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To the Devs working on Disciplines: Remember the NGE?

STAR WARS: The Old Republic > English > General Discussion
To the Devs working on Disciplines: Remember the NGE?
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_NovaBlast_'s Avatar


_NovaBlast_
10.15.2014 , 10:27 AM | #71
Quote: Originally Posted by Jadescythe View Post
I agree there should be solo play options in the game because many players don't want to group all the time or sometimes may just be hopping on to get something done in a short time span. The differentiating factor of an MMO, however, is the ability to group and play with other players. If you don't stress that point and those options, then there is no reason to make an MMO when a single player RPG gives you SO many more options to delve deeper into the story, the skills, and the environment.

I'm not saying single player content isn't important (I play solo a lot), but the group factor makes this different than single player games. Buying an MMO to play solo content with other people around is the same as buying a semi truck to go to the grocery store. It will get the job done, but is extremely inconvenient compared to a normal car.
I don't agree with your single player games should be reduced to single player format. I think in a lot of ways Swtor makes a great single player game in a mmo format personally think of it as KOTOR3 but it forces grouping to much. There is nothing wrong with group play if thats what you like to do . It's Forced group play that I have an issue with .

Let your community decied . If all grouping is completely optional and your not going to miss any thing ( content or gameplay altering rewards) then the players who want to group will group the players who don't wont . If it turns out the majority of your player want to solo then yes there will be higher que times for groups .

Which is what the complaint is with the solo reasoning . People want to "force " others to group who don't want to simply to reduce their que time and to me that type of thinking is a completely selfish mindset with similarities to a dictatorship not a free society
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Quote: Originally Posted by Nefla View Post
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Rafaman's Avatar


Rafaman
10.15.2014 , 10:45 AM | #72
Some people were really scarred by NGE weren't they? It is the default cry when there are any changes to any game; even when those changes are in no way congruent to NGE.

Malastare's Avatar


Malastare
10.15.2014 , 10:48 AM | #73
Quote: Originally Posted by PlagaNerezza View Post
They will never be able to balance the game. It just makes it easier.
That is true.

Quote: Originally Posted by PlagaNerezza View Post
Last I checked we still have different skills and abilities by class. Some heal tree is going to be vastly superior than another from another class.
That is not.

At best, its exaggeration. The difference between an Op/Scoundrel healer and a Sorc/Sage healer right now is not "vastly" different. One is preferred, perhaps, but the differences are not huge. However, humans are great at seeking out any advantage, and exploiting it, and when we do that, it feels like its a huge advantage... even when it might only be something like 4% on a good day.

The DIsciplines system will make it easier for Bioware to reduce that percentage. However, it doesn't need to be 0% to be effective. Even now, player skill is more important than your AC. I've seen plenty of great Sages who outperform Scoundrel healers. And I've seen Powertechs who outperform hybrid Juggernauts. That's going to continue to happen with any system created. The balance only needs to be improved to the point where Ops leaders don't care whether you're a Sorc or an Op, or a Marauder rather than a Merc.

BuriDogshin's Avatar


BuriDogshin
10.15.2014 , 10:56 AM | #74
Quote: Originally Posted by TheCardinal View Post
Stupied posts like I think yours is don't belong here since you do not offer any opinion except for a single player that would be me, but you have my offer above here and NEXT time, post something usefull or not at all.
You haven't posted anything useful, so why should anyone else?

Besides, I think asking you to please quit is useful. Follow the logic:
  • Getting rid of annoying nuisances is usefull.
  • People who create a lot of noise on the forums over things they know nothing about are annoying nuisance.
  • QED: trying to get rid of you is useful.
Going Preferred January 31, 2015.

Mariojediwookie's Avatar


Mariojediwookie
10.15.2014 , 10:59 AM | #75
Sorry but from what I've read about the changes so far, what they did to SWG was completely different. This is from someone who had unlocked a Jedi by having to Master 29 professions (if my memory serves me right) in SWG. They DESTROYED the crafting professions and literally made people cookie cutter over night.

This game actually reminds me a lot of what that NGE was but it's just much better combat and a lot better missions. SWG for the longest time had no story experiences, it was just roam around and kill **** for hours on end. When I leveled my Jedi, had to do it solo for months.

Trust me, this change doesn't even come close to what was done with SWG.

LordArtemis's Avatar


LordArtemis
10.15.2014 , 11:03 AM | #76
Quote: Originally Posted by TUXs View Post
The "greater good" is balance in a game where balance is everything...everything from PvP to PvE revolves around balance and the traditional trinity roles.
I disagree Tux. Everything in PVP and endgame PVE progression revolves around balance and trinity. Balance is not everything in the PVE casual content side of the game, which represents not only the likely majority of players but the majority of content as well.

The likely majority casual PVE playerbase is unlikely to care about or be effected directly by balance issues IMO. Therefore this balance problem is likely only a problem for a minority of the playerbase, and will likely always will be that way.

Quote:
This move has nothing to do with more content...where did you get that idea? It's about balance and making it so that a 5 level cap increase doesn't break the entire flipping game.
Because spending less time, resources and effort on the neverending balance crusade can translate into more casual PVE content.

And again, end game progression and PVP is not the entire flipping game IMO Tux. It is a minority portion of the game, the majority portion of the game is the PVE leveling storyline and side quests. That is the majority content, and that is the content that the likely majority casual playerbase most likely engages in.

So this change only indirectly helps the majority of players, in so far as it likely reduces changes to abilities that require reassigning points, nerfs and changes to abilities that hurt casual PVE for the sake of PVP or progression, and frees up resources, otherwise dedicated to balance issues, that can be applied to PVE content.

Kourage's Avatar


Kourage
10.15.2014 , 11:20 AM | #77
Quote: Originally Posted by OrionSol View Post
Now I know there are going to be trolls, fanboys and cult followers trashing my thread here, and I am prepared for that.

That said, DEVs, before you introduce the Disciplines system to the game, in effect dumbing down the game from a chess game to a checkers game, I highly recommend you go read, and re-read the history of the NGE in SWG.

Keep in mind, while you have a larger group in SWTOR, you have many of the old SWG customers, and many of them this is fresh in their mind. You also need to ask yourself, who was asking for this change? The customers or the employees? Because ever lame excuse I've seen it was "it will make it easier for us" and not "our customers were asking for"

Here is an article where the President of SEO bemoans the utter stupidity of changing the game the way the NGE did: http://www.edge-online.com/news/star...soe-president/

If you are going to radically change the game this much, you need to be 100% absolutely fraking sure you are not going to enrage your customers and destroy the social network of the game by doing something that makes players leave the game.

Don't repeat history and piss off your current customers. If even a 1/4 of the customers dont like this system it will cause major problems for SWTOR.

Did you have any constructive criticism of the Disciplines or were you just living and ranting in the past about a different company you still hold bitter feelings for? This topic is a waste.






Quote:

Greetings!

Today, we bring to you Disciplines, a major overhaul to the class system that will be coming live with Game Update 3.0! At its very core, the Disciplines System replaces the current Skill Tree system while offering a wider array of impactful utility choices to expand their character and the ability for a character’s identity to surface much earlier in the level path. The Disciplines System changes the way we think about and develop the classes themselves, which will translate into a more balanced game and the capacity to expand levels and abilities more often. We’re excited about this system and the possibilities it unlocks for the future.
Say Goodbye to the Skill Trees

After much discussion, the Skill Trees that have been with us since the launch of the game have been removed. While we hope to maintain the feeling of progression with each level, players will no longer get a single point every level to invest in an array of skill boxes that we felt resulted in the burying of class identity, uneven power gains, and crazy-town rotations, depending on where you were in the tree. Instead, we created three Disciplines per Advanced Class, named and themed after the original Skill Trees (for example the three Disciplines for Commando are Combat Medic, Gunnery, and Assault Specialist, all very familiar names, themes, and play-styles from the skill tree era). For each of these disciplines, we took a look at all of the skills from their tree ancestor and imported everything that defined the identity and rotation of that tree and laid them out in a level-based progression, along with quite a bit of combining, cutting, creating new, and balancing along the way. No longer are you forced to purchase skills that are, in essence, necessary for your character to function; you simply get them automatically as you level up and progress down what we call the Discipline Path. Much like the old Skill Trees, each path is made up of active abilities, passive abilities, and a new type of progression concept called a utility selection, which we’ll explain later in the blog.

A Little Discipline is Good for You

From a player’s perspective, interacting with the Discipline system couldn’t be easier. Our goal was to design an elegant system that brings forward class identity without sacrificing the challenge of mastering your role in the process. We have combined the interface and process of taking an Advanced Class and discipline all into a series of linked panels that you access in much the same way you previously accessed the skill tree. Once you are level 10, you can simply open up that interface and are presented with the options for each Advanced Class available to you. After selecting an Advanced Class, the next panel of the interface describes each of the three disciplines available and allows you to select one. You can preview each of them to see what they are all about, and once you see one you like, you simply select and commit it! The chosen discipline path is automatically set to your current level, so if you want to abandon and switch disciplines (similar to resetting skill points on the trees), you can take on the challenge of a new role with ease. To make sure newer characters could immediately feel the identity of their chosen discipline at level 10, we’ve made sure that the very first things you get tend to generate a big impact to the type of character you want to be: healers get a nice heal, tanks get good defense/threat, and DPSers get a nice attack ability for their rotation. Tanks no longer have to grind 30 levels before they really start getting “Tanky” abilities; they can start being tanks right away.

What are Utility Selections

One of the most important goals for Disciplines was to make sure that the player had real choices that actually mattered as they advanced throughout the game. So after we finished pulling out all of the skills that we thought were really important for a Discipline’s play style and rotation, we took the remaining skills from each of the three Advanced Classes, cut some of the extraneous ones, created some exciting new options, polished old favorites, and put them into a selection pool available to all members of that Advanced Class. The end result is greater versatility. As an Engineering Sniper, do you want to gain AE damage reduction when you entrench? Well now you can, it is no longer for Marksmanship only. Each Advanced Class’s utility selections are divided up into three tiers, with each tier requiring a certain number of utility selections before unlocking. We also wanted to make Utility selections quick and easy to change around, so as long as you aren’t in the middle of combat you can bring up your new discipline window, reset your utilities, and quickly choose new ones.

Why the Change

While Skill Trees appear on the surface to provide flexibility and choice, in practicality they give very little of either. Players of a skill tree all tend to take the same skills in roughly the same order, with only minor variations on which utility choices they pick up by the end of their leveling system. With Disciplines, we can focus on creating strong and fun play styles from level 10 on, without having to worry about how people are spending 50 skill points and whether some people are making bad decisions or if others are finding crazy untested combinations that vastly exceed what we want to happen. Attach to that the idea of expanding the amount of and type of utility each player has access to and you get a system that creates better and more balanced characters with a stronger identity while allowing players actual choice. We also continued to run into a significant problem expanding the Skill Trees for level cap increases: development time. Each of the Skill Trees were balanced based on an assumption of points and how players must spend their points to get what they need to perform in combat. When we add more points (as well as more skills themselves) to the trees during a level cap increase, all of that balance is thrown off kilter and must be reset for every Advanced Class. This results in a massive amount of time spent every level cap increase simply redoing and rebalancing the Skill Trees over and over, preventing us from spending time actually doing cool new things. So to sum up, we’ve created Disciplines for stronger and earlier role specialization, more utility, more flexibility, better balance, and more development time for class improvements - letting our designers do more for you!

Get Ready for Disciplines

When you log into the expansion for the first time you will be prompted to choose your desired Discipline and utilities, and you are off and running. With this reorganization of the class system we’ve strengthened the identity of each class path and made the choices a player has available immediately impactful to their character. Coming up we are going to do a blog for each particular discipline for every class, so you can really get a feel for the changes coming to your specific style. We’ll also show off all of the cool new things we are adding to the classes thanks to this flexibility. All of this is just the beginning of the journey – we can’t wait for your feedback!

Is there something in there you want to refute
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LordArtemis's Avatar


LordArtemis
10.15.2014 , 11:30 AM | #78
"...While Skill Trees appear on the surface to provide flexibility and choice, in practicality they give very little of either."

I love it. Even the devs admit the current system only gives the illusion of choice. It was and remains a very poorly designed system to fool players into thinking they are getting customization.

This change simply pulls back the curtain IMO, and may even offer MORE flexibility, though still not much.

Kalfear's Avatar


Kalfear
10.15.2014 , 11:31 AM | #79
Quote: Originally Posted by Delta_V View Post
The NGE was a complete revamp of the entire gameplay of SWG. It was called "New Game Experience" for a reason, although the decision to so fundamentally change a game that late in it's life-cycle was incredibly risky to begin with. The fact that the players of the old game thought many of the changes made the game worse instead of better caused that risk to blow up in their face.

The Discipline System isn't even in the same ballpark as the NGE. It only changes the way the skill trees are presented and eliminates hybrid builds. It has no effect on the basic combat system. The Disciplines have been designed to preserve the playstyle of the Specs they replace, but wrapped up in a package that is easier to balance and gives players access to key abilities at an earlier level. Comparing that to what NGE did is ridiculous.
Well said
Well said

One thing though. I know they keep denying it (the fanboys) but truth of matter is (as found in SOE investor financials regarding SWG) SOE had been losing money on SWG for some time and NGE had to be done to attempt to stop the bleeding.

Remember this was NOT a F2P era game where a cartel shop would fly and add a new line of revenue to the game. They lived and died on subscriptions and the subscriptions had hit a terminal point.

The fanboys keep moaning about NGE but the financials show that the NGE actually did turn it around somewhat and bring in new subscribers. Not nearly enough mind you, but sub numbers went up, not down, after the introduction of NGE.

The revisionist history by the fanboys finding these vague articles in unknown sources drive me nuts personally. All they need to do is go back and look at investor information from back then.

Anyways, your right they not even in ball park.

NGE was complete overhaul of failing game
Disciplines are attempt to remove unplanned variables from PVP and try to create a easier balance to design for.
SWG was losing money
SW:TOR made 161 million dollars in profit last year
And the list of opposites between the two games just grows from there.

Ive no clue if disciplines will be good or bad as of yet
but I'm willing to take a wait and see attitude on it
Its NOT the system I wanted btw (Nor would SWGs system be desired), I wanted KotOR 1 and 2 systems put in honestly.

SWG is starting to remind me of some cult classic movie.
Failed outright in theaters but gathered a small but vocal following after wards that allows it to be shown once every few months in a midnight showing of a run down theater. Yet those few in attendance insist its the greatest thing ever made.
In regards to lessening F2P and Preferred restrictions
In GAMING, as in LIFE,
You get what you pay for
No game restriction is so dire that $15.00/month will not eliminate it

Raansu's Avatar


Raansu
10.15.2014 , 11:36 AM | #80
Quote: Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
I'm speaking of them for any use -- my 55 Scoundrel is a giant mess (and admittedly more of a struggle to play in certain spots than other characters) because none of the trees appear worthy pursuing in full. It's a rotten build because nothing looks worth taking (I'm not at home so I can't get into details of why right now). Doing endgame group content with that character wouldn't change the massive mountain of MEH that is the upper half of all three trees.




Only if there's a "capstone" skill you give a damn about for that class.
Aaaaand there it is. You have just proven that you have no idea how to play this game and have zero understanding of the class skills.

Quote: Originally Posted by _NovaBlast_ View Post
I don't agree with your single player games should be reduced to single player format. I think in a lot of ways Swtor makes a great single player game in a mmo format personally think of it as KOTOR3 but it forces grouping to much. There is nothing wrong with group play if thats what you like to do . It's Forced group play that I have an issue with .

Let your community decied . If all grouping is completely optional and your not going to miss any thing ( content or gameplay altering rewards) then the players who want to group will group the players who don't wont . If it turns out the majority of your player want to solo then yes there will be higher que times for groups .

Which is what the complaint is with the solo reasoning . People want to "force " others to group who don't want to simply to reduce their que time and to me that type of thinking is a completely selfish mindset with similarities to a dictatorship not a free society
Grouping in this game is optional, but at the end of the day this game IS AN AMMO. Time to pack up and go play something else dude. This genre is not for you.
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