VampyrePaladin wrote:
SWG had that system or similar when it 1st came out 3 years ago.
So What if SOE ripped of WoW, 1st everyone complains that WoW is better SOE use a similarity and all of a sudden they are wrong?
Good on SOE for doing it, they are trying to provide what is best for their paying customers (its about time)
Obviously, you have no idea what you are talking about when you say the pre-CU system was similar to this new Expertise system. What you have now differs RADICALLY from pre-CU.
First, as others have pointed out, the pre-CU system (as well as the CU system) was originally a mix-and-match system. Players could mix elements of any of the game's professions FREELY, so long as they had the skill points to do so. By contrast, this new system is very linear. And worse, it's a FLAWED linear system. You need look no further than the new Bounty Hunter tree for proof of that.
The official SWG forum is in an uproar again, because after all the rhetoric from the devs about reintroducing "diversity" into the mix for players, the players have already seen that they will be channeled once again into templates predetermined by the devs. A good example of that is the defensive bonuses BH's can receive for composite armor (assault armor). Why no trees for battle armor or recon armor? Is it because the devs want all bounty hunters to look like Boba Fett rather than Zam Wessell? Why no pistol certs? Is it because the devs wanted all BH's to emulate Boba Fett rather than Jango Fett?
These two flaws are glaring examples of the ineptitude of these devs.
The second radical difference between pre-CU and the current system is a difference that is at the very core of the game: the level-based damage multipliers. Before the Combat Upgrade went live, all the beasts and NPCs of the game had numeric ratings in the box you could bring up by the radial-menu "Examine" command. That "difficulty level" was almost irrelevant to everyone, with the exception of Creature Handlers, for whom it was the determinant of which creatures they could tame at a given level of expertise. But for combat purposes, everyone and everything played on a level playing field. Thunes and horned voritors could and frequently did kill even full-template characters in the pre-CU environment. When the CU went live, it ALL boiled down to a comparison of your level versus your target's level. Even an unarmored toon with a CDEF rifle could kill any target in a couple of shots, as long as he was a sufficient number of levels higher than his target.
This one change effectively ruined the gameplay value of ALL the pre-existing planets in the game, save for whichever planet happens to have the "right" mix of creatures of your level at a given time. WoW has a similar effect with it's multiplicity of "zones," which I still don't particularly like -- but at least they have plenty of zones with plenty of content for ALL the levels of players in their game. But for SOE to have shoehorned a level-based damage-multiplier system on top of a game originally designed to be a level playing field is just asinine.
The ONLY rationale I can see for the move was because "They did it in WoW...."
"So what if SOE rips off WoW?" Egad.... SWG was a totally different game than WoW, with totally different mechanics arising from a totally different approach to how the game should have been built in the first place. And now, trying to retroactively paste individual features from WoW on top of the original SWG is a never-ending parade of idiocy. THAT is why I care when SOE rips off WoW -- again. It's just another element adding to the ruination of a game I once greatly enjoyed.