Discipline system in 3.0(with or without expansion purchase)

[Gelda82]

http://www.swtor.com/blog/developer-...on-disciplines

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!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I cannot wait for this to sink in to people. They are removing talent trees completely and replacing it with the same talent system(perks) that WoW did with Cataclysm 4 years ago. I always liked the reasoning Blizzard gave at the time, so for BioWare to copy it is pretty vindicating. I can't wait to see the tears from people who hated it in WoW, and the wishy-washy people who flip and say "oh, well since SWTOR is doing it too, I guess it's not so bad." Also a little humorous BioWare is following exactly in Blizzard's footsteps design-wise, but that's a whole different discussion.
This made my day.

[Fkiolaris]

Well, it's a shit system in WoW and I don't have much confidence that BW will make it any better. Again, what seems the main driving point is to kill hybrids and get more bland (but easier to balance apparently) specs. Which of course makes for spectacular gaming experience- not.

Let's see what the rest of the features are, they did mention battles that are "massive like you've never seen before" so yeah. And Revan as the bad guy is such a shite story development as well.

Ok, end of rant :-)

[xuros]

Well, it's a shit system in WoW and I don't have much confidence that BW will make it any better. Again, what seems the main driving point is to kill hybrids and get more bland (but easier to balance apparently) specs. Which of course makes for spectacular gaming experience- not.

Let's see what the rest of the features are, they did mention battles that are "massive like you've never seen before" so yeah. And Revan as the bad guy is such a shite story development as well.

Ok, end of rant :-)

Have to agree with the skill system. Just not on the entire "its a shit system". I get bored between levels waiting on the next tier to get something shiney and new lol. Will wait and see how they roll it out to cast judgement on it. They may work it out in a way that makes it better than wow did. Who knows!? Makes me kinda sad to see only one planet really to level up in. Looks like a second that will be for max level toon or something. Going to resub tonight on both of my accounts and preorder. Going to finish off some long neglected toons leveling. Stack with the market xp buffs. HAHA every double xp weekend i would buy the shit out of those 3 hour exp buffs that they slash by 50% in cost. Think my marauder is 53 and still on Corellia due to the last xp weekend and the buffs. Stil have something like 40 of those in my banks.

Side note and keep in mind that i never played KOTOR or any of the spin offs or add ons that may have spun off it. Hell i never played PC games til everquest came out! I thought Revan was a good guy. That went bad. Then got redemed and was good again. Am i missing something?

[WarpedAcorn]

Side note and keep in mind that i never played KOTOR or any of the spin offs or add ons that may have spun off it. I thought Revan was a good guy. That went bad. Then got redemed and was good again. Am i missing something?

Revan was a good Jedi who saw people suffering in the Mandolorian War and got mad that the Council refused to intervene. By the time the events of KotOR 1 begins Revan has embraced Sith ideology after a confrontation with the Emperor. Canon KotOR 1 has Revan becoming a Jedi again, then going back in search of the Emperor. As of SWTOR, Revan is basically the little Angel on the Emperor's shoulder that keeps him from devouring the galaxy. Last we see of Revan it appears it is still walking a very gray bipolar line. I expect a storyline similar to Malgus, where Revan defies both Republic and traditional Empire.


As for the Discipline system...I dunno. The illusion of choice and customizing characters is nice, and most people love putting those points into talents as they level up. I remain skeptical, but we'll see how it plays out.

[Edge-]

They're really taking this whole, "You're doing it wrong if you're not doing what WoW is doing!" thing a little far.

Not a fan of what info I've heard of this new system.

[xuros]

To be fair. Even with wows system. There still are cookie cutter specs that most go by. Save a teir or two. I know for locks depending on the spec. We all chose the same things cept for 2 or so tiers where they offer no dps value all, just survival type stuff.

[quras]

Well, it's a shit system in WoW and I don't have much confidence that BW will make it any better. Again, what seems the main driving point is to kill hybrids and get more bland (but easier to balance apparently) specs. Which of course makes for spectacular gaming experience- not.

I'm right there with you. It's not a system I enjoyed in wow, BW will have to do some major rethinking to make it worth it and not simply copy wow.

Way to many that love hybrids too. That might hurt as well.

It could have a wow and rift style system that might be Ok but I'm not sure BW could pull it off and make it sell in a F2P game. Tough call but I know wow's system was not interesting at all.

Hoping the stream tomorrow will have better information on it.

I hope this gets a PTR showing.

[zorkuus]

Way to many that love hybrids too.

There really isn't much room for hybrid builds even with the current system. Unless you're content in being subpar.

[Fkiolaris]

There really isn't much room for hybrid builds even with the current system. Unless you're content in being subpar.

For group play perhaps, but for solo play that's not correct at all.

To give you some examples, my main is a 55 scrapper but when doing dailies I load all sorts of hybrids depending on what I am facing: if it's a big group of normal mobs I drop Flachette Round and get Sharp bomb for some extra AoE that scrappers really lack. For elite mobs I either switch back to full scrapper if I can burst them down or I go healer hybrid and grind them down. Also, for my lower level sorcerer alt the first thing I do is to get both AoEs for the the two dps specs, gear up my tank and ride into town. Same with my commando etc etc.

Has anyone ever been benched because such specs dominated a raid? Not as far as I know. Has any pvp season been dominated/made unplayable by such hybrids? Not as far as I know. And at the end of the day, what kind of specs would be excluded from any of the Tactical FPs that seem to be the basis of small-group end-game content?

The problem is that the current system offers plenty of options for casual play and that's what most of the SWTOR players are. This change will probably affect that style of play so that the very few, apparently "top tier" players will find another thing to whinge about after the hybrids will be dead.

Anyway, let's see what they show today. If it is more like the Rift system then it could actually be interesting and still offer room for experimentation and fun. If it's like WoW's talent "tree"...

[The Kao]

Well. Seems to me like, the lower you get on the downward spiral, the less you have to worry about your dignity and credibility.

Poor Star Wars, having to live through that game. Sic transit gloria mundi.

[WarpedAcorn]

There really isn't much room for hybrid builds even with the current system. Unless you're content in being subpar.

As much as I hate to say it, I think this is another instance of PvP influencing decisions for PvE. While I have been out of the game awhile, I remember that the Assassin class specifically benefited tremendously from Hybridization. That didn't translate into PvE much, but it gave players access to certain skills and abilities that were more suited to the dynamic environment in PvP. A lot of what this boiled down to was having less-than-stellar top tier talents that weren't worth picking up.

[zeekphreak]

I'm pretty sure I'm reading it wrong. But the system to me sounds more like Rift than WoW.

For those that don't know, as you work your way through the talents in Rift, you open abilities and bonuses, additionally the more points you put into a tree the more of it's "roots" you unlock. The change being here the "root abilities" you can personalize to your suiting.

[Pool of the Dead]

I very much look forward to this new system.

Having your trees base talents and being given the option to choose what utility you want for different things is amazing.

It will also stop me from having to play with people that have specs like 15/13/7 in dungeons that just spam their basic moves because they've learnt none of their trees core skills.

This Expansion is shaping up to be awesome and I have already bought it outright, $20 is less than what I paid for dinner last night and will give me many hours of entertainment.

[Kelimbror]

As much as I like talent trees for nostalgia, familiarity, and a false sense of control of my character...it's just poor design. I find WoW's system just fine, because hybrid specs were only good for being a walking gimmick or playing poorly. Sure it was fun, but usually at the cost of making other people not have fun. Hybrids are a silly concept in a game like SWTOR where every class has a dps and support role available to them if you choose that AC.

I think the direction they are going with the game is spot on. Most of the people playing this game are not your typical MMO players, they aren't a majority of world first raiders, etc. They have been embracing that for a long time now and it's paying off. More power to them.

[noahjam326]

I really enjoyed this system when Blizzard implemented it in WoW, so I imagine I will greatly enjoy it in SWTOR as well. The current UI they have for it as well seems visually satisfying.

[Gelda82]

This Expansion is shaping up to be awesome and I have already bought it outright, $20 is less than what I paid for dinner last night and will give me many hours of entertainment.

Do you live in NYC or was that for a whole family? $20 for one meal seems like alot.

I was impressed with the UI, visually it's a lot more stimulating than WoW's current UI for talents but the sci-fi theme helps that. Interesting too that you can dump all 7 points into the tier 1, even if that would be an ignorant move for most classes(definitely so for the Inquisitor, seeing things in the tier 3 like the "can cast certain channels while moving" and "whirlwind is now instant and stuns for 2 sec if broken early"). Didn't see any actual activated new abilities or "overwriting" abilities like Monk's Chi Explosion over Blackout Kick in the tiers, unless I missed them. Did anyone notice any in the stream? Otherwise that's something WoW's talent have a slight edge in.

[Kelimbror]

Do you live in NYC or was that for a whole family? $20 for one meal seems like alot.

I live in an average cost of living location and it costs $20+ just to order my wife sushi. Two pizzas with coupons is also $20. I think the only meals you can get for less tan $20 are fast food, which isn't great. If you are talking about groceries, then $20 is easily a real dinner. In any case, it's always silly to compare costs of things like that in real life to entertainment. Even comparing different forms of entertainment is a vain pursuit.

Value isn't always about raw numbers. In this case, it's $35.00 to participate in the levelpalooza. To me that's at least worth the entry fee. I'm also an altoholic. I'm not even purchasing this for the expansion, so I'll definitely get my worth out of it.

[Elim Garak]

Looking forward to this new system - Talent trees with skill points are so last century.

[Gelda82]

I live in an average cost of living location and it costs $20+ just to order my wife sushi. Two pizzas with coupons is also $20. I think the only meals you can get for less tan $20 are fast food, which isn't great. If you are talking about groceries, then $20 is easily a real dinner. In any case, it's always silly to compare costs of things like that in real life to entertainment. Even comparing different forms of entertainment is a vain pursuit.

Value isn't always about raw numbers. In this case, it's $35.00 to participate in the levelpalooza. To me that's at least worth the entry fee. I'm also an altoholic. I'm not even purchasing this for the expansion, so I'll definitely get my worth out of it.

Subway meals for two in Michigan is around $13, and I can make spaghetti for four with $6 at the grocery store. A flat $20 or more per meal that isn't a special occasion just seems high to me.

[Kelimbror]

Subway meals for two in Michigan is around $13

Subway here costs almost $20 for two footlong combos if you aren't getting the monthly $5 special.

spaghetti for four with $6 at the grocery store.

That's as much dinner as a TV Dinner :-/ When I picture a home cooked meal, I'm thinking steak with steamed lemon garlic asparagus and smashed red potatoes. For two people that costs more than $20, but I was being conservative. I have a 2 person household and it costs over $100 a week for us to eat and I eat half my meals at my job's caf.

Anyways, I digress because I really, really want to get home and start leveling some toons.