As for abilities that are mostly the same, I know that at least some classes have abilities that you basically aren't supposed to use (not in a 'proper rotation' anyway). Some of these are base class abilities rendered useless by your advanced class (like the two or three melee abilities sages get). In some cases you have two basically identical abilities because your chosen discipline (that's the name now right?) gives a new ability that basically has the same affect but is slightly better and with another animation (I know commando/mercenary has this). Think there are a few abilities you get with advanced class that are mostly used with specific disciplines as well.
Despite all that I think the biggest issue is all the "situational" abilities. All the defence boosts, shields, stuns, interrupts, threat dumps, cc breakers and so on... There are way to many of them. Most classes have three or more interrupts I think (except two work by stunning and won't work on bosses).
On a high level character you'll have over 20 active skill on your hotbars, and that's if you've removed a some of the less useful abilities and choose not to have stuff like medkits in your hotbars. That's more than twice as many abilities as the default keybindings handle and half of those are out of reach without moving your hand. No wonder there are so many 'clickers'...
The current trend in MMOs are to limit you to a smaller set of abilities in your active build, say 8-12 abilities, while usually giving your more than that to choose from. Personally I think this is a way better approach. It's fewer keys to keep track of which makes the game both easier to get in to and easier to get back in to (which I feel is a big issue with SWTOR) and it often leads to a larger amount of viable builds than SWTOR's one build/rotation per discipline.
I would love to see Bioware rework the abilities in the game and this would be a great time to do it if they are changing so many other things. But I'm well aware that a lot of people would get really angry about it because people hate change and a large portion would probably be upset that it "dumbs down the game" (which is ridiculous because frankly, the main gameplay consist of press tab and then these keys in sequence and repeat, it doesn't get any simpler, any time where there is more depth to the combat it's not because of how many abilities you have but due to mob behaviour or other mechanics).
Wow, that got a bit longer than I though it would... Hope someone actually reads it because I'd love to see other peoples thoughts on it
Huh, they're even redoing the dialogue system? :Owe do know it won't use the system we see in the game now -- two players sharing dialogue choices in cut scenes
