Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Reizla

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Grizzkhit

Seems the author forgot that you choose an advanced class in Swtor at level 10, so you basically just have to choose another path on your mirror class to get a completely different playstyle.

These are identical to their mirror's counterparts as well. Vanguard (Trooper) == Powertech (Bounty Hunter).

What I don't get is that the author tells us that mirroring is BAD BAD BAD. And look at what MMO has done it for the last 7 years now..? Right WoW has been mirroring classes 100% and no one ever complained about that..?

Other point of interest: the classes the author named as mirrors ARE NOT their mirros. The mirror of Bounty Hunter is Smuggler, and not the Trooper as the author states...

Also, as Grizzkhit  said gameplay is different. Mirrored classes have a whole set of DIFFERENT skills. In basic they might seem the same, but the differences in skills makes them completely different in game-play.

 

I don't mind mirroring when it's done more like how WAR did it at launch and less like how WAR does it now. :) I used the White Lion and Marauder comparison in the article. They functioned very similarly, but were still different in meaningful ways that established a sense of class identity.

And yes, the Bounty Hunter is the Trooper mirror, not the Smuggler. 

http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/bounty_hunter/mercenary/

http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/trooper/commando/

Compare the Mercenary Bodyguard tree (Healing) to the Combat Medic (Healing) tree.

http://db.darthhater.com/abilities/class_abilities/trooper/

http://db.darthhater.com/abilities/class_abilities/bounty_hunter/

As for them being different. I mentioned in the article that yes, the abilities are styled and flavored in a way that is appropriate to their class from a visual standpoint, but from a gameplay perspective they're the exact same thing. If you have a level 50 Trooper Commando, you'll know how to play a Bounty Hunter Mercenary Bodyguard without any need to adjust. You could set your hotbars and talents up exactly the same as your other class with the mirrored abilities.

That is where I took issue. I don't mind mirroring to some extent, but being completely identical is what bugged me. This isn't gamebreaking for me -- but it's something worth talking about as is clearly evident by the discussion that has followed. ;)

Did you play WAR at release? The qq over balancing was epic ... it filled the forums.

As to the above poster - *Balancing is over rated* -

Yes I agree, classes should be there to fullfill *roles*. As long as each class is equally viable in PvE and PvP in its *role* I dont really care. I played DAoC for many years and enjoyed the game.

However even back then there were balancing qq threads abound. These days its even worse as MMO players develop even larger entitlement issues. The bottom line these days is that a non-mirrored game is either strickly PvE or a niche game, Developers have learned that the epic QQ over balance is just not worth the headache.

Hell take Rift as a recent example ... both sides have all the same options and still the Rift forums were (when I last played) FULL of bitching about how X spec or X class was OP and needed *balance*. WoW had constant QQ about shamans/paladins being faction specific. DAoC had massive issues with the Mid healers and Runecasters, Hib Animists and even the stealth classes got in on it ... Shadowzerkers being FOTM until the LA nerf .. then they all cried Infiltrators were top dog. SCout from Alb was always viewed as the *best* scout class .. etc etc. I can go on and on and on listing this crap.

Did it bother me? No. I've always argued that PvE and PvP are TEAM games and as long as balance is maintained across the TEAM its fine, but these days I'll just settle for mirrors so that I dont have to scan past 50 qq threads a day about class / faction balance.

Sorry its just not a battle I concider worth fighting with the Dev's over. Its easier for them, sure we take a hit in play options, but you need to learn to pick your battles and fight for something that you have a chance of winning. In the current climate of gaming with the way players react to *any* perceived balance issues ... its just not worth the effort to fight.

Wait for a niche game (DAoC2 how I long for thee) and move onto a battle you can win.

It's the old Brown v Board of Education arguement. Separate is inherantly unequal. The only way to achieve perfect balance is to have identical sides. Now at this stage, I can see how that can easily be looked at as a huge negative, however, if you look at the forums of nearly every game out there, it's filled with "nerf this" and "buff that". So the developers are left with a huge difficult decision that is impossible to please everyone. SWTOR chose to mirror the classes on each faction, but do it in a way that still felt as different as possible. The alternative would be a neverending battle to try to get close to balance but never being able to reach it, but you have more diversity.

Basically, there is no way to please everybody in this case, so it's hard to fault the devs too much.

Originally posted by chefca

Ok I just can't let this pass...

 

I think you're downplaying how much of a problem the non-mirrored classes were in WAR. WAR was my favorite MMO, and one of the biggest reasons was because of the unique classes, BUT they were a HUGE problem from day one!

People constantly complained about:  "my class is gimped", "if my class isn't fixed I'm going back to WoW", "X class is SO OP", and blah blah blah. So the devs would try and fix it so suddenly: "why did they nerf my class", "well my class sucks now, I'm going back to WoW" and my favorite "finally they nerfed X now if they could buff my class maybe the game would be balanced".

I say mirror the classes and focus on making this awesome game better in other ways.

 

I agree. WAR had that issue because they had built a game on lore - and you have to follow lore. Star Wars has the same thing going. So you decide to either make mirrored classes at the expense of hurting player replayability or you try and make unique classes at the expense of spending time balacing - a hard task. 

I prefer having unbalanced, different classes - as they will always be worked on. But in WAR's case it was helmed by Mythic ... and they never really that great. DAoC was okay because it was one of the early major MMOs and back then, all of them were so new they were all somewhat fun to play. But DAoC wasn't all that well designed from a dev standpoint and neither was WAR. Mythic is a very overrated company IMO.

You don't even have to go all the way back to WAR to see what effect non-mirrored classes have on the game.   Just check out Rift.  It's one of the more unbalanced class systems in both PvP and PvE that exist today.  Every single update they do includes a major nerf to a specific class and a major buff to another.  Then it all gets changed around in the next update.  It's ridiculous the amount of balancing issues they have.

I'm not saying having a non-mirrored class system is bad.  In fact, I prefer more options for classes than less options.  Always will.  But I also understand how mirrored classes in a two faction game would make it easier to balance for both PvE and PvP. It's not like TOR only has 4 classes per side---it's technically 8 with the Advanced Class system.  For me, that's plenty, particularly when you take into account that the classes, even though mirrored, don't necessarily FEEL like they are mirrored due to differing weapons and animations, as well as a completely different class story.  

Originally posted by Paragus1

I agree with you.   It completely hurts the prospect of giving each side a distinctive feel and feels like they opted to cut corners either out of laziness or for the sake of balancing.   Just another in a long line of examples of how they are trying to dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator.

Let me guess you ve played beta and no exactly how things play out. Let me give all you people that think they re exact mirrors a hint. Follow up abilities and reactives, they don t play the same.

[Mod Edit]

Originally posted by Raymac26

It's the old Brown v Board of Education arguement. Separate is inherantly unequal. The only way to achieve perfect balance is to have identical sides. Now at this stage, I can see how that can easily be looked at as a huge negative, however, if you look at the forums of nearly every game out there, it's filled with "nerf this" and "buff that". So the developers are left with a huge difficult decision that is impossible to please everyone. SWTOR chose to mirror the classes on each faction, but do it in a way that still felt as different as possible. The alternative would be a neverending battle to try to get close to balance but never being able to reach it, but you have more diversity.

Basically, there is no way to please everybody in this case, so it's hard to fault the devs too much.

Exaclty.

Either way the Dev's cant win on this one.

They either mirror and get posts like these about being lazy, or they dont and suffer qq posts about balance for the entire life of the game.

As I said above, its just not worth fighting them on. The way I see it having Mirrored classes means that all the Dev time that WOULD be taken up monthly scanning logs, checking for OPness and recoding and adjusting classes (And lets be honest, pretty much every stinking patch has *balance fixes*) can be focused elsewhere Improving other aspects of the game.

Sure they will still monitor logs to balance X class vs X class .. but its a hell of alot easier to balance 4 classes than 8.

Players have proved time and time again that even a slight change to a class can be creativly used to gain advantage, be it in your favor playing that class or playing against that class. At least in a mirrored system a nerf to your sides tanks is a nerf to thier sides tanks, a buff to thier healers is a buff to your healers. It gives people far less room to complain.

Sure you'll still get the 1V1 QQ, *my Warrior cant kill thier healer NERF!*, *My healer cant kill thier rogue NERF!* but at least both sides suffer the same and its then a teamwork issue and not a class issue.

The *L2P* argument is easier to use when its a mirror system and the other side has the same classes available that your side does.

Originally posted by sirphobos

Originally posted by nate1980

I'm really bummed out about this news. I actually didn't look too far into the classes to see that they were mirrors of each other, so this is the first I'm hearing about this. It's going to make rolling the mirrored class to experience the story hard to do. I'm one of those players that loathes repeating content, including the same class dynamics.

Play the opposite advanced class.  Even better, pick a different combat role.

A Shadow Tank, for instance, will be nothing like a Sorcerer Healer.

Good point, where's my head at today, that'd work perfectly. Thanks!

i agree, cutting down to 8 final classes seems a copout to me by bioware as opposed to 16.

of course, to me classes in general are a copout and i'd have rather the game has a character sheet/skills type of system, but i do find that the games-with-classes that i enjoy are the ones with lots of class choices.  EQs 1, 2, ff11, rift with their build-a-class.

While this game does have mirrored classes, at least the mirrored classes have completely different icons and animations, and yes that goes a long way. 

Anyone who played Warhammer should be completely fine with mirrored classes. They tried to do the "similar" class thing and all it resulted in was one always being more powerful than the other. 

They could have just as easily made generic classes and thrown them on each side ala WoW, at least here they made different stories and visuals to distinguish them. 

Originally posted by teakbois

 

Mirrored isnt ok when you basically have 4 classes in the entire game because of it.

 

Mate there is in reality 8 class in SWTOR.

There is nothing similiar between IA Sniper and IA Operative, or Consular Sage and Consular Shadow.

Advanced Class is just a name.

Your opinion is based on unbeta-ed knowledge it seems.

@demarc01: Yes. I played WAR at launch. The fact they failed to balance things properly doesn't mean the design concept is flawed, maybe they just weren't so great at balancing. ;) Obviously, it'll never be as easy as fully mirrored classes, but why shirk the challenge? As a gamer I expect more, and that's all this article was about.. Many of my recent previews were decidedly positive in tone on the game, but nothing is perfect, so I wanted to take a look at some of the aspects I don't feel are as great.

If you prioritize balance parity more than anything else or even disagree with my premise that classes are identical, that's completely fine. I offered my take on what I felt was a negative and opened it up to you guys to share your thoughts at the end. :)

With that said, I am pretty satisfied with the resulting discussion. There are people with strong arguments on both sides of the issue and that's all you can really ask for.

Thanks for your thoughts on the subject, guys; it's been illuminating! Keep it coming!

Originally posted by Raymac26

It's the old Brown v Board of Education arguement. Separate is inherantly unequal. The only way to achieve perfect balance is to have identical sides. Now at this stage, I can see how that can easily be looked at as a huge negative, however, if you look at the forums of nearly every game out there, it's filled with "nerf this" and "buff that". So the developers are left with a huge difficult decision that is impossible to please everyone. SWTOR chose to mirror the classes on each faction, but do it in a way that still felt as different as possible. The alternative would be a neverending battle to try to get close to balance but never being able to reach it, but you have more diversity.

Basically, there is no way to please everybody in this case, so it's hard to fault the devs too much.

And that's how I see it.

The only way to not just balance the classes, but to actually MAKE THE ARGUMENT that the classes are balanced, is to mirror them out, and do it in the not so subtle way that BW has done it.

It's not just about balancing the classes.  It's about making little doubt that a A faction class = B faction class, so that at least THAT argument loses by default.  8 AC's to balance out is going to be more than enough work to do.

Balancing completely different classes is definately possible.

Look at GW1 - the classes are very different from each other, and the mechanics of the game make it even harder to balance what with being able to have only 8 skills usable at once, people discovering wierd new combinations leading to flavour of the month builds, extra powerful elite skills, the really competitve PvP meaning people really scream when things get Nerfed too hard on their chars etc etc

Yet they still managed it.  It might be harder to do than having mirrored classes, but it certainly makes for a more interesting, enjoyable and varied game

Originally posted by Kappadonna

 
 

I agree. WAR had that issue because they had built a game on lore - and you have to follow lore. Star Wars has the same thing going. So you decide to either make mirrored classes at the expense of hurting player replayability or you try and make unique classes at the expense of spending time balacing - a hard task. 

I prefer having unbalanced, different classes - as they will always be worked on. But in WAR's case it was helmed by Mythic ... and they never really that great. DAoC was okay because it was one of the early major MMOs and back then, all of them were so new they were all somewhat fun to play. But DAoC wasn't all that well designed from a dev standpoint and neither was WAR. Mythic is a very overrated company IMO.

I've said this before and I'll say it again.  There are:

8 advanced classes

8 different stories

There are easily as many replayability options in TOR, even with mirrored classes, as there are any other game out there.  Mike B.'s concern about Soldier/Guardian playing just like BH/Tech is like me being upset that a Tauren and Human Warrior play the same in WoW.

I'm an altoholic, and I STILL don't have 8 maxed out characters in any MMO I've played.  Cripe, I don't even have 4 maxed in any game I've played.

If 8 isn't enough, Mr. Van Patten, then no MMO to date has made you happy.

As much as I dislike that there are no Imperial Troopers, Empire Smugglers, Republic Agents or Bounty Hunters (and unlikely that there ever will be as noted by another poster in another thread - you'd still only have the four base classes - we'd just have four trooper/hunters and four smuggler/agents) . . .

. . . we kind of have to look at some of the specializations (not even including hybrids):

• Sith Warrior Marauder Annihilation
• Sith Warrior Marauder Carnage
• Sith Warrior Marauder Rage
• Sith Warrior Juggernaut Immortal
• Sith Warrior Juggernaut Vengeance
• Sith Warrior Juggernaut Rage
• Sith Inquisitor Assassin Darkness
• Sith Inquisitor Assassin Deception
• Sith Inquisitor Assassin Madness
• Sith Inquisitor Sorcerer Corruption
• Sith Inquisitor Sorcerer Lightning
• Sith Inquisitor Sorcerer Madness
• Bounty Hunter Mercenary Bodyguard
• Bounty Hunter Mercenary Arsenal
• Bounty Hunter Mercenary Pyrotech
• Bounty Hunter Powertech Shield Tech
• Bounty Hunter Powertech Advanced Prototype
• Bounty Hunter Powertech Pyrotech
• Imperial Agent Sniper Marksmanship
• Imperial Agent Sniper Engineering
• Imperial Agent Sniper Lethality
• Imperial Agent Operative Medicine
• Imperial Agent Operative Concealment
• Imperial Agent Operative Lethality

Originally posted by Robsolf

I've said this before and I'll say it again.  There are:

8 advanced classes

8 different stories

There are easily as many replayability options in TOR, even with mirrored classes, as there are any other game out there.  Mike B.'s concern about Soldier/Guardian playing just like BH/Tech is like me being upset that a Tauren and Human Warrior play the same in WoW.

I'm an altoholic, and I STILL don't have 8 maxed out characters in any MMO I've played.  Cripe, I don't even have 4 maxed in any game I've played.

If 8 isn't enough, Mr. Van Patten, then no MMO to date has made you happy.

No, that is not the same.  There is a difference between both classes being represented amongst multiple factions (thus potentially playable by multiple races) and two different "classes" having the same mechanics.  You would expect the Tauren and Human Warriors to offer similar play - they're both Warriors.  One would not expect a Trooper and a Bounty Hunter to play the same.

I picture a Trooper.  I picture a Bounty Hunter.  They use the same mechanics?  WTF?  I try to picture it...it just rubs me the wrong way.  Republic Trooper and Imperial Trooper?  Sure.  Imperial Bounty Hunter and Republic Bounty Hunter?  Sure.  Republic Trooper and Imperial Bounty Hunter?  WTF, man?  (Yes, I'm using the term Imperial Bounty Hunter even though it is just Bounty Hunter).

WoW has 10 classes - I only played a week into Cata, so I only took one toon to 85 - my Lock.  I had an 80 Pally, Shammy, Warrior, and DK.  I had a 75 Priest, 72 Hunter, 62 Druid, and a 47 Mage.  I had several other alts of those classes, though the highest does not really count since it was just another level 70 DK.

RIFT has 4 classes - I had a 50 Mage, Warrior, Cleric, and Rogue.  I also had a bunch of toons in the 20-30 range that I deleted to focus on those four 50's when R7-8 came out.

I'm not sure I would consider you an altoholic... Hell, by the way most people use the term - I'm not an altoholic.

As an avid mmo player for 11 years now I'm extremely excited about mirrored classes. Too many games come out with unique unbalanced "equivalent" classes. As any gamer here can tell you it ruins games and causes too many people to reroll or quit; that creates a greater imbalance in the game itself with lopsided availability of classes. My appreciation so much of the mirrored classes has become simplified to what side do I want to roll "good" or "evil". Which storyline do I want to try, and I appreciate that. I think the individual ability lines for each class offers great diversity and caters to multiple playstyles which then creates the different feel and roll in the game itself. If you've tried multiple specs and have actually leveled up to 50 you would then understand how different each line is. I'm delighted at the availability and variety they are offering and look forward to launch.

Well, aperently they want people to only play for 2-6 months and then bail to try the new hot MMO or the WOW expansion