Save Settings when changing specs

[MacCleoud]

Please look into how you guys can save the settings across different specs. It is just a nice little QoL piece for us not to have to redo trees and placing abilities to be in the right places for keybinds....

[SteveTheCynic]

People have been asking for some variation of this (in some terminology or other) since what feels like forever. You have my vote, if that helps.

[SteveTheCynic]

My own preference, by the way would be what I described back then:

In programming, there are only three interesting numbers: "zero", "one", and "many"(1), so it doesn't matter whether there are three or seven or four hundred and sixty three options. Well, sort of it does, because the UI for 463 different disciplines would be ... fraught.

 

That said, it's worth noting that each class has way more than three options. Three disciplines with different combinations of utilities (and given that 6.0 will have nine utility slots, that's potentially a *lot* of combinations per discipline). And yes, one might wish to use different combinations of utilities for different content even with the same discipline.

 

I think the best way would be to follow the Guild Wars 1 example, and save files somewhere with a combination of build details (discipline and utility combination) and bar layouts. Where exactly those files get saved is important mostly to people who play on more than one computer although there's a migration cost for local storage for people who replace their sole PC with a new sole PC, if the storage is local.

 

On the other hand, local storage does have the advantage that the storage is not shared between all players, so BioWare doesn't have to manage it, and we already have local storage of some per-character stuff, e.g. keybind files and UI layouts.

 

The sequence would then be:

* Select Field Respec ***OR*** see the Mentor and de-disciplinify the character.

* Set up a new combination and save it.

 

Or it would be:

* Select Field Respec ***OR*** see the Mentor and de-disciplinify the character.

* Load an existing template.

 

I would also recommend that the templates be compatible between a class/discipline on one faction and its mirror on the other (that is, a Merc can load a template saved by a Commando or vice versa).

 

(1) By this, I mean that once you've decided to be able to handle more than one thing, it really doesn't matter how many more than one there are. There may be practical limits related to available storage or processing time, but the number of different objects you can handle is dependent *only* on those limits.

[Mirli]

I look at games like wow where this works in more than just the action bars too. You could set your gear to change with your spec (though we don't have gear sets in swtor, so that would also be really nice).

 

Being able to easily swap between disciplines would also help to alleviate some of the full DPS veteran queues I get.. someone could swap to a healer or tank in for some reason the 4 DPS are struggling with a boss or mechanic.

 

But as it is right now on my sorc, I am a DPS and Im working on my gear but I have a few pieces of healing shells too but im not worried about them because even though I can (and would love to) heal on him, it is too much effort to swap, and move all my keybinds around to accommodate healing over DPS.

 

This is my #1 biggest QoL change I would love to see implemented in the game sooner rather than later.. but I know it's been asked for forever over multiple mediums (forums, reddit, twitter, direct feedback, etc). So I hope someday it will come.