In their latest news article, Bioware has broken down advanced class mechanics in Star Wars: The Old Republic into something “somewhat” easy to understand.
We all know there are four classes on each faction and two factions. Recently we were told that each of these eight classes will have two Advanced Classes stemming from them to choose for a total of sixteen advanced classes Details on how these advanced classes would function were scarce, until now.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic not only will you be choosing a Class, but you will later choose an advanced class. If that wasn’t enough, you will then have access to three talent trees. These trees basically work as your archetype. Each advanced class will then have access to two trees with a third shared between both advanced classes. Allow me to explain…
Skill-Set, Perks, Talent Trees, call them what you will. Most MMOs have skill-sets in some shape or form. A skill-set is a component of character development where the player sinks special points (earned through various ways) into in order to increase abilities, stats, or to gain specific rewards. Many times, these are used as a way to limit or balance a class allowing each class to have several ‘game-changing’ abilities while forcing the player to choose only a select few. In SWTOR the player then chooses an Advanced Class when they arrive at their Capitol world, granting them access to three skill-sets. Bioware dives further into this citing “not picking an Advanced Class is not an option.”
In the diagram above you see the choice between the two Smuggler advanced classes: the Scoundrel and the Gunslinger. Once the advanced class has been chosen, two class specific skill-sets are accessible, with the third (Luck) being shared between both. Bioware goes on to state that the Luck skill-set contains general skills that benefit the Smuggler class as a whole. In addition, choosing an advance class opens up changes such as access to specific weapons, armor, and abilities, so identifying an advanced class will be visually easy.
You can read the entire news blog post here.