it was also implied that it would affect things like your storyline at some point in the future

That would be cool. I'd love some official confirmation on that.

Edited March 27, 2012 by RolyartNala

they did say the planned on expanding on the legacy system alot. i believe it was also implied that it would affect things like your storyline at some point in the future

 

And again that makes me affraid of making decisions since I would be making them Blind

Its a tool for rp-ers, that is it. Simply an in-game rp-ing tool just like any /wave or /bow command is in-game.

And again that makes me affraid of making decisions since I would be making them Blind

Well, the nice thing to dealing with a system that has no practical benefit is that it also has no practical downside. You could choose to simply not make a family tree until they add in some other system that gives it meaning and value. I suspect that this is what I will do---what's the point of locking myself into a family tree setup until there is actually a benefit for doing so? Edited March 27, 2012 by RolyartNala

it's there so you guys can complain about it

Its a tool for rp-ers, that is it. Simply an in-game rp-ing tool just like any /wave or /bow command is in-game.

See, I'm going to disagree. /bow or /wave have practical & aesthetic value because they are tools for interacting with other players. The family tree as we currently understand it is not an interactive system, nor displayable to others. It has exactly the same value as just telling someone "Character A is character B's father."

 

It is a RP tool in the same sense that a baseball-sized D100 die is a RP tool. 2D10 works just as well, and takes less effort besides.

Edited March 27, 2012 by RolyartNala

it's there so you guys can complain about it

Again, who is complaining? I'm just making conversation on a slow work day.

The Legacy system does give 50s something do to besides grinding endgame. And for support of Alts, to experience and make leveling a little bit easier than the grind it already is (doing all the quests a second/third time). Second, if you are a role-player nobody should be able to see your family tree anyways. Because, in roleplay wise you don't even know who's is his/her family until you asked, or get told, would be a mistake being able to see this.

 

Only if you haven't made any alts so far as it doesn't allow race change for existing characters. So if you've already made different races of different classes, getting them to be "related" is going to be pretty far fetched.

 

In this game your legacy name can be displayed, so you'd know that someone is of this legacy so they're related somehow to that name.

 

The flaw is that the legacy relationship is currently limited to just blood relations and marriages, instead of making it viable for non-blood related relations like clans (like Ventress' night sisters with a matriarch and sisterhood of assassins). If there was a Clan option for legacy relationships the system would be more fitting and complete, but again, being short sighted in terms of content development, BioWare opted for less and pawned off the whole "Anakin > luke x leia" family crap that SW is supposed to be about and based the entire Legacy system off of that. A legacy can be applied to a great many things, not all of them require blood relations.

 

 

The family tree adds a bit of extra fun for players who want that bit of immersion into their characters. It allows one to create a fun story in their head about their characters. Bob the jedi is the long lost brother stan the sith. Its obviously a feature that not every one will like, want, or use but for the other players it will be a lot of fun.

 

I don't need the game to tell me that, I for one already made "Clans" for my characters to belong in instead of forcing them to be blood related. My characters belong to the greater will of the Clan regardless of their name, race, and class. They may be different species but they all do work to further the goals of the Clan. The legacy relation system in place in 1.2 is pointless for me since I have different races, and I refuse to bow to their inferior planning and lack of freedom for player choices.

 

Yeah, family tree should def. show up as a tab when you inspect someone.

Or how about some sort of Legacy crest or pattern to display on your character/gear, or anything that shows off that this character belongs to a legacy in a more meaningful way than turning a title on or off. Other games have capes that display guild symbols, and while capes in this game isn't likely to happen, allow for a little doohickey to show off a player's unique legacy could be well appreciated.

 

 

 

Legacy as it stands doesn't really appeal to the people it was supposedly intended for. They wanted to "balance" the benefits of those who utilize it and those who haven't but couldn't figure out how. So they opted for the lazy approach, make it meaningless and have no effect on whether it's used or not.

I would have done different skill animations to be chosen if characters are linked, get the linked characters as a combat assist character/or temp companion for a few seconds (on a massive cooldown and restrictons), pass on Legacy gears by turning one of their gears into a legacy item that is available for the other characters to assess via the legacy menus.

 

There are tons of ways to make Legacy and the relationship options meaningful without upsetting game balance, but it wasn't planned as such, and it was delayed till now because they still had no clue as to how to get it to work. They need better designers, it's like they don't know how to make the game better and more meaningful as time goes on and keeps borrowing the same old crap other MMOs failed to do right in the first place. BioWare isn't really learning from other people's mistakes, they're repeating them at the moment and looking like they'll continue to repeat the mistakes until something drastic comes along.

The flaw is that the legacy relationship is currently limited to just blood relations and marriages, instead of making it viable for non-blood related relations like clans (like Ventress' night sisters with a matriarch and sisterhood of assassins).

 

Except, you know, you're wrong. "Ally" and "Rival" are available relationships. So presumably you could make a republic "clan" made up of characters who are all allies of each other, and are all rivals with an imperial "clan" made up of imps who are all allies of each other.

 

(or one big cross faction clan that are all allies of each other).

 

Possible connections according to duffies movie:

Ally

Child

Adopted Child (seems like they could have just looped this in under Child, unless they actually force racial restrictions for child)

Sibling

Spouse

Rival

 

(and P.S. Not exactly new info, they've said all along you would be able to link friends and enemies in your legacy tree. Just the exact term used (ally and rival) wasn't really known.)

Edited March 27, 2012 by GnatB

i have to say if the family tree doesn't do the following:

 

1. required to use alt legacy moves

2. keep a record of your progress through the class story lines and your choices

3. can be seen when you inspect people....

 

i think its kinda worthless.. definitely a missed opportunity to be unique in the right way.

It has to be set so that everyone can get immersed in it, not just u. And it has to have real purpose not just cosmetics...

Hey, OP. I have a question. I don't do PVP or a large amount of grouping/operations/etc. Why include those things and their systems in the game if they have no valid application to MY playing style?

 

Think about it, friend. Just because you don't see a value to it or it doesn't pertain to your play style, it doesn't mean it's useless. The family tree setup is an immersion and RP device that has potential to be used in future situations. Right now, it's more or less just for Role Players and for people who are going to take full advantage of the legacy system.

 

Get over the fact that there's something in the game that isn't focused directly on you or your play style. The rather large contingent of non Trolls that play this game would be grateful.

Hi William,

 

Thanks for the response. I appreciate the clarification on the design intent behind the family tree.

William Wallace Ally of Robert Bruce and Rival of Edward I?

Someone please help me understand this.

 

From what I can tell, the family tree does bupkiss.

 

Zero. Zilch. Nada. It appears to be a fancy UI for linking your characters together, the in-game benefit of which appears to be squat. I mean, correct me if I missed something, but it doesn't appear to be tied to any of the level/credit-based rewards for the Legacy system.

 

The family tree appears to be so useless that not even role-players benefit from it, since you can't SHOW your family tree to other role-players. What, then, is the difference in benefit to role-playing between the family tree system in 1.2 and simply writing down your characters' family connections on a piece of scratch paper and then just telling people what they are?

 

I mean, is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the system has no practical value (even to role-players)? If I am missing what the in-game benefit of the family tree is, someone please tell me. Thanks.

 

Not everything in the game has to be useful I do agree that there should be an OPTION to show it via the inspect system though.

After so many years of being told how Bioware were bring Story to the MMO, the fourth Pillar I would hope things like the Legacy of characters would be included in the story or future story.

 

If your mother and father both hold the darth title, your adoptive brother is head of a black ops unit and your allie is the winner of the great hunt should have some effect on how people view you. I'd be very surprised if some Lord is going to mouth off at you given your parents sit on the dark council.

The question I have is that each character has their own romance options, if we did choose to romance, in current state, the opposite sex, and marry them, does this affect the family tree? i.e. is my married character locked out of spouse option?

I am a content driven player and never have or ever will RP.

But despite the tree being 'useless' in terms of gameplay gain, I somehow look forward to it.

It does have value as a ingame overview for all your characters. You can look at them and compare them. And I even plan to fill a slot with some old guy that will stay level 1 and be the grandpa for all the other alts - not beacause I gain anything of it but it just looks good when I open the Legacy tab to view or buy unlocks.

 

It's like the login screen. What good comes from seeing nothing more than the name of your character? You know it's level, class and faction. Why the need to display even the current look right in the middle of the screen?

Why use new moddable armor? There's no gain to be had by a different armor style.

Edited March 27, 2012 by Hxxr

Yeah one of the 1.2 teaser videos said that the family tree would probably play an important role in future updates, which we can assume to mean stories. I'd love it if the actions of one of my characters impacted another, or if there were a story instance in which I had to confront my Sith lord father, or something like that. The ultimate *** awesome/terrible moment would be choosing to kill off one of your characters, though I think some sort of faction change for characters could be plausible. Not that Bioware's mentioned any of the above - I'm just musing.

All characters in your legacy get all of your global legacy unlocks, regardless of the arrangement of characters in your family tree.

 

The family tree is just a fun visualization of the relationships between your characters - we don't want you to ever have to "respec" your family to get the unlocks you want, or for guilds to require you to have a certain family arrangement in order to pick up the right rewards.

 

So it is basically a "fun for 5 minutes" thing, and then forever forgotten again, ok. I would like to suggest that instead of wasteing time and money on adding features like the family tree , you instead add something that would benefit me in the long term, like the ability to remove error messages spamming the center of my screen, because who ever thought that 10 lines of error text was a good idea should be ashammed of themselves, in fact could you please tell me who was responsible for that, because I would like to ignore anything they ever say from this point on.

Edited March 27, 2012 by System_TOR

So it is basically a "fun for 5 minutes" thing, and then forever forgotten again, ok. I would like to suggest that instead of wasteing time and money on adding features like the family tree , you instead add something that would benefit me in the long term, like the ability to remove error messages spamming the center of my screen, because who ever thought that 10 lines of error text was a good idea should be ashammed of themselves, in fact could you please tell me who was responsible for that, because I would like to ignore anything they ever say from this point on.

 

are you capable of having fun for 5 whole minutes?

So it is basically a "fun for 5 minutes" thing, and then forever forgotten again, ok. I would like to suggest that instead of wasteing time and money on adding features like the family tree , you instead add something that would benefit me in the long term, like the ability to remove error messages spamming the center of my screen, because who ever thought that 10 lines of error text was a good idea should be ashammed of themselves, in fact could you please tell me who was responsible for that, because I would like to ignore anything they ever say from this point on.

 

Are you aware that it's different people working on these different aspects of the game, and the existence of this feature isn't going to impact when or if they deal with the error messages.

 

Anyway, the game, and really all games, need more things like the Legacy family tree. Things that are just there to add flavor. Not everything needs to be about that .008% stat increase.

Are you aware that it's different people working on these different aspects of the game, and the existence of this feature isn't going to impact when or if they deal with the error messages.

 

Anyway, the game, and really all games, need more things like the Legacy family tree. Things that are just there to add flavor. Not everything needs to be about that .008% stat increase.

 

They're comparing a UI issue with a UI issue. The people responsible for doing the new family tree are likely on the same team of people who would be responsible for an error message toggle.

The benefit of the legacy family tree seems obvious to me. It is something fun for players to do. Whether you think it is fun or not, there are people who do.

 

What is the purpose of having playable alien races? I am sure it took them a great deal of time to work out all the art assets, and they still have not gotten everything right - see, for instance, the massive clipping problems twi'leks have. It would have made everything a lot easier to just make all player characters human. What is the actual benefit to playing an alien race? None. Zero. Nada.

 

Here is a better question for you:

 

What is the benefit of adding a new warzone? Does it let me kill people faster or better than before? Sure, it adds a slightly different capture/victory mechanic, but what is the benefit of that? Were players unable to kill each other effectively on the other maps? As far as I can tell, adding a new warzone only complicates queueing and adds potential balance problems to a game that is still going through major iterative balance adjustments while adding no meaningful new benefit. Were there not open areas and places with line-of-sight blocks and hills in the other warzones? Was there not enough space for me to fight other people in the other ones? Can I bring more friends to this one or get the game started with fewer people? It seems like a pretty massive waste of development time to me.

 

In my opinion, what we really need is a petition telling Bioware that we want them to stop wasting time building new warzones (seriously... what genius thought the the big problem with this game was a shortage of places where we can get together and kill each other?) and spend their time developing content players actually want, such as:

 

- Race-specific voice acting, including non-basic voice acting where appropriate. My miraluka looks nothing at all like my twi'lek, but they both use the same voice acting! It is absurd.

 

- More comprehensive family trees including companion marriages, frienemies, and Facebook-style "It's complicated" relationship descriptor.

 

- Death Star bombing space combat scenario. Two words, Bioware: Ret. Con. Maybe my character has a time-traveling device powered by pure awesomeness and blowing up the Death Star overloads it, allowing me to use it one last time to get back to the present (before the daily resets tomorrow, of course... come on people, you do not have to be so literal about everything). Or maybe it is just a normal time-traveling device but it is like that tomb from the Sith Inquisitor mission

 

 

 

They employ plenty of creative people. I am sure they can find a way to make it work.

 

- Playable musical instruments.

 

- Sandcrawler minigame.

If your mother and father both hold the darth title, your adoptive brother is head of a black ops unit and your allie is the winner of the great hunt should have some effect on how people view you. I'd be very surprised if some Lord is going to mouth off at you given your parents sit on the dark council.

 

yeah you'd think would you? Then again NPC's have a nasty habit in this (and all other games) of doing really dumb things.

 

On a much more pragmatic and non-rp p.o.v, I'm glad its not more than a visual representation. I have characters on both factions on Lord Adraas and 1 on each are human, none of the others are human at all. Try figuring out that as a family tree.

 

Would be nice to see it as a tab when you inspect another player though.