Was dual spec never added?

And this is the root of a lot of SWTOR's challenges in retaining players, especially those that have played many of the competing games that exist with more highly developed and robust feature sets.

I don't think it is necessarily a refusal on their part in the 'we don't want our game to be as well designed and feature rich as other games' vain, but rather they just don't have or aren't willing to get the talent or the time or the money required to deliver a superior product.

Bioware seem to have added many 'features' to SWTOR that are expected in modern MMOs, along with a few twists and new ideas of their own, but for some reason they seemingly cannot implement any of them in what would be called 'best in class'.

So semantics aside, while the current game does allow changing of spec and gear and thus is not broken, adding a fully functional multi-spec feature is something that would be desirable.

I think a larger part of this is that SWTOR attracts more casuals and people who have no need of such systems, and thus don't understand the frustrations of those who are used to them. "The system works fine, stop complaining."

No, the system works. It does not work fine. There isn't a single advantage gained by the current system over a complete dual spec system.

I guess the whole thing we all can agree to is that the Field Respecialization is tedious. It lets you change your skill tree around, but not your action bars. It gives the immersion of having a Dual Spec, while being a whole different thing.. But it looks like it!

Something that is for sure is that the whole Field Respecialization is quite a useful thing. And it takes away the fact that you don't have to go to the trainer to reset it. It never said it would be the same as Duel Spec. But apparently a lot of people asociate it to it, as it 'almost' has the same use.

Well as stated previously, you can come back to the game in another year and check in on the forums to see what you missed.

They haven't refused to do it. They just haven't done it yet. Like the OP you can take a stand. Quit the game. And check back in a year or so on the forums to see if they have implemented this vital feature that forced you to leave the game by posting a thread just like this which bashes the game and its features because of exactly how vital dual spec is to your gameplay experience.

I'll tell you why.. because just copy pasting WoW, RIFT or whatever other's Code into TOR will simply not work.

Just because the concept is readilly available, doesn't mean the technology is. Each game has their own challenges in making this work. What was given, was the quick, easy improvement to make a step forward in allowing respeccing to be easier. To make the system you and everyone else wants you need a lot of work. Especially if you want to make it as feature rich as some of the others. Let me explain by making a simple list of the main features they'll need to add to give you what you want:
- Functionality to change skill tree set up to a predetermined set
- Functionality to have action bar setups change with each spec, including keybinds if applicable
- Functionality to be able to make a predetermined set of gear you can equip on the spot (probably with also remembering Unfiy Color set up)
- Functionality to change and maintain each predetermined set of skill trees, action bars and gear sets
- New interface elements and menus to support all these new functionalities.

This is just off the top of my head to make an industry standard Dual Spec system you expect from them. This is a lot of extra Coding work they need to do to make that work and deliver it as bug free as possible.

What they did now was:
- Make the respec system that was already in game available through more means than one NPC in each faction's fleet.

You may call it half-assed. I call it the quick 'fix'. It didn't need any new interface elements, it didn't need any new systems or a lot of Testing effort to deliver it as bug free as possible. It was a step forward, but not the be-all end-all of this problem.

The issue here is, and the line I quoted made that perfectly clear, that you have no idea how much effort it takes to make a good Dual spec system into the game. I am sure their UI guys are working on it and have it on their to-do list. But first they worked on other aspects like being able to change your UI setup, or improving performance of the UI.

But naw.. it is an easy thing they can just pull off the shelf and plug it in and they are just lazy for not adding it. That is the only possible explanation.

It takes me 1 minute and 30 seconds to Field Respec and fix quick bars on every single character. If that was all saved I would have to spend that 1 minute and 30 seconds trolling the forums.

You must not have been in WoW for a long time - you click a button on your profile to switch Primary Spec and Secondary Spec. That's it - talents changed, glyphs changed, keybinds changed automagically. There's another button to switch between different gear sets automagically as well. It's been like that for years.

You visit your trainer only once to train the dual spec talent for some extremely extremely nominal cost of like 15 gold that any level character can afford (not 200k credits). In MoP, that's actually the only time you ever visit your class trainer ever anymore - they've eliminated all the training of skills, which are added automatically and for free. They've actually eliminated the trees as well, but that's not necessarily all good.

I see this is still a sore subject - people really went off the wall in this thread. I suppose the remaining subs are overly defensive about the game after last year. I get that, but I still thought if anything they might have added this type of feature as a cartel market item, or something, if nothing else.

You can check back in May to see if it's part of the expansion you're not going to buy.

This is just a bunch of people arguing about a feature, Dual Spec, that is not in the game, and has been addressed by Devs already. Short answer is NO, the ability to instant switch builds with the press of a button is not in the game. Subs can respec for free and with legacy can respec anytime outside of combat as far as I have seen.

Close this, it will not produce anything useful.