Yours is a good analysis but I wish to point out that most likely as you indicate it could have gone either way, actives or passives. My faith-based belief is that the designers are also decent analysts and have the benefit of knowing the details. We do not so know, or at least we don't know yet. Passives and their effects may be altered by the redesign. Actives may entail or carry influential factors that have not been revealed to us. The designers elected to go the way they have gone based on knowledge, not guesswork. Our understanding is based on what we have grown accustomed to, and significant change in what we know is upon us. Thus it is a fair bet that our grasp of the future, as embodied in their 'discipline' system, is probably tinged with some measure of unease or even fear. Our projections are likely skewed by that influence. tl;dr We should encourage our colleagues to wait and see before making their several and community judgment.

It isn't a whine, and your saying it is whining betrays your lack of vision. If you have two sides to an argument, and those sides to the argument are in the process of refining one another, then if the dialog and mutual refinement continues they may find synthesis, a new idea born of conflicting understandings unified in an evolutionary, and suddenly shared realization. This is also something we are seeing in politics, by the way. But when one side aborts the process and dismisses the other, especially by belittling or disrespecting the other, then all we end with is dysfunction. You have a thesis. He has the antithesis. By forcing ourselves to continue the conversation we can make progress and ultimate unity until the next antithesis comes along. Willfully excluding disagreement is a sure recipe for community failure and should be discouraged.

Did you read what he said? TUX may have had a point, and maybe he speaks for you, but he also doesn't decide anything for me especially values. Excluding people is not the way toward community but away from it. Intolerance is not constructive. We may not like someone, but it takes all kinds to make a world. Every human being is valued.

Heh. Nothing like self-centered. The arbiter of values, a virtual god among mortals in the magnifying glass of his own imagined domain, fountain of enlightened wisdom has deigned to assign the hierarchy of his lessers... the foremost argument against required grouping has spoken to us all and we have no recourse but to obey.

Math meets myth. Sorta takes all the mysticism outta the anguish...

...being a bit behind... but... I sure wish we hadn't devolved our game play of something as vast and rich as this one into a footrace, where someone is a little bit behind...

Or if you want to go along with them simply don't turn the quest in until after the 12X period is over. Or turn one or two just to keep up with your pals.

Solution: Work from home.

Same reason no battleplan survives the opening of an engagement. Humans can never adequately plan for ingenuity. Ingenuity is what players bring to every game.

I'm not sure if you are missing anything, but I did get the impression there were still choices to be made selecting what they are calling utilities and those gate the availability of useful skills. So if I'm right (no guarantees) then we get to set which array of actual skills based on what utilities we select from within the more general template (type 1, 2, or 3). So if I choose type 1 I will set what role I'm choosing similarly to what we have now and will unlock some , what was it, nine possible utilities for basic, nine for advanced, and nine for mastery. Of all of those (27?) potentials I get to select at least seven to fill into my rotation. So there is some 'build' to it, some variety, but limited to game-viable mixes. That is still a limitation and that seems like it would be a downside. But I wish to point out that the rose grows taller if upon a trellis. A metered poem with a pleasing rhyme scheme can be as or more beautiful than free-form. And landscapes present merits that Pollack paintings lack. The difference looks like limitation, is structure, and as you have admitted will make it easier and therefore less expensive to craft new content.

It is also a significant downside for players who prefer independent play to be essentially punished -denied content and rewards- because they prefer to play independently. Neither of us knows whether one or another portion is a majority, but I would argue there are some things that shouldn't be subject to democracy (example: the argument that everyone has an equal opinion would subject facts to a vote). But we know that both those who prefer only to group and those who prefer to play independently (and other factions in the spectrum between those) are large portions. We also know it is possible to scale encounters, and it could even be made easy to do for the developer were there both a well-built tool and their data elements already had hooks to allow that tool to adjust them (which Bioware may well have, just considering the requirements of managing an MMO). So if the whole spectrum of preferences could be provided for without having to rework the quests themselves, what is already present for groups could be added for the rest of the player base for, I imagine, less than the cost of crafting a new planet and all its quests. That sounds cost effective, and shouldn't impact any player group negatively unless there is some faction who feels that, for example Huttball is exclusive to team play because that is (obviously) a team based sub-game. Surely Huttball wouldn't somehow become a soloable game... unless the players on a side weren't actually grouped I suppose... independents playing cooperatively maybe but I don't see that sort of effort as at all reasonable anytime without the implementation of time travel...

@LordArtimus: Fine, be dismissive and above-it-all. Making reference to disagreement that implied that anyone with a different opiion seems threatened is an insidious rhetorical device and you should have anticipated this silly response to your suggestion. But, as you and others rightly pointed this is all a digression from the intent of the thread, and for that I apologise. I still fail to see why grouping needs incentives if they are anything people actually prefer.

Me too, though as you point out if the mission difficulty scales it should be about as difficult. In fact it might be even more difficult since you don't have a trinity backing you up. I'd certainly rather also get the rewards but I'm selfish like that .

Like anything being done for a diverse player base there will be mixed results. The ultimate outcome must weigh both, and the change will be good if the benefits outweigh the liabilities. Who would deny that limiting the diversity of builds is a delta, a negative result? Not me. But at the same time what player would argue that increased diversity in play environments, new content, and new class/story lines is bad? Not me. I have strong 'builder' tendencies as well. I like few things more than experimenting with my builds if they ever manage to improve my performance. But I would not choose that over the creation of new works of art. I would not impede the crafting of a good story. I would not insist that a painter should not clarify his palette rather than allow me to make my colors muddy. If the end product turns out better overall it will have been worth it and if not, then not. But just as I don't reorganize my mechanic's toolbox when he is working on my car, so too will I refrain from criticizing the developer before I have had a chance at their handiwork.

Did I not use other words I would be unable to form a differing sentence. I disagree that the only words available should be those quoted. That seems an odd view of dialog and conversation. If we engage in conversation we generally reply to one another. Should I take it that because you keep responding you must feel threatened? I didn't think so. How is it then that you think others would not respond to him where they disagree? Tell you what: why don't you respond to my questions asked above. If grouping is so wonderful, whence comes this fear that if grouping is made optional fewer would group up? Second, if grouping is so wonderful, why does Bioware offer incentives for players who endure grouping?

I haven't had a problem coming up with it either, but you and I may not be typical. We aren't 'nominally' challenged, heh. But players have reported difficulty whether or not you and I have, and I have been in other games that really were seriously challenging just to create a decent name and I would not want that happening here. So if someone quit the game, why shouldn't their character names be made available?.

In other words people who disagree with his opinion in your world don't have good reasons and can be ignored because they are merely weak people who feel threatened?

Where did you get the 'threatened' part? Or was that your invention?

It will take much less time and cost far less money to adjust the difficulty of an encounter making it accessible to the independent player than it would be to make a whole new encounter, and given the market share of players would add content for independents for a fraction of the cost/time. This is more bang for the buck. It would increase player retention. I doubt companion AI has to change a bit. As to that last the idea, at least as I envision it, is that group content remains group content, otherwise unchanged. It is only that someone not in a group, or in a duo, could be provided an equivalent-difficulty version of the same encounter. That means increased scalable content for a fraction of the cost to the developer. To scale existing content difficulty to the number of players? Relatively little. Much less time than you appear to think. In many cases it is an Excel exercise, though granted some puzzles would present a challenge that might not be worth it. I would expect the devs will identify those quickly and efficiently. Why not? Let's look at that a minute in a different way than has been done (that I have seen). If the only reason people group for content is that it can't be done solo, what does that say about grouping? If the only reason you group is because the game cannot be played otherwise, and if the consequence of removing the incentives to group would result in no one grouping, then grouping itself is a problem. Is that what you really want us to take away from your argument? IF the developer has to provide the enticement of greater rewards to get people to group, then is grouping something that players would choose to do without those enticements? Doesn't sound like it. Bioware makes the carrots bigger to offset the chastisement of the stick involved in grouping. That means that Bioware is fully aware what a PITA grouping can be.

As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, unless your name is Ernest Albert Bioware, their definition will be as different from yours as mine.

Your list is incomplete. Employers and creditors call to verify employment. Whether you deploy is distinct from where/when you deploy. Keep your sheesh.

Not much except significantly increased potential for new content and more useful engineering from a designers perspective. Those were the explicit and implicit reasons cited and implied in the video. The vast array of hybrids, both extremely powerful builds and gimps, made it a serious problem for designers of new content or the addition of new skills to make new content challenging (for the OP hybridizations) yet accessible for the gimped builds. There is an upside to simplification, especially from an engineering standpoint, that is difficult to explain to the closed-minded.

What about 'inept' playstyles? I think I may qualify...

Heh, sounds very like you are in an old wine cellar, deciding which year and vine to savor.

The DoD and all U.S. Government agencies have dedicated phones lines and CSRs to verify employment in Federal Service/Armed Forces. Such verification provides no closely held information, nor PII, and does not provide deployment details whatsoever. You might believe that is a needless expense but there are many good reasons for it, nevertheless if you take exception take it up with your congressional representative.