Wild Space: Playable Species Lore, Class Balance, And Re-Specing

It’s a big galaxy our there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

One of the things that greatly interests me about the character creation process are the species that you can play as. In SW:TOR, BioWare made the conscious decision to not include “non-human-like” classes. This means that Mon Calamari, Trandoshan, Rodians, and Bothans (among many others) will not be available for play when the game goes live. Instead we have “near-human” species such as the Chiss, Zabrak, and Sith Pureblood. BioWare made this decision because they thought that players would have trouble identifying with a character of “strange” species.

Over at SW:TOR Life, Joshrooms argues that BioWare has to walk a fine line balancing Star Wars lore as well as gameplay mechanics that might not always agree with each other. The trouble is that MMO gamers expect certain gameplay aspects that aren’t always “lore friendly” (and vice versa). As you can image, this is quite the tough job and the first conflict of lore and gameplay occurs when you choose your species. Joshrooms talks about the Chiss and Sith Purebloods and why, from a lore perspective, the can or cannot play certain classes. It is a great read (if you don’t mind the occasional spoiler or two) and I would encourage all of you to head over to SW:TOR Life to read the article.

Next, the guys over at Darth Hater scored a great interview at PAX with James Ohlen, Game Director for SW:TOR. The interview focused on endgame content, beta testing, and class balance between multiple game systems (specifically, PvE and PvP). Hearing about how that balance happens and how the teams work together to achieve that was very interesting to read about. Here’s an excerpt:

DH: On that point… how are you approaching class balance? We heard a lot about mirrors and how you may need to keep things somewhat similar to each other, while still keeping them separate but unique in their own ways. Can you speak to how that works in PvP?

JO: Well, PvP does impact class balance. The combat design team is led by Georg Zoeller, who is my lead combat designer. They’re always communicating with Gabe Amatangelo, who is the Flashpoint and PvP guru of the group, and so they’re in close communication. Gabe has a lot of experience from Warhammer Online on how to balance PvP combat, so he’ll just talk to the combat team and tell them, “Hey, try to avoid this, or “Please don’t use these kinds of abilities, and “Be careful with the stuns; we don’t want to stunlock the player in PvP. Things like that, and the combat team uses that. Occasionally, I’ll come into it and make a dictate that makes everyone run around with their hair on fire, but they’ll usually solve that.

James Ohlen always gives great interviews and this one was no exception. Check out Darth Hater for the full article.

If you haven’t heard, there is a new SW:TOR fansite that is already pumping out great content. Force Junkies has just arrived on the fansite scene, and has come out with some great features like an(other) interview with James Ohlen at PAX. However, one of their recent articles is what I would like to focus on. In their article titled “To Spec, Then Re-spec, That Is The Question”, they talk about the feature of being able to respec your class’ talents and even advanced class. They are worried that one of the most important decisions of your character’s life, picking the advanced class, could become meaningless if there isn’t a high price to pay, whether that be in credits or time.

As we know, advanced classes in SW:TOR really are entire classes in their own right. Each one is different and all have varying degrees of difficulty. Force Junkies suggest that a player switching advanced classes should have to go through a long series of quests designed to teach them how to play their new advanced class. Obviously, this could cause issues with some members of the community who do not care to do extra quests in order to learn a class that they feel they already know. However, if the player has played more then 10 levels (or something) in their previous advanced class, then some training on how to play the new advanced class would be quite helpful. Again, some people won’t want to do that, but it will probably help out a lot of people who struggle to figure out how to play a totally new class. Also, switching from a DPS advanced class to a healing advanced class, and learning all of the intricacies of that new role, is quite difficult for a new player. This “supplemental training” could be a really good idea for someone in that position.

Check out the full article over at Force Junkies and let us all know how you feel about advanced class switching and receiving “supplemental training” in your new advanced class.