various kinds of activities that each behave differently.

[TickTickTick]

I think the biggest problem is that WoW is first and foremost MMO. You just can't make comparisons to "RPG" games because MMO means that 1). balance is a big factor there (something that Blizzard is constantly failing at) and 2). the game is competetive to a lesser or bigger degree depending on what kind of content you're playing.

I don't trust in Blizzard to properly balance the covenants (or anything really) and I don't trust in the community to not discriminate players because of their choices. We all know we are going to end up with "cookie cutter" covenants / soulbinds etc, we all know some addon or site is going to pop out and people will pay far too big attention to that even on the lower level of gameplay. And don't even get me started on playing in a guild that aims for realm firsts and every bit of min/maxing matters.

This is going to be worse than 8.0 azerite + corruptions combined.

[Drutt]

The emergence of RPGs that allow you to re-train something at a whim is very much a recent thing. The vast majority of old school RPGs never let you change anything; you had to start over to change it.

[Big Thanks]

The emergence of RPGs that allow you to re-train something at a whim is very much a recent thing. The vast majority of old school RPGs never let you change anything; you had to start over to change it.

If by "recent" you mean "20 years old" then, sure, agree.

20 years ago i was already playing RPGs with customization where u can "go back" on your decisions.
I played like...20 different RPGs in my life and 99.9% of them i could "go back"
From the top of my head...only Dragon Force (sega saturn) and Fire Emblem had stuff you couldnt "go back".

[Nzx]

Yep - exactly the answer I expected. Thanks for confirming what I thought.

So yeah - thanks for providing the meme reply.

Lmao this is the biggest backflip I've ever seen in my life and I've been reading forums for almost 20 years.

But let me just elaborate if you're struggling to work out why I posted that - you, in a discussion about games that make it difficult for players to respec, you criticised me for not knowing something that I should have done in advance if I had researched it properly - which is exactly what you've been arguing against.

The only thing I've "argued against" is the inclusion of PoE, a game where nothing is permanent, being included on a list of RPG games that include "permanent choice". The entire core gameplay loop is based on quarterly complete resets of player progression.

But regardless, a new player in PoE who may have done some research, may not know the full details and so, upon realising midway through levelling that what they made the wrong choices, they will have to start over. There is no "full respec" available to them.

They just don't, dude. You're digging the most absurd hole for yourself. Rerolling at the end of Act 5 is like rerolling at level 30 or 40 in WoW - there's barely any time investment whatsoever and it's more akin to a "trial period" of a given class than anything else. As far as a "full respec" for new players goes, the equivalent in WoW would be allowing players to run a couple of M+ dungeons to get enough currency to respec their covenant to the exact same point as their current one is at. PoE doesn't turn around and tell you you're not allowed to make anymore progress towards collecting Orbs of Regret this week and artificially gate your change to a different build, and every single thing you do in that game gets you closer to respeccing by virtue of just collecting currency.

edited to add:

But you are able to reverse and change the Covenants in SL.

That's the entire point, it just requires a grind to go back. The entire premise of the OP is a lie.

I don't think anyone would care if there was a currency you could collect from doing a couple of hours worth of the content you enjoy doing (e.g collecting currency from Delve/mapping and then selling it for Regrets) that you could provide to a Covenant "vendor" and transfer your entire progress from Kyrian to Venthyr with no loss. The problem is that Blizzard's idea of a "grind" is almost always just time-gated progression, that takes maybe 10 minutes of effort a week but no amount of time spent in the game can progress any faster, and it almost always is doing bullshit content like world quests rather than raiding or M+ or PvP that you actually want to do.

Let me put it this way: if the "grind" to replace a Covenant is ~2-3 hours of doing content I would be doing anyway (e.g I have to do ~3-5 M+ dungeons with my "raid" covenant or ~3-5 M+ dungeons with my "M+" covenant to alternate between the two, and each remains at it's original level of renown progression etc) then that's fine, because I can plan raid nights and key nights around that. If the "grind" is completing a "Make Loh Go" world quest three times a week for three weeks, then the entire system can go fuck itself.

[Big Thanks]

Could someone explain me WHY ion hazzikostas says:

"Permanent choice is a core element for the RPG genre"

When im 30 years old, played probably 20 RPGs or more and never seen such a thing for the vast majority of RPGs ive played (99.9%)?

Front Mission 3 is a game from the year 1999 and the "game" itself was playing around with all the customization options freely.
I remember as a kid PRINTING on my crappy home printer a 20+ pages of customization options with different ability unlocks for every "part" of the mech robots.
This was in the year 1999

I understand D&D does this...but since when "you cant go back on your decisions" is a "CORE RPG ELEMENT" ???

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Could someone explain me WHY ion hazzikostas says:

"Permanent choice is a core element for the RPG genre"

When im 30 years old, played probably 20 RPGs or more and never seen such a thing for the vast majority of RPGs ive played (99.9%)?

Because you are failing to comprehend the words he is using.
Its already a core element OF THE VIDEO GAME HE DESIGNS.

It is a core element of every game on the planet to some degree too.
You are just too focused on this one situation, which isn't even "irreversible."

The reason its a core element of the genre is because it is modeled after real life scenarios and decision making.
That's what it means to be a "role playing game."
You need to play a role and make decisions within it.

I can understand why people don't like it, but I can not understand why you are acting like this is some absurdly unique thing to WoW when there have been similar decisions in the game for 15 years. Let alone every other major single player RPG ever created.

[Big Thanks]

Because you are failing to comprehend the words he is using.
Its already a core element OF THE VIDEO GAME HE DESIGNS.

What?
The game he designs? You mean WoW? We can respec since Vanilla and we never had in the game permanent mid game gameplay customization options.

It is a core element of every game on the planet to some degree too.

What?

You are just too focused on this one situation, which isn't even "irreversible."

It is incredibly taxing and is confirmed for the intended design to be a permanent choice.
You can switch covenants the same way you can create a new save file in fire emblem.

I can understand why people don't like it, but I can not understand why you are acting like this is some absurdly unique thing to WoW when there have been similar decisions in the game for 15 years. Let alone every other major single player RPG ever created.

Well...almost every RPG from 20 years ago i have played, you can "go back" on your mid game gameplay customization options.
Im only 30 y old though
Maybe it was different...a long time ago?

[Jastall]

MMOs are obviously different by nature to most RPGs as well though, so that is hardly surprising. Usually single player RPGs don't try to extract money from you in short regular intervalls by offering various kinds of activities that each behave differently.

Also nobody gives a single flying fuck if I play Dragon Age or Baldur's Gate with a suboptimal setup, it's a single player game and I am free to do as I wish in my game. In a cooperative multiplayer game, the dynamic changes radically for better and for worse, that's just the nature of the beast.

[ClassicPeon]

Ill be damned...i really thought NO somewhat recent RPG's had this perma choices.
I was wrong...
I really thought they didnt exist (>_<)

I thought this was a year 1900 thing...exclusively.

Why would you think no decent rpg's where being made anymore?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

??? What the fuck lol. If you do just the side quests and don't spend a single regret you could respec your ascendancy from gladiator to slayer and back again by the end of Act 5. PoE hands out respec points like candy during the storyline, and if you get through all 20 of those then you can just map for an hour or two to get enough currency to buy regrets and do it all over again. PoE is an absolutely terrible example of "locked-in" choices because literally nothing in that game beyond base class is "locked-in", and that's one of the absolute keystones of its design.

It's a pretty good example of putting in some effort to change your choices though and it seems unlikely covenants will take longer to change then farming for regets or currency If you keep your progress in them after you leave.

[ClassicPeon]

Well...almost every RPG from 20 years ago i have played, you can "go back" on your mid game gameplay customization options.
Im only 30 y old though
Maybe it was different...a long time ago?

Could you name one of these iconic rpg's?

[Cosmic Janitor]

This cant be true.

Ive played a crapton of RPGs...and all the ones i played had the option to "go back" and redo your "talents" or "skills"

Breath of Fire IV
Front Mission 3
Dragon Quest VIII
Dragon QUest XI
Dragon Quest IX
Star Ocean: Till the end of time
Grandia
Rogue Galaxy
Hack
Shin Megami Tensei
Persona

I genuine never played an RPG where u cant go back...only Fire Emblem for the gameboy color wich i completely forgot as a kid.

Guess I will bite:

I mean your list is pretty much just JRPG from what I can see, and since I haven't played some of the obsucre games you have on that list could you elaborate how respeccing in those games has worked? Also which parts? Like in Persona 5, respeccing is not even a thing since there is nothing to respec. Fusing different cards is not going back on descision, it's just picking another disable pawn for example.

[OrcsRLame]

In the recent edition of D&D, you can respec feats. You can't change your class but your feats yes.

Not sure about current D&D but in 3.5 you could technically respec with miracle, since miracle could do literally anything with the only limit being what the DM would have the gods let you get away with. Technically you could even do that as a gold cost if you knew a level 17+ NPC cleric, though it would be quite expensive due to the 5k xp cost.

- - - Updated - - -

It's a pretty good example of putting in some effort to change your choices though and it seems unlikely covenants will take longer to change then farming for regets or currency If you keep your progress in them after you leave.

Depends. Super late game in PoE the top players average over an ex profit per map in solo or closer to 25 ex profit in group. If you need to respec you ascendancy and literally all 120 points of your tree, (Unlikely even with vastly different builds.) then that's about 1 ex in regret orbs. It's a bigger burden earlier in your character's progression to be sure, but it does become less of a burden as you go along.

[ClassicPeon]

Not sure about current D&D but in 3.5 you could technically respec with miracle, since miracle could do literally anything with the only limit being what the DM would have the gods let you get away with. Technically you could even do that as a gold cost if you knew a level 17+ NPC cleric, though it would be quite expensive due to the 5k xp cost.

Respec'ing isnt a feature of DnD its a feature of the setting. Its been a thing since the first iteration of DnD if the GM wanted it to be there.
Most people dont play with respec features because they cheapen the choices you make.
(i'm not saying thats how it works in wow, so dont crucify me here. Wow is a different beast then an actual dnd rpg)

[OrcsRLame]

Could someone explain me WHY ion hazzikostas says:

"Permanent choice is a core element for the RPG genre"

When im 30 years old, played probably 20 RPGs or more and never seen such a thing for the vast majority of RPGs ive played (99.9%)?

Front Mission 3 is a game from the year 1999 and the "game" itself was playing around with all the customization options freely.
I remember as a kid PRINTING on my crappy home printer a 20+ pages of customization options with different ability unlocks for every "part" of the mech robots.
This was in the year 1999

I understand D&D does this...but since when "you cant go back on your decisions" is a "CORE RPG ELEMENT" ???

Ion said that because he's trying to spin a narrative. It's simply not true. Permanent choice is a secondary element for a decent percentage of the RPG genre. It's much less prolific than an actual core element like critical hits.

[ClassicPeon]

Ion said that because he's trying to spin a narrative. It's simply not true. Permanent choice is a secondary element for a decent percentage of the RPG genre. It's much less prolific than an actual core element like critical hits.

Yeah no. Your post here is just objectively false.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Depends. Super late game in PoE the top players average over an ex profit per map in solo or closer to 25 ex profit in group. If you need to respec you ascendancy and literally all 120 points of your tree, (Unlikely even with vastly different builds.) then that's about 1 ex in regret orbs. It's a bigger burden earlier in your character's progression to be sure, but it does become less of a burden as you go along.

Top players are never really relevant when talking about things like this as they will always minimal these things.

[OrcsRLame]

Respec'ing isnt a feature of DnD its a feature of the setting. Its been a thing since the first iteration of DnD if the GM wanted it to be there.
Most people dont play with respec features because they cheapen the choices you make.
(i'm not saying thats how it works in wow, so dont crucify me here. Wow is a different beast then an actual dnd rpg)

It literally is a feature of D&D going by RAW. At least if we're talking about 3.5. In 3.5, the miracle spell has absolutely no limits aside from not being able to go against the deity's alignment. If you delve very deeply into the lore it's also implied that miracle can be blocked by other deities of equal or greater power if the miracle intrudes on their portfolios.

[klogaroth]

Could you name one of these iconic rpg's?

As has been brought up a bunch already in other places, Divinity Original Sin 2 is a prime example here, with a respec mirror available after Act 1. There are also respec potions in The Witcher 3. Both of those are pretty big names.

Also there's a lot you can do with save games.

The idea of changing things up mid-game has been around a while though. Like you could change the class of The Nameless One in Planescape: Torment by talking to an NPC. This is probably the earliest example that I've played myself, though there may be others going back further. It's not a complete reset on all choices though. Some have been more restrictive, some have been less restrictive than Torment was.

All of which ignores the secret hidden option, and whether we want to count it - in many single players games the devs leave in the ability to respec your character, in many ways. Even if it's not obvious. Console commands. If they absolutely didn't want you to be able to change stuff, they could completely disable console commands in public builds, but in many games, they don't.