I've seen quite a few threads and discussions from these forums, Reddit, Tamriel Foundry, and other fan sites discussing the topic of the cost to respec our character’s skills. Not once have I ever seen any of these discussions receive official replies. You have promised as a company many times to increase communication and transparency with your customers, so I’m making this thread and tagging @ZOS_JessicaFolsom and @ZOS_GinaBruno to see where this goes.

I’m also tagging the person ultimately responsible for the vision of this game (@ZOS_MattFiror‌ though I don’t think he posts here) because this is, as the title suggests, simply a matter of intent. How prohibiting do you intend the respec cost to be? What is your response to the opinions of many of your customers who feel the cost is currently too high?

I find this whole topic and others like it (e.g., design related) particularly annoying because I am an enterprise (or business) software developer and, quite frankly, you guys in the entertainment software business have it good. At least when it comes to design, that is.

To give those who have no idea what the difference between these two worlds are, ask yourself this question: which is easier to write logistically, a book report or a short story? A book report that requires all sorts of research, fact checking, citations, and structure, or a short story that can technically never be wrong and has techniques where you can literally write words as they come to mind as a valid form of narration?

In enterprise software development, there’s all these rules and requirements that, more often than not, come from people who have little to no interest in the actual application that’s being developed. Worse is that said rules and requirements frequently conflict with one another, as various government agencies on different levels (local, state, federal) or different departments in a corporation might have different ways of doing the same business process.

You might be trying to upgrade a paper/manual process to an electronic/automatic processes, for instance, and one guy says he’s done it one way for thirty years (government employees work the same jobs forever) and another guy – who works ten feet away, in the same unit, under the same job title – says he’s been doing it a completely different way for twenty. Whoops! Who do you believe? Which way do you implement the process? Regardless, it’s out of your hands. There is some sort of correct processes that you need to implement and that’s the end of it. It's just a matter of finding that correct process, which isn't always easy.

Developer: “What happens if the person signs up online, but they don’t have a valid license/passport/some other document that this entire processes is based around?”

Architect: “No idea, let’s ask the business analyst.”

Business Analyst: “No idea, let’s ask the users.”

Users: “We were hoping the developer knew.”

But here, in the world of entertainment software, those processes are created out of thin air. That is mind blowing to an enterprise developer. Somewhere, a Zenimax designer (sitting in a bean bag chair in a room full of action figures and movie posters, right? I’ve seen behind-the-scenes videos of game studios…) thought “you know what would be cool?...” and then that cool thing happened. In the above exchange the Enterprise Developer has to ask “what happens” and then gets stonewalled when no one knows the answer. In entertainment software, there’s a better question to ask in that situation: “what do you want to happen?” That's like some Harry Potteresque magic phrase to an enterprise developer.

So when it comes down to a matter of intent, regarding the thing you built from scratch with your minds, I cannot fathom how an answer doesn’t immediately come off of the top of your head and why it would be difficult to relay that thought to your customers.

That’s like someone building a house to your exact specifications and then coming to you asking “you put down here that you wanted the boy’s room painted pink and the girl’s room painted blue, are you sure that’s right?” and you responding “I have no idea.” What? You have no idea what you want? You have no opinion on your own opinion?