Why even have respec costs?

seriously? what is the point of having high respec costs in a game with a massive, expansive omnidirectional skill tree with near infinite combinations of skills?

it seems to me like the point of designing such a tree is to encourage build diversity, player experimentation, and flexibility, but the difficulty to respec and change a character in exile games has always seemed to completely counteract this intention and forced people to spend hours agonizing over planning build paths or resort to outside guides instead of being able to figure it out on their own for fear of risking losing dozens of hours of resources just to tinker around or undo a mistake or correct after a nerf.

this is an antiquated system that may have been acceptable in 1998, but i cant think of any modern games outside of the exile games that still do this, pretty much every modern rpg such as diablo/warcraft, baldurs gate, etc makes respecing free or trivial to encourage players to play around with character building and customization, not punish them for it.

this has always been the biggest turnoff for me for exile games, it put me off of PoE 1 fairly early, and while im enjoying myself so far in PoE 2 as far as the gameplay is concerned, the build respeccing system will probably put me off of it in the long run as i reach the endgame and get hamstrung by skyrocketting resource costs and inflexible choices.

i see a lot of steamers "oh sir, a free respec please? just one to fix my build? a crumb of respec if you can spare it sirs?"

no. get rid of respec costs alltogether. needless friction directly contradicting the design of the skilltree as a freeform "build how you want to" tree with no predetermined path. completely scuttles the intended design. i dont know why this is a hill they've felt willing to die on for so long but it is hurting their game, which is a shame because that skill system could be something really special, but as is its just a pain point.

I like respec costs. I understand prohibitive isn't ideal. It's good to find a middle ground. They make build choices matter and your character not a blank page that you can rewrite for every encounter if you want, instead give your character a stronger identity that you must manage and craft against everything you want it to be able to do.

They can also help making currency matter, though you probably woudldn't want that as the main "dump" for any currency, since hopefully a character wouldn't want to respec or fully respec very often.

There should definitely be a respec cost just so there are some consequences.
With that said i really miss those free respec points you earn via quest. It was definitely helpful at low levels