Remnant 2's been an unexpected hit, knocking out everything except CS:GO on Steam's top seller list yesterday, in spite of some thorny performance issues that have made upscaling a necessity. On the whole, however, most fans seem happy with a sequel that's more, but better. There's a fly in the multiverse ointment, though: the game's respec costs are weirdly high.
The official subreddit has been buzzing with issues surrounding Remnant 2's trait system. In the first game, traits acted as a continuous grind, giving you minor boosts to your stats with no cap on how many you could stack up.
Remnant 2 takes a different tactic, capping your trait points at 60 to make those choices more meaningful. This allows the developers to add stronger traits to the game without fretting over players breaking the late game balance completely. After all, if you could get all of your traits to their maximum power on one character, you'd become an unkillable demigod, so the cap makes sense.
That'd be fine in isolation, but reallocating those trait points will cost you. An Orb of Undoing, an item needed for respeccing, is priced at three lumenite crystals and a whopping 2,500 scrap, which is Remnant 2's basic currency. This is a problem, because you need that scrap for just about everything else: upgrading weapons, unlocking new archetypes, buying weapon mods—there's just not enough to go around.
Fortunately, Gunfire Games are aware of this. In an announcement post, principal designer Ben Cureton—also known as verytragic—clarified a few design intentions, as well as confirming that the team will be looking into changing things:
"We are aware that players are finding [respeccing] a bit too costly and a bit clunky. In regard to the cost, this is an easy change. In regard to the fluidity of respeccing, that's another challenge," while Cureton wasn't able to divulge any details on how the issue will be solved, Gunfire Games "want players to know that we understand, and we are on the case."
Another juicy admission for theory crafters is that while the trait point cap is here to stay, it isn't "set in stone". It's unlikely to get sky-high, however: "It doesn't have to be capped at 60, but if it's too high or if there is no cap, it diminishes or almost completely invalidates many of the Trinkets we designed to supplement Traits."
Cureton also commented on the scrap economy itself, promising that further tweaks are coming: "Players should have more room to experiment."
I'm pleased that the response has been so straightforward and quick, considering Remnant 2 was only released three days ago at the time of writing. I haven't hit a point where I've had enough spare change to get properly tinkering, but I'm glad to hear I won't have to take out a post-apocalyptic mortgage just to switch things up.
