Dual Spec!

[Mallorik]

I am all for Dual Specs. Yes it isn't hard switching specs on the fly. Yes it can be done in 30 secs or so (realistically, for those saying they do it in 15-20 secs are lying - I have never grouped with someone who has been able to fully change specs and redo their bars in 15 seconds...we always end up waiting for 1-2 mins).

 

The question is why do we have to? Dual Spec makes me lazy? Seriously? That's your answer? I have been playing MMO's since 1999 with EQ1...I have walked, without SoW, from Freeport to Qeynos more times than I can count. I sat for 45 mins at a time waiting on the boats to Kaladim. I waited for HOURS at a time trying to find someone to bind me to a city so if I died i didn't have another 2 hour run. I once traversed an entire continent in Shadowbane ON FOOT to get to my new guilds city. Don't tell me about lazy, if you started MMOing with WoW then everything you know about MMO's is lazy...get over yourself. There is NOTHING wrong with convenience in MMO's - it is one of the ONLY good things about the changing MMO world.

 

Most of the wow generation would not have lasted a day in EQ1, I miss a lot of the tedious time sinks wow removed from mmos, without them people don't care about their characters the way they used to and mmos are just not the same thing they once were.

 

But I don't even consider Dual specs one of those things that ruined the old mmos, having to walk from Qeynos to Freeport and figure out how to take a ship to get to crushbone at level 10 built character, having to click 40 buttons everytime I want to tank or dps instead of just one button is a waste of time.

[Hailius]

To the people that say dual-spec is useless because we have field respecs now:

 

In-field respecs are merely a ham handed implementation of dual-spec systems. It is essentially a dual-spec system that is preceded by a mini game of "clicky all the talents" and "set up yo bars again". This is completely unnecessary .

 

If you believe dual-spec is going to magically turn people into idiots then the community is already in such a bad state that it wont make a difference. Convenience does not necessarily breed laziness, convenience is there to make rudimentary or unnecessarily complicated tasks simpler to perform in light of more pressing and engaging content.

 

I actually want to pose a serious question: What is the ultimate end-result difference between the field respec now and a possible dual-spec system, aside from the level of player friendliness?

 

 

 

Also, comparing how this community will react and how the more vocal part of the WoW community reacts is like comparing fine caviare and champagne to someone's regurgitated kebab on the sidewalk.

[Tremulant]

The engine cant handle dual spec. Sorry guys.

[Erasimus]

Dual spec's is not an improvement.. Anyone that says otherwise hasn't thought of anyone else other than themselves..

 

It is not a QoL issue.. It is a laziness issue.. You can already change your spec pretty quickly.. You do not need a button that does it all for you.. You call can already change your specs when ever you want.. Quit QQ'ing about having to fill out your talent trees..

 

If it were up to me, you would still be paying progressively more each time you change your spec.. Not to mention going to the dude on the your home world.. While I believe the changing your spec is required to fix mistakes or to try new things on occasion.. It was never meant to be abused and allow you to change your spec on a whim..

 

People need to specialize and learn a character and their spec.. Allowing people to change specs does absolutely nothing for the game but diminish the number of skilled players the game has..

 

Laziness, Video game, Work, Fun .... look. I'm really having a problem understanding why doing tedious repetitive tasks is "fun" or contributes to "entertainment" in any way what so ever.

 

It is a game, most, if not all, people play it for entertainment. Now that is an opinion I feel pretty confident about. So what is the "virtue" of memorizing 20 or so key pushes that seldom if ever change, and doing it every time you respec, versus doing it once for each spec then pushing 1 button to change? I'm really struggling to understand the rationale behind the "laziness" comments

 

P.S. Have a lot of video components on my home entertainment systems. I guess instead of programming a single remote with buttons to "Watch TV", "Play a PS3 Game", "Play Music", etc. I should not be "lazy" and get up and go push all the different buttons on the various pieces of equipment every time I want to do something different.

 

Hmm, well, no, I don't think so. Guess I'm just lazy

Edited December 19, 2013 by Erasimus

[CharleyDanger]

Dual spec's is not an improvement.. Anyone that says otherwise hasn't thought of anyone else other than themselves..

 

It is not a QoL issue.. It is a laziness issue.. You can already change your spec pretty quickly.. You do not need a button that does it all for you.. You call can already change your specs when ever you want.. Quit QQ'ing about having to fill out your talent trees..

 

If it were up to me, you would still be paying progressively more each time you change your spec.. Not to mention going to the dude on the your home world.. While I believe the changing your spec is required to fix mistakes or to try new things on occasion.. It was never meant to be abused and allow you to change your spec on a whim..

 

People need to specialize and learn a character and their spec.. Allowing people to change specs does absolutely nothing for the game but diminish the number of skilled players the game has..

 

I respect your opinion, but let me try to make a case that dual spec is in fact a great QoL feature...

 

The difference between PvP and PvE builds are so great that it is an absolute must that one switches spec when switching from one to the other. I sometimes have to re-spec 4 or 5 times a day because I play both PvP and PvE equally.

 

Dual spec has nothing to do players not wanting to master one spec. It is mostly for players that have mastered two specs, and need two specs to play the game how they want to play it. It is meant for healers who like to do dailies as a DPS. It is meant for PvP DPS who like to Tank in PvE.

 

Is it lazy? Well, you could make that point, but is zero CD on the fleet pass lazy? Is 25XP bonus lazy? Is sprint at level 1 lazy? Is a speeder at level 10 lazy?.... Yes, and that why is it called a QoL feature. A good dual spec system lets you change spec and gear with one click. If that is not QoL then I do not know what is.

 

As far abusing the feature for a tactical gain... I would suggest that the dual spec feature could not be used while in a WZ, Op, FP, or in open world combat.

[Einobi]

Why stop at dual spec? Still stuck in the ancient Wow game mindset? Go for triple spec of all the 3 trees.

 

And might as well put in a gear manager where at a click of a button, we can instant equip a different set of gear to suit the occasion. (Just like Wow gear manager). Make it better than Wow, make it able to pick up the appropriate gear from the starship storage instead of just from our personal inventory. Since vanity gear contributes a lot to the cartel market sales, this feature seems of high priority nature. If this is implemented, I would be more likely to purchase more vanity gear. At current its a pain to go through and equip different gear PIECE-BY-PIECE. Having more gear is in fact a ironic burden to manage than a joy to have.

[TrooperRCH]

There's obviously a lot of people who would want/benefit from dual spec, especially tanks and healers who also like to go DPS from time to time and don;t like going through the hassle of going back to the trainer, re-doing bars and talents, etc.. just for a single raid, and then wasting the time to go spec back again.

 

It never ceases to amaze me at the dinks who say things like "NO! I DONT WANT DUAL SPEC! DURRRR!"... well, ok? Let them impliment it for the rest of us, and you can keep running back to your trainer and re-do all your bars and talents every time you want to try another spec. No one will be forcing you to use it, so stop trying to block it from the rest of us who could really benefit from it.

[illgot]

love dual spec that does more than give you multiple spec options.

 

Each spec is also a gear tab. You can keep one set of gear for both tabs or have a second set of gear in your mutli-spec tab. That way when you click over to the second spec your second set of gear is applied.

 

This does a few things, makes it less annoying to respec and reassign all your gear and makes people want to have a second set / second dye / second outfit.

 

As for people that do not want this option I suggest they do not use it.

Edited December 19, 2013 by illgot

[TrooperRCH]

Dual spec is also great for people like myself who do a lot of PvP and PvE. Being able to spec between PvP and PvE builds and gear on the fly would be a great addition, and encourage me (and I assume others as well) to do more of both. There are times when I am doing some dailies, and get the urge to do some PvP, but don't queue simply because I can't be bothered to go back to the trainer, unlearn my talents, re learn my talents in a PvP optimal build, set up my PvP build, get my PvP gear out, and then do it all in reverse when im done the WZ and go back to doing my dailies.

 

I don't understand how anyone with an IQ higher than a shoe string could be so vehemently against dual spec.

Edited December 19, 2013 by TrooperRCH

[Khaleijo]

The difference bewteen the current field respec and a general dual spec button is, that currently only those who really want to play more than one spec buy this character perk. You can't assume that the guy in front of you changes his spec to healer or tank, only because his class is able to fill that role. You can't see if he has the perk and sending him to the fleet is too much effort, so you don't expect or ask it from strangers.

If a player wants to change his role/spec he has to spring into action himself, it is his decision. If he doesn't say anything, the group just finds another way to do what they planned to do.

 

When Wow brought the dual spec after a short time every player of a class able to fill more than one role was expected to have and use dual spec. If you hadn't dual spec, you were a bad player not playing his class hundred percent, it was kind of a social pressure.

Even pure damage dealers were expected to absolutely optimize their skillset to the current situation. Optimization where it wasn't really needed like in storymodes, to optimize for Nim is ok but there people expected you to be optimized everywhere even in simple dungeons.

If you played you mage in frostspec for example because that was the most fun for you, and that spec wasn't the one and only best spec of the world to face a particular boss, you were a bad player without being judged by your real performance and often forced to respec because "it's so easy, just one click, the other spec is better here so respec!!" if you wanted to stay in the group.

Many tactics became onesided because everyone always was able to have the perfect skillset and could change it for the next boss to be perfect there again. Players lost their ability to be flexible due to groupsetup or different spec that needed sometimes different tactics to shine.

No need to find ways to cope with weaknesses of you spec anymore, no need to balance a spec and the matching equipment to be viable enough to play everything with it, just hit one button and be on the winning side.

That is easily an argument against changing classes or specs to balance them too, why bother that some specs aren't as good as others, just respec back and forth for the best one in this or that situation and win, no need to do anything by the devs.

 

Of course field respec gives you this possibility too, but there is still some effort involved and no everyone has it or wants to make that effort. The player himself decides to change his role/spec or not or even to tell that he could do it in the first place.

There is much less pressure on possible tanks or healers, "just respec so that we can go on" or on damage dealers to play the optimal spec for each boss mechanic. People are much more willing to try with the specs they have in the group and just cope with their different strengths and weaknesses instead of going with the perfectly respecced group for every situation. There are a lot of different tactics because of this diversity, players think of many ways to beat the mechanics instead of just going the easy way of using the perfect match all the time.

 

The barrier of effort of changing your spec isn't really high at the moment, but it is there and many players don't use field respec and they are good to go with not absolutely optimized skillsets.

If it is only one click, that will change and it will change the community and the demands players make of their groupmates. There will be expected a lot more perfection on the playerside instead of adapting the tactics, even in easy parts of the content.

 

That is why i'm happy with field respec as it is and really don't want dual spec. The small effort involved prevents that everything is streamlined in the name of perfection and optimization. For the diversity!!

Edited December 19, 2013 by Khaleijo

[Ratajack]

The difference bewteen the current field respec and a general dual spec button is, that currently only those who really want to play more than one spec buy this character perk. You can't assume that the guy in front of you changes his spec to healer or tank, only because his class is able to fill that role. You can't see if he has the perk and sending him to the fleet is too much effort, so you don't expect or ask it from strangers.

If a player wants to change his role/spec he has to spring into action himself, it is his decision. If he doesn't say anything, the group just finds another way to do what they planned to do.

 

When Wow brought the dual spec after a short time every player of a class able to fill more than one role was expected to have and use dual spec. If you hadn't dual spec, you were a bad player not playing his class hundred percent, it was kind of a social pressure.

Even pure damage dealers were expected to absolutely optimize their skillset to the current situation. Optimization where it wasn't really needed like in storymodes, to optimize for Nim is ok but there people expected you to be optimized everywhere even in simple dungeons.

If you played you mage in frostspec for example because that was the most fun for you, and that spec wasn't the one and only best spec of the world to face a particular boss, you were a bad player without being judged by your real performance and often forced to respec because "it's so easy, just one click, the other spec is better here so respec!!" if you wanted to stay in the group.

Many tactics became onesided because everyone always was able to have the perfect skillset and could change it for the next boss to be perfect there again. Players lost their ability to be flexible due to groupsetup or different spec that needed sometimes different tactics to shine.

No need to find ways to cope with weaknesses of you spec anymore, no need to balance a spec and the matching equipment to be viable enough to play everything with it, just hit one button and be on the winning side.

That is easily an argument against changing classes or specs to balance them too, why bother that some specs aren't as good as others, just respec back and forth for the best one in this or that situation and win, no need to do anything by the devs.

 

Of course field respec gives you this possibility too, but there is still some effort involved and no everyone has it or wants to make that effort. The player himself decides to change his role/spec or not or even to tell that he could do it in the first place.

There is much less pressure on possible tanks or healers, "just respec so that we can go on" or on damage dealers to play the optimal spec for each boss mechanic. People are much more willing to try with the specs they have in the group and just cope with their different strengths and weaknesses instead of going with the perfectly respecced group for every situation. There are a lot of different tactics because of this diversity, players think of many ways to beat the mechanics instead of just going the easy way of using the perfect match all the time.

 

The barrier of effort of changing your spec isn't really high at the moment, but it is there and many players don't use field respec and they are good to go with not absolutely optimized skillsets.

If it is only one click, that will change and it will change the community and the demands players make of their groupmates. There will be expected a lot more perfection on the playerside instead of adapting the tactics, even in easy parts of the content.

 

That is why i'm happy with field respec as it is and really don't want dual spec. The small effort involved prevents that everything is streamlined in the name of perfection and optimization. For the diversity!!

 

Well said.

 

Of course, the "have to have it now and for as little effort as possible" crowd will dismiss your points for no reason other than that they do not mesh with their desire to have a "one button does it all" rather than actually take less than a minute, possibly as little as 30 seconds, to change their spec and skill bars.

[illgot]

As a tank I would love this option. I can not always be used as a tank and I am not going to fleet to respec and come back. I would rather just log and play a low level alt.

 

Or just turn the game off and spend my money else where. If Bioware does not want to supply us with the features we want, there is no incentive to stick around and invest our money.

[cpanther]

it takes about 5 secs to respec if you know exactly where you want you points. Is actually very fast and easy to switch between roles.

[Mizasuke]

CUTTTT

 

So solution would be to not be able respec in flashpoints, ops and warzones. So it would be same thing as now but with a bit more convenience. Especially for those who like pvp and pve equally.

[CommanderKeeva]

I think most of you are approaching this from the wrong angle. I believe dual-spec and multi-spec has very real, out-of-game technical problems. Actually, I think it's not so much that Bioware does not want dual-spec in particular, it's more like they don't have the tech to implement it yet.

 

Many widely requested QoL features like dual or multi-spec, individual tracking for armor pieces in the Collection tab or customizable Biography pages would drastically increase the amount of data that needs to be tracked per character. Each character already has a wide assortment of skills, talent points, equipment for himself and his companion and his ship, achievements, Codex entries, reputation, starfighter upgrades that needs to be processed. This data cannot be stretched indefinitely or it will cause serious performance issues in the end.

 

When questioned as to why we can't unlock armor pieces individually in the Collections tab, Bioware admitted that they had thought about it but it was such a drastic increase in data-per-character that it would have caused significant performance degradation on both the servers and the clients. They also admitted that the current system isn't as good as they had wanted it to be originally but that was the best they could come up with within the constraints of technical limitations.

 

You can say, of course, that WoW and some other games had no trouble implementing dual-spec and you'd be absolutely right. WoW had most of these features and many more that we'd all love to see here, even the developers I'm sure. But the thing is, WoW's engine was optimized and fine-tuned for the game, so most of these technical issues did not exist there. Hero engine was a very bad selection for SWTOR and they only compounded the problem by not optimizing it for the game.

 

They made a call to sweep the problem under the rug back then and pretend it didn't exist. Now it's coming back at every turn to haunt them. I'm sure the programmes warned the EA financers that the engine needed tons more fine-tuning, but they shortsightedly ignored their warning about the unfinished state of the game in order to push it out before Xmas 2011.

 

TL;DR: Bioware needs to be very very careful on what they spend their precious data on, in order no to go beyond the limits of Hero engine. And they would rather spend it on Starfighter and Hangar customization than dual-spec, when we already have field respec, which is like a slower, weaker version of dual-spec.

Edited December 19, 2013 by CommanderKeeva

[Elminster_cs]

I have to admit, most of the time I am to tired of field respec that I not joing GRP finder or arena.

My main is a sorcerer, I can heal and dps as well, I have both gear, with good optimization, but the fact I can't change point and gear with few click... I prefer to go and do some daily instead.

 

I don't want a duel spec, I want MULTIPLE spec, the possibility of recording multiple spec, because I use to do PvP as DPS, as Healer and either PvE in these two roles.

 

Same with my juggernaut.

They say 1 year ago that the dual or triple spec is in plan, how much does it takes to implement?

 

We can't have:

- chat bubble

- more quest

- spec

- ship customization

and so on, just because of Hero engine and the coding? ***? This game have so many fast horses and we are stuck because they are bound to a big anchor? This is not acceptable, take your time devs 2 months with no updates, optimize the code, the engine and so on and build from there.

[Laris_Rai]

I say no to this because PVPers want it. That is the only reason.

[IInox]

I agree. need dual spec OR hold skills to quickslots on GUI file. so we can switch without swapping al the time skills into quickslots etc

[Erasimus]

I think most of you are approaching this from the wrong angle. I believe dual-spec and multi-spec has very real, out-of-game technical problems. Actually, I think it's not so much that Bioware does not want dual-spec in particular, it's more like they don't have the tech to implement it yet.

 

Many widely requested QoL features like dual or multi-spec, individual tracking for armor pieces in the Collection tab or customizable Biography pages would drastically increase the amount of data that needs to be tracked per character. Each character already has a wide assortment of skills, talent points, equipment for himself and his companion and his ship, achievements, Codex entries, reputation, starfighter upgrades that needs to be processed. This data cannot be stretched indefinitely or it will cause serious performance issues in the end.

 

When questioned as to why we can't unlock armor pieces individually in the Collections tab, Bioware admitted that they had thought about it but it was such a drastic increase in data-per-character that it would have caused significant performance degradation on both the servers and the clients. They also admitted that the current system isn't as good as they had wanted it to be originally but that was the best they could come up with within the constraints of technical limitations.

 

You can say, of course, that WoW and some other games had no trouble implementing dual-spec and you'd be absolutely right. WoW had most of these features and many more that we'd all love to see here, even the developers I'm sure. But the thing is, WoW's engine was optimized and fine-tuned for the game, so most of these technical issues did not exist there. Hero engine was a very bad selection for SWTOR and they only compounded the problem by not optimizing it for the game.

 

They made a call to sweep the problem under the rug back then and pretend it didn't exist. Now it's coming back at every turn to haunt them. I'm sure the programmes warned the EA financers that the engine needed tons more fine-tuning, but they shortsightedly ignored their warning about the unfinished state of the game in order to push it out before Xmas 2011.

 

TL;DR: Bioware needs to be very very careful on what they spend their precious data on, in order no to go beyond the limits of Hero engine. And they would rather spend it on Starfighter and Hangar customization than dual-spec, when we already have field respec, which is like a slower, weaker version of dual-spec.

I seriously doubt the amount of data involved in maintaining dual specs, which would be trivial, has anything to do with why it isn't in game. I doubt they changed the database used by the engine, probably Oracle (the same database engine that is used in WoW). But even if they were using a different database, say MSSQL, the database would have no issue handling the, relatively, tiny amount of data involved in dual specs even for millions of players.

[Elminster_cs]

I seriously doubt the amount of data involved in maintaining dual specs, which would be trivial, has anything to do with why it isn't in game. I doubt they changed the database used by the engine, probably Oracle (the same database engine that is used in WoW). But even if they were using a different database, say MSSQL, the database would have no issue handling the, relatively, tiny amount of data involved in dual specs even for millions of players.

 

I think you are wrong. If you have another account or a friend you can see how much the database slower down the performance. I have check, with same settings of course, my account and my girlfriend one.

I have 10k of achievement she have just 4k, I have almost complete collection at 60% she have less than 10.

 

With this come out a differece of 10Fps when I log with these two accounts, she got 10 more than me. Not a small impact, she also take really less to log in. 45sec less.

 

So database are having right now a huge impact on performance

[TrooperRCH]

...eee... Edited January 2, 2014 by TrooperRCH
Spelling errors

[Elminster_cs]

And Dual Spec was great for that. I got to PvP more because I could easily change spec, and all around had more fun with the game.

 

Point scored, this is the real truth.

Also it can have really big impact on queue time. With my jug I never go as tank, I have gear for HM FP, because i don't remember always the spec three, so I have to open Noxxic, search for it, respec and check that is correct, also look if my ability are in the correct position (another important factor). That is why i prefer to wait while I'm questing and join later. But if I have the spec recorded and a fast way to switch all I will do more FP and let that more people come as DPS... so lesser queue times.

 

This is not only for me, but for a lot of people here.

[LtBombshell]

So wait.... how would dual specs work? Just the capacity, for example, to swtich between ACs? Or are we talking being able to do full points into 2 different trees?

[Jacen_Starsolo]

So wait.... how would dual specs work? Just the capacity, for example, to swtich between ACs? Or are we talking being able to do full points into 2 different trees?

 

I'm against AC change. But skill tree builds I'm all for it.

[ELRunninW]

You can not carry the gear suitable for all alternative spec options. You will complain about the dependence on the gear next. Big, monstrous NO!