I don't know if this has been posted elsewhere but I would like to chime in my 2 cents worth here goes.

As a healer i often get asked to change specs to dps this i try to avoid as i not only have to re do all my combat prof utility points but i also have to redo all my action buttons to suit dpsing.

I (yes i may get shouted down here but im still going to say it) suggest someone looks at the way WoW has the spec switch setup you set it once and forget it i.e. your a druid dps in WoW you need to switch to heals you just click on one button and its changed all the points where they have top be all the spells on the right buttons etc...

Like i said just my 2 cents worth from those of us who get asked to switch specs to fill a specific role for 1 or 2 runs

i don't wow, so i can't speak for their interface system.

i tank and dps on the same toons and swap all the time, it takes me personally less than a minute because i know where all my stuff goes. if they had tons of resources to spare i'd say sure, but at this point, i'd rather they focus their efforts on making the new stuff as tolerable and with as few bugs as possible

As someone who plays all classes and most specs on both factions, it can sometimes get hard to remember exactly what went where until I get into combat, where muscle memory takes over, and I muck up my rotations.

I can't speak for the WoW system, I don't play that, but I do find it pretty strange that swtor doesn't have something to make this process more smooth yet.

The "tons of resources" counter-argument is rather pointless. This would be a relatively minor thing on your average patch (yes, even your average swtor patch), requiring no new assets to be developed. I'm just going to shamelessly copy what I said in the thread about more outfit slots, as it applies here also:

Any limit outside of "we just don't want to" will have to do with memory management. Not just the absolute amount that one slot might require, but the manner in which they are currently stored might not be sufficient to accommodate for more, and changing this might require them to reserve more memory than they are willing to 'spend' on a feature like this.

That's the part that is difficult to judge for an outside. Having a system remember which ability or utility went where is not going to compete with creating new content or fixing bugs in recent content.

Anyway, +1 from me.

Everquest II has this system called alternative advancement (AA) points. Your assignment of which skills (think: combat proficiencies) get which points can be saved out as a template and reloaded as you like, so people can flip between AA configurations that heavily favor combat over healing and back again without the labor of re-distributing the points again.

That could work here.

requiring no new assets to be developed.

Wrong. There would be:

• new UI assets (some sort of control thingy that switches your setup, and another for telling the system to remember *this* setup for this discipline)
  
• new storage assets (database table(s), client-side text files(1), etc.) to store the setups
  
• new import/export UI assets to enable me to copy a spec to a different character (the way we can for keybind setups), including reflecting abilities.
  
• a new algorithm (that doesn't exist now) for applying a setup to a character of a different level to the one it was created for
  
• new bugs, although I'd be reluctant to call them "assets".
  

None of the above should be taken to mean that I'm against a spec-switching aid, merely that I'm against people trivialising the work it would require. I actually think it would be a great idea. It's one of the things that I kinda miss from Runes of Magic, although in that game, as a result of its weird class system, spec-switching was something of a core mechanic rather than a convenience feature like it is in SWTOR. It didn't have spec-layout import/export, nor a separate "save layout" button like I propose above, and the "different level" algorithm wasn't applicable, since the auto-saved layout for, say, Rogue/Knight was inherently valid, if possibly sub-optimal, when you switched back to R/K from Knight/Mage.

EDIT: Footnote.

(1) I'd prefer server-side storage so that my spec-setups are portable across machines, but client-side storage could work as an alternative, to reduce the amount of messing with the databases on the servers.

I don't know if this has been posted elsewhere but I would like to chime in my 2 cents worth here goes.

As a healer i often get asked to change specs to dps this i try to avoid as i not only have to re do all my combat prof utility points but i also have to redo all my action buttons to suit dpsing.

I (yes i may get shouted down here but im still going to say it) suggest someone looks at the way WoW has the spec switch setup you set it once and forget it i.e. your a druid dps in WoW you need to switch to heals you just click on one button and its changed all the points where they have top be all the spells on the right buttons etc...

 

Like i said just my 2 cents worth from those of us who get asked to switch specs to fill a specific role for 1 or 2 runs

That is a self-evident and long overdue feature that obviously should have been part of the game since start.

But now, "just" 6 years later they start to implement another self-evident feature which are guild management tools that actually deserve their name instead of the joke we had to cope with until now - so give them another 6 years to implement spec switch tools I guess. /sarcasm off :-)

Wrong. There would be:

• new UI assets (some sort of control thingy that switches your setup, and another for telling the system to remember *this* setup for this discipline)
  
• new storage assets (database table(s), client-side text files(1), etc.) to store the setups
  
• new import/export UI assets to enable me to copy a spec to a different character (the way we can for keybind setups), including reflecting abilities.
  
• a new algorithm (that doesn't exist now) for applying a setup to a character of a different level to the one it was created for
  
• new bugs, although I'd be reluctant to call them "assets".
  

 

None of the above should be taken to mean that I'm against a spec-switching aid, merely that I'm against people trivialising the work it would require. I actually think it would be a great idea. It's one of the things that I kinda miss from Runes of Magic, although in that game, as a result of its weird class system, spec-switching was something of a core mechanic rather than a convenience feature like it is in SWTOR. It didn't have spec-layout import/export, nor a separate "save layout" button like I propose above, and the "different level" algorithm wasn't applicable, since the auto-saved layout for, say, Rogue/Knight was inherently valid, if possibly sub-optimal, when you switched back to R/K from Knight/Mage.

 

EDIT: Footnote.

(1) I'd prefer server-side storage so that my spec-setups are portable across machines, but client-side storage could work as an alternative, to reduce the amount of messing with the databases on the servers.

Nothing in your post contained anything that I'd not considered when posting mine, so I'm just a tiny little annoyed at someone entirely sidestepping the point in an attempt to appear knowledgeable, especially when they open with "wrong".

"Assets", in the context of game design, tends to refer to a specific subset of elements that is presented to the user. Models, textures, audio and such. Not code, not database entries, certainly not bugs, and you know they'd just reuse existing UI elements in a new context.

I trivialized nothing. I was pointing out that no new assets needed to be created because of the person saying "if they had tons of resources to spare i'd say sure, but at this point, i'd rather they focus their efforts on making the new stuff as tolerable and with as few bugs as possible".

Explaining why this would not require "tons of resources" and would not directly compete with producing new content (am I going to have to explain what "content" means in the context of game design, now? or am I getting enough response saying I'm wrong because this would also be content? ) is not trivializing anything. It's placing things into perspective. Which is where you've yanked it out of again.