Expansion officially announced...

[Corvinius]

One sidenote which I find rather bitterly ironic:

I checked the player feedback from the changes they did in WoW.

It was rather...devastating.

Plenty of WoW players came to SWTOR rejoicing having SKILL TREES again.

Instead of this discipline like choices in WoW.

One comment in all those rage filled player reactions (20+ pages long) caught my eyes:

"I was going to cancel SWTOR, but after what WOW did, I'm having second thoughts. "

It is pretty ironic that with that they will definitely lose many players from WoW that came here because they were mighty pissed about the changes to WoW...

[Raiah]

Never been terribly fond of the skill trees to begin with there are way better ways of offering , specialization and progression, that said, I think it's a pretty stupid move to just redo the entire system in a game that's been out for such a long time.

The one hybrid I cared for was kind of killed already if memory servers me right so it doesn't really impact me. Not really a surprise, they've always been against the hybrids, they always wanted us all to find and use their intended builds so that it made balancing easy.

----

"People hated it when WoW did it so why would they do the same thing?"

1. You'll always get people who hate change, doesn't matter what it is. You'd get an outcry (or two, a positive and negative) if WoW switched back too.

2. Well, they've been using WoW as the blueprint in so many other areas so why not?

[Corvinius]

I would agree, Rahja, if this was about hybrids only.

But it is defnitely not.

In the skill tree system you had 45 points.

You needed 35 to get the maximum in one tree.

So you had 10 points to customize a bit.

For instance that meant for me as a scoundrel heal I could go for 2 points of backblast crit bonus (+16% crit) take some scrappers melee damage bonus and get me some 3% percent more tech critical.

That made me no hybrid at all.

It only served to make my healer a bit more viable to fight.

Especially in PvP and also in FP.

With the disciplines I am FORCED to rely only on one tree giving me some 7 (!) points only to customize a bit.

From the heal spec perks and customizations.

And I can't even choose a bit from a combat spec to make me a bit more combatworthy giving my heal a bit of teeth.

Again I ain't a hybrid but I had some intermixed choices.

Which they take away from me saying:

"You are HEAL - and why do you want some fighting boosts from another spec?"

And as for levelling:

I found it motivating to have one point each level to put in a skill tree.

Now?

I get automatic skills.

I get no way to choose at all.

And even those come from the 10th level each 3 levels or so.

And only after some 6 or 7 levels I get ONE point for a small bit of customization?

Well, that is no choice at all...

[Raiah]

My two paragraphs was supposes completely separate from each other, maybe not clear enough...

As for mixing trees, you've got a point, I can't think of I build I've ever used where all my points was in a single tree... The disciplines could just be more inherently versatile. The fixed skills could give you what you're pretty much given to pick from the current skill trees (let's face it, most healing builds for a certain class will have skill builds that are in large part the same and that's true for many other kinds of builds as well) and then your seven points would give your bigger effects that have more impact on the way you play the class. That's the way I'd do it anyway.

The system could be made to work pretty well, it'll certainly feel less customizable though, no way around that, even if in the current trees we don't truly have as much choice as it might look or feel like.

Again, I'm not a big fan of skill trees but just replacing the system like this feels stupid.

[SethAltair]

Although, if they're taking away the credit costs of training new skills, I'll be very happy. Such a credit sink.

It remains to be seen how much those seven points of utility will count in customization. I mean, it seems point costs for builds are decreasing anyway, so seven points could mean seven different skills which is not a bad amount of utility.

[Corvinius]

Skill learning and credit cost for the "normal" class-skills as well as respecc mechanics will stay the same.

[Lisszia]

Wel for now every skil for me costing 0 creds to learn.. might be only till Dec2.. but still nice...

[SethAltair]

Dammiiit... oh well, can't have everything. I'll update all those speeder pilotings to grade 3 before December then.