Bioware released more information on the classes system for SWTOR yesterday. In the article they reveal some very basic details about how players will be able to choose an advanced class once their base class has reached a certain ‘level’. The aptly named ‘Advanced Class System‘ functions as another means of customizing your character in an attempt to be unique.
Here’s the general idea of what they’re trying to accomplish:
I can see this going one of several ways.
When you think about it, this isn’t any different from talent trees in other games. For example, a Druid in WoW has talent trees which grant entirely different playstyles in each one. This sounds similar to the idea that Bioware presents here: “…all Smugglers are lucky, opportunistic swindlers. But, do you want to be the kind of Smuggler that sneaks into the middle of a firefight and quickly blasts away at an opponent from point-blank range?” Essentially they’re just adding more trees (a good thing) and giving different names to you once you’ve identified yourself with a certain path. If it ends up being like WoW, then it really isn’t all that exciting.
However, if it ends up being a little more like SWG then I think there’s some merit to this level of customization. How do the players obtain the skill points and how many can be spent? I’m really reaching here by trying to remain open-minded…. but I really like giving them the benefit of the doubt. There’s also the chance that all those talents pictured above are great and maybe there will be lots of different ways to differentiate yourself from another class. If it’s like WoW then regardless of what class you are there’s always a ‘best’ way to spec. If there is a cookiecutter spec for the Advanced Class system then it will be a completely missed opportunity.
I’m most optimistic about the shared tree. It’s a tree that all advanced classes will have in common which ties back to the original class. These points are shared with what you’re allowed to spend in your advanced trees. If done correctly, the importance of those base talents will allow for some players to stand out as a purer character and those who specialize will bring unique attributes at the cost of losing out on some of those more bread and butter skills. I believe that specializing should bring with it great cost but also worthwhile results.
If everyone gets to have their cake and eat it too then this will be just another drop in the bucket. If Bioware doesn’t screw up then they have a great chance of creating a diverse class demographics.
I can safely say that I am completely neutral on this idea. It neither excites me or makes me go WTF? It is sort of like “Yes our game will have combat.” Then again I have taken a very “wait and see” approach to the whole game.
I don’t really expect anything “new” from SW:TOR. I just expect it to be well done and elegant.
I’ve seen a few really negative reactions to this. I just don’t understand it. Seems like the worst thing that could happen is, like you said, end up being not all that exciting.
“If it’s like WoW then regardless of what class you are there’s always a ‘best’ way to spec”
This is nonsense.
If you pick your own talents it’s almost guaranteed you’ll be slightly different from everyone else who picks their own talents.
If you copy a build off Elitist Jerks’ For Dummies section you’ll have the same as everyone else who copies it.
If you analyse your build based on advice and discussion at places like Elitist Jerks you’ll have a different build to other people in most cases as there is no true single best build for the majority of specs.
There have always been huge debates over whether Warrior tanks need things like Improved Shield Bash.
There are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS going to be cookie cutter classes in games. Mainly because people look for the easiest yet strongest class to play.
A class could be more powerful than one but, can take a ton of skill to play so some might opt from doing that and it wouldn’t be a cookie cutter class because, even though it would be a strong class, it is too difficult to play.
Also, people as a whole like to follow. If someone starts a class and starts to say its good a few more people will jump in playing it and sooner or later it becomes a cookie cutter class.
Just like you will always have FOTM classes you will ALWAYS have cookie cutter classes.
I still stand by my theory that games need to have more in the lines of allocating stats/skills points. Because, not eveyone will know your exact stat points, unless you tell them where you put them. Also, you can have a lot more differences in how the character plays.
Say you want a character that is hard to hit, you put more points into your dex. You want a class that does more melee damage you put that into str. Games really need to include stats that people can put where they want and have them actually be effective.
I would they would make species a factor. Instead of it meaning nothing, let it make an actual change. Say you want to be a Jawa Sith warrior specializing in being a Tank…LOL, yea I know so bear with me. Well then make it so you can have an assist droid fight with you that does 10% more damage than others, but you as a tank have 2% less health then some human species. So, just throwing numbers out, at max level you have 400 less health than a human tank, but your droid does 50 more dps than a human droids. Something like that.
I recall back in EQ you rarely if ever saw the black human Paladin (cannot rem their race name), why? well because they had a higher Int but lower str and were therefore gimped. But they were cool because they were so rare and you knew the guy had to work harder to play it.
yea I agree with the others, people will always try the cookie cutter. Just like Diablo, you can not read anything and spec out your guy to have fun. But if you are not careful, you may end up half way thru and stuck because you put pts in something that makes life difficult to beat certain guys and now you feel screwed. That is why people read up and copy, they don’t want to take risks that make them “feel” like they made a wrong choice. And Game Companies are scared to death of having people make choices that would cause them to feel cheated and quit the game. Screw that, let people make mistakes, let us have a challenge.
There will always be cookie cutter spcecs, there’s nothing you can do about it.
as long as there are some respecs I think stat allocation and skill allocations would be the best way to go with any mmo. As long as you don’t make it so peopel can respec as much as they want. I say give an initial one free than a few others through a hard quest.
In the interest of “balance” – I don’t think things will be all that excitement.
As soon as you introduce “exciting” – you also introduce uncertainty which doesn’t sit well with most developers who want to achieve perfect balance between classes and players.
Cookie cutter specs (a few strong talents littered with many so-what talents) are easier to control then specs with endless customization options…the latter breeds uncertainty (and excitement)…if these two forces meet…Devs these days will always choose to reduce uncertainty.
I dont agree with that strategy but I believe that is how it is.
Didn’t EverQuest II launch with a similar class system? Where you started off with a broad class and chose a more specialized one later on?
Here we go.. from the Wikipedia article..
“There are four “archetypes” in EQ2 – Fighter, Scout, Priest and Mage. When EQ2 was launched, a player chose the character’s archetype during the initial character creation and then chose a ‘class’ at level 10 and a ‘sub-class’ at level 20. This system was changed in Live Update 19 in January 2006 so that a character’s final class is chosen at creation.”
yes, very very similar.
[…] then we’re left with a system with more choices, but nothing particularly new. As Keen points out, more choices are good, but not particularly anything to get excited […]
They way to have less cookie-cuttism is to have strong counters that make it possible to build a character that has a large advantage against a cookie cut character.
ANother approach is making generalists very good. Good example would be Midgard Healer from DAOC, there was a large variety of specs that worked great but most players used a hybrid setup.