Restructuring Classes in SWTOR

In my most recent revision:

You would simply play one character, have access to 5 skill trees, use various gear and weapons based on your class, and the advanced class would simply disappear.

The significance? Your Bounty Hunter can now be a PowerTech, a Mercenary, or a Hybrid combo of the two. Now you can experience the story, and respec from Tank, to DPS (any of the 3), or Heal, without ever having to roll another Bounty Hunter unless you want one. This puts the complete control and customization in the hands of the player. ACs were a mistake, and AC swapping would just be a bigger band-aid on an existing issue. Removing the AC entirely and building the 2 spare Damage trees into every build would open up all kinds of doors.

So, let me ask you: Would you rather play with two different Bounty Hunters, two different sets of gear, and double the playtime and expense, OR would you rather have access to all 5 skill trees and gear on ONE Bounty Hunter with the ability to field respec as a Tank / DPS / Heal?

I doubt that would be the case, since we already see within each AC that you can't share gear very effectively.

Tanks in DPS gear, and DPS in Tank gear, are quite gimped. Likewise, Healers and DPS have very different uses for their stat budgets — you "can" share, but you're not being optimal.

It would probably end up like it currently is — each Role needs its own gear (and perhaps each Spec, if you're really optimizing your DPS trees). All that really changes is the number of characters you collect that gear on, and how much you can do with one character.

There isn't. But objectively, there also isn't a need for most of the theoretical discussions that occur in eg, academic environments, yet they sometimes lead to surprising practical developments.

This topic is interesting in the sense of: "Would this work? Would the players be able to handle the change? Would it improve the game?" etc.

You're correct, this isn't needed. At all. But it could work and improve the system, and that's interesting to discuss IMO.

How many geared 55's do you have? Be honest plz. (by geared I mean 180+)
I can see how your idea would have made sense when the game launched but those of us who have already put in the time to level and GEAR separate alts would be getting the shaft so others can get a shortcut.

Being honest with yourself, does the amount of time you chose to invest in something really justify the developers witholding positive improvements to the game later?

As Blizzard devs have stressed over and over, to make a good game, developers can't be held hostage by player emotions or entitlement senses. These things are not trivial, because gaming is inherently an emotional experience (as a hobby / pleasure craft), but they also can't dominate development decisions.

I mean (non-rhetorical here), how many other QoL changes can we think of in SWTOR or any other MMO that invalidated, trivialized, or otherwise rendered someone's "hard work" (always a creepy term in gaming...) obsolete or unnecessary?

At some point you have to accept that — just like IRL — things that are difficult or costly for you today, may not be for future generations. It's really about how much benefit and satisfaction you got from doing it when it mattered, not permanently hampering all future users just to make you feel better.

I mean gawsh, I leveled several alts before they implemented Double XP Weekends, Complimentary XP Boosts, I didn't have a steady income (so couldn't afford infinite CC to keep myself Boosted / twinked) ... took me way longer. Hours and hours I didn't "need" to spend.

But uh... it's cool, you know? I don't want them to deliberately make all future users' level-up process slower just because it took me longer when I first joined the game and has improved since then.

etc etc.

That's the problem though. I enjoy my Advance Class title. Sith Marauder sound infinitely better than Sith Warrior.

Because the possibility of having a tank/healer hybrid totally wouldn't completely and utterly break PvP......

So by merging AC's you'd use the same gear (armoring, earpiece, implants, relics) for your "merged" char without having to switch if you're going from tank to dps and vice versa?

1. The story is the same for any base class, so mercenary and powertech have the same story anyway, NOW.

2. I don`t like universal classes. Never have and never will. Also, I will need gear for each spec ANYWAY, so I am ONLY gaining the extra 1 - 55 trip in your request. And I sincerely don`t think it is unreasonable to need ONLY TWO toons for all 3 roles as they are.

All this cluster**** is just to avoid ONE MORE toon to 55, with opening all sorts of potential stupidity and problems in balancing the classes, without the original crew to do it - which they didn`t do TOO bad up to 50 - and the new ones that still are clueless on how to balance them properly, 2 years later. And we are expecting 5 more levels worth of balancing at one point also, which will have people screaming murder soon.

I`m sorry, but the potential for having bigger issues with class balance is too high for just the time you save for one toon. Especially when we are talking about the new emerging FOTM`s - stackers and CC automatic machines - and THAT will be true murder for most.