Georg Zoeller, Lead Combat Designer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, chimed in on the official forums today clarifying points regarding player character respec’cing and dual spec’cing.
In short: 1. You can pay in-game credits and re-do your character’s skill points, 2. Changing your Advanced Class is still not possible and 3. Dual Specs are not planned for launch, but may be added later.
A Jedi Consular 'respec'cing' an enemy from 'Alive' to 'Dead'
Here’s the full hog from Zoeller (below). I really should probably finish packing for the BioWare trip now as I leave in a few hours. Nothing like leaving it ’till the last minute!
“The ability to respec your skill point distribution is still in the game.
Summary, since this is a confusing topic:
You can change your skill point distribution by paying credits at a vendor on your capital world. That has not changed.
You may or may not be able to change your Advanced Class, we haven’t decided on this one yet. If you can, the cost would be significant. That has not changed.
There is currently no plan to add dual spec (the ability to swap almost instantly between two skill point configurations) for launch. At this point, it seems not necessary for us, but we’re not opposed to add it at a later point / patch should we feel that the game would benefit from it.”
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So what is your opinion on this development?
Personally, I’m not very happy about it. I just can’t see any scenario where it would not be better to allow two specs simultaneously as opposed to just one.
This will be changed eventually, I guarantee it.
I agree that having two specs would be beneficial for those who plan to participate in different aspects of the game, like having a pvp spec and a dungeon/raid spec as long as its in the same Advance Class tree but i also agree with not having the ability to dual spec into the only other Advanced class you could get. I look at the Advance Classes like actual classes in themselves so it’d be like having a Warrior spec and Mage Dual Spec. It sounds cool, but seems a little OP for the players. Plus each Advance class has its own story and that could get confusing.
I’m not too surprised by this and I’m kinda happy about it. You can’t really expect them to throw the kitchen sink at us on release day and it’s just plain not smart. I liken it to being married and how you should treat your first Anniversary. You don’t want to take your wife to the Bahamas and replace her 1 carat diamand with a 2 carat on the first Anniversary. You do this and for the next 50 years you won’t be able to top it! You got to be smart and start simple and go from there. Keep her guessing. As a community we should want the same thing, we should want to be surprised and have great anticipation for every patch and expansion. Dual spec may not be available on release day but it won’t take long before they start teasing us with future patches and it’s availability.
Would it not affect the storyline as they say each class and advanced class has their own storyline. Would being able to swap between two not cause problems with that.