"Advanced Classes = Fundamentally Different Class Designs"

Yes that's true but without faction change you're left with two characters on two opposite factions. A lot of us like to have all our alts in the same side so we can send gear and money between them and quite often join the same guild.

with the new legacy system you will be able to send thing to any of your legacy members even opposite factions. you can have your trooper in BH mando gear if you want

I see your point, but I don't see how allowing you to change ACs solves the problem. I'd much prefer they work to add content rather than find a way for me to circumvent the existing content. To me, part of the fun is experiencing the growth of that character. Learning to adapt how you've been leveling in order to accommodate a new skill. I have two rogues, two hunters and two paladins at or near max level in WoW and the second of the pair was leveled after the first massive revamp to the process (Wrath, not Cat) just to see how it was different.

I would not be opposed to faction changes like that. Satisfies the desire for both advanced classes and avoids the nasty replay old content concept. I'd still prefer them to add planets and story. Looking back at how much you could play through when WoW was released and comparing it to this, SWTOR is lacking - significantly.

Which is cool but we still have a faction between our characters. Like I said some of us like having our characters in the same guild to serve mutiple functions and run HM's with.

If they introduced a paid faction change service though, that could help.

+I agree with the OP


I would love this "Multi-spec" to let us have 1 AC different spec...i would pay 20m for it too


I have a jugernaut and i have plans to play all 8 classes for story..meaning i cant have a marauder on emp...and even if we had more than 8 chars allowed...why play thru the same story...get the same light crystals...mounts...etc...if you were a JAVA programmer...and wanted to use C++ or something...why cant u learn and go for it? why the restrictions? if you dont want to change ur AC then fine...but i hate players who say others shouldnt do it cz they only know how to play caster and wouldnt melee...so others shouldnt either :S be different bioware...give us freedom..most gear can be used for both ACs anyway

i think a solution would be instead of a system like weekly respecs make a adv class change only happen a few times in a characters life.

lvl 15
lvl 30
lvl 45

Would give people ample oppertunity to decide whether they enjoy the advanced class theyve spent time leveling and the oppertunity to change it if theyre not but only at certain points so as not to trivialise the process.

Here’s an interesting thing to consider. James Ohlen was recently quoted on the kind of metrics he looks at weekly, which you’d expect him to do, and the kind of instrumentation and reporting that you’d expect software like this to have. Ohlen can see the entire game population’s numbers in terms of level balance, how many are playing what, how many alts they have, et cetera.

Now, none of us mere mortal consumers have access to those metrics. But if we did, there’d be some correlative indicators available.

Start with a base number: # of players who have achieved level 50 with two characters on the same faction.
(at first I wrote “more than one character on the same faction”, then realized it would probably throw the 14% number I’m about to get to, but you’ll see where I’m going in a minute—the math would be a little harder but you could still get to the indicative number.)

Of those players, what is the percentage that have achieved level 50 with both Advanced Classes?

Now, if the people who argue that Advanced Classes are actually the same as classes, and are fully independent classes in every way that matters, that number would be something like 14%, would it not?

14% because they’d have 7 other classes to choose from for their alt, and if the AC’s really are full-on classes and are equal as has been argued, and the intent is for the game to have an even distribution of those classes, then there’s about a 1 in 7, or 14% chance, that they are going to pick a class that just happens to be the other AC from the one they already have.

Yes, there’s a lot of unstated assumptions there, chiefly that all else is equal and so forth, which of course it isn’t, so spare me the nitpickery. But as an overly broad statement you’d basically expect it to be that.

For any nitpickery, all that means is that you have to do more sophisticated math to arrive at the number. The point is that this number exists. I’m deliberately keeping it simple to explain it.

If that number really is about 14%, that means that the anti-respec camp is essentially right. That would clearly show that the lack of content is not preventing people from rolling alts of the same base class and taking them all the way, simple as that.

You show me that number is around 14%, and I’m willing to concede you the victory, anti-respec camp. No joke. You were shown to be right and I was shown to be wrong, I will absolutely admit that right here publicly and you will not hear from me again. Except on other topics and only when I’m totally bored at work.

However, if that number is significantly lower (and it would be my guess that it is), that might lead one to believe that leveling the 2nd AC is not nearly as appealing as the anti-respec camp would seem to state that it should be.

Which is the chief argument motivating the pro-respec camp, the trolling bloviations of others to the contrary, of course. A low number might also lead you to suspect that your class design was conceptually busted at a base level, if indeed you had even distribution as a design goal.

I’d be seriously interested in hearing what those numbers really are. I just thought it was interesting to think about because a lot of what we do here is totally speculative. What’s really going on with the business is mostly a black box to us.

But somebody, somewhere, actually CAN produce numbers that support one point or the other, and as such it would be a lot more objective than just what people say, even when they’re saying what caused them to quit or will quit over.

I’ve been thinking about posting this one to see if the devs will find the courage to hit it on a Q&A.

Were glad to see even in a game, nobody wants to be held accountable for decisions they make.

[QUOTE=-Scopes-;3434630]I have a jugernaut and i have plans to play all 8 classes for story..meaning i cant have a marauder on emp...and even if we had more than 8 chars allowed...why play thru the same story...get the same light crystals...mounts...etc.../QUOTE]

Every time you start a new character, its 80% the same story.

Roll on a new server. Make new friends. Play the matching AC on the republic side.

You have plenty of freedom.

I wouldn't mind if the storylines started out the same... But I feel like it'd be interesting if the storyline branched depending on the AC that you chose.

But as of present, and since a vocal majority disagrees with the idea of adding in more potentially awesome content, the best advice I can give is that if you made your Sorcerer lightside, go darkside on your Assassin or vice versa. At the very least, that should give different responses and be semi-more interesting.