Second Combat Style...

[Ghost_Spectre]

I'm still trying to play catch up on what 7.0 is bringing. So my question regards the topic. I have an assassin, Darth Imperius. I know you cannot choose to switch combat styles with an established character. The second style is for choosing to do so? Am I correct in this assumption. I've seen and read so much that it's confused my old brain a bit. I want to turn her into a Jedi Shadow to fit her alignment. I'm just a bit confused on the process in doing so. So, can someone explain the process to me? I have both Light/Dark unlocked at max. Thanks.

[ThanderSnB]

You will be able to switch your primary to Jedi Shadow if you want. You just need to make sure you have at least 1 light side point and I think completed Chapter 3 before 7.0 comes out. Sounds like you already meet those requirements. You'll get a mission to switch alignments of your primary combat style and another separate mission to choose your second combat style. Just remember that you will still be playing on Empire side with the Inquisitor origin story (or backstory in your case). Edited December 14, 2021 by ThanderSnB

[Ghost_Spectre]

You will be able to switch your primary to Jedi Shadow if you want. You just need to make sure you have at least 1 light side point and I think completed Chapter 3 before 7.0 comes out. You'll get a mission to switch alignments of your primary combat style and another separate mission to choose your second combat style.

 

Great! All requirements are met. She's maxed Light and level 73 completed up to doing the Alliance story lines.

[mirellha]

arghh .... so i am not forced to wait the launch to prepare some new characters ?

 

i was told that only new characters would benefit of the new combat style. (or i understood that at least).

 

So lets imagine, i level 1 class and decide to do the 3 chapters without choosing my first combat style, Would it be good for the launch ?

 

Or i can still level the class i want for 7.0 and make the swith when good.

 

Or i am totally lost ? Will there be a difference between a pure new lv 1 and a lvel up to the 3 chapters without combat style choosen) ? can i level new characters now ?

 

(went en pts but that lost me even more)

Edited December 14, 2021 by mirellha

[Tausos]

You guys should check out swtorista's youtube channel.

 

She has so many videos on this (and a TON of other stuff, seriously, take a look). She has explained this is great detail, also does PTS updates on new stuff coming and what all is available in 7.0.

 

Also, she is very clear, concise and thorough. Great speaking voice and I have even emailed her once with a question (email on her website swtorista . com), she is such a nice woman and very kind.

 

And.........she does a podcast too!

[mirellha]

Thanks i missed the one from December 2 )

[Tausos]

Thanks i missed the one from December 2 )

 

You're welcome! I am always happy to advertise her channel and website as I get so much entertainment and knowledge from her, its the least I can do to "give back".

[NDNCreek]

What would have been great is it you could have mixed the abilities of course that would not happen the only one I might switch is my BH to use the Rifle with my Infamous BH outfit...or to switch in battle from one to the other

[ThanderSnB]

arghh .... so i am not forced to wait the launch to prepare some new characters ?

 

i was told that only new characters would benefit of the new combat style. (or i understood that at least).

 

So lets imagine, i level 1 class and decide to do the 3 chapters without choosing my first combat style, Would it be good for the launch ?

 

Or i can still level the class i want for 7.0 and make the swith when good.

 

Or i am totally lost ? Will there be a difference between a pure new lv 1 and a lvel up to the 3 chapters without combat style choosen) ? can i level new characters now ?

 

(went en pts but that lost me even more)

 

It depends what combination you want on your characters. If you want to play Inquisitor Origin Story with Sith Sorcerer and Sith Juggernaut Combat Styles, you can create the character now and add the Juggernaut when 7.0 comes out. On the other hand, if you want to play Inquisitor Origin Story with Sith Marauder and Sith Assassin Combat Styles, you have to wait until 7.0 to create the character.

[Caokeo]

I have a question for you guys. How much benefit do you see in having multiple classes on one character? I myself am having some difficulty seeing it. I know there my be many people who do not have multiple characters. I myself having been playing a little while and I have leveled about every class so I don't feel like I need another class on my characters because I can just switch to that class on another character. Now I can see some benefit in being able to switch to tank, heal, or dps on one character, however again if I needed to I can switch to another character.

 

Also many of the currencies have been set to legacy so all of your characters can contribute to your stash. I find myself switching between characters to complete dailies and weeklies so I feel like having another class on the same character may not be needed because I will likely switch to another character to complete their dailies.

 

I also had another question. They had mentioned that through this change to combat styles it could open the possibility to *** more classes. Now I know that this would be way down the road, however I am also under the impression that when you pick your combat styles you are locked to that choice. So does that mean that if all my character have their secondary combat style I then need to make another character to play the new combat style?

 

Is this change more intended for newer players?

Edited December 17, 2021 by Caokeo

[TrixxieTriss]

I have a question for you guys. How much benefit do you see in having multiple classes on one character? I myself am having some difficulty seeing it. I know there my be many people who do not have multiple characters. I myself having been playing a little while and I have leveled about every class so I don't feel like I need another class on my characters because I can just switch to that class on another character. Now I can see some benefit in being able to switch to tank, heal, or dps on one character, however again if I needed to I can switch to another character.

 

Also many of the currencies have been set to legacy so all of your characters can contribute to your stash. I find myself switching between characters to complete dailies and weeklies so I feel like having another class on the same character may not be needed because I will likely switch to another character to complete their dailies.

 

I also had another question. They had mentioned that through this change to combat styles it could open the possibility to *** more classes. Now I know that this would be way down the road, however I am also under the impression that when you pick your combat styles you are locked to that choice. So does that mean that if all my character have their secondary combat style I then need to make another character to play the new combat style?

 

Is this change more intended for newer players?

 

I’ve been testing on the PTS since they announced this. I’ve recently been testing the latest iteration on the PTS last night and there are still many hurdles for Bioware to overcome to make this feature a smooth and enjoyable option for us.

 

Ie, currently if you swap to your second combat style and back again, it reorganises your task bar differently than the way you had it set up. Keybinds are also not linked to each combat style to swap automatically, so you have to manually do that too. On top of that, it doesn’t always put your preferred discipline back or select your abilities choices you had previously set up.

 

The whole process of switching back and forth is pretty time consuming and inconvenient. There are also bugs where it doesn’t always put all your abilities back on the taskbar (and some general abilities are removed). Which means you have to double check and go hunting for them because you can’t sort active abilities from passive abilities.

 

Lastly, the outfit designer is bugged too. It won’t allow a weapon that’s different to your main story to be equiped. Ie on my bounty Hunter story I chose a sniper as the combat style and I can’t currently equip a sniper rifle in the outfitter because BH’s use 2 pistols. Plus when you swap to the second combat style, it unticks all your match colour options on your outfits.

 

I’m sure if they can over come all these problems and snares that slow down the process, it will be fun for some people. But at this stage, it is too cumbersome and time wasting to swap everything and reorganise your task bar, keybinds, ability tree and gear. It’s actually 100 times faster to just log out and log back in with another alt character.

 

As for new classes? Who knows what they have planned. If they don’t get this working properly and walk back on many negative changes in 7.0, this maybe the last expansion we ever see. So I think this part is moot until we see how well 7.0 is received by the masses. In its current form and with their current announcements, I won’t be playing it and neither will a bunch of others.

 

Because of all that, I would say 90% of these changes are aimed at new players and not old/current players. Sadly, if Bioware can’t attract enough new players, all of these changes will have been a waste of time.

Edited December 17, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

[mike_carton]

I’ve been testing on the PTS since they announced this...

 

Ie, currently if you swap to your second combat style and back again, it reorganises your task bar differently than the way you had it set up. Keybinds are also not linked to each combat style to swap automatically, so you have to manually do that too. On top of that, it doesn’t always put your preferred discipline back or select your abilities choices you had previously set up.

 

..There are also bugs where it doesn’t always put all your abilities back on the taskbar (and some general abilities are removed). Which means you have to double check and go hunting for them because you can’t sort active abilities from passive abilities.

...

But at this stage, it is too cumbersome and time wasting to swap everything and reorganise your task bar, keybinds, ability tree and gear. It’s actually 100 times faster to just log out and log back in with another alt character.

 

Reading this at this stage - we're at the original go-live date - is both frustrating and infuriating. Looks like a failure to consider all aspects during the design of the feature. Or it was designed and coded by somebody who doesn't play the game recreationally. The original Guild Wars had this down right 15 years ago.

Edited December 17, 2021 by mike_carton

[MadDutchman]

Reading this at this stage - we're at the original go-live date - is both frustrating and infuriating. Looks like a failure to consider all aspects during the design of the feature. Or it was designed and coded by somebody who doesn't play the game recreationally. The original Guild Wars had this down right 15 years ago.

 

As a software designer and developer, I find attitudes like this frustrating and infuriating.

 

You clearly have no idea how complex these kinds of systems can be. Do you honestly think they can truly take into account all aspects of implementing such a massive system change?

 

And even if they did, do you honestly think they could accurately assess every mistake made along the way introducing bugs (and delays as a result)? Do you think they can accurately assess the productivity of every developer, graphics artist, project manager etc. so as to produce a perfect estimate? Regardless of sickness, people leaving, miscommunications etc.?

 

No, BW did the right thing here in delaying it. Had they released such a buggy product, now that would be reason for frustration and infuriation (they've made that mistake before)

 

The only major blunder BW made here is waiting until the last minute to announce the delay. I can appreciate the desperation to meet a deadline, but they should have realized at least a month ago that there was little chance of them actually meeting it. Or perhaps more accurately, the upper management who makes these decisions should have listened to the project managers and designers who probably were telling them for over a month that they had a problem

[mike_carton]

You clearly have no idea...

 

Devolution into personal attacks in the comment is an indication that we've reached "Peak White Knight"; but I'll ignore that and respond on the merits of some statements there. My previous comment and this are solely about the state of the Loadouts and Combat Styles on PTS; please keep that in mind.

Do you honestly think they can truly take into account all aspects of implementing such a massive system change?

 

The Loadouts and Combat Styles - which Trixxie was talking about and I opined about - are not that massive a change (I'm not implying that Trixxie agrees with that assessment); even if they were, it is still quite reasonable to expect the development team behind a AAA MMORPG to be up to the task of doing a decent design. Far more mission-critical complex systems are routinely updated with much greater design sophistication and success than what we see with SWTOR here(*).

And even if they did, do you honestly think they could accurately assess every mistake made along the way introducing bugs (and delays as a result)? Do you think they can accurately assess the productivity of every developer, graphics artist, project manager etc. so as to produce a perfect estimate? Regardless of sickness, people leaving, miscommunications etc.?

 

Yes. That is what Software Project Management is all about. It is at least a 50 year old discipline with important lessons being learned as early as during the OS/360 development (mid-60s). They're not inventing the project management practice here. It is possible to do all of the above in Waterfall, RUP, and Agile Scrum development methodologies. We have previously experienced Configuration Management(1) and Change Control(2) failures as well. What we have here is just a failure of a software development organization in competently discharging its most fundamental responsibilities.

No, BW did the right thing here in delaying it.

 

Ignoratio elenchi

The only major blunder BW made here is waiting until the last minute to announce the delay.

 

Not the only blunder but certainly a major one; we can agree on that.

 

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

 

(*) Another recent example of failure of design team is the Amplifier Window; the original "enhancement" was followed up with a bad fix which required a real fix subsequently. While the left hand was doing this, the right hand was actually coding Amplifiers out of existence.

 

(1) Defect fixes rolled out in a patch not making it into a subsequent release so the defect reappears after having been fixed.

 

(2) Code that is no way ready for production making it onto production servers. We had this situation recently where everyone who logged in during a time window had the game client continuously re-downloading the entire game in a never-ending loop. There was at least one other previous instance of code making it onto production servers prematurely.

Edited December 18, 2021 by mike_carton

[DarthArturus]

I’ve been testing on the PTS since they announced this. I’ve recently been testing the latest iteration on the PTS last night and there are still many hurdles for Bioware to overcome to make this feature a smooth and enjoyable option for us.

 

Ie, currently if you swap to your second combat style and back again, it reorganises your task bar differently than the way you had it set up. Keybinds are also not linked to each combat style to swap automatically, so you have to manually do that too. On top of that, it doesn’t always put your preferred discipline back or select your abilities choices you had previously set up.

 

The whole process of switching back and forth is pretty time consuming and inconvenient. There are also bugs where it doesn’t always put all your abilities back on the taskbar (and some general abilities are removed). Which means you have to double check and go hunting for them because you can’t sort active abilities from passive abilities.

 

Lastly, the outfit designer is bugged too. It won’t allow a weapon that’s different to your main story to be equiped. Ie on my bounty Hunter story I chose a sniper as the combat style and I can’t currently equip a sniper rifle in the outfitter because BH’s use 2 pistols. Plus when you swap to the second combat style, it unticks all your match colour options on your outfits.

 

I’m sure if they can over come all these problems and snares that slow down the process, it will be fun for some people. But at this stage, it is too cumbersome and time wasting to swap everything and reorganise your task bar, keybinds, ability tree and gear. It’s actually 100 times faster to just log out and log back in with another alt character.

 

As for new classes? Who knows what they have planned. If they don’t get this working properly and walk back on many negative changes in 7.0, this maybe the last expansion we ever see. So I think this part is moot until we see how well 7.0 is received by the masses. In its current form and with their current announcements, I won’t be playing it and neither will a bunch of others.

 

Because of all that, I would say 90% of these changes are aimed at new players and not old/current players. Sadly, if Bioware can’t attract enough new players, all of these changes will have been a waste of time.

 

My recent experience regarding combat styles of the last four days is in disagreement:

 

I am a Founder player. I copied over two characters from live to the PTS.

 

Selected their second combat styles. Completely rearranged the ability placement of every bar for both combat styles on both characters. Selected my preferences regarding discipline and ability trees.

 

Switching loadouts is easy as easy can be. Select the loadout and Activate. Done

 

My ability placement on every bar, discipline and ability tree selections returns perfectly to the screenshots I made after the reconfiguration.

 

I organize keybinds on ability functionality to minimize any changes required upon loadout change.

I have only done minimal work with the outfitter and no changing of weapon yet. The minimal changes I have made with two outfits carry over fine with loadout changes.

 

I love this new system. The two playstyles that i love to play are now available on my main character. I play sorcerer and juggernaut. I have no need to level any alts. I can dps, heal or tank with a simple loadout change.

[Pricia]

You will be able to switch your primary to Jedi Shadow if you want. You just need to make sure you have at least 1 light side point and I think completed Chapter 3 before 7.0 comes out. Sounds like you already meet those requirements. You'll get a mission to switch alignments of your primary combat style and another separate mission to choose your second combat style. Just remember that you will still be playing on Empire side with the Inquisitor origin story (or backstory in your case).

 

Actually on PTS right now you only get one mission for both. That really irks me. I had no choice but to pick a second combat style as well, if I canceled the mission I lost both.

[Schlumpfine]

 

Ie, currently if you swap to your second combat style and back again, it reorganises your task bar differently than the way you had it set up. Keybinds are also not linked to each combat style to swap automatically, so you have to manually do that too. On top of that, it doesn’t always put your preferred discipline back or select your abilities choices you had previously set up.

 

The Task bar settings and i think also the keybinding is not saved in the combat styles. It is saved in the loadouts.

You have to save a loadout for each combat style and load it when you switch the combat style

[-Alma-]

As a returning player (not played for many years), I like the second combat style option, but feel its a somewhat limited. Perhaps something like the following would work better in giving players full customisation on one character:

 

From character creation, when you choose your starter class, you receive a holocron for that class. Then through completing activities, world boss drops, flashpoints etc, you get the chance to loot different holocrons for other classes that you can use on your character to swap between classes/combat styles.

 

You can even expand on that system by having a holocron collection legacy reward and perhaps even modified holocrons that work in a way augmented gear works right now. Augmented holocrons are advanced versions which boost character stats.

 

This could even work the crew skills, collecting crew skill holocrons that expand your characters crew skill abilities, allowing you to have all of them on one character.

Edited December 19, 2021 by -Alma-

[MystyqeofXev]

Yes. That is what Software Project Management is all about. It is at least a 50 year old discipline with important lessons being learned as early as during the OS/360 development (mid-60s). They're not inventing the project management practice here. It is possible to do all of the above in Waterfall, RUP, and Agile Scrum development methodologies. We have previously experienced Configuration Management(1) and Change Control(2) failures as well. What we have here is just a failure of a software development organization in competently discharging its most fundamental responsibilities.

 

For those who don't understand the significance of that statement (Specifically the highlighted parts).. There are multiple ways to approach a long-term project (FYI, I'm no PM, but I've been forced to "dabble" in Afghanistan).

 

One is, after breaking down the project into component phases,, setting timelines, et al, the PM devotes all resources to the first step. Then the second step (with some backwards testing if necessay)., Then the 3rd. On the surface this appears slower, but you are pretty certain you're not going to have to go back and fix "stuff"

 

Method two is to break down your team, assign them specific tasks (say step one to team one, step two to team two), and make progress that way. (I'm way oversimplifying)

 

What Trixxie and the poster have pointed out - step one ISN'T WORKING. (Or 'buggy' at least). At a minimum there are UI issues. (again, way over simplifying)

 

We all know how "diligent" this team is in tracking down and fixing bugs. As evidenced by the invisible platforms dropping in EV last night. An issue that has been reported since 2015. (<-- not a typo)

[TrixxieTriss]

My recent experience regarding combat styles of the last four days is in disagreement:

 

I am a Founder player. I copied over two characters from live to the PTS.

 

Selected their second combat styles. Completely rearranged the ability placement of every bar for both combat styles on both characters. Selected my preferences regarding discipline and ability trees.

 

Switching loadouts is easy as easy can be. Select the loadout and Activate. Done

 

My ability placement on every bar, discipline and ability tree selections returns perfectly to the screenshots I made after the reconfiguration.

 

I organize keybinds on ability functionality to minimize any changes required upon loadout change.

I have only done minimal work with the outfitter and no changing of weapon yet. The minimal changes I have made with two outfits carry over fine with loadout changes.

 

I love this new system. The two playstyles that i love to play are now available on my main character. I play sorcerer and juggernaut. I have no need to level any alts. I can dps, heal or tank with a simple loadout change.

 

Not sure why being a founder should influence anything. But if you need that info, my wife and I are also founders.

 

I’ve tried it on new characters and copied lvl 75 characters and it does not work as you describe for myself or my wife. I can only assume it has some massive bugs still.

 

I’ve tried it on a Bounty Hunter story with BH / sniper combat style, Sith Inquisitor with Guardian / Sage combat style AND I tried it again today with Jedi Warrior story with Assassin / Sorc combat style.

 

Maybe it’s just some combos working at the moment and you got lucky. Cause Ive tried 3 different ones and it doesn’t work the same as what you experienced.

[TrixxieTriss]

The Task bar settings and i think also the keybinding is not saved in the combat styles. It is saved in the loadouts.

You have to save a loadout for each combat style and load it when you switch the combat style

 

Tried that again today and it still messed up. Sadly, there is no tutorial or official explanation about that anywhere. So any people who’ve not done testing before, it will be confusing (aka my wife).

If BioWare does fix it properly for 7.0, I really hope that add a small tutorial on how it’s supposed to work because it’s not intuitive at the moment and people are going ti be confused ASF.

Edited December 19, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

[Sareeph]

Tried that again today and it still messed up. Sadly, there is no tutorial or official explanation about that anywhere. So any people who’ve not done testing before, it will be confusing (aka my wife).

If BioWare does fix it properly for 7.0, I really hope that add a small tutorial on how it’s supposed to work because it’s not intuitive at the moment and people are going ti be confused ASF.

 

What I have seen is that if I choose specific loadout Sin/spec (aka loadout 1), my bars and gear and such do what I want. If I were to change from that loadout to Mara/spec (aka loadout 2), my bars and gear and such do what I want. If I were in Sin loadout 1 and switch to Mara style without switching to a specific loadout, my bars and gear break loose and everything is screwed. The game is populating my bars according to which abilities I received in the order they were received.

[Lord_Arawn]

I am sincerely disappointed with this expansion. One of the few cool things, it won't work like it should. As far as I could see, you can only choose between two styles, yours and another one you choose, but so far so good. The big problem is that to change skills you'll have to go to a shrine, that is, you'll have to go back to a place, change skills and until you do the whole process again, you'll remain with that skill.

 

In the end, it will be useless, I won't even use it, I like to play with Sith Warrior, I would just like to be able to launch my lightning or use the Inquisitor's powers in a few moments, but not to play a good part of my game as Inquisitor. The same goes for my Inquisitor, I don't want to play Warrior with him, but at times make use of two lightsabers, like Palpatine. Combat Styles will only be good for those who are too lazy to log in with another character.

 

My idea was to be able to use this as a strategy in solo pve combats at any time and be able to switch between three different styles in the case of Subscriber. My animation for this expansion is zero and maybe not even converting any of my characters since it won't serve me for anything the Combat Style.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Lord_Arawn

[DarthArturus]

I always and only switch loadouts. My loadouts specify the outfits, discipline, ability tree, skills on bars. Works perfectly every time.

 

I saw in another post a person with issues of the key binding changing. To my knowledge and from what i've read, key bindings are not part of loadouts and stored server side.

 

Also complaints about bar 5 keybindings not holding; I tested bar 5 & 6 and mine hold just fine.

 

Also mentioned elsewhere that area loading messes up the bars. I flew to Hoth, no change, all perfect.

 

btw, I just recently installed the PTR.

 

addition 1: I purchased the legacy field respec. I can change my loadout with different disciplines anywhere.

 

addition 2: If you change the combat style on that tab, the loadout will also auto save.

Edited December 19, 2021 by DarthArturus
addition

[TrixxieTriss]

What I have seen is that if I choose specific loadout Sin/spec (aka loadout 1), my bars and gear and such do what I want. If I were to change from that loadout to Mara/spec (aka loadout 2), my bars and gear and such do what I want. If I were in Sin loadout 1 and switch to Mara style without switching to a specific loadout, my bars and gear break loose and everything is screwed. The game is populating my bars according to which abilities I received in the order they were received.

 

Tested a Jugg / Mara setup this morning and have noticed that the loadouts work as you describe. But when I try it with my other characters I created or transferred the other day, it doesn’t work at all.

So i’m wondering if it has something to do with characters created / copied after the last PTS patch or if it only works with Maras.

I’ll recreate some of the other characters again tomorrow or tonight and see if I can pin point what’s happening because at the moment it’s certainly still broken and not consistent.

Edited December 20, 2021 by TrixxieTriss