Had this character claimed a respec (any of them) three times before? It has always been that the max number of times you can select respec from the trials is three.
I've definitely claimed three respecs. And I know the maximum number of respecs has always been three. But up until now, there were only three badges that any one character might be able to claim from the respec trials. There are now six.
My assumption to this point was that upon completion of the trial the game checks to see which respec badges you've already claimed, and if you haven't claimed all three, checks to see if you have a high enough level to make you eligible for the next. If you haven't claimed all three badges and you're high enough to be eligible for the next, the game offers you the badge and a respec as an option at the end of the trial. Otherwise you just get an offer of merits.
(And prior to merits, you just either got the badge and respec or you got nothing.)
If that were the case, then the game should have checked to see if I had already claimed the badges I was eligible for. Being a Vigilante, I could see how I still wouldn't get any offer of a badge since I might not be eligible for Villain respec badges while a Hero.
However, the characters that had made the full transition to Villain
should have been offered the badge as a reward if that was what the game checked against. The evidence seems to indicate that this is not how the system works.
Instead, it appears more likely that there's a series of three flags on your character that indicate whether or not you have already earned a respec for each trial level range. If this is the case and the game checks those flags instead of the badges you've collected, then once a character has claimed three respec badges, they simply won't be able to earn any more of them.
And then the question is: Was this an oversight, or is this working as intended?