Blizzard's method of speccing your character in Diablo 4 Gold is a blend of the style of the studio's Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. As executive producer and director of the Diablo franchise Rod Fergusson put it, "Diablo 2 felt like you were locking into the game; you could respec once per difficulty. But with D3 you kind of changed your look like you changed your clothes. Everything was gear-based as opposed to skill-based."Fergusson added, "I think the fact that we have skills on the equipment [in Diablo 4] is really nice for experimentation -- as a sorceress I [might] get Blizzard [on a pair of boots] three levels before I should and I can try Blizzard to see if I actually want it."
Director of the game Joe Shely told Polygon in an interview at a roundtable the idea of "having your character feel like a compilation of choices that you've made will lead to fascinating decisions, or at a minimum, intriguing opportunities."Shely explained that the Diablo Team is well aware of the fact that gamers, particularly beginning, may not be fully aware of each class' set of capabilities. Players are likely to want to play around.
"When you take a look at our respec system," Shely said, "which can be applied to both the skill tree as well as Paragon to later levels which is our endgame progression system, we've endeavored to do it in a way where you're making a choice matters and that your character is not identical to everyone others, and that you're in a position to have lots of flexibility to try things out.
"You've been given the option to specify points point by point. You just need to click to despend a single point and use it for something else However, as you progress further into levels, the cost rises to make choices a bit more thought-provoking. Of course, it is possible to change the entire tree in one shot if you want to rebuild from the ground up."
Fergusson stated that as players progress and deep into their character "the costs of in-game currency to respect becomes higher and higher until you get to the point that you've reached the level of a 90 Barbarian and buy Diablo IV Gold instead of completely redesigning my build, it's much better to roll a new Barbarian and start over."
