Restructuring Classes in SWTOR

what an asinine thread.

beta ended 2.5 years ago.

youre suggesting a minimal dev team that pushes out content slower than any mmo in history to stop creating new content, and redevelop the entire class system?

another waste of text from superman_az

it would have been useful all of those years ago. or better yet going with no classes and allowing the play to mix and match a number of skills.

According to me, because I'm capable of staring at each class' skill trees and ability panel and noticing where the overlaps occur and what could be segregated by spec (as WoW does it).


Who cares about WoW? That game is 10 years old and coasting along on a hardcore fanbase that will never unsubscribe. WoW hasn't been relevant to new gamers since early Cata, and SWTOR isn't competing with WoW. This has like nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Yeah but that's because you have like a bajillion hours to spare for 1 computer game and take some kind of perverse pride about investing that time instead of like, climbing a mountain.

Which is totally cool — everyone needs a hobby. But not everyone needs to be pinned down to the same one, or the same way of enjoying it.

Personally, I don't care about AC swap any more because I'm happier having 1 of each AC since they all have really different flavors even when they're mirrors. But I'm also in nooooooo hurry. I've got 10/16 right now (which took forever) and I'm sloooooowly leveling up the others when I find time for SWTOR.

But that's me. I can see that leveling yet another character to 50-55 is a huge PITA for people with limited time for the game, and so I really, really don't care if Cindy from Louisiana wants to change her Sniper into an Operative and start healing SM Ops.

Like honestly, IMO this whole thing is ludicrously overblown on both sides. It doesn't really affect me any more, but I can totally see it negatively affecting the play experience of others (who reach 55 and go 'Oops, that in-game summary 45 levels ago was kind of misleading'), so I'm like... yeah sure, go ahead and let them AC swap.

This actually seems unnecessarily extreme to me, because you can allow AC changes without trivializing the concept of AC.

It's pretty simple... the same way MMOs classically allowed spec swaps without trivializing the concept of Spec:

• Swapping is expensive
• Swapping requires relearning skills
• Swapping requires re-gearing (in many cases)

That's really all the (sane) AC-swap proponents are arguing for, is an option to change your mind without having to abandon the character entirely.

The reason I feel that's healthier than merging 2 ACs into 1 class is that each AC does have its own structure and systems. Sometimes this is much more extreme than others (Sorc vs. Sin is 2 totally different classes, while PT vs. Merc is more of a stylistic split), but there's enough of a difference to be worth preserving the identities.

This is in the context of a dev team that, as pointed out, is one of the slowest and most over-burdened I've encountered in mainstream MMOs (outside like Korean F2Ps).

In an ideal world where we could trust BioWare to have the time and resources to merge ACs properly, yes — it would be a cool idea, and probably feel better in the end. But in the real world we're stuck in, just implementing an option to change AC (via a non-trivial investment) is probably the right direction.

I don't favor trivial AC swapping (eg, like a Field Respec button for AC) because I think the AC concept is cool and an ingrained part of the game.

It honestly felt really cool to me at level 10 to choose "what kind" of Inquisitor I wanted to be on my first character. I thought about it a lot, and I liked the sense of meaning inherent in picking up my double-bladed saber and knowing I had committed to a combat path while still staying inside my storyline.

The ideal AC swap implementation preserves that sense of committing to a path within your class, but without punishing people who are attached to their specific character and class storyline by forcing a reroll.

Additionally, making AC swap non-trivial — like making Buy-a-90 so expensive in WoW — encourages people to make a decision: you could AC swap, but it will cost you (in resources, time, etc). Some people will decide it's not worth it and level up a new character anyway (which is healthy for the game), while others will cash in (because they want to keep their character, gear, etc).

Overall I'm just a huge proponent of giving people options and decisions on how to reach their goals. IMO it's more interesting, and more fair.

To do that, though, it has to actually be a decision — trivial AC swapping wouldn't be a decision, because you'd basically be 2 characters in one, swapping spontaneously as the need arises. That's not wrong from a design perspective, but I do think it's wrong for SWTOR.

I'd be good with that.

Why not do both? I am in no rush to 55, and have no desire to just blow through content. Though, I am a fan of Double XP weekends Comes in handy for throw away alts.

I'm sure the details would be more finely tuned by BW, this was simply a suggestion with some groundwork.

I like it.

IMO it would be kinda silly spending time and resourses on restructuring classes and removing AC quests when the same endresult is more or less the same by letting people switch AC.

Not that i think you should be able to switch AC like you switch talent spec, but if someone wanted to buy a token to clear AC for a fair chunk of CC i wouldn't be opposed.

What would be a fair price would be up for debate, i'm thinking about 2k cc.

No rush to 55? No ****! Throw away alts? You have no expertise with this make believe issue lol! While people like you complain about not having an all-in-one char and being lazy as ****, the rest of us put in the work and reap the benefits of having multiple alts, even of the same class. Figures though, lazy people want everything easy.

I think the simplest way to do it is remove the ACs, include all five trees, and then just have weapon requirements/locks on skills--both speced and inherent.

The only exception would be war/knights and their armor, but I think adding a similar "medium armor required" to Camo would do the trick. In other words, a "mara" or dual-wielder could still wear heavy armor if he wanted to; he just wouldn't be able to stealth. If balance was still an issue, add CoP. Either way, this would harken back to Fighter/Pally, Fighter/Ranger builds.

As far as, having cross-mirror weapon types for the non forcies, that's something I've wanted since before launch. But, for whatever reason, Bio insists that the mirrors all be completely different, even if it means giving a skill a different name and animation really changes it. Either that, or they think that if Ops run around with punchies and kicks to the jewels and Scoundrels go stabby-stab, the world would end.