ETA on Advanced Class change?

And yet, we have heard NOTHING in over a year about class changes and whether or not hey will be implemented. There has been not one peep, or even a hint of a whisper, about this topic. No dev has yet even popped into this thread to let us know if it is even still on the wall of crazy, despite over 440 pages. That speaks volumes to me.

As for "dual spec", with field respec, you have access to infinite specs at any time, without even having to go to fleet to respec. We do not have an "easy button, one button does it all" system, but what we have is, IMO, better. I can switch specs, gear and action bars in under a minute. I have yet to find myself in a group that is unwilling to wait a minute for me to respec.

Even in that other game "dual spec" is apparently not enough for many players, judging from the number of threads asking for triple spec, quad spec or even infinite spec. You yourself have said you "need" at least three specs.

Interesting that you support a system that allows a player to change their Specialisation and role (ie go from DPS to Tank, or Heal to DPS) on the fly and with no cost (if you have field respect and subscribe) and no indication of how well they can play their new role.
And yet at the same time deny a similar ability (AC swap is essentially allowing a change in role across a broader spectrum, tank to heal) to others that want it, and are prepared to pay for the opportunity (within reason).

Changing spec =/= changing class. It's really that simple.

The devs' designed the classes such that NO single character has access to tanking and healing abilities AT ANY TIME, not just at the same time. Allowing class changes would negate this design intent.

Perhaps...but you probably know, as well as I, that many design intents have already been negated. Quite a few in fact. I don't think one can depend on either the contention that AC is a class or the idea that devs designed ACs to prohibit tank and heal to prevent AC change.

I think that AC change could be prevented based on it's likely negative impact on the game IMO....just my opinion mind you. I think that is the only real leg to stand on.

Now, if they allowed AC change on the fly....then one might be able to argue Tank and Heal would be a bad thing, say if someone switched mid flashpoint or operation. I would agree that the role you choose when you enter should be the role you play through the encounter.

Were is the Source?

That Daniel Erickson is serving worm cans somewhere, were is the recent info on class respec.

Also There is a different between DPS spec=/=Tank Spec, because its Sub-Class.

At the risk of getting on this particular semantic hamster wheel once more...
I agree, Changing spec =/= changing class, but you're not changing your character's class you're changing their Advanced Class. No matter what you like to quote about devs that no longer work at Bioware once said about intent, having played the game through 16 Advanced Classes, they feel far closer to an Advanced Specialisation rather than a distinct Class.

The original design intent has been changed for many aspects of the game as it matures.
Allowing Advanced Class changes does not have any impact on game balance at a mechanical level.

I disagree with that, as it would actualy change already existing parameters for the worse.

for example, I often queue as a double role, because I can play both and either have gear for both (or in case of healer/dps - my healing gear is more then sufficient to perform dps role in a flashpoint) I have field respec on all of my characters that can play two roles.

sometimes people leave mid flashpoint and sometimes group finder changes my role on me. or we as a group discuss switching roles around and do so. being locked into a spec, the way you are in pvp - would remove that flexibility. I understand why they do that in pvp. becasue it IS competitive and ability to change spec can swing the balance, but flashpoints and operations are NOT a competition, they are cooperative activity and as such - anything that allows players to have better time in them - should stay as is. or be improved/expanded.

Yes I consider Avanced Class like a Master Degree Diploma, you do have just 1 career but can take many Master Degrees and be even more competitive.

Same with SWTOR, you have your Class which is your career, then you take advanced class which is Master Diploma but someone thought you should be "locked into it" without thinking that players can specialize in many things not just 1 Advanced Class.

Its one of those things that dont make sense.

With the legacy we can have say a red LS on Jedi, Siths as Jedi, Mercenaries doing force choke, most companions or NPC being able to better force jump than our Jedi Master characters, interplanetary travels costing less than a taxi ride, charters gear that would make WoW or Diablo players drool, and so on.

Now speaking of a futuristic setting, we make holo call but can't even send emails through datapads.
We have to go to a mail box to post of get stuff, there is no such thing as fedex.
We can't even remotely browse AH, when I can do this from round the world with a satellite connection on a 4 inches phone.
We have speeders that don't go that faster than bycles, that get stuck by 1 feet rocks and can't compensate for fall over 3 feet.

As such when people say AC =/= Class it's just funny.
In the end the devs did not do any changes yet and I do know people who left because of this and the lack of dual speccing, not farther than 2 weeks ago.

But guess it's not a big deal because his $15 will be way compensated by the ones buying the new black/black gear dye, this without even impacting the server load.

It's only that simple when your entire argument depends on it being that simple. The part where it breaks down is when you try to mix and match definitions with other games.

Technically, in this game, Warrior is a different class than Knight. Does anyone, dev or not, take that distinction seriously? Would any of the arguments in this thread against AC swapping apply to stopping someone from swapping their Sentinel to a Marauder if the mechanics allowed it? YES! The whole "class swapping is class swapping and class swapping is bad" mantra. But that's the only one. Every other argument about "too much role flexibility, too likely to ruin endgame because no one in fps would have a clue about which buttons to push, etc" would go out the window. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really care what some of these devs called "a class" 2.5 years ago: they were selling tickets to a circus and wanted to say this game has 16 classes when it really has 4. Everyone that's played MMOs for any length of time knows that Knights and Warriors are not different classes - they have differences and distinctions but are functionally the same. That is a good, easy example of the problems with cross-applying definitions.

But here's the thing, the documentation/help-section for this game does _not_ claim that separate ACs are separate classes. I've spelled out what makes up classes in other games and how distinct ACs really aren't in this particular game in past posts so I'm not going to bother doing it again here, but it's not really relevant anyways.

The fact is, and the part that is relevant, is that this thread is NOT about base class swapping. No one in this massive thread has seriously asked to swap from Powertech to Assassin or anything similar. This thread is about the possibility of swapping from Powertech to Mercenary or Sentinel to Guardian. Whatever Ratajack wants to call it, I don't care anymore, it doesn't matter. Instead of Advanced Class Swapping, call it Conditional Class Swapping, Non-Base-Class Swapping, whatever. It amounts to what is very similar to a spec change in this game and other games (none of which went belly up or even lost anyone I've even heard of over adding too much character flexibility). For every 1 person that might leave this game because AC swapping was added (a very small number of people in this thread) I can almost gaurantee that at least 500 ppl will pay cc for a non-base-class swap and at least 10 will re-activate old accounts to try out a spec they didn't want to regrind for (some people like having lots of alts, some don't mind it, many only want to play one or very few characters - those are the ones you win back).