| The legacy system is going to be a huge feature in SWTOR and it is probably the reason why patch 1.2 was named Legacy. The first feature introduced with the legacy system is family tree. This is more of a RP feature but it is nonetheless very cool to be able to sort all your characters in a family tree. Currently this legacy tree is only available for characters you own, there might be plans down the road to add other people's character as marriage partners etc. The key thing about this legacy tree is that it is cross-faction so it can contain both your Republic and Empire characters on the same server.
Another cool legacy feature is species & class unlocks. Once you play a species to swtor power leveling 50, you can unlock that species be any classes on both factions - this means that you can have a pureblood Jedi or a Chiss smuggler! If you are playing human, you will be given a presence stat on all your existing and upcoming legacy characters instead since the human species can be all classes. Cyborgs also have a neat feature. If you havn't noticed this before, each class for the cyborg race have their own unique cyborg attachments. You can now unlock all of them and become a super cyborg!
In terms of class unlocks - completing a character to the end of Chapter 2 for that character's class quest will grant you that class's class specific emotes and buffs for all your legacy characters. This means that you can have bounty hunter buffs on your sith warrior alt for example. Completing that character to the end of Chapter 3 will grant you heroic abilites from that class to all your legacy characters. These abilites are iconic class abilites (i.e. force choke from sith warriors or flamethrower from bounty hunters) that will require a companion to use (similar to the heroic moment abilites you have right now). The companion restriction will prevent you from using these heroic abilities in places such as a warzone or operation.
Companion completion: Bioware wants you to do those companion quests and there are now incentives to do all the quests for a specific companion. Once you "complete" a companion (do all the quests available for that companion), you will receive a) shorter cooldowns on heroic abilites, b) longer durations for your heroic moment and 3) unlock small stat boosts if that companion is the first companion you have "completed" for that companion type (i.e. ranged tank). If you complete a second companion of the same type, you will receive an additional presence buff.
Alignment/Social Rank/Valor unlocks: These unlocks are mainly non-combat based (fluff). Reaching Light V/Dark V will unlock active abilities for all legacy characters with swtor power leveling. Reach a certain valor rank will unlock the abiliites to have unarmed duels on all your legacy characters. Reach a certain social rank will allow you to dance with your companion and unlock RP emote packages.
Additional rewards: Sprint has being moved to level 1 with 1.2 so you no longer have to wait for your teens to get faster running speed. Gaining legacy levels will allow you to unlock a higher level version of spring called Jetpack for bounty hunters and rocket boots for all other classes. This is essentially a shorter duration spring with faster movement speed. Legacy levels will also allow you to purchase items for your ship such as training dummies, mailboxes, repair droids, neutral GTNs and even cores for your ship droid to improve specific crew skills. To prevent the fleet from becoming a ghost town, the devs have said that items like neutral GTNs are only available for players with very high legacy level and lots of credits. Mobs will also drop legacy tokens. These tokens are not class specific and are bound to your legacy. You can trade them to merchants in return for low level gears for your legacy characters.
Economy and Crew skills
Some hard statistical data were given during the summit. It was interesting to see the overall distribution of all the crew skills. Biochem was actually not the most popular crafting skill - that was artifice. Interestingly, bioanalysis was actually the least used gathering skill, which explains the inflation seen on the GTN right now with the bioanalysis mats.
The goal of crew skills in 1.2 is to to make every single crew skill viable for endgame. To that end, there is an overhaul to the current reverse engineering system - better reverse engineering rates and the ability to reverse engineer more items. There is also going to be a change to the augment system - synthweaving, armstech and armsmech will be able to make augments while slicing (the current source of augments) will be providing mats for these three professions for augment making. There is a huge emphasis on the crafting of orange armor with crit slots to both customize the look you want and also providing the best stats since the majority of endgame mods/armoring/enhancements can now be removed. Schematics for new orange gear will be released with 1.2 so if you don't like the look of the orange gear you can get right now from crafters there is hope down the road.
Roleplaying & Guild features
The meat of the roleplaying experience will be in the Legacy system introduced earlier - family trees, social unlocks, emote unlocks etc. Chat bubbles will be making a come back as Bioware has resolved the technical issues that prevented their usage at launch. You will also see a lot more ambient activity as well - creatures, NPCs etc to make the world feel more alive. Cosmetic/social armor will no longer be light armor exclusive and should be useable by all without taking a stat loss.
For guilds, there are two major improvements - guild banks and guild UI as well as swtor power leveling. Guild banks has finally arrived and now features 7 tabs you can unlock with increasing credit requirements. Guild leaders can restrict access to these tabs to only people of a certain rank - including the option to require authenticators to combat account hacking. Guild UI will feature some minor improvements with 1.2, with the promise of a complete revamp sometime after 1.2. In 1.2 you should be able to invite people to group from the guild window.
Guild capital ships and calenders are in the works but Bioware has no ETA on exactly when they will be released. |