Posted by ReDDoT in Blue Milk & Cereal | 22 Comments
Blue Milk & Cereal: Does TOR Have Room For Social Professions?
No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal. Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!
Every class in Star Wars: The Old Republic is focused squarely on the combat aspect of the game. That’s not necessarily a bad thing either, however, as it allows a very specific focus for the player and developers alike. But we all know that MMOs can provide a wider variety of activities than just combat. That’s exactly the point behind this discussion on social professions on the official forums.
For those that are not sure what a social profession is – the best example would come from another Star Wars MMO – Star Wars Galaxies. The game in question had quite a few professions that fully revolved around interacting with and servicing other players. You don’t fight anyone (unless you really, really want to). You practically stand, socialize and do the tasks that are appropriate for your class. A great example would be the Entertainer profession, which allowed players to stay in a cantina and actually work there, essentially buffing other players. It’s certainly not everybody’s dream to play an Entertainer, but it gives an option to play and progress through the game more on the social side than the combat side. A varied style of gameplay, to be sure.
So while we know that the classes for TOR’s launch are related to combat, is there room for more variety later? Can we see non-combat classes such as social professions? Maybe in an expasion down the road? Could the BioWare story for these classes be as interesting as that of the combat classes? You can vote, but we’d love to hear your thoughts below!
Loading ...
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Variety is the spice of life, and I think BioWare would be making mistake if they didn’t fabricate more ways to participate in this galaxy they’ve built.
It was fun taking the entertainer prof in SWG. Worked well with a scout so you could set up a camp and dance away the battle fatigue out in the field.
i was thinking more of a trader from swg where you focus on keeping the economy going
For any product to continue success, variety needs to be added.
Social professions might have a place, but not as full classes; how would you make an interesting story based around dancing in bars? Or even crafting… It’d be very hard to build a story about being a musician for a good 200 hours. How did Entertainers in SWG level? Almost solely through macros. Same with doctors and similar buff classes.
They DO, however, have an opportunity to shine in a non-story area, as primary or secondary ‘crafting’ professions. Crafting armor and weapons is obviously already available, but it would also be very interesting to be able to craft ‘buffs’ through dancing or playing music… on the side of your epic story, of course. You’d still be a smuggler or trooper or Jedi, you’d just be doing something else on the side.
Maybe it sounds odd for your Jedi character to be dancing in clubs, but then again, it’s kind of equally odd for the same Jedi to be making blasters and selling them on the open market in his/her spare time.
And if there’s primary and secondary professions, well… can anyone say fishing?
I thought doctor was fun as hell as well as being useful in combat i buffed the hello out of people for soem serious credits. I was tera kasi/doctor and it was awesoem pre nge OF COURSE but it definately had a place both in social realm and in combat.
I was also able to cleanse myself of just about anything that a bounty hunter or any other class could hit me with. The only people that waxed me was JEDI, and there were like 2-3 around in the whole server pre NGE that is. My point is Doctor was fun as hell!!!
YES, please
I dont think having them as classes would work but why not have secondary skills for dancing, musician, cook, dancer, etc… Obviously this would not be ready for launch but they should deffinitly add it to the “wall of crazy”tm. I know my wife would like this aspect of the game and I would as well…consider them mini games within the game.
omg please not.
they can add more professions – I’m okay with that,
but I dislike the idea of profession based character classes.
thats what professions are already for.
just look at ff11 or ff14 – both have profession based character classes and even if its just my opinion – but I dont like this system.
why make a class which is not able to fight if you wish/have to, when you can just add more variety in professions for “real classes”?
instead of profession based classes they should rather implement more actual “standart” classes – or make the 4 non-force-user classes available to both factions – but thats not the right place to talk about that.
I think, although it could be nice, it would be a feature to keep for a later stage, when the game is already well implemented, because it is a costly feature in terms of man-hours that targets only a fraction of the game’s population.
Also, it remains to be seen if the game can be/is adapted to a type of class that would only work in towns.
While I would rather not see these types of professions put in as classes, I would love to see these kinds of professions put in as actual secondary professions. For example the entertainment profession could allow players to learn new dances that could possibly give small buffs as mentioned above. I think that its these kinds of professions that really add to a game and really help with good RP in an MMO.
don’t agree, but i can see how that would be a compromise to han solo the massage therapist.
If people want to have those as professions, then they should be able to…but what a lame existence.
agreed
I have been part of the thread on the official forums. My stance on this is “no.” It’s quite simple really, the game — as we have seen it — is simply not created to support this type of idea. The “professions” in the game are called “Crew Skills” for a reason, your companions perform most of them, not you. There is no place in the basic design of the game that we have seen for these types of professions.
They could have created a professions system just like WoW or SWG or many other MMOs I have seen, but they didn’t. They decided to do something different, i.e. allowing you to use your companions for crafting and similar activities, rather than your character. From what we have seen, their intent with the system is to keep your character as a hero and your companions do the more mundane stuff.
So, to make this work in the system they have created, you would have to have one of your companions be the entertainer or what have you. Which means either you stand around in the cantina while he/she dances, or you drop him/her off while you go adventure and come back later to get your credits or whatever. Either way just sounds like a horrible system.
Of course, they could develop a new system for social professions, but it would go against the decisions they have already made. I would much prefer other avenues be explored to create social spaces and experience. Introducing pazaak, of course, is a popular idea. Other minigames and social activities could be introduced that would not include this type of system.
Also, the purpose of an entertainer in SWG has no transfer into TOR. We already have healers and classes with buffs. The system is just different. SWG was designed from the ground up to utilize entertainers and other classes for healing, buffing, and accomplishing other tasks. SWTOR is just not designed that way. I don’t ask to find pieces of the Triforce in Mass Effect, and I wouldn’t ask to become an Entertainer in TOR. (now, flame away)
A social class in swtor would be absolutley silly in many videos and presentations bioware has stressed that they want you to feel like a hero through combat and everyother aspect of the game. being an entertainer dancing at a cantina hardly sounds heroic.
umm. luke skywalker the bartender or gogo dancer…lols. People join epic adventures to save the girl, the day or the galaxy. They don’t do it to pour captain morgan a rum and coke.
Sure, if you want to take the easy, predictable way out… but there are many, many ways to be more creative.
I agree with Raz.
My hope is Bioware focuses on a successful vision of their game and not a cobbled together patchwork of ideas in hopes of being everything to everyone.
Secondary professions, not even tied to crew skills could make sense in time
But let’s see the fame hit 3 million in subscribers in the format defined first
I say no to any non-combat classes if it messes with others in game experience. It cause havoc in game and distract from game’s story focus. No SWG playerss will play story part and ruin game’s economy with their overprice items. I want to keep this game as far from SWG. I never had good experience in game. It was too much concentration on players vendors and buffers.
If you have classes that match actual jobs or just buff classes (dancers) it destroy economy and make every player need consent buffs to be relialbe in combat. I am against it.
If its any class that won’t ruin gameplay or the economy than it might not be a problem. No crafting classes or buff classes. If they want social classes well than let it not be anything dealing with ingame credits or buffs.
If they want politicians or something I don’t care.
Just remember this game got so much attention because its total opposite of Star Wars Galaxies. Lets not follow mistake of a sandbox game which focues on non combat, story and just deals with credits. I am sure a vast majority are interested in a game actually based on SW lore with storyline. Plus people are here for MMO sequel to KOTOR games.
I voted “no”. This is not SWG, and those concepts just wouldn’t work. I’m all for more immersion, but these types of professions would not add that. Just imagine, a Sith Sorcerer… Cantina Dancer??? Or if you want to suggest having classes that are dedicated solely to this, how could the game work at all with a class that does not hold up in combat, therefore eliminating a vast majority of the content for them to participate in?
This is a combat and story driven game. As Georg Zoeller said recently, this is *not* the spiritual successor to SWG. It is the sucessor to Knights of the Old Republic, and I don’t remember any of the main characters in that game being involved in anything like being a dedicated crafter or a doctor who sits in a medcenter all day. Again, I’m all for other side elements to add more immersion and to help with RP’ers, even having your own shop that your companions run. But never, ever, ever a class dedicated to just entertaining or “doctoring”.
I am not particularly certain that folks that focus on sales and crafting can really be “heroic” and I believe that is what BW/LA/EA is going for. They might find someway to incorporate it enough that you could be like a field mechanic trooper or something to keep you engaged in the combat, but having a specific role in regards to vehicle maintenance. That just seems a bit off the cuff and far to sandboxy to me.