Developer Update: Introduction to Disciplines

[bassfu]

I am going to post this here in hopes that someone somewhere will see it and be better for it.

 

DISCIPLINES ARE NOT DESIGNED TO IMPROVE PLAYERS' SPEC CHOICE AND CUSTOMIZATION EXPERIENCE. DISCIPLINES WERE IMPLEMENTED TO HELP THE DEVS MANAGE THE GAME BETTER AND OVER TIME DELIVER A BETTER EXPERIENCE, WHICH WILL LEAD TO LONG-TERM SUCCESS AT THE COST OF SHORT-TERM WHINING. WE HAVE KNOWN THIS TO BE THE CASE SINCE DISCIPLINES WERE ANNOUNCED.

 

TL:DR - Quit complaining that skill trees were better and they had more options and they gave you more choice. EVERYONE knows that. The players know it. The devs know it. So shut up about it.

You must be new to the SWTOR forums. There's no such thing as "short-term whining' here.

[Tukash]

I am going to post this here in hopes that someone somewhere will see it and be better for it.

 

DISCIPLINES ARE NOT DESIGNED TO IMPROVE PLAYERS' SPEC CHOICE AND CUSTOMIZATION EXPERIENCE. DISCIPLINES WERE IMPLEMENTED TO HELP THE DEVS MANAGE THE GAME BETTER AND OVER TIME DELIVER A BETTER EXPERIENCE, WHICH WILL LEAD TO LONG-TERM SUCCESS AT THE COST OF SHORT-TERM WHINING. WE HAVE KNOWN THIS TO BE THE CASE SINCE DISCIPLINES WERE ANNOUNCED.

 

TL:DR - Quit complaining that skill trees were better and they had more options and they gave you more choice. EVERYONE knows that. The players know it. The devs know it. So shut up about it.

 

/sign .. and btw I like the new system.

[Hitomo_x]

thats not russia or China here, Stalin ... people can complain as long as they want and about what ever they want

 

just because u are challenged by to much thought, u cant demand everyone to come down to ur Level, bro

[M_A_White]

I am going to post this here in hopes that someone somewhere will see it and be better for it.

 

DISCIPLINES ARE NOT DESIGNED TO IMPROVE PLAYERS' SPEC CHOICE AND CUSTOMIZATION EXPERIENCE. DISCIPLINES WERE IMPLEMENTED TO HELP THE DEVS MANAGE THE GAME BETTER AND OVER TIME DELIVER A BETTER EXPERIENCE, WHICH WILL LEAD TO LONG-TERM SUCCESS AT THE COST OF SHORT-TERM WHINING. WE HAVE KNOWN THIS TO BE THE CASE SINCE DISCIPLINES WERE ANNOUNCED.

 

TL:DR - Quit complaining that skill trees were better and they had more options and they gave you more choice. EVERYONE knows that. The players know it. The devs know it. So shut up about it.

 

And yet, despite that, I clearly remember in the announcement the justification that Disciplines were SUPPOSED TO IMPROVE CHOICES AND CUSTOMISATION. Something that the devs decided to rescind later, without actually passing that message along to the players.

 

However ... the blame for the implementation of the Discipline system doesn't fall solely on the shoulders of the devs. Blame all of the closed beta testers that got to try out the expansion prior to implementation and didn't pass on a legit level o dissatisfaction TO the devs.

[Mozepy]

I am going to post this here in hopes that someone somewhere will see it and be better for it.

 

DISCIPLINES ARE NOT DESIGNED TO IMPROVE PLAYERS' SPEC CHOICE AND CUSTOMIZATION EXPERIENCE. DISCIPLINES WERE IMPLEMENTED TO HELP THE DEVS MANAGE THE GAME BETTER AND OVER TIME DELIVER A BETTER EXPERIENCE, WHICH WILL LEAD TO LONG-TERM SUCCESS AT THE COST OF SHORT-TERM WHINING. WE HAVE KNOWN THIS TO BE THE CASE SINCE DISCIPLINES WERE ANNOUNCED.

 

TL:DR - Quit complaining that skill trees were better and they had more options and they gave you more choice. EVERYONE knows that. The players know it. The devs know it. So shut up about it.

 

You are half right. It's to balance PvP, same reason WoW did it, and it has nothing to do with "a better experience".

Edited December 8, 2014 by Mozepy

[idnewton]

You must be new to the SWTOR forums. There's no such thing as "short-term whining' here.

Whining is the initial drama where you might even be lucky enough to have half the participants actually care about the discussion (rather than just be there for the sake of arguing). The 150 pages afterwards is just the rambling of people who can't leave a discussion without having the last word. As long as there's a least two of them, it will never end. At that point, just unsub from the thread, and move on.

 

And yet, despite that, I clearly remember in the announcement the justification that Disciplines were SUPPOSED TO IMPROVE CHOICES AND CUSTOMISATION. Something that the devs decided to rescind later, without actually passing that message along to the players.

In other words: "There is hard evidence to the contrary, except that I can't refer you to it because it doesn't exist."

 

However ... the blame for the implementation of the Discipline system doesn't fall solely on the shoulders of the devs. Blame all of the closed beta testers that got to try out the expansion prior to implementation and didn't pass on a legit level o dissatisfaction TO the devs.

The closed testers, whether they did or not, were chosen to test the new content, as all closed tests are designed to do. From what I hear, Bioware handpicked the testers, most likely to ensure that people like you (who whine for the sake of whining) don't distract from the real bug reports.

 

You are half right. It's to balance PvP, same reason WoW did it, and it has nothing to do with "a better experience".

But it does. It allows the developers to give lightning sorcs Chain Lightning at level 10, to give infiltration shadows their stance at level 10. It's not just "we don't like hybrids so we're taking them out." It's "we disabled hybrids so that we can mold the experience into our vision without being constrained by the rules of our own game."

 

Not only that, but streamlined builds (such as they are now) make the game a lot easier to be built upon with future level cap increases (expansions). The massive amount of tuning, balancing and testing required by the devs each xpac just to fight unplanned hybrids is essentially bypassed entirely by the Disciplines system. That means the time inbetween expansions should be smaller. This has been stated even by the devs, but it makes a lot of sense if you think about it from a dev's perspective (though I would imagine if you've never made a game, that may be a bit challenging).

Edited December 8, 2014 by idnewton

[Yunsha]

And yet, despite that, I clearly remember in the announcement the justification that Disciplines were SUPPOSED TO IMPROVE CHOICES AND CUSTOMISATION. Something that the devs decided to rescind later, without actually passing that message along to the players.

 

However ... the blame for the implementation of the Discipline system doesn't fall solely on the shoulders of the devs. Blame all of the closed beta testers that got to try out the expansion prior to implementation and didn't pass on a legit level o dissatisfaction TO the devs.

 

Agree to that. You guys announced this changes saying we will have more choiches, so not everyone will choose the same setup.

 

This is not rue even in 1pct, instead pure lie 100pct.

 

Before I could avoid some unwanted skill in my tree and pick some other from an other tree. Now I am forced to have the same like everyone else, and I can choose only 7 as I like, but from those 7, I swear at least 6 will be the same for all as the others just useless crap that most people will avoid.

 

So DPS will use the 7 best for their dps, healers the 7 best for the heals and so on.

 

So how do you justify this as an improved number of choiches and more variations of skill distribution?

 

Here I am not even mentioning you forced us to have an extra damage skill that is almost the same like an other we got already, wiht a minor difference. Cant even avoid to get it and its shares the CD of the "original" skilsl. What a crap. (eg. Penetrating Blas+Series of shoot. Before I had skill that cleared the CD on Series of shoot so I could repeat that dealing massive burst damage, now its gone.)

 

An other thing.

 

You took away my op healer Orbital Strike saying I am not supposed to do that damage anyway. WTH? I never had any dps as op healer since I was healing the grp anyway, so if I spare time, my only dps was that Orb Strike I could support my team. Soling dailies and some other content was a tiny bit easier wiht Orb Strike, since I am using a tank comp. Imagine, how long does it take for me to solo my quest now?

 

You say Orbital Strike for healers is an OP skill to have, but you give DPS an extra heal spell, so now they got a HoT heal and a direct heal too? How does that justifies, a dps to have that kind of heal?

 

An other story that u just implemented craply. Increasing the CD on Cleanse type spells you broke soem of the already existed game content, which was required to have fast cleanse, or you simply die/wipe. You simply forgot to readjust your NPCs to cast their debuff skills. (eg. Hammer Station first boss encounter)

 

So far the changes I have seen are unliked. The game content is good, areas, new zones and so on but the class changes are the most crap ever,

Edited December 8, 2014 by Yunsha

[idnewton]

Agree to that. You guys announced this changes saying we will have more choiches, so not everyone will choose the same setup.

 

This is not rue even in 1pct, instead pure lie 100pct.

 

Before I could avoid some unwanted skill in my tree and pick some other from an other tree. Now I am forced to have the same like everyone else, and I can choose only 7 as I like, but from those 7, I swear at least 6 will be the same for all as the others just useless crap that most people will avoid.

 

So DPS will use the 7 best for their dps, healers the 7 best for the heals and so on.

 

So how do you justify this as an improved number of choiches and more variations of skill distribution?

 

Here I am not even mentioning you forced us to have an extra damage skill that is almost the same like an other we got already, wiht a minor difference. Cant even avoid to get it and its shares the CD of the "original" skilsl. What a crap. (eg. Penetrating Blas+Series of shoot. Before I had skill that cleared the CD on Series of shoot so I could repeat that dealing massive burst damage, now its gone.)

 

An other thing.

 

You took away my op healer Orbital Strike saying I am not supposed to do that damage anyway. WTH? I never had any dps as op healer since I was healing the grp anyway, so if I spare time, my only dps was that Orb Strike I could support my team. Soling dailies and some other content was a tiny bit easier wiht Orb Strike, since I am using a tank comp. Imagine, how long does it take for me to solo my quest now?

 

You say Orbital Strike for healers is an OP skill to have, but you give DPS an extra heal spell, so now they got a HoT heal and a direct heal too? How does that justifies, a dps to have that kind of heal?

 

An other story that u just implemented craply. Increasing the CD on Cleanse type spells you broke soem of the already existed game content, which was required to have fast cleanse, or you simply die/wipe. You simply forgot to readjust your NPCs to cast their debuff skills. (eg. Hammer Station first boss encounter)

 

So far the changes I have seen are unliked. The game content is good, areas, new zones and so on but the class changes are the most crap ever,

 

No one is going to take you seriously unless you cite some kind of source for ANYTHING you say.

 

Pretty much all you just did is make a bunch of claims and backed up none of them.

 

"Devs said this, devs said that". Source, please? Please?

 

 

PS: I had to go back through and color code that. Red is for claims you should probably back up. Green is for when I laughed out loud (lol)

 

PPS: Tried to be nice, highlighted the reasonable points in Blue

 

PPPS: In regards to each spec having its own 'best' utilities to take, that's sorta true. Classes like Assassin have various Heroic utilities which can be good for different fights and based on different playstyles. I really think that the only thing Disciplines really needs to make it better is simply a lot more utilities. Damage bonuses to all sorts of things, not just an aoe attack (although those utilities are nice, don't get me wrong). It's a lot easier said than done to just be all like 'make moar utiliteees' but that's the best course of action. Disciplines themselves already solve the problem the devs wanted solved (streamlined specs, no hybrids, spec abilities at lower levels, easier xpacs). Now all they need to do is solve the players' problem: variety. People can't make their own spec. So now, it makes sense to allow the utility system to really give players the ability to be unique. Again, easier said than done. Will it ever happen? Maybe. Soon? No. And they won't look here to find the answer.... well, they might, but not here here on page 81 of an old thread. If they do, they can send me a PM, then we can theorize cool stuff. Until then? Meh.

Edited December 8, 2014 by idnewton

[M_A_White]

The closed testers, whether they did or not, were chosen to test the new content, as all closed tests are designed to do. From what I hear, Bioware handpicked the testers, most likely to ensure that people like you (who whine for the sake of whining) don't distract from the real bug reports.

 

Whining for the SAKE of whining? Just because there are trolls like that on the intorwebz, don't just automatically assume EVERYONE with a grievance is one of them.

 

Also http://www.swtor.com/shadow-of-revan

 

Specifically: Customize Characters with the New Discipline System* - Choose from among a set of new Disciplines, see your Path before you, and customize your combat experience to fit your play style.

 

Now I might have interpreted that in a completely different way than the devs intended it to be interpreted, but I see it as saying that I have choices with regards to my skilling that will benefit my play style. But I don't. Every Combat Sentinel is going to be spending on the same utilities, and will automatically learn the same passives/abilities as they level. That's not customisation. That's cookie cutting. And I'm as likely to be the only one that interpreted it that way as gravity is to stop existing in the next 5 minutes.

Edited December 8, 2014 by M_A_White

[Krynx]

So, having witnessed WoW being destroyed, I now get to see SWTOR adopt the same dumb crap, dummying-down, less versatility/uniqueness, make-it-playable for little kids so no adult would bother anymore, changes.

 

Great.

 

Anyone know a good mmo to switch to?

 

I am not going to throw out a suggestion of the Next mmo to research for switching, but I do agree it is tiring watching mmo's destroy themselves.

The original SW had over 13 different classes. They dumbed that one down. They improved with galaxies. They dumbed that one down again. Its almost as SW implodes on itself.

[Krynx]

The community in general has acted like children for quite some time. Judging from your post, I don't see a reason to exclude you from that characterization, either.

 

its ok Newtie, your entitled to your opinion... even if it doesn't correspond with the greater community.. it is still all yours

[LordArtemis]

I don't personally feel that the introduction of Disciplines harmed the playerbase in some way. I do think some of the changes were odd, others are a concern, still others could use a bit of adjustment.

 

I expect the latter will happen in the short term. I think this new system could definitely use some work, but I think it is a reasonably working system overall.

[azudelphi]

And all you do Mr. Fanboy is spin all the posts against that exclusively pro PvP "update" of the skills from all the players that share their bad experience so far with it. You are not adding anything but a trail of brown nose posts along the thread.

 

Every game I left I did for the same reason, they decided to "balance" the game (i.e. always for the PvP) and screwed the casual players in the process. Because we all know that no class must be better in their field otherwise the whinny PvPers will flood the forum of their eternal lamentation about the game not being fair toward their class.

 

So to make sure those morons make no mistake making a toon and to be certain they all have the same "chance" in PvP. They have reduce the choice players make to a minimum and reduce every class to their lower common denominator. But morons being morons, they will continue whining about unfair advantage some get and in the end the next "update" of the system will let you choose a name and that's about it, everything else will be chosen for you.

 

The changes transcend PVP.

 

For your consideration, the rationale of the Disciplines:

So, prior to 3.0 my Commando focused exclusively on the talents that would strictly result in a higher damage parse. +ranged crit change, reduction in Charged Bolts pushback, +aim, etc. And ultimately, when I was done, there was absolutely no way my spec could even consider those next steps after single target dps optimization, which are increased survivability (you get to do more damage in a fight if you don't die in a fight), mobility (Charged Bolts, Full Auto, and Grav Round effectively require you to be a stationary cannon), non-single target utility, and raid-wide utility (Commando's were effective off-healers when not-dps'ing, but didn't assist the raid much beyond that).

 

So, as others have stated, effectively the core discipline is meant to take care of the single-target dps question. Is it simpler and less customizable than before? Yes. But I can state from experience that Commandos were left with 2 points after their effective builds in PVE. Sure, hybrids were available, but the purebuilds were by far better... objectively I say that because either you were a healing pure-build which could out-heal any single mob's damage or a dps which could out dps an enemy's damage.

 

Now the utilities come into play. This is where your ability to add mobility to your class, or assist your raid, or survive different types of threats, or gain the upper hand in PVP come into play... because your Discipline does indeed cover the original base. So that's why, even if it can be said that we have fewer choices (hybrids gone, no more 51 skill points) we really do have encounter based flexibility through the Utilities portion of the tree.

 

My personal stance is that the old system wasn't going to look as it did no matter what happened. I believe the combat team saw the issues with extending the trees up and the new hybrid builds that were going to be possible. The problem is that in order to limit overpowered hybrids with a vertical extension, you would have to go back and lock certain abilities and procs to a single stance. You would have to add stances to the non-Stance based classes. Or you have to lock a certain ability in a tree to a certain number of points in a tree. Basically, by the time you have prevent hybridization with the increased skill point budget, you have restricted players into only using the purebuilds you decided upon anyways; that system is the Discipline system as we have received it... it looks different, but it is essentially the old skill trees with the kind of restrictions needed to keep unintended synergies at bay.

Edited December 9, 2014 by azudelphi

[LordArtemis]

Whether or not the changes transcend PVP, one can still argue the changes were made directly as a result of PVP balance efforts, and were made for Bioware's benefit.

 

Sure, the changes will likely benefit the majority casual playerbase eventually, in a big way probably (less frequent ability changes), but that doesn't change the fact that this change was made to benefit Bioware, not the game's players.

 

Personally I have received enough toys recently from Bioware to swallow this change.

[azudelphi]

Whether or not the changes transcend PVP, one can still argue the changes were made directly as a result of PVP balance efforts, and were made for Bioware's benefit.

 

Sure, the changes will likely benefit the majority casual playerbase eventually, in a big way probably (less frequent ability changes), but that doesn't change the fact that this change was made to benefit Bioware, not the game's players.

 

Personally I have received enough toys recently from Bioware to swallow this change.

 

They were not made as a result of PVP balance efforts; at least not exclusively.

 

They were made to balance PVP outputs just as much as PVE outputs. The change was made to prevent new unintended synergies of extending the skill trees. Additionally, it makes extending the Disciplines system a more streamlined process for future level cap increases.

 

Whether certain skills should be added to the Discipline trees or to the Utilities section, is a fine and valid discussion.

Edited December 9, 2014 by azudelphi

[Mozepy]

 

But it does. It allows the developers to give lightning sorcs Chain Lightning at level 10, to give infiltration shadows their stance at level 10. It's not just "we don't like hybrids so we're taking them out." It's "we disabled hybrids so that we can mold the experience into our vision without being constrained by the rules of our own game."

 

Not only that, but streamlined builds (such as they are now) make the game a lot easier to be built upon with future level cap increases (expansions). The massive amount of tuning, balancing and testing required by the devs each xpac just to fight unplanned hybrids is essentially bypassed entirely by the Disciplines system. That means the time inbetween expansions should be smaller. This has been stated even by the devs, but it makes a lot of sense if you think about it from a dev's perspective (though I would imagine if you've never made a game, that may be a bit challenging).

 

First of all they pretty much said the first one and did not say the second.

 

If "unplanned hybrids" is true then the devs didn't even look at the original system they took from WoW. It's designed to make hybrids. That is how Blizzard designed it. They must be the most idiotic people in the world.

 

Finally this is supposed to be an RPG. You are supposed to be able to decide how your character develops their abilities in meaningful ways. The game is less of an RPG now, because the Devs are lazy. How they proceed is going to be exactly what they want with no real options for the player. And if You think getting certain abilities at particular level is important than you should be asking for that as an option not a track you are confined to. The devs should try having an original thought or hire somebody who can.

 

for whoever was asking: DCUO and Rift are good examples of mmos where you have real choices.

Edited December 10, 2014 by Mozepy

[idnewton]

First of all they pretty much said the first one and did not say the second.

 

If "unplanned hybrids" is true then the devs didn't even look at the original system they took from WoW. It's designed to make hybrids. That is how Blizzard designed it. They must be the most idiotic people in the world.

 

Finally this is supposed to be an RPG. You are supposed to be able to decide how your character develops their abilities in meaningful ways. The game is less of an RPG now, because the Devs are lazy. How they proceed is going to be exactly what they want with no real options for the player. And if You think getting certain abilities at particular level is important than you should be asking for that as an option not a track you are confined to. The devs should try having an original thought or hire somebody who can.

 

for whoever was asking: DCUO and Rift are good examples of mmos where you have real choices.

You know, for someone who tells me I misquoted the devs... This game is not an RPG, it never has been, it never will be. It's a story-based MMO, focused on the progression of a character's story, level, and gear.

Edited December 10, 2014 by idnewton

[ShepardSpock]

They changed the skill system. The only negative effect of any substance is that it removed the viability of hybrid specing... which the new Discipline system was clearly designed to do.

 

Solution: you embrace the new Discipline system, choose your spec and play away. Sure it requires some adjustment to retune your play style... but that too is pretty normal during the life cycle of any MMO. You probably will respect a couple times to fine tune it too... but respecs are free for subs and it should not take more then an hour or two to re-perfect your play style to the new changes.

 

OR.. you can continue to curl up in a ball and play victim to the new Disciplines.

 

Honestly, an hour into playing after the release of 3.0... I've yet to find a "real issue" with any of my characters so far. Then again.... I don't have emotional meltdowns over min/maxing. If I can do the content effectively... then I'm fine.... and frankly play is somewhat different and there were some rotation adjustments to make... but content is completely doable.

 

In my view... most of the complainers (and I'm NOT singling out any one person here) are bent over having played clases/specs that were poorly balanced and higher powered vs other classes/sepcs.

 

Anyway.. you have two choices: 1) embrace and adapt...or... 2) curl up and give up.

 

Funny. This and then you rage quit over a slot machine thing? Kind of ironic.

[sartt]

This is what broke PvP.

[idnewton]

This is what broke PvP.

 

ACTUALLY, this was the groundwork they needed to lay to FIX PvP. However, the problem is that they never actually DID anything with that groundwork. Rather than needing to create three new PvP skill trees and go through the hybrid-avoiding process all over again, the Discipline system allows the Devs to simply make PvP and PvE variants of each discipline. It'd be clean, it'd be organized, and it'd go a long way to alleviating the class balance in both PvP and PvE. At the moment, as most people know, they're trying to please the PvP community and the PvE community at the same time, and it ain't workin'.

 

If they'd actually used the inherent benefits of the Discipline system to their fullest potential, class balance would be in a much better place.

Edited November 2, 2015 by idnewton

[sentientomega]

ACTUALLY, this was the groundwork they needed to lay to FIX PvP. However, the problem is that they never actually DID anything with that groundwork. Rather than needing to create three new PvP skill trees and go through the hybrid-avoiding process all over again, the Discipline system allows the Devs to simply make PvP and PvE variants of each discipline. It'd be clean, it'd be organized, and it'd go a long way to alleviating the class balance in both PvP and PvE. At the moment, as most people know, they're trying to please the PvP community and the PvE community at the same time, and it ain't workin'.

 

If they'd actually used the inherent benefits of the Discipline system to their fullest potential, class balance would be in a much better place.

 

I had a suggestion once, that every single passive and utility have separate implications that come into play when flagged, or un-flagged; that way, class balances need not favour one type of play over the other.

 

I also think there should be a dps charge for the tanking disciplines, with abilities and passives modified accordingly. Take Darkness, you'd have Dark Charge as it stands now, for tanking, and Dark Charge (Damage) for dps, Dark Ward would act a bit like Cloak of Pain, or something, for instance.