That is all correct! It functions exactly like Grim Dawn, by not allowing you to respec skill points spent on masteries or attribute points. I forgot about that.

I disagree to you diagreeing. Equiping the best-in-slot-weapon for any given situation is exactly one of this non-choices I was talking about. A simple script could do this just as good if not better than the player and therefore it doesn't add anything to the gameplay (other than superfluous micro management).

Fortunately there are usually other choices to be made concerning equipment, like limited inventory space and opportunity costs for keeping stuff vs selling it. Last but not least a skill system might prevent you from swichting your weapons at will as your character might not be proficient with all of them.
Suddenly the choice you have to make is: "should I increase my swordsmanship to use this firesword in the upcoming ice dungeon, which would be super useful, or can I make it through without and level up my bow skills instead, which would benefit me in the long run?"
This of course only applies if you can't switch skills like clothing...

Diablo 2 hell difficulty was at some point redesigned to gently force players into multiplayer. You could still beat it solo but for that you had to know what to expect there in before. Of course this doesn't go well with a strict no-respec system. Maybe they realized this themselves as in a later patch the introduced limited respec options (one time per difficulty).

That assumes there is a best-in-slot weapon for any given situation. Sometimes, weapons (or other equipment) have various special effects, and which one is best may be influenced by the player's strategy. Consider, for example, that there often isn't a "best" spell in games that have magic, and sometimes there are trade-offs to be made.

Perhaps a more interesting example might be accessories. For instance, in Final Fantasy 6, which accessory is better for Strago: The Earring (which boosts the power of spells by 25%) or the Muscle Belt (which boost maximum HP by 50%, and keep in mind that there are a few Lore abilities (Pearl/White Wind being the one that occurs to me first) that are affected by HP and work better for characters with higher max HP). See how the choice isn't clear cut?

I consider weapon proficiencies to be one of the worst examples of skills. In most games, there isn't any strategic difference between weapon types that is obvious before one is aware of what weapons there are to find; hence, I consider asking a player to choose a specific weapon type at the start of the game to be bad game design. The Infinity Engine games, for example, suffer from this issue. (Things get more interesting if the game actually makes the weapon types strategically different throughout the game and accurately informs the player; Lords of Xulima is an example that does this well, though I happen to dislike the skill system in that game as it made me dread leveling up.)

I don't really like respecing in ARPGs (or any other game, for that matter), because I don't like my games more complex and confusing than what they need to be. I don't enjoy games that have builds that simply don't work, and my philosophy of not respecing goes in that same direction: I like to make my own builds and stick with them until I finish a given game.

Granted, games that do not allow respecing sometimes feature broken builds as well, and it's much more annoying to discover it halfway through without the ability to reassign skill and character points to make yourself a build that works, but I guess I've been extremely lucky with my games and builds, since I never needed to waste hours of my life searching for a build that works on any given game.

I don't assume anything. You gave an example and I was referring to it.

I agree that there are lot's of games with poorly implemented mechanics. Not sure if weapon proficiencies stand out in that regard but generaly speaking, whenever a permanent descision is to made by the player, he should have enough information available to make this an informed descision. Because otherwise it's not strategy but luck. Of course this requires the developers to make their homework and a lot of games fail at it. In those cases respec options and similar mechanics indeed provide a band-aid fix but in a good game you shouldn't need them (at least not for getting around flaws in game design).

I think that it is only something that matters when doing multi-player, but when it comes to that, it matters a lot. MMOs especially should NEVER HAVE RESPEC., but any MP game where this is allowed is bogus.

I'm vehemently opposed to allowing any sort of repseccing in multiplayer games.

Single-player? why not? It's my game and I want to have fun with it and if that means tweaking my build then I should be able to do that.

I think companies do it for 1.) the gametime padding like previously mentioned and 2.) because they don't know how to implement something for SP but not MP or they haven't figured out that THAT is what matters?

Even given that example, by being clever with the level design, one can make the decision not so clear cut. Let's modify the example slightly: In the fire dungeon, there is one enemy type that is immune (or highly resistant) to ice, and that enemy happens to be a problem enemy. In this case, you will need some way to deal with said enemy, and as a result, using that weapon is no longer necessarily the best choice.

The weapon might still be a good idea, especially if you *do* have another way of dealing with the enemy; for example, you can have another party member equip a different weapon, or you could save your magic for that enemy. Or, perhaps, you decide that making that one enemy less of a pain is worth being less effective against every other enemy in the dungeon.

(This is assuming a game where you can't see enemies before combat starts, and where changing equipment during battle, if possible, isn't free.)

Why? I mean, wouldn't that be like being forever stuck with a bad deck in a CCG just because you didn't immediately right off the bat get the game perfectly? That wouldn't make sense, so why would being forever stuck with a badly build character make more?

I like having the ability to respect, since so many games seem to allow you to unknowingly build a character that's totally ineffective, or they have skills that are useless and/or never used in-game.

Having said that, I don't refuse to play a game that doesn't allow respecs. But I always research builds and skills/abilities to make sure I don't inadvertently waste skill points/ability points on useless crap.

Honestly, I loathe the concept of specializations (or even to a more exaggerated case, classes) in games. I see it as an arbitrary gate and often flimsy, artificial replayability--or in it's most innocuous form; perpetuation of a tired Gygaxian trope.

Here's where those damned Elder Scrolls actually do something RIGHT. They say, "Here, you can play with ALL the toys but, the more toys you have, the harder the next one will be to come by but, it can still be yours if your willingness to persist is strong enough."

I dig that. the concept of 'classes' still exists in the game but, it is on the players onus to define precisely what that entails. They become and emergent, organic affair and unique for the players agency and a by proxy celebration of it instead of a hard set of limitations imposed arbitrarily for the 'bett'er' of the game more so than the betterment of the player's experience in it.