And to Andryah. Yes, this was absolutely a thing, I'm aware. Elitists are everywhere. It's the same kind of bs people had to deal with in WotLK concerning gearscores. Before I go any further, I'd like to reiterate that I'm not saying the old system was perfect or even ideal. And I am aware of the flaw of hybrid builds, though I'd argue that's really only a flaw in PvP situations. In PvE, it's rewarding deeper engagement in the system and creative thinking. One of your raid members was able to do twice as much DPS as anyone else thanks to a hybrid build. How awful. So long as you still need a raid to beat the boss, I don't consider this to be a problem. Honestly, the new system not having a significant impact even if you do choose skills that literally don't get any use further underlines its pointlessness. As I said, I'm pretty sure I could level entirely without picking any, but if what you're saying is true, this means that I could play the entire game up through Hard Mode raids without it. As implied in my first post, I haven't played nearly enough to know that aspect firsthand. I'm primarily concerned with the leveling experience and the difference in how previously I'd spend a skill point and go "all right, now X ability that I use all the time will do more damage/have a higher proc rate/etc." whereas now, I get a skill point and look at the options and go "which of these do I even have a use for?" The difference here is that in the old system, yes, you had to take specific builds in order to be most effective. This is what I argued to support it when WoW revamped their system. But now it's the difference between your choices having any impact whatsoever. Basically, now you have right choices and wrong choices (or, if various previous posters are to be believed, choices between having disciplines that do stuff, or disciplines that don't, but neither case really matters) whereas before it was the right choices and the not quite right ones. Anyway, obviously MMOs change and evolve. I tried to minimize my mentioning of WoW just so I wouldn't be That Guy, but I was immediately on board with its new talent system as soon as MoP launched. Hell, I created entirely new characters just to see what their talent options were. Because those are choices with an immediate impact on how you play and so feel like a reward rather than a chore. Even if they weren't equal, I'd often pick different talents on different characters of the same class just to experience them, because even if it wasn't the best choice, every single one was at least a choice you could immediately start using and notice. Honestly? I would love it if SWTOR just aped that, too. I mean, if we're honest, its combat and character progression system were pretty much a clone of WoW's from the start, and its changes in those have pretty much mirrored WoW's from then on. So why not just keep that going? I mean, aside from the fact that it would take a lot more work than just altering some preexisting variables. This is why I called the current system the worst of both worlds. It has all that finicky under-the-hood bs with clear right and wrong answers (though worsened due to the difference being between 0% and 100% effective rather than 50% and 150% effective - which again, only matters in PvP which... fine, I've never really cared about to any meaningful extent so go off, I guess), and also the lack of any immediacy to trigger short-term reward reactions for an easy dopamine score which it doesn't make up for by having abilities that actually feel rewarding. Not that I wouldn't mind SWTOR coming up with a fourth system entirely different from all of the above, of course. That would definitely be ideal, in fact. Just so long as it actually has a point and is fun and rewarding to use.

Actually, I merely prefer it to the new one. At least it had some short-term, minor spike in dopamine associated with it. Ideally, I'd prefer they come up with a third system that's actually good on its own merits, but failing that, at least reverting to what was tolerable would be a start.

Okay, so it is easier to run through all the possible options, sure. And while I'm in no way saying we necessarily need to return to the old system (honestly, I'm pretty sure any attachment I actually have to it is due to Skinner Box mechanics), as I said, it did at least provide more direction in where you ought to invest your points. And with the new system, you've got a roughly 3.3% chance of randomly guessing the right pair of talents at each tier. In the old system, you could be practically guaranteed to have a character that's at least decent by just putting points into the highest available tier in your chosen spec. Theorycrafters may disagree, but the chance of putting points into an ability that you won't actually get any use out of (even if it's suboptimal use) is virtually 0. As I said, with the new system, half of the disciplines are literally and completely useless. Still, for me, what it ultimately comes down to is whether or not a system in a game is fun. Even if it's in a psychologically manipulative way. And this system absolutely is not. There is no enjoyment to be gained from it for me, and I can't even conceive how anyone could get any from it.

I don't think I've tallied up more than two or three day's worth of playtime since the new system was implemented. I love the characters and the story and the world and everything, and I want to come back and play it but... The Share the Love event got me to resubscribe but even after dropping $15, I've only logged maybe three hours since I resubbed back in the middle of February. And the discipline system is solidly to blame. I mean, I've got my issues here and there with other things, but I actually come back and play in spite of them. This though? Pretty much all of my time playing is spent leveling up alts, since that's what I enjoy doing most. So I'm intimately familiar with choosing my discipline every 8 levels, and I have grown to loathe it. I'm not threatening to quit, here. I've already gone. You guys threw out a hook last month and I bit, but if this doesn't change, I won't be sticking around. I'm sure you have some way of looking at my play history. You can see I'm just stating facts, here. The old system at least had the advantages of being almost Skinner Box-y, since you'd get something from it every level, and you could at least make an acceptably playable character by dumping all of your points into a single tree. And they'd have effects on all sorts of different abilities, so it actually felt like you were customizing your character as they grew. But with this system? First off, almost every class and spec shares a lot of analogous or outright identical effects, so the whole thing comes off very cookie-cuttery, and not at all customized to a specific character. Some of the abilities are outright traps - which is a word I use very sparingly, since I sometimes appreciate "trap" options in RPGs and even MMOs, so long as they're fun - and the rest have such narrow and specific effects. The whole thing ends up feeling more like an obligation than a reward since the only thing I get out of it as a player is keeping on par with what my DPS/healing/tank performance should be. They don't do anything to actually change how I play. I hate to bring up this point of contention, but I really do have to compare - partly due to the curious timing of the new system's implementation - to Warcraft's talent overhaul. The old system used by both SWTOR and WoW was math intensive, but gave frequent rewards immediately on level-up and affected all sorts of different aspects of your character that were unique to your class rather than just the same dozen with a different coat of paint. Lacerating Blast is Imperial Efficiency is Lambaste is Path Carver. Of course, the old system also had its fair share of clone skills, but if for no other reason than due to their number, it wasn't something you could notice by just getting three characters through Dromund Kaas/Coruscant. WoW drastically simplified its talent system so every character now had only three choices every 15 or so levels. But almost none of these were a merely changed existing numbers. Whether active or passive, every single one made a material and immediately noticeable change in how you played your character, both before and after the talent was added, as well as between one talent and another. Of course, this was decried by a lot of "hardcore" gamers as "dumbing down", which I'm not really going to get into, but regardless... The discipline system is essentially the worst of both worlds. It's entirely a numbers game that's essentially a test on the minutiae of game mechanics and so has distinct right and wrong choices. For every single class and spec, there's pretty much one choice that you absolutely should take, no questions asked, and only two others that are even worth considering. The deciding factor between those two basically being "Are you going into PvP or raiding?" And that's another thing, because as I said, they don't actually change how you play your character so I honestly believe I could go through the entire leveling experience without taking a single discipline and I wouldn't even notice. They seem to be entirely in service of endgame content, even though they're scattered throughout the leveling experience. And unlike with the old system (which, arguably, was also entirely in service of endgame content), they don't guide you in anyway to help you learn how the game works and how you should play your character. You just get slapped in the face with six choices and are told to figure it out. Your only recourse being to close out of the game, and pull up a theorycrafting forum to find out what the good choices are, because again, none of them are really going to affect your day-to-day experience so until you run a flashpoint, there's no real way for you to know whether you chose wrong or not. TL;DR: From top to bottom it's a horribly designed system that doesn't actually serve any meaningful purpose or actually provide anything to the experience except an arbitrary hurdle to enter raiding. While I'm sure hardcore gamers will scoff at this saying that if you're not prepared to go diving through forums and study like you're trying to pass the MCAT, then you shouldn't be playing but... that's just not how you grow a playerbase. And a mentality like that will see this game shrivel and die. Which is a massive shame because underneath it all, this is a legitimately good game and probably one of the only ways that EA has any hope of ever seeing my money. (To this end, I won't be interacting with any replies that are along these lines of "git gud".)