All of the Wave 1 characters that remain were kept specifically because they were crafting masters, i.e., they were all maxed out in one of the six crafting skills. Not only are they maxed out, but because of found schematics and deconstructed stuff, they've mostly got a lot of extra schematics that they're capable of making. They aren't just maxed out, they really are crafting masters.
However, only one of them (so far) is in "post retirement" status, by which I mean, has started the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion which completely changes the companion menu. I'd like to start a second character through this expansion, but I'm wary of losing my companions for a time as I go through it. For that reason, I started coming up with backup crafters out of wave 2 characters. Unfortunately, only four of the wave 2 characters are at max level, and only three are done with their class story (semi-retired.) Two wave 3 characters will probably move into "semi-retirement" before all of the wave 2 characters do, unless I intervene and manually leave them aside and focus on finishing wave 2 first. Which I probably won't do, because I'm obviously just playing characters that I feel like playing as I go through them. But that's OK. The only character who's likely to move into post-retirement soon is M'at Thew, which means that the only backup skill that's urgent to get done is Artifice. And Taul Kajak is already moving along nicely in getting that backup skill going. None of the other backups are urgent, or even important at all, honestly. So I think I'll stick to wave 2 characters being the ones that pick up the backup.
Wave 1 is, of course, my first attempt to play one of all of the classes. Six wave 1 characters remain; I've deleted the Sith Inquisitor Assassin and the Jedi Consular Shadow, as well as my "extra" bounty hunter powertech. Wave 2 was my attempt to play the "other" class mechanics for each story, i.e., if I did a powertech hunter, then I needed to do a mercenary hunter next, as an example. However, it wasn't completely straight; I somehow ended up with two Jedi Sentinels, and no Jedi Consulars at all, for instance, due to weird decisions that I made at the time. I ended up also with two hunter mercenaries, actually, but no trooper vanguard and no consular sage. It's not a perfect scenario, because I guess I just wasn't in the mood to play a trooper or consular at the time. The specific doubling of Jedi Sentinel and Hunter Mercenary were more about my attempt (at the time) to document the playthroughs with video recordings. When I messed those up, I started a second one. Anyway, whatever. Wave 2 characters are what they are, and if it's not a perfect roster of all eight of the "correct" classes, there are, in fact, at least eight characters. This is where I started using more aliens as characters too (including one girl character. Heh—but I have no interest in the twi'leks, or any aliens that I have to buy in the cartel market, like cathar or nautolan. So by "aliens" I mostly just mean funny colored people, like green people, red people, blue people, etc.)
Wave 3 is a big wave of characters that I started after BioWare decoupled origin story and class mechanics, and I started a bunch that were mismatched mechanics and origin story. I have 11 characters here, so this is my biggest single chunk. I worried here less about "coverage" of the classes, and more about what I wanted to play, although the latest that I added were sometimes about coverage of the combat specs on classes that I really like, at least.
Wave 4 is the most recent wave, and only has two characters so far. They are characters that repeat coverage from Wave 1, i.e., the class and origin is the same as a wave 1 character, but one that I just wanted to play again, long afterwards, and with the added customization options to make them look cooler and better options for names than I had at the time that I did wave 1. I'm all out of character slots at the moment, but those are relatively cheap, so wave 4 characters may grow—although I don't have any specific plans to do so, and I'm not sure right now what else I would want to add to that roster. I'm not sure at this point that I do. I've got a lot of characters that still have a lot of gameplay left in them. I do think that I prefer the early game, though, which is part of why I start a lot of characters and take a long time to finish them. I prefer early game but with higher level characters; one of the reason that I run around doing Heroics and other random things that cause characters to level before they even start their story. It's rare that I start a character on his story that's less than about level 20 anymore, and literally impossible that I'd consider doing so without being at least level 10.
A putative wave 5 could happen to get additional mechanics and/or combat specs that I don't have. More commandos. More operatives and scoundrels. More consulars and inquisitors, etc. However, given that there's a reason I haven't played these character options for so long, there's a good chance that I won't, because I'm obviously not super motivated by those options. I think that the 27 characters I currently have should keep me busy. Nearly half a dozen of them literally haven't even started their stories yet or just barely did; I've ESCed out of the opening cinematic and run around on the starting planet getting gratuitous leveling up. I can go back and still start doing the story from the very beginning again.
— ( † ) —
Lately, I just finished Anstal Tane and moved him into semi-retirement. I want to do the same to Vant Galaide soon. But rather than doing so, I've been playing some of my mid-level characters a bit, like Vash Galaide (related to Vant? I dunno, I haven't decided.) I don't like to plan too far ahead what I think I'm going to be in the mood to play, because I don't want to make this a chore, but I've been doing Vash Galaide on Balmorra and am level 44 with him right now. I'll probably be around 46 or so when I finish that planet, and I'll put him back on the back burner. He's a wave 3 character, though—I'd like to get back to some of my wave 2s like Vant Galaide, Phovos Maledict, Revecca Arden and Elemer Kell. Vant in particular will just finish up and go into semi-retirement and become the backup armstech crafter, while the other three aren't really very close to that yet.
On the other hand, Gael Heckett and Mirabeau Tane are the farthest along in level and story progression, other than Vant Galaide. While Wave 3, I'd like to get them out of the mid-60s in level, where they are, and get them up to max level sooner rather than later. They have somehow leapfrogged ahead of most of the lingering wave 2 characters, and will probably stay as such for some time.
What I do not intend on doing is actually starting the story with any of the characters that are at the very beginning, though. I have too many in play to start up someone new at this point. Ideally, I'd completely finish wave 2 characters and move them all into semi-retirement before I start up any of the new ones that are still at the beginning of their journey. Although I did start Saxon Hettar, and he's more than halfway done with Hutta. That was mostly so I could see the "new" Hutta textures and graphics, though—otherwise, I'd had left him alone too.
So roughly, let's finish Vant, play a lot of Phovos, Revecca and Elemer in particular, probably play a lot of some wave 3 characters like Gael, Mirabeau, Wulf and Beorn a bit. Then take a step back and see where we are. Hopefully I've got most of wave 2 either at max level or looking close to it by that point, and some of wave 3 as well. In the next month or two, Vant is the only one who's at all at risk of going into semi-retirement, and the only one I expect to reach that milestone in that time frame. If I can get most of my characters who are in the 30s and 40s for level into the 50s or 60s, I'll consider that a major win, and if I can get the two characters who are in the 60s right now to max level in the same time frame, I'll also consider that a win.
UPDATE: Speaking of which, I did not add level to the tracker. That seems like that changes too fast. I can just track level in game and otherwise pay attention to it more birds-eye view rather than attempting to track it on a spreadsheet. I mean, even at higher level, I only need to play a character for a couple of hours to get a level or even two. It just doesn't really work that way where the juice is worth the squeeze.
Another aside; for some older characters, I've updated the combat spec, sometimes even more than once. That's a pretty easy thing to change on the fly, so sometimes I rethink exactly how they're set up. Graggory in particular has been all three specs during his career; he's currently sitting on Shield Tech, but I mostly played him as advanced prototype with a few levels as pyrotech. Because I have two advanced prototypes otherwise in play, I think I'll leave him where he is for now.
Final aside; you can certainly see which stories I either like the best, or at least want to have an excuse to play. I have more hunters than anything else, and that's even if you don't count my very first bounty hunter from my earlier login, Galation who I deleted, or even Embric Stane, who's kind of in a weird limbo status; listed as wave 2, but otherwise mostly kind of ignored. I also have a lot of smugglers, even though there are a lot of things about how that story plays out, especially near the end, that I don't like. I've got a decent amount of agents, including two semi-retired agents, one each of both original agent mechanics. I even have a fair bit of troopers, although that's mostly because I wanted excuses to play more tech class variations, without always picking the other three. I have a clear tech class bias, and that's true even if you account for the fact that I don't really like the Inquisitor or Consular all that much. I still only want to play so many Knights or Warriors, and that number is... already on the table, I think. Three of each, and that's plenty.
Maybe I'd like the Consular or Inquisitor story a little better if I played it through as a Knight, Warrior, Sentinel or Marauder mechanics. Maybe that's where Wave 5 will come from, after I pick up a couple more character slots to use. But I'm in no hurry to start that.
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