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Who wants free racial skills?
Muktuk
Member UncommonPosts: 84
Here's the deal. Racial skills are supposed to make the races feel distinct. But, taking a racial skill means that you are giving up one of your class' support skill slots (and there's only 5 of those). The result is either lower class diversity (from those who take a racial skill) or lower racial diversity (from those who only take class skills). It sounds like racial skills are intended to be weaker than class skills in which case lower racial diversity seems to be the likely outcome.
I'd prefer a system where players are allowed to have racial skills without sacrificing class skills. For example, add an 11th skill slot that would be exclusive to non-elite racial skills. Elite racial skills could be assigned to the elite skill slot, allowing up to two racial skills total. This way players would have to make that tough choice about which racial skill to take, but every player would have at least one racial skill that "captures the flavor" of their race.
UPDATED 11/05/2010: Originally I suggested adding up to 3 racial skill slots, but based on the feedback I now feel that a single racial slot is more appropriate. I also added the last sentence in the first paragraph. There were 33 votes at the time of this change.
Comments
They aren't just doing racial traits?
no they have already stated that the racial stuff will be skills (they havent said anything about traits but i dont think anyone has actualy asked them and as far as i know they havent denied it since noone has asked)
EDIT: also a reply to the OP no i dont see a problem with it, i mean giving us extra skills it would take some of the strategy and toughness out of the game, having a limited selection of what you can do in a fight means you have to learn to improvise and think on your feet (which i think is the reason this game will require skill as the allowing of roll changing in battle does make combat easyer but this allows them to increase the difficulty of the AI and situations beyon what current mmo's have been at makeing more realistic battle situations).
Interesting point that I wasn't aware of. I too thought it was just racial traits and not skills.
In GW, I really enjoyed the limitations of skills that a person could "take with them". I liked figuring out new builds and playing my character different then another player might. With the primary skills being based off of the equipped weapon, and therefore limiting the diversity of skill selection, I hope that they don't force the use of any racial skills, letting us choose if we want them as part of our build.
I voted for extra
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I'm actually ok with the limitation, as long as the choices are tough ones to make. One of the things I have grown to really like about GW1 is that I have to choose whatever skills I think are best for the situation. If I make a wrong choice, things might be tough.
Your choices should be meaningful.
I have said it once and ill say it agian GW2 glaring issue is that you are a carbon copy of your fellow class mates. The racial skill thign is an ok attempt in addressing this but i perfer rift/daoc/co type ability to determin your classes focus.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
I would prefer that the racial skills were seperate but also limited. More choices= more possibilities for diversity.
Jetrpg, to my understanding - not only do classes have multiple focuses available, Minions/Casting/Control for Necros, Ranged/Melee/Protection for Warriors, Pet/Ranged/Melee/Mobility for Ranger, and multiple elements for Elementalists each of the above are drastically different mechanically from one another...
But they also have traits that can change up their first 5 skills and a full customizable 5 skills after the fact. I don't think you will see much homogenization in classes for GW2.
I understand your point of, "It would be cool if you could like... combine classes like Rift", but the fact of the matter is even if it doesn't seem like it - every character for the most part will be by design able to be effective and different both mechanically and aesthetically. I actually can't think back in all of the MMORPGs I've played in recent years to a game that has more potential for effective differentiation than GW2 and what has already been announced.
People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan
I wouldn't mind the OP suggestion, but I'm sure they won't implement this. Besides, you are going to use a lot of weapon/elemental skills, the others are only so few because you have to chose them properly when out-of-combat and use them well, because they really are few. They want players to learn how to manage the few things available.
And I'm not sure about this, but I think Racial skills will be somewhat weaker than the class skills. They don't want the players to have specific builds (ex: best healer is a sylvari water elementalist, because you can use this 3 racial skills to heal/support others). With this kind of skills and with the class skills beeing the most important and effective ones, is harder to make builds. Chosing a race is more important in epicness and lore.
BTW, Traits will influence ALL the skills of the game. 2 players can have the same skills in their skill bar, but those skills do different things because of the traits.
So maybe you can change 1 racial skill for 1 class skill because the first one has something the other one doesn't have, but you might do the opposite for the same reason. And maybe you can even have those 2 skills be completely the same with traits (the only difference might be the skills graphics). We don't know that yet, but it might be possible.
OP:
Skills 1-5: Determined by weapons selected. This number varied by Profession and profession mechanic. T= (E: 60, W: 58, R: 30 (+ pet skills) N: 26 (+ minions)
Skills 6-10:
6 - Healing - Each Profession/Race has 3 healing skills for 1 slot.
7-9 - Utility - Each Profession/Race has between 10 to 12 skills for 3 slots (or av 4skills/slot
10 - Elite - Each Profession/Race.
Ok, on top of this: around 10-12 skills from racials to choose instead of Professions skills.
So each heal, utility and racial is just like the first 5 skills in that you have ONLY 5 SLOTS on either side. From these you have sub-divisions of pools of skills to choose from.
(1) Not all profession have the same skills or numbers of skills
(2) Racial Skills are another level of customization (Edit:) alternative to profession slotting for 6-10.
All it boils down to is that the OP wants MORE SKILLS vs GAMEPLAY BALANCE. But the fact there is a "rough upper limit" on available skills is a number that is already determined by design and iterative testing and further testing of what provides interesting playstyle subleties between professions combined with what is conceivable to maintain balance across professions.
(3) EDIT: Ok, I see where the OP is coming from, does feel like a limitation afterall. I guess it means there are distinct builds/choices to be made between racial and profession and if the racial skills will allow players to take more of a type of skill more than a totally different set of skills, I'd expect to keep from causing balance issues. So guess the answer depends if that is what the racial skills do: Allow players to go extreme control/damage/support??
As to the separate question: Are there enough total skills? There may be less than GW but there is still a "large number" of choices/customization and "large number" of combinations of builds and "large number" per build set. So think numbers is ok eg see skill numbers 1-5
For comparison: GW had lots of builds but lack of balance or build wars of a few premium builds; Rift desigers have openly claimed that balancing the large combinations is not their intention with their game hence the proportional relationship of No Skills vs Balance. Lastly by designing this way these professions, adding NEW RACES with new stories in expansions is made a lot easier.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
One little bitty thing... Slot 10 is actually your elite slot, not your racial.
People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan
dude totaly wrong the 3 utility skill slots are were the racial skills can be slotted then there is the heal slot and then there is the ELITE SKILL SLOT for your elite skill that takes a long time to recharge such as the skill where an elementalist turns into a tornado and moves around damaging people etc.
plz research your information please this is one thing that i dont even need to look up an article for will take you 5 min max to find the information on the second 5 skills
so technicly it would compete but you choose skills based on what you think you will need for the next battle so the skills will not compete they will simply give you more options that your class normaly wouldnt have (based on the way they are saying stuff i dont think the skills will be very powerfull or made in a way that they could conflict with balance)
EDIT: hehe beat me to the punch reizlanzer
doesn't really matter I believe Anet is designing the skill system so you change yoru build on the fly with fighting conditions. No one is going to stick with the same build through an entire game sessions. I believe you are supposed to change it up based on the change in battle conditions. I really hope Anet makes it fast to rebuild, probably one of the reasons they decided on the weapons effecting the first 5 skills. Maybe they will have slots for skill builds that you can quick swap to for different engagements?
My bad, thanks for correcting that, all my logic out the window, re-edited to avoid misinformation. Hmm, not familiar with 2ndary skills from GW so maybe it's a crack at creating that sort of diversity of choice and tailoring?
OP: I see where you are coming from now and it's good point you raise. As I say, must be a decision to try to allow some tailoring (careful selection involved and keep the devs balancing workable)? But that depends on just how different or not the racial skills will be (not highly different it's been stated).
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Well, tddavis - You will be able to change anything on the fly in an outpost I believe. Sticking with a build should be half the fun truthfully, because there will be just enough differentiation in skills to say "THIS IS MINE, I MADE IT" and those people will proceed to be copied if it works better than the next person but there will always be a person that does it a little better. Games like Starcraft 2 show us that all builds fade. A huge thing you will see is that peoples 3 optional slots will be different from person to person since it is more about personal taste and primary weapon/element/whatever of choice.
Also, MumboJumbo - it's cool, but something else you should realize is that characters will be different, but how different do you require them to be in order to brand them as unique I guess is my area of thinking. Two warriors both using Greatswords will have the same 5 first skills, slightly changed up by factors like traits and to my knowledge utility skills. Not only will those characters look completely different which is a big thing that A-net is pushing for this game... but they will both use whirlwind in a completely different way.
For example, there could be a utility skill that ignites a blade - making it if you swing it fast enough you might fling a wild fireball. So one person would use it as a mobile damaging pursuit move (DEMACIA!) and another will use it as a wildly erratic fire AoE move. So the utility skills are typically for more than just "3 moves". Food for thought.
People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan
Ill be honest, the idea that GW2 might need more diversity in its skill bar isn't a new one but its really an unfounded anxiety. I mean, we hardly know how much diversity we are actually going to have, so worry about it when we actually know more.
Additionally, racial skills aren't actually supposed to be as powerful as the class skills, but there won't be the huge number of skills we had in GW1, and these class utility skills won't (I assume) cover much outside the boundaries of the class's play style. Racial skills will give the needed diversity to the different races without making any of them required (or one might see the text "GFL Charr Ranger" or something similar).
BTW, I find this game makes a lot more sense if you think of it as an mmoRPg. It just has that feel to it.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
it wont be glf char ranger
You walk to to action and not camp instance entry loking for ur tank/dps/healer.
Need a Charr 'Tasty are Asura' skill.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Thanks for all the constructive feedback. Much appreciated.
gimm6th raises one my concerns. If racial skills aren't as powerful as the class skills then how often will players take a racial skill at the cost of a class skill? ANet says the racial skills are supposed to "capture the flavor of his particular race", but if most players don't take a racial skill then the differences between the races will feel purely cosmetic.
Based on your feedback I've revised my suggested fix. How about adding an 11th skill slot that would be the only place where the player could put non-elite racial skills (rather than three slots as I suggested in my OP)? The elite slot could still be used for an elite racial, allowing up to two racial skills total. This way players would have to make that tough choice about which racial skill to take, but every player would have at least one racial skill that "captures the flavor" of their race. And, since racial skills are weaker by design this approach would hopefully have a minimal impact on game balance.
If racial skills are weak then nobody will take them. If they are overpowered then you run into the "glf charr ranger" stuff. Making the racial skills weak but exclusive to the class skills seems like a win for all.
I updated the OP to include some of these thoughts.
Link to quote from ANet: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/part-two/
It seems fine enough for me. I play GW and EQ2. In EQ2 my swashie have 4 fast key bars filled with skills and another one with items, each bar is 12 slots. In GW I have 8 skills.
Still is GWs system actually more fun.
More slots does not make a better game, to me GW2 seems to have enough. This makes it a lot easier to add new classes, races and skills to the game without completely destroying the important balance.
Possibly would the adding of a single race slot work but i don't feel it as a must, it seems good enough for me.
Well... You choose between races because of their different personal storyline, the maps where you play at are completely different too and, of course, special racial abilities that any class has. As an Asura, you will be able to have your own gollem that any other race has and probably be able to do asura gates or something like that. Or as a Norn, you can transform into the animal you have chosen before in the personality questions.
So there's other reasons for you to choose a specific race, instead of the usual tendency we get in MMORPGs where players search "the best Tank/healer/DPS or whatever build" by comparing the race-specific skills beeing as good as (or better than) the class-skills. They don't want players to think "this race is better for this kind of gameplay"..... they want them to think "whatever race I chose, it will be fun and different then the others (in story, in map and lore, and other things) and I can still be as much effective in all the classes as any other race"
actualy you will be able to change all of your skills and such outside of battle at any time if they stick with what they have stated. said something along the lines of they didnt want to force players to go all the way back to an outpost or something to change their skills (basicly the only thing skill wise you can change in battle would be the first 5 skills by swapping weapons/attunement or a necro in death shroud form )
Good point. The storyline will give the player a different experience when playing each race. But, if the racial skills aren't worth taking then the races won't play any different.
I share your concern about not wanting racial skills to be a factor in deciding who is best to take in a group. But, that possibility exists with both the current system and with my proposed fix. That is, unless the racial skills are so worthless compared to class skills that nobody takes them. In that case we'll just have the situation where people spam, "glf any ranger who doesn't have racial skills on their bar".
I don't want any race to have a significant advantage in PvE or PvP, but I also don't want race to be irrelevant.
Beeing able to have a Gollem or not might be really worth playing, because is different from any class out there.
In this game you only have to search for a group in dungeons and in structered PVP. But you can do both of them alone or with only 1-2 friends too, specially in dungeons where the difficulty is scaled according to the quantity of players there. And don't forget, a lot of those groups are filled with players that want the most effective gameplay according to a general build or their own opinion of best build and when the players in that group don't fill the requirements, they are kicked (and not in a friendly way). I don't think players want to find unfriendly-but-effective-teams, they want both friendly and effective. But since all the skills with the same name might be different because of the traits, the possibility to follow a certain build gets much lower than we usually see in other MMORPGs, making possible to play whether you are in a team or not, and be effective no matter what kind of skills the players in that team have.
This thread has progressed nicely. ^I think this above is the nutshell of races (5) & professions (8) = 40 combinations... .
I'm sure they have tried to add racials as bits of flavor eg Totem Form (norn), Gollum Suit (asura), Grasping Roots (Sylvari) etc. as already stated.
But obviously as there are 40 combinations the balance dictates that these skills must be fairly standard in effect. It could simply be a case of:
(1) Racials more or less = Professions cache of Heal, Utility, Elite
therefore:
(2) Racials + to Professions cache of Heal, Utility, Elite so you could pick greater emphasis for Support, Destruction, Control across these skills or balance of all of the, I'm guessing?
Take an example with the current info we have:
Imagine you like damage so you p: Warrior-Axes, Norn-Totemform eg Snow-Leopard-dmg-increase?, Utility (as Reizlander mentions increases your adrenaline/damage capability eg Frenzy) and maybe another utility from the from either the racial or profession to boost your adrenaline (Warrior) or boost your damage (Norn racial unannounced).
So seems to fulfil the criteria of tailoring:
Profession > Race > Pool of skills for 6-10: pick primarily stuff that enhances the profession mechanic (Prof only) or stuff that enhances the overall damage, control, support (both prof & racials with racials adding more of these?).
What OP has highlighed for me that I did not realize before, is that seems the these skills 6-10 are more FLEXIBLE choice WITHIN chosen prof-race combo but at same time more SELECTIVE choice per build due to racials/profs competing for same slots.
What with all the variety so far, playing safe at this top-end branches of the skills available per build, seems like a safe move by ArenaNet to reign in the chaos!! That's my take, I'd never be able to balance all this in 100yrs tbh...
(I also learnt their are tiers of improvements you can train skills up to too, which I think involves trade-off choices: "Which skills will I level up to max12" etc)
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
They have never said racials will be weaker than other skills. I looked for it. They HAVE said racials won't be stronger than other skills. Apparently many people read this as saying they'll be weaker for some reason. They just don't want people feeling like they have to go with racials.
Anyhow, I don't think a racial slot is a good idea. I like how you can go with more than one skill for your race or go with none. There is plenty of flexibility there.