Die - Retry gameplay.

This is mostly a discussion post, with a bit of a suggestion, so I thought I'd put it here instead of the Sanitarium.

I think GW shares a flaw with so many games these days in that it has the "Die-Retry" gameplay mechanic. Everything is completely linear. You play through it, you screw up, you go back to your last save, you repeat until you succeed, by luck or learning. (Or, in the case of Doom 3, by reloading your quick save, pointing your shotgun at the exact same location, and walking forward and headshotting the thing which surprised you last time.)

Edit: Some people are a little confused by what I mean about "die-retry syndrome". Here's a more detailed version, from a later post of mine.

I think the best games are those that allow a group of good players, to play through without die-retrying, AS LONG AS they stay on their toes and adapt. Pre-knowledge of the upcoming mission should NOT be required to pass it.

Whereas poorly designed games deliberately make you die-retry until you learn where the enemies come from, where to stand, who to attack, who not to attack, until you pass the level via repetition and rote learning. (or forum browsing...)

Oh, and note the difference between difficulty that requires skill, fast thinking, knowledge of the game, etc. versus the kind of "difficulty" that requires rote learning, repetition, or pre-knowledge of the "secret trick" to beating the task.

End of edit

In PvP, you pick a build, you beat the weak teams, you beat the teams your build is strong against, and then you come up against a build that you are weak against, and die. Oh well, bad luck. Try again. Let's hope we dont meet anyone running that build this time. (I know - in high level play, the skill is about knowing which builds you're likely to encounter given the current trends, and running a build which is not weak to those teams. But anyway...)

What do I think should be done? (It's a little too late... and Sorrow's Furnace shows me that they havent really learnt much... but there's always hope I guess.)

** Radical Suggestion :
Bring back Refund Points! *dodges tomatoes and rotting cabbages*... No wait! Hear me out!

Allow full freedom in changing atts and skills in towns as we do now. However, in PvP and PvE games, for every DP you get, you earn 1 refund point. (so 1 death = 15 refund points.)

Edit: you start at 0 points when you enter a mission/EA/pvp battle. There's a cap on how many points you can accumulate in a battle. You only get points if your DP increases, so if you hit -60 you can't get anymore refund points until you get some morale back.

You can spend 1 refund point to refund 1 attribute, like before. HOWEVER, you can spend 20 (40? 60?) refund points to change ONE skill to something else, DURING the mission/match/EA.

So you're in GvG, and you're losing by a small margin. You've discovered the secret of the enemies' build though, and you know, if you only had that one vital skill, you could tip the scales in your favour. Some quick discussion goes on in Teamspeak whilst half your team holds up the enemy to buy time. A skill or two gets changed, and you charge in to turn the battle to your favour. The enemy must adapt or die.

Or you're exploring a new mission in PvE, you've never been before. You have no idea what to expect. Halfway through, you come across a big group of Undead, unexpectedly. You take losses but some of the team manages to get away and Rebirth the dead. Instead of what happens now, where you try again, and probably die, and half the group ditches, and you have to start from scratch, instead, you come up with a new plan, substitute in some smiting spells, and after a tough battle, defeat the undead and progress in the mission. And everyone feels like they've overcome a challenge with their skill and wits.



*** General suggestions:
- More optional bonuses. Bonuses everywhere. Make the missions easy, but make the bonuses have a range of difficulty and rewards.

- Rare Bonus quests in EAs. Randomly spawned, in non-fixed locations, so that it's always an exciting adventure to find one.

- Allow resurrect shrines in missions. Make it easier for groups to retreat, rez and regroup, without monsters chasing them down forever. This is for the point below.

- Edit: In missions, (and pvp battles?) if you hit -60% DP, resurrect shrines no longer function for you. You can still be rezzed by teammates. Whether to extend this to EAs, I dunno. It might be annoying.

- The bonuses should not be completable by running, luck or via gradually wearing the monsters down by dying and attacking over and over. (ie. monsters respawn at a slow rate, the presence of healing / rez monsters, etc.) Either your group is skilled enough to take them on and win, or you're not, and after a few tries, you should be allowed to give up and move on to complete the mission. You should not be caused to fail the mission due to attempting a bonus.

- Bonuses should be repeatable. I'm mostly talking about post-ascension content. Maybe give every mission in the game a range of bonuses intended for fully-ascended players to complete. Add some replayability.

- It'd be nice if the bonuses affected the mission outcome in various ways. Maybe different cutscenes, different stories. Maybe different rewards (not better, just different).

End of over-long death-essay.

Um, whats the point of attribute refunds if your 8 skills stay static. Wont really make much difference.

Yup, but then no game dosnt.

I suspect you didnt read my post all the way through. The key point is that you can spend 10 (20? 30? 40?) refund points to swap out a skill for another skill during the battle.

As for games not having a die-retry game mechanic, perhaps you better play some more games. Some classic games. Some better games. Lots of games have "game over" when you die, but they vary in how much they rely on this sort of thing to stretch out gameplay time. Good games dont do it as much, or as often, or as annoyingly, or as linearly, as bad games do.

Compare Doom 3 to say, System Shock 2. I only played the first few levels of Doom 3, so I don't know if it gets any better, but due to the limited ammo, and the limited health you had, and the totally scripted and predictable enemy behaviour, it was very easy to fall into a gameplay pattern of "charge forward. Note the enemy that pops out the door behind you. Die. Reload. Charge forward. Turn around and one-shot headshot the guy as he comes through the door" to save ammo and health.

Whereas in System Shock 2, the enemies behaved randomly, respawned in unpredictable ways, wandered about randomly. You had ways of regenerating your health between battles, and buying more ammo, so if you're in trouble you can fall back and try to think of another way through. However, if you took too long, enemies would respawn, or the guy would simply wander over and find you, so you're always under time pressure. Plus, if you died, you repawned in another part of the level, so you keep going. The situation changes. Rather than going "back in time" to your save game, and retrying the same slice of time over and over. Groundhog Day might be good for romances, but its not good for video games :P

Refund Points discourages trying new builds. it was one of the worst features of the game originally.

there will never be a situation where putting 1 more attribute point into a skillset is going to make the difference between a losing team and a winning team. Rewarding someone with attribute refunds because of deaths goes against every law of nature we've ever known.

Allowing players to change a single skill not only defeats the original intent of the game...but it makes little sense. In most good builds you are relying on multiple skills to achieve a desired effect. Changing out one skill isn't going to do anything.




if you can't walk through PvE with 8 random skills you're doing something wrong.(for the most part)


honestly, we don't need to make any of the missions easier. We need to make the missions more difficult on a scaling curve. The biggest problem this game has is that 90% of the missions require no thought, no skill, and no planning. You can literally run in and slaughter everything in your path by simple focusing your fire. The other 10% require a planned organized team all knowing what they are doing. This creates noob traps...games should not have noob traps.


because I've always wanted to spend my night looking for a bonus I may never find or never know exists.

aren't mobs easy enough to get away from? Throw up a defensive stance and run in one direction until they stop....that's not too difficult. Missions should not have ressurection shrines...you should be penalized for being a dumbass.(we're all dumbasses sometimes)

Very very very few of the bonuses in the game are completeable by running...with that said running is a valid technique and often quite difficult in itself. You should be penalized for attempting the bonus should you not be able to complete it. The Bonus SHOULD be a gamble....that's why it's called a "BONUS"

this would be nice....but if you didn't notice while playing through the game ArenaNet doesn't care about the PvE portion of this game. They didn't bother writing a decent script, the didn't bother completing the plotline, they didn't bother hiring voice talent, they didn't bother syncing the voiceovers with any type of graphical movement, they just simple couldn't be bothered with creating a decent storyline to follow....so I doubt you'll ever see this.

I did read your post but missed this bit, sorry if i seemed short.

But no i dont like the idea of bringing back refund points, i have experimented more with builds in the last week than in the last 2 months previosly.

I can see your point, but in actual use it could be abit clumsy. What i mean is that those adjusting could be "out" of the game selecting skills for 10-30 seconds, and if your adjusting it becuse its not working that time may be not enought to save yourself with.


I have played ALOT of games and have found not one that dosnt have the die - retry sydrom, either by game over, or last save or level reset ect.

I have not played system shock 2 however, and respawning at a random location where the enemies also respawn at random points, sounds fun, im sure another game uses it as well, but i cant remember the name (some old rpg i think).


As to your suggestions.

im going to be short here as i SHOULD be working

I agree with algren, just ot expand on a few though.

I would like the bonuses to be repeatable, but i dont see why this helps with the die and retry syndrom.

Yes i agree, but again dont think it will happen. Maybe you get items instead of XP for doing the bonuses. Again though i cant see this helping the die and retry sydrome.

You've commented a lot on specifics, Algren. Do you agree/disagree/dont care about my general point about the gameplay?


Agreed. Full refunds in town should stay as is, which I have said.

Allowing changes of attribute was intended to make changing skills in mission viable. There's no point allowing a change of skills if you cant change attributes.

I don't know what kind of kooky laws of nature you are referring to, but they usually talk about motion of massive bodies under gravity (ooh, kinky) and very rarely about video games. Irrelevant.

Giving a boost to those behind is a technique used to make games more arcadey and fun. The opposite effect is used to make games more technical and competitive. My biases show.

(For example, the arcade racing game "Daytona USA" provides a boost in speed to people who are behind. Whereas the game Starcraft, if you start losing, you tend to collapse pretty quickly after that.)

I know it goes against everything GW stands for. But I'm questioning that principle. The cost of the skill change is designed to limit the use of such changes. Sometimes a single skill can make a difference. (Elemental resistances. Winter. Smiting. Rend. Heck, rebirth.). And besides, after multiple deaths, you would have earned enough DP to change several skills. Exactly how many we would allow at once as a maximum is an issue for testing.

I agree. PVE is far too easy in this game. With some specific, and frustrating exceptions. It's not consistent and it's less fun. The game should allow all players, good and bad, to progress, whilst offering up difficult and rewarding challenges for skillful players to tackle. Spreading these challenges out throughout the game is a way of keeping variety and stretching out the existing content. At the moment, an endgame PvE player looking for a challenge has few places to go, and few things to do: FoW/UW, Sorrows. 80% of the content in the game is now completely useless to him. Waste of resources.


I agree. Hence, the missions should be made easier. Wait, I mean, the missions should all be equally easy. Everyone should be able to "play to the end" regardless of skill, because we'd like everyone to enjoy as much of the content as possible. Then we add optional stuff, with scaling difficulties, for people who want a challenge. Give those optional tasks rewards, both cosmetic for bragging rights, and material, to make it worthwhile.


It should be so rare and random that there's no point looking for it. It should be something that you come across whilst you are doing something else, or something to reward exploration. If you've played a game like Fallout, you'll know I'm talking about that magical feeling of stumbling across something completely unexpected in the middle of the desert. I dont like how a lot of games are so... *researchable*.... maybe it's my own weakness, but by halfway through GW, I had already downloaded the maps, read forum posts about upcoming missions, and nothing was new for me.



You should be penalised for screwing up, but not in the godawful die-retry gameplay. Which is the point of my post.

Take the game Devil May Cry. It contrasts quite heavily with similar action games on PC, because it gives you a ranking as you play the mission.

Your rank goes down if you take more damage, if you take too much time, if you use potions and other items, how many times you died, if you're not "stylish" in your fighting (no really... it's more of a system that penalises repetitive conservative fighting).

You are then rewarded at the end of the mission based on your rank. (and conversely, penalised if you suck). Not only does it encourage you to replay and try to improve yourself, it also rewards several different behaviours, not just survival, and has a range of outcomes, not just Win or Retry.


Perhaps, in GW, the amount of DP you've racked up is applied to the final mission reward, so if you've died a lot, you get less stuff, and a bad score too.

Running is valid if it's not significantly easier than fighting, and isnt that much quicker. Running is not valid if it's much more difficult than fighting, but saves you time. (Because its frustrating to be in impatient crappy teams that only want to run everything, and they die again and again...)


I agree that attempting the bonus and failing should have some penalties. However, it should NOT cause you to Die-Retry. All you get is conflicts over "We doing bonus? No, it's too hard. I wanna do bonus or I leave! *tries bonus* *dies* Goddammit I said DONT DO THE BONUS!! *leaves*"

If we have rewards being penalised by DP (as above), then trying the bonus and failing would penalise you via more deaths, a lower score and less xp/gold/whatever for mission completion.


How funny that PvPers are complaing that PvErs have all this huge content, the free update, all this stuff, whilst we dont even have the skill balances, new pvp areas etc blah. And then the other side turns around and says how shoddy the PvE story is, how linear and one-dimensional the missions are etc blah.

I'm taking a balanced view. ANet simply spread itself too thin, and also fell into the trap of conventional thinking. Sure, GW is very different from MMORPGs, but if you look at the overall structure, GW is almost identical to FPS games, like Half Life 2 etc. (i didnt like HL2. They focused on the graphics and useless physics model, and lost much of what made HL1 so fun to play.)

ie.
Single player/Coop "Story" -> Linear. Barely replayable.

"Deathmatch/Teamplay mode" -> Small scale arena maps, totally seperate from the story part of the game. Repetitive, but played by competition fans over and over again.


Since the GW technology is pretty sound, and the art style is rather nice, I'm hoping they'll continue to work on GW. And my wish is that they'll learn some lessons and break the stupid FPS/PC Game mould.


End of overlong death-reply.

Because, if bonuses arent repeatable, then if you win, you'll only see the content once, and you wont spend much time on it. Therefore, in order to stretch the content, a lazy game designer will make the bonuses hard and kill you a lot, so that you'll Die-Retry several times before progressing the mission.

It's more of a change in philosophy rather than simply "Oh, let the bonuses be repeatable."


If the mission has variable outcomes based on your performance in the mission, then you'll have an incentive to replay the mission several times to challenge the hard parts and see all the possibilities. Thus reducing the need to make missions that are deliberately tricky to cause you to become "stuck", and forced to die-retry until you figure out the "trick" to getting past it.

I think the best games are those that allow a group of good players, to play through without die-retrying, AS LONG AS they stay on their toes and adapt. Pre-knowledge of the upcoming mission should NOT be required to pass it.

Whereas poorly designed games deliberately make you die-retry until you learn where the enemies come from, where to stand, who to attack, who not to attack, until you pass the level via repetition and rote learning.

Oh, and note the difference between difficulty that requires skill, fast thinking, knowledge of the game, etc. versus the kind of "difficulty" that requires rote learning, repetition, or pre-knowledge of the "secret trick" to beating the task.


Ok, going to bed now. I value all your civil and well reasoned responses, keep them up!

The problem with GW is not only the die/ figure it out / retry mechanic, but the fact that there is lots of boring rubish inbetween. Look at Elona or Thunderhead. Before you arrive at the "retry" part, you have to endure some basic timesink.
Even skilled individuals may need to quit, reajust the build and breeze through on the second run.
I dont mind difficult missions, but please, no 1h missions of cleaning boring mob after mob with difficult boss at the end. Thats just ... console. Back when you could not save.

If you want key / lock mechanics, at least make em cool. Like air gang mobs - or 55hp prot bosses. Or healing balls. Or spirit spammers of old.

Er, despite my going to bed, I'm posting in my sleep. Oh yes.


Yeah, the other thing that's missing from GW pve is clever and fun bosses and special encounters.

Take a look at Devil May Cry (yes, i love the game. I admit it) or Phantasy Star Online. Or the Beholder in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance.

The bosses in those games are practically levels in themselves. You have to constantly pay attention, concentrate, and adapt/react to defeat them. They change their behaviours over time, have just the right balance between predictability and randomness, occasionally have lots of weaker respawning minions that really makes things crazy, have several different hit areas (and tactical decisions that need to be made about which to aim for), and several different modes of behaviour.

Then contrast that to the weaker-than-a-group-of-normal-enemies bosses in GW.

Or the final boss in Quake 2, or the Big Dragon monster in Dungeon Siege.

Sidestep attack. Shoot. Repeat until dead. (which takes a large amount of time due to the amount of HP they have.)


If there are tough and creative bosses, I dont mind crowds of time-filling weak monsters as long as there arent too many of them. Its relaxing and fun to wipe out vast armies of things (I wish Elem AOEs were more spectacular :/ )


Edit:

Also in those good games I mentioned above, normal enemies are often completely optional. You just run past them. You kill them for fun, you kill them for drops, or to practise your combos, but they dont slow you down unless you want them to.

then instead of seeing endless complain about PvE is too boring, we'll see a new wave of complain about PvE is too short, can be completed in 3 hours.

Wonderful ideas Rieselle.

Even thought the missions, as they are now, are pretty easy, the pentalty for losing them is crap.
Relaying on guildmates to help you with missions is crap. (they dont play when your ready for them to play)
Relaying on PUGs to get you through a mission is crap. (log off, aggro everything, afk for 10 mins. etc, etc.)
Relaying on henchmen is more reliably, but not as fun, so its crap too.
No matter how good you are, you stand a chance of wasting time unless you play with henchmen all the way through.
The way some missions are set up now, there is no room for respawn points.
But your suggestions are good notes to remember for making new missions more fun and less fustrating.

Id add:
Each mission/bonus mission/quest has a difficulty rating attached to it.
Because any thing that reduces unnessary guess work is favorable.

And Ive always been in favor of any system that could introduce adaption on the fly.
Using DP as a means to do this is great.
Losing teams need to adapt not winning teams.
And even then, this would put some wind under a losing teams feet, but diffently not put them ahead.

Im not to keen about the rare missions. Just because I already know Ill never get it. I know I wont; like I know I wont ever get a superior vigor rune drop or win the lottery. But Ill want it anyhow, and it will piss me off that other people get it. Id prefer to be in control over what missions/rewards Im working for/towards.
Maybe missions that appare after one meets a large prerequisite, requiring one to explore everything/complete all bonus missions or whatever.

The implementation of refund points he is suggesting in no way discourages trying new builds, so this point is moot.

I don't understand this point at all? Why would you assume they would only use one refund point at a time? I do agree with deaths not being a logical source of refunds though.

Again, why would you assume they would only change one thing at a time?

Difficulty is also not the point of this discussion and is not that hard to scale up or down. Whether or it should be made easier or harder is an entirely different debate. He's merely trying to lay out a game mechanic that would be more fun, which I entirely agree with. However, as he admits, it would be impractical to try to implement it now.

agreed...so there's no reason to put it in.



I read his initial post incorrectly. as I understand it now one death would give you 15 refund points two deaths would give you 30 refund points...so basically this advocates the "let run the worst possible build I can think of and change it on the fly after i've died 3 times and know what the opponent is doing"....there's no skill in that. There's no skill in being shown what the opponent is going to do and then being allowed to design a build. Also think about how impractical this would be...."damnit, I know you guys are getting owned but let me run off into the corner over here change a couple attributes and swap out a skill or two"......cuz there's a lot of time for that in the middle of a match.






in his system you'd need to die 3 times to be able to swap out two skills...when was the last time you died 3 times in PvP and still had a chance to win?




He clearly stated that the missions should be easier...did you have a point when you typed this? or were you simply too anxious to click "Submit Reply" and get your mind numbing dribble out into the world?

i agree with the idea of being able to swap out skills during Tombs matches. it should not cost any "refund points" or any such nonsense to do it, though. it should be free and able to be done at any time.

any players who don't know what they're doing would probably end up fubaring themselves up by using this feature anyhow. those who do know what they're doing should be able to counter the enemy party on-the-fly.

Guild Wars Tombs should indeed be about truly countering the enemy, rather than the current system of: "make a build and pray that you don't happen to come across a skilled team that is designed to counter that build".

as for making PVE missions have res shrines: horrible idea. there are already far, far too many horrible players at the endgame of PVE. to make missions easier would just increase the horrible player mass at endgame missions even more. therefore it's a very terrible idea to make the missions easier. better to let the horrible players die and redo all the missions 10 million times until they change their horrible-playing ways.

It's the idea, not the number crunching, that is important. As I said, I agree that DP is not a logical source for refunds, but the idea of having on-the-fly changes in a match sounds interesting. There is more skill in this than in playing a RPS guessing game at the beginning, and promotes quick-thinking and adaptation.

He had an interesting idea for discussion, and you sidetracked the main idea so you could attack inconsequential details.

Exactly like you're doing now with my post. I never commented either way on his comment that missions should be easier, I commented on your comment that skill adaptation would make PVE easier when it is already too easy. My response was that that is not a valid reason why we shouldn't have skill adaptation, since we can separately make PVE harder.

You group different points together into the same discussion when it suits your purposes for attacking them, and then treat them separately when that instead suits your purposes for attacking them.

This is slightly off-topic. But what the hell are these "good" and "classic" games that he speaks of? System shock 2? Devil May Cry? WTF?

I've heard of all the other games he mentions which he dismisses. Yet never heard of these "wonderful" games he loves so much.

Some great and classic games I know of, Secret of Mana, Super Mario Kart, Final Fantasy Tactics, Starcraft, Street Fighter 2, CS.

They all have a die/retry mechanic to them in a way though not exactly the same. So in these great games of yours you never die? You didn't want save points in an RPG?

Definitely don't make missions easier. His argument of letting those who want to see the story do so is crap. You have to earn an ending/continuation of story. He seems to want everything to be made easier. I'm guessing he's stuck at thunderhead. Go watch a movie if you want all the missions to be easy and want to see the story.

why bring any skills at all? just bring a large chunk of "refund points" and put your skills in as you see fit when you approach mobs. Surely that will make PvE worth playing...The point is that his idea is one of those ideas you have while taking a crap only to realize when you're done crapping that it wasn't a complete idea.....unfortunately he never finished crapping

That's why he suggested you need to obtain the refund points over the course of the mission. Now, the DP idea I don't agree with either, but there are plenty of other ways we could do this (award for killing bosses, doing bonuses, etc. etc.) I would think it wouldn't have been hard to come up with suggestions like this to improve his idea, however I can see how it would be hard if you come in with an extremely negative mindset, and have an agenda of shooting everything down.

it's an awful idea...mainly because you can walk through PvE with the skills you get in pre-searing without any trouble at all...but also because it defeats the purpose of planning. Why would I want to expand on an awful idea?

It's one thing to allow something like your skill-swap in PvE when people are really only there to amuse themselves and the 3-7 other people in their party co-operating with them, but I can't see this ever being a good idea in a competitive PvP match.

One simple example: Someone who didn't bring a res in the first place winds up being the only person left alive on their team can suddenly grab a res and bring back someone capable of resing the entire team (talkin' theoretically here).

I know that's pretty much the Holy Grail of your "claw your way back from the brink of death" idea, but it's hardly fair to the team that was just one simple kill away from victory due to poor initial strategy on the part of the opposing team..

I dunno, if a team can claw its way back from that position, then all power to them. Certainly more fun than chasing that last guy around for 30 mins (although I admit that mostly happens only in random arenas.)

Like I said, it's Starcraft vs. Daytona. Do you want every battle to be hard fought, with both sides given a chance of victory until the very last moment, or do you want the side with the advantage to be able to win decisively and move on? I make no judgements on which position is "better", I just personally prefer Daytona.


Wow Algren, you started off so intelligently. But now you've descended back into the barrel of slime you normally live in. I made a direct reply to your points so I wont repeat myself unless you have anything more to add.

Personally I tire of the victory until the last moments mentality of many games, this create problems when there is any of kind of ability to hold positions and strategize, the idea is to gain enough advantages to overwhelm an opponent, each time you move to a better position, each time you choose the right skill, etc., is another victory which helps for the more unified victory.

I personally do not want to see skills and points being redistributed, and I wonder how overall effective this would be in gameplay as opposed to simply lengthening a fight for unnecessary reasons. This would then change into, a do not doubt it trust me, macroing changes of points and skills based on what the enemy is using, you're going to create a large amount of people shifting, or not wanting to reveal their hand, or revealing a false hand, in order to gain information about what they have and counter it. Plus, I feel that allowing them to change will give more protection spells and resurrects to just further delay a victory, rather than usurp control of the battle.

Honestly, in a team of eight, it should not be difficult to have enough instances of certain types of spkills and situations that switching out becomes necessary, planning is all that it is, and the ability to adjust those.

I dont agree. The points are there to limit the rate at which you can change your build. Making it unlimited would effectively give you access to all of your skills during the match.

I agree.


I'm going to have to side with Algren on this one. You should not have noob traps in games. Anyway - it just makes them frustrated, impatient, and all the more likely to be jerks.

And are you seriously suggesting ANet should put in a gameplay mechanic to seperate out poor players into a place seperate from the rest of us?!? Think hard about the overall consequences of such an act.

As we've gone over twice already, if this idea were in place, the map designers would simply have to increase the difficulty of the maps, so the game currently being a cakewalk is irrelevant. Note that the OP admits right off the bat that it's too late/impractical to put this in right now, we're just talking about how much better the game might be if this were part of the original design.

Also, who says this defeats planning? That is again an aspect of level design. How frequently will you be getting refunds? How many would you need to significantly change your build? These are all variable things, and so planning is not lost.

Here are some things that COULD be in place if this were here that cannot be in place in the current system.

1) Teams of enemies designed to counter different builds at different points in the map. If this were to be implemented, you would have to make sure that SOME player team build could make it through all portions of the map, which would be horridly restrictive if they could not adapt at stop points on the way.

2) Stealth/scouting classes and builds. There would be a lot more value added to knowledge of the upcoming enemies, esp. if point 1 were implemented, so that you could decide how to spend the limited number of refunds you just earned by beating that last boss.

I'm sure there's more ideas that could be come up with as well. It is not the idea alone, but also the possibilities that it opens up.

A very valid point. It could cause games to drag out more. I have no real solution to that. Artificial timelimits such as Victory or Death can help, but they kind of distort things in their own way.

Although it makes DP-erasing techniques such as the flag stand more important, as it allows you to adapt more without hitting -60 DP. You could see back-and-forth battles with each side dying and then coming back with a slightly different build, until they managed to figure out a way to put the other side down permanently.

Oh, one thing - it means having a broad knowledge of becomes important - no more copying builds from forums and expecting to do well, since a knowledgable team might be able to adapt to it easily, whereas a forum-copier wouldnt know how to cope.

Looking at the team builds posted at TGH, I think in GW, the more effective builds are specialised ones. I dont hear about wide-ranging general builds doing all that well.

Planning is not really the word, since your opponents are random - you cant plan without advance information. It's more like Risk Management and knowledge of the metagame. But maybe I'm quibbling over semantics. There's nothing wrong with either thing anyway.

It's a funny idea, I like it.

though there's one flaw.. which is solvable.. it's just not been mentioned at all here.
the whole attribute points.. stuff cool and all.. let's say 40 for a skillswap...

the flaw... is there a cap on it ? as in.. can I just into PvE die.. let's say 50 times and get like 3000 refund points.. ? that'd be some skill swapping..

solution to this.. a cap.. let's say at 60, just enough for 1 skillswap and halfway to a second one...

OR...

no cap... and each time you get into a new fight.. as in go from a town into PvE area or get into a follow up fight in a PvP area.. it resets and it only counts as in-battle gained so to speak.. But.. the flaw with this is.. that it could only.. happen maybe.. in Tombs or GvG because you have to die 3 times.. to get -45 which would be 1 swap...

also...
Depending on the ease of getting the refund points I think the Res signet should be kept in memory as in if you swap it and swap it back, it's still inactive if you used it, unless you gained a morale boost during the fight while it was swapped out then you can use it again.

if this would be implemented.. it would need a lot of balancing.. and maybe several rules as in.. you can't swap Elite skills or something.. however that might change the entire battle.. so maybe only the swapping of Elite skills..

And maybe.. some kind of quickswap bar.. as in.. you know what builds you might encounter so you have like... 8 spaces to put skills in..
as in.. if you want to swap.. you click a button or icon whatever.. the window that pops up contains the full skill list... to drag it from, but at the top are the 8 you selected pre-hand.. the ones you would most likely swap for, since skill lists are quite long.

As for the whole save reload thing.. GW does NOT have that.. not as much as Doom or games as such.. because.. there's no actual save file.. thus if you have a weapon with a max upgrade.. and you salvage it.. there's a chance it'll be lost forever.. while it wouldn't be if you could save-reload.. till you got it... also GvG battles lost.. will always be count as lost on the ranking.

Oh, did I forget to mention it? There's definitely a limit.

Refunds start at 0 when you leave town (ie. when you enter a mission, EA, or PvP match). And they're capped at some value. And even if you use them, there's a limit to how many more you can get, because DP maxes out at -60%. Unless you kill -a lot- of enemies in a mission :P

Die-Retry is less about reloading, as it is about gameplay that kills player with little warning and makes them retry until they've memorised the "optimum" way to complete a level.

Its more a case of linearity, predictability matched with artificial difficulty, and a timesink.