POE2 - Respec impressions

I am a new player (i played poe1 for like an hour or 2 many years ago) and as it is evident to me after reaching the middle of act 2, I suck at making good builds that allow me to stay ahead of the enemy power curve. So I want to try stuff, respec, try silly ideas, then discover that things don't work as I thought they would and try again.

But currently respec feels punishing because of the price, moreover, if something I did doesn't work I need to pay double the price to return to the last state that worked. And since I suck at this at times I need to refund all of the points because I now see a more optimal path on the tree, or I want to try going in a radically different direction, but it requires changing early points. And then there is the fact that the price always goes up. I need to save all of my gold for this and take every item I see to go sell them.

Basically at first i was exited to try things, now i am not. I still like the game very much but i feel like if i could google up a good build i would just follow that instead of finding my own path because doing it on my own feels bad.

I think that respec should be free, but I also understand that building a character is a skill, so in my case, it's a skill issue. On the other hand, you did say that you want to make the game more accessible, and this is one part that is going to be gatekeeping players and forcing them to instead google up good builds foregoing trying to learn how to do that themselves.

i agree with this, i wish there was more build flexibility for either newer players or players who just like to experiement. im not sure how much the high cost of decisions adds to the game, especially since you can't know beforehand how it turns out, which also in turn leads to (i would expect) the majority of the community following guides of established players.

for example, i would appreciate a respec token once in a while (or any functionally equivalent solution obv.), so i can try different ideas.