Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
another thing that makes it seem overwhelming or too many i guess is the lack of extra hotkeys. if you put every ability on a hotkey you only have maybe 6 for anything else... like potions,custom macros, emotes etc.
Alot of the issues could be alleviated by Bioware adding more hotbars for bottom center.. like 1x3(or4) or 2x2 etcs. They seem to have ignored all beta player threads about this brought up though, so..
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. Lao-Tze
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
there are most certaily redundant skills though.. why would you need 4 skills that do xx to xxx dmg that all share the same cooldown and the only difference between them is maybe the animations and the names?
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. Lao-Tze
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
But shooters benefit from a variety of very distinct abilities in terms of weapons. All games do really. Toss 5 abilities that are all pretty similar at someone along with 15 others and it just doesn't benefit the gameplay that much. It also wastes development time trying to balance a few dozen abilities rather than focus on making say 10 or 12 distinct abilities work well and feel distinct. It also makes the learning curve better for things like PvP, while still allowing for deep gameplay.
I don't even know why you made the "old style arcade games" comment, since I wasn't talking about 1-3 abilities or whatever. Seems like you are just trying to belittle my point rather than actually discuss it.
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
there are most certaily redundant skills though.. why would you need 4 skills that do xx to xxx dmg that all share the same cooldown and the only difference between them is maybe the animations and the names?
Why not? Do you only have 10 skills to get you through the day? Or can you decide to walk, jog, run, drive a car, fly in a plane, etc . . . ? Seriously, if you honestly feel less is more, then go talk to some of SOEs customers that got hacked due to their lax cyber security. I think you might find a lot of people disagreeing with you.
As for the only difference being the animations and names, that is more than a little misleading. Most often the biggest difference is the damage and secondary effects such as stun, knockdown, knockback, mezz, etc. In the end it is the decision to risk less damage with a chance at a stun, when you need a second to heal, vs. going for the higher damage and hoping for a crit shot kill, when you are almost dead, that is the most fun.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
Look at the Witcher's combat mechanics for example, imo thats the best combination between action-based and a button-based RPG implemented so far, you have various combat styles, blocking, dodgin, and other things but also normal "press X to kill Y" abilities. ToR removed auto-attack which is a good step, but in term it gave you too many abilties which are not needed, and there is little to no diffrence between many of them, especially considering that most of them still work in PVP and PVE the same way, heck atm PVE is more restrictive than PVP in regards to crowd control and simmilar abilities...
I've PVPed quite a bit, especially on my Shadow and you know what i felt? i felt like a rogue during the first year of WoW, heck even "stronger" because if it switched to a tank stance it took 3 guys to take me down. I could just run around stunning half the group DoTing them and backstabing whats left which in terms left me with about 30-40 kills to 2-3 deaths in every match with highest / 2nd highest damage done over all... Was it fun? yes for the first couple of games, but then it wasn't as fund, i dont see a reason why a class should need 5 diffrent CC abiltiies which dont share the same cooldown, or why a class needs to have 4 diffrent ranged attacks which do the exact~ damage, cost the exact amount of resources and the only diffrent thing is the animation... Heck with some classes i've found that the auto-attack does the same amount of damage as the main resource costing dps skill, auto-attack did only slightly less damage to classes that can shield or mitigate attacks in a diffrent way, and even more damage to classes which dont like getting hit very often.. Thas just screams bad game design/ballance to me.
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
there are most certaily redundant skills though.. why would you need 4 skills that do xx to xxx dmg that all share the same cooldown and the only difference between them is maybe the animations and the names?
Why not? Do you only have 10 skills to get you through the day? Or can you decide to walk, jog, run, drive a car, fly in a plane, etc . . . ? Seriously, if you honestly feel less is more, then go talk to some of SOEs customers that got hacked due to their lax cyber security. I think you might find a lot of people disagreeing with you.
As for the only difference being the animations and names, that is more than a little misleading. Most often the biggest difference is the damage and secondary effects such as stun, knockdown, knockback, mezz, etc. In the end it is the decision to risk less damage with a chance at a stun, when you need a second to heal, vs. going for the higher damage and hoping for a crit shot kill, when you are almost dead, that is the most fun.
Wow. What a ridiculous strawman attack. Reread what we've said. The point seems to be flying WAAAAY over your head.
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
Look at the Witcher's combat mechanics for example, imo thats the best combination between action-based and a button-based RPG implemented so far, you have various combat styles, blocking, dodgin, and other things but also normal "press X to kill Y" abilities. ToR removed auto-attack which is a good step, but in term it gave you too many abilties which are not needed, and there is little to no diffrence between many of them, especially considering that most of them still work in PVP and PVE the same way, heck atm PVE is more restrictive than PVP in regards to crowd control and simmilar abilities...
I've PVPed quite a bit, especially on my Shadow and you know what i felt? i felt like a rogue during the first year of WoW, heck even "stronger" because if it switched to a tank stance it took 3 guys to take me down. I could just run around stunning half the group DoTing them and backstabing whats left which in terms left me with about 30-40 kills to 2-3 deaths in every match with highest / 2nd highest damage done over all... Was it fun? yes for the first couple of games, but then it wasn't as fund, i dont see a reason why a class should need 5 diffrent CC abiltiies which dont share the same cooldown, or why a class needs to have 4 diffrent ranged attacks which do the exact~ damage, cost the exact amount of resources and the only diffrent thing is the animation... Heck with some classes i've found that the auto-attack does the same amount of damage as the main resource costing dps skill, auto-attack did only slightly less damage to classes that can shield or mitigate attacks in a diffrent way, and even more damage to classes which dont like getting hit very often.. Thas just screams bad game design/ballance to me.
I was actually starting to get convinced by your argument until I saw the lie you put in their. Either you never played this game OR you lied on purpose. Not sure which, but I don't think I will be calling your arguments credible now.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
But shooters benefit from a variety of very distinct abilities in terms of weapons. All games do really. Toss 5 abilities that are all pretty similar at someone along with 15 others and it just doesn't benefit the gameplay that much. It also wastes development time trying to balance a few dozen abilities rather than focus on making say 10 or 12 distinct abilities work well and feel distinct. It also makes the learning curve better for things like PvP, while still allowing for deep gameplay.
I don't even know why you made the "old style arcade games" comment, since I wasn't talking about 1-3 abilities or whatever. Seems like you are just trying to belittle my point rather than actually discuss it.
The difference is presentation to the user. You can have an astonishing ammount of skills, talents and abilities on a character, as long as you don't give them all to the player.
Its fine to have 400 (or more) skills in the game, but limit the player to using only 5-10 of them at any given time. This breeds diversity and streamlines the experience.
People have a hard time keeping track of more than 6 things at any given time, this is a pretty well known fact in psychology. Try it yourself, try to visualize 6 apples, and then imagine 7 apples. What you will notice is that you first compartmentalize 6 apples as a separate entity, then just add one apple more.
Obviously this threshold is different from person to person, some can do 3 and some can do 10 apples, but the median is around 6.
Games should not have more than 6 (active) abilities accessible to the player at any given time, more makes micromanaging combat (or whatever that is an active component of your game) a nightmare.
There is a reason why MOBA style games have 3-5 abilities per champion and some usable items. Chances are you will never have more than 10 active abilities to think about, ever.
You can use upto 40 keybindings, not as effectively as you can use 5, not on a normal keyboard, not unless you are a cyborg korean octopus hybrid. I Use my mouse to move, got 3-2 abilities bound to my mouse, use qawsedrftg and `1234567890 for abilties, and still there is no way i can hit alt+0 for example as quickly as i could hit q or e, yes ofc you put the situational/idont care abilities at alt+0 while you put your main abilities on buttons like m5+4 Q E R T Y 2 3 4 5 which are the easily reached buttons on a normal keyboard/mouse setup.
Originally posted by Kidon
that can be solved with more UI customization bars etc... since u dont need all the skills for a task, pvp raiding or just questing, but we should be able to save the skills in diferent bars that we could easily bring out for certain situation, and maybe we can i didnt had time to explore that part of the game since i was to busy devouring the story Glory to the empire
It's not about the UI it's about the design, having a UI that you could fit 400 abilities on it will not solve the basic issue that you dont need to have 400 abilities in the first place.
Having an abilitie i use once every 4 levels is stupid, a good game design fine tunes the classes and leaves you with a small number of abilities which you could use at allmost any stituation and a handfull of situational abilities. ToR seems to have a billion abilties which you can spam allmost as much as you want, since most classes dont seem to be running out of resources any how, unless they spam some poorly ballanced ulti and even then it takes allot to get "OOM" in this game...
A Game with few abilities is a no brain game, as long as all the abilities can be used in a certain situation some more some less ofc, it is fine by me, being able to start and pvping as max lvl an mmo is retarded and having 8 abilities to use and being defeated by someone just because he had better abilities on the bar is retarded (GW) .
when u start playing an mmo u should have that filling of being nothing but a grain of sand, that is what i felt in SWTOR loving the progression loving everything and i want new and more skills as i lvl, u should have a counter to everything someone else does at all times, not 8 abilities and luck
Sounds like what you described is a card battle game. Anybody agree?
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
there are most certaily redundant skills though.. why would you need 4 skills that do xx to xxx dmg that all share the same cooldown and the only difference between them is maybe the animations and the names?
Why not? Do you only have 10 skills to get you through the day? Or can you decide to walk, jog, run, drive a car, fly in a plane, etc . . . ? Seriously, if you honestly feel less is more, then go talk to some of SOEs customers that got hacked due to their lax cyber security. I think you might find a lot of people disagreeing with you.
As for the only difference being the animations and names, that is more than a little misleading. Most often the biggest difference is the damage and secondary effects such as stun, knockdown, knockback, mezz, etc. In the end it is the decision to risk less damage with a chance at a stun, when you need a second to heal, vs. going for the higher damage and hoping for a crit shot kill, when you are almost dead, that is the most fun.
Wow. What a ridiculous strawman attack. Reread what we've said. The point seems to be flying WAAAAY over your head.
I've read exactly what you have said and I disagree. You don't like variety and having to make choices, I do. At least that is what it boils down too. Btw, love your repetitive use of "strawman attack"" in pretty much any thread where people disagree with you. If you can't handle a discussion in the future I would recommend just not posting.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
there are most certaily redundant skills though.. why would you need 4 skills that do xx to xxx dmg that all share the same cooldown and the only difference between them is maybe the animations and the names?
Why not? Do you only have 10 skills to get you through the day? Or can you decide to walk, jog, run, drive a car, fly in a plane, etc . . . ? Seriously, if you honestly feel less is more, then go talk to some of SOEs customers that got hacked due to their lax cyber security. I think you might find a lot of people disagreeing with you.
As for the only difference being the animations and names, that is more than a little misleading. Most often the biggest difference is the damage and secondary effects such as stun, knockdown, knockback, mezz, etc. In the end it is the decision to risk less damage with a chance at a stun, when you need a second to heal, vs. going for the higher damage and hoping for a crit shot kill, when you are almost dead, that is the most fun.
Wow. What a ridiculous strawman attack. Reread what we've said. The point seems to be flying WAAAAY over your head.
I've read exactly what you have said and I disagree. You don't like variety and having to make choices, I do. At least that is what it boils down too. Btw, love your repetitive use of "strawman attack"" in pretty much any thread were people disagree with you. If you can't handle a discussion in the future I would recommend just not posting.
I don't use the term that much, but you seem fond of that logical fallacy.
For instance, you say I don't like variety and making choices. That's just flat-out wrong and I've never said that. You say that "less is more" means that people must like like less cyber security. These ARE strawman attacks. You're completely misrepresenting what is being said.
You are free to disgree, but if you don't have a logical counter to what we're saying, then don't pretend like you do.
The difference is presentation to the user. You can have an astonishing ammount of skills, talents and abilities on a character, as long as you don't give them all to the player.
Its fine to have 400 (or more) skills in the game, but limit the player to using only 5-10 of them at any given time. This breeds diversity and streamlines the experience.
People have a hard time keeping track of more than 6 things at any given time, this is a pretty well known fact in psychology. Try it yourself, try to visualize 6 apples, and then imagine 7 apples. What you will notice is that you first compartmentalize 6 apples as a separate entity, then just add one apple more.
Obviously this threshold is different from person to person, some can do 3 and some can do 10 apples, but the median is around 6.
Games should not have more than 6 (active) abilities accessible to the player at any given time, more makes micromanaging combat (or whatever that is an active component of your game) a nightmare.
There is a reason why MOBA style games have 3-5 abilities per champion and some usable items. Chances are you will never have more than 10 active abilities to think about, ever.
Yet MOBA games feature a deep tactical component.
A lot of skills doesnt equal gameplay depth.
Well said, though you can have a few more abilities than that if chunking and other tricks are taken advantage of (an RTS can potentially do this by having abilities divided by unit, assuming some care is taken in that division).
Of course, turn-based or non-time senstitive games can make do with a lot more abilities, but it is still a good principle of game design to make sure all choices are meaningful and hence to avoid small or otherwise unimportant differences between multiple abilities. Of course, this is where some games can fall flat.
I like the way it is. Maybe they didn't design this game for the dumbed down console generation. It's good to have different options during battles, reminds me a bit from the golden age of Neverwinter Nights.
It's not about "less or more cybersecurity" a simpler system is usually a more secure one, a stand alone computer in a locked safe is more secure than an internet facing server. And yes to an extend the more "security" features you add the less secure your system can be both in terms of security flaws that each additional component brings and both in the terms of human interaction where complex securiy schemes either force people to turn them off or result in a "yellow postnote" effect where people intentionnaly leave clues for them selves, and usually for others...
A MOBA game is a very good example, heck even games like Mass Effect and TES are a good example for how you should expose abilities to the player. If your combat is about swinging a sword, the swinging it self should not be presented in 40 diffrent buttons, the how you swing it should be more about char development than about pressing a button.
Look at how many swordmenship schools are there, even for simmilar weapons in the same~ enviorment, europe has multiple and very destigutive swordmenship styles even tho allot of the weapons were of simmilar size and shape. Some styles revolved around hitting the enemy with the hilt and the corss of the sword and not with the blade, some required the weapon to be held by the blade it self with a gauntlet, and what do you know some styles actually envolved holding the hilt of the sword! all of this could be and should be exposed to the player in a diffrent way than another button.. weather by his chioice of the class it self, by training a specific skill or by leveling with a specific weapon. The fighting it self with swords and other melee weapons was much more limited that what you think, there are only a hanfull of moves which were found to be effective for each weapon and figthing style, and people who trained trained to use a very specific weapon in a very speicifc style untill they became very good at it.
As for those who mentioned P&P RPG's i still remeber when elf was a class in D&D and where after numbers you had letters for levels, and P&P RPG's are way way way more restrictive than any MMO today, you had attack, maybe a handfull of spells of which you had to pick what to use), computer based D&D clones are quite restritive also, you usually dont have more than half a bar of skills, maybe bit more if you are a spell caster but that's it...
Now i dont say that you would want an MMO where you can only case 3 magic missiles per PVP match, but still there should be much more thought put into what skills you take to the battle, or can have on your char at any givven time. Skill points, and talent points should actually have a meaning besides givving you some additional flat % boost to your damage or defense. I never thought that WoW's Talent 2.0 was any good untill i actually took a look at it...
I think they amount is fine. If you want to take a look at a game with way too many abilities, look no further than EQ2. all you do is stare at your giant box of abilities and click the shit out of it. You almost never get to see what's happening on the screen. If I can set my abilities to 1-5, R, F, C, V and Z on my keyboard and get the job done, I'm happy. SWTOR lets me do that.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
The difference is presentation to the user. You can have an astonishing ammount of skills, talents and abilities on a character, as long as you don't give them all to the player.
Its fine to have 400 (or more) skills in the game, but limit the player to using only 5-10 of them at any given time. This breeds diversity and streamlines the experience.
People have a hard time keeping track of more than 6 things at any given time, this is a pretty well known fact in psychology. Try it yourself, try to visualize 6 apples, and then imagine 7 apples. What you will notice is that you first compartmentalize 6 apples as a separate entity, then just add one apple more.
Obviously this threshold is different from person to person, some can do 3 and some can do 10 apples, but the median is around 6.
Games should not have more than 6 (active) abilities accessible to the player at any given time, more makes micromanaging combat (or whatever that is an active component of your game) a nightmare.
There is a reason why MOBA style games have 3-5 abilities per champion and some usable items. Chances are you will never have more than 10 active abilities to think about, ever.
Yet MOBA games feature a deep tactical component.
A lot of skills doesnt equal gameplay depth.
Well said, though you can have a few more abilities than that if chunking and other tricks are taken advantage of (an RTS can potentially do this by having abilities divided by unit, assuming some care is taken in that division).
Of course, turn-based or non-time senstitive games can make do with a lot more abilities, but it is still a good principle of game design to make sure all choices are meaningful and hence to avoid small or otherwise unimportant differences between multiple abilities. Of course, this is where some games can fall flat.
Your first example perfectly compliments my point.
RTS games can have more abilities -as long as- they are COMPARTMENTALIZED in unit-abilities.
The same way there is no problem that a class using pets has 5 more abilities on the pet. You are seperately tracking your toons abilities and the pets abilities.
You can offload the issue for example with having stances (WoW Warrior) or binding abilities to the weapons that are used (GW2).
If you look deeply into game-design ethics you will find this trend everywhere. For example console controllers have up to 14 physical buttons. There is no restriction to have more than that abilities in any given game though as you could toggle a set of abilities by holding for example the left trigger.
YET barely any game goes beyond the 4 main buttons (X, Y, A, B on the 360) and the d-pad. Even Bioware itself stuck to that philosophy in Dragon Age Origins on 360
On the PC not so much, but given the fact that combat can be paused, this is not a big deal. In MMOs however it is.
WoW for example has many many skills, but if you boil it down, you will be using 3-4 of them, the others being situational skills or utilities (not counting summon mount, slowfall, permabuffs like hunter-aspects, etc.)
Effective design is about making the simplest mechanic to acheive the most complex of results. MMORPG only got half of it, over complication.
Too late to turn back now. Remove a single ability, and the "omgdumbeddown!!!one1!!!!" types instantly appear.
I actually like having more options than I can easily juggle; I have to make choices.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Effective design is about making the simplest mechanic to acheive the most complex of results. MMORPG only got half of it, over complication.
Too late to turn back now. Remove a single ability, and the "omgdumbeddown!!!one1!!!!" types instantly appear.
I actually like having more options than I can easily juggle; I have to make choices.
Again situational abilities are not a choice, they are forced on you - press 5 to kill a green spine spoted dragon between 12.00 and 16.30 on the first monday of every even month is not a chioce its another "requirement".
Having abilities which you need to combo or used in a specific time frame during the fight, or as a responce to an oponent's actions(in a non press 5 to kill dragon frequency) is about "choice". If your choice is do you use the blue lighting or the purple fireball to kill somthing when they both do the same damage cost the same amount of recources are virutally identical than its not a chioice. A choice needs to have a meaning, no meaning = no choice...
Comments
Didn't seem like too many.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
Ever heard the phrase "less is more?" That's what the OP and others are talking about. A short list a very different abilities can give better gameplay than a long list of abilities that have lots of overlaps. Think of what Doom would have been like with 40 weapons, but overall little more variety than already existed.
That said, TOR seems to be about the same as WoW when I looked at it with regards to number of abilities. Since the combat system is largely based on WoW that is not surprising.
Less is not always more. Most often less is just less. Some games make it work, but most do not. Sorry, I loved the old style arcade games in the mall when i was a kid, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to playing them.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
another thing that makes it seem overwhelming or too many i guess is the lack of extra hotkeys. if you put every ability on a hotkey you only have maybe 6 for anything else... like potions,custom macros, emotes etc.
Alot of the issues could be alleviated by Bioware adding more hotbars for bottom center.. like 1x3(or4) or 2x2 etcs. They seem to have ignored all beta player threads about this brought up though, so..
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
there are most certaily redundant skills though.. why would you need 4 skills that do xx to xxx dmg that all share the same cooldown and the only difference between them is maybe the animations and the names?
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
I like it the way it is.
It's you. I dont have a problem. I have everything binded and it works fine.
But shooters benefit from a variety of very distinct abilities in terms of weapons. All games do really. Toss 5 abilities that are all pretty similar at someone along with 15 others and it just doesn't benefit the gameplay that much. It also wastes development time trying to balance a few dozen abilities rather than focus on making say 10 or 12 distinct abilities work well and feel distinct. It also makes the learning curve better for things like PvP, while still allowing for deep gameplay.
I don't even know why you made the "old style arcade games" comment, since I wasn't talking about 1-3 abilities or whatever. Seems like you are just trying to belittle my point rather than actually discuss it.
Why not? Do you only have 10 skills to get you through the day? Or can you decide to walk, jog, run, drive a car, fly in a plane, etc . . . ? Seriously, if you honestly feel less is more, then go talk to some of SOEs customers that got hacked due to their lax cyber security. I think you might find a lot of people disagreeing with you.
As for the only difference being the animations and names, that is more than a little misleading. Most often the biggest difference is the damage and secondary effects such as stun, knockdown, knockback, mezz, etc. In the end it is the decision to risk less damage with a chance at a stun, when you need a second to heal, vs. going for the higher damage and hoping for a crit shot kill, when you are almost dead, that is the most fun.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Look at the Witcher's combat mechanics for example, imo thats the best combination between action-based and a button-based RPG implemented so far, you have various combat styles, blocking, dodgin, and other things but also normal "press X to kill Y" abilities. ToR removed auto-attack which is a good step, but in term it gave you too many abilties which are not needed, and there is little to no diffrence between many of them, especially considering that most of them still work in PVP and PVE the same way, heck atm PVE is more restrictive than PVP in regards to crowd control and simmilar abilities...
I've PVPed quite a bit, especially on my Shadow and you know what i felt? i felt like a rogue during the first year of WoW, heck even "stronger" because if it switched to a tank stance it took 3 guys to take me down. I could just run around stunning half the group DoTing them and backstabing whats left which in terms left me with about 30-40 kills to 2-3 deaths in every match with highest / 2nd highest damage done over all... Was it fun? yes for the first couple of games, but then it wasn't as fund, i dont see a reason why a class should need 5 diffrent CC abiltiies which dont share the same cooldown, or why a class needs to have 4 diffrent ranged attacks which do the exact~ damage, cost the exact amount of resources and the only diffrent thing is the animation... Heck with some classes i've found that the auto-attack does the same amount of damage as the main resource costing dps skill, auto-attack did only slightly less damage to classes that can shield or mitigate attacks in a diffrent way, and even more damage to classes which dont like getting hit very often.. Thas just screams bad game design/ballance to me.
Did I get it right, SW:TOR actually has depth in an area?
Maybe all is not lost for us who wants some complexity in our MMORPGs.
My gaming blog
It has depth in several areas. You just have to get past level 4 to see it.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Wow. What a ridiculous strawman attack. Reread what we've said. The point seems to be flying WAAAAY over your head.
I was actually starting to get convinced by your argument until I saw the lie you put in their. Either you never played this game OR you lied on purpose. Not sure which, but I don't think I will be calling your arguments credible now.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
The difference is presentation to the user. You can have an astonishing ammount of skills, talents and abilities on a character, as long as you don't give them all to the player.
Its fine to have 400 (or more) skills in the game, but limit the player to using only 5-10 of them at any given time. This breeds diversity and streamlines the experience.
People have a hard time keeping track of more than 6 things at any given time, this is a pretty well known fact in psychology. Try it yourself, try to visualize 6 apples, and then imagine 7 apples. What you will notice is that you first compartmentalize 6 apples as a separate entity, then just add one apple more.
Obviously this threshold is different from person to person, some can do 3 and some can do 10 apples, but the median is around 6.
Games should not have more than 6 (active) abilities accessible to the player at any given time, more makes micromanaging combat (or whatever that is an active component of your game) a nightmare.
There is a reason why MOBA style games have 3-5 abilities per champion and some usable items. Chances are you will never have more than 10 active abilities to think about, ever.
Yet MOBA games feature a deep tactical component.
A lot of skills doesnt equal gameplay depth.
It's not about the UI it's about the design, having a UI that you could fit 400 abilities on it will not solve the basic issue that you dont need to have 400 abilities in the first place.
Having an abilitie i use once every 4 levels is stupid, a good game design fine tunes the classes and leaves you with a small number of abilities which you could use at allmost any stituation and a handfull of situational abilities. ToR seems to have a billion abilties which you can spam allmost as much as you want, since most classes dont seem to be running out of resources any how, unless they spam some poorly ballanced ulti and even then it takes allot to get "OOM" in this game...
A Game with few abilities is a no brain game, as long as all the abilities can be used in a certain situation some more some less ofc, it is fine by me, being able to start and pvping as max lvl an mmo is retarded and having 8 abilities to use and being defeated by someone just because he had better abilities on the bar is retarded (GW) .
when u start playing an mmo u should have that filling of being nothing but a grain of sand, that is what i felt in SWTOR loving the progression loving everything and i want new and more skills as i lvl, u should have a counter to everything someone else does at all times, not 8 abilities and luck
Sounds like what you described is a card battle game. Anybody agree?Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I've read exactly what you have said and I disagree. You don't like variety and having to make choices, I do. At least that is what it boils down too. Btw, love your repetitive use of "strawman attack"" in pretty much any thread where people disagree with you. If you can't handle a discussion in the future I would recommend just not posting.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
I don't use the term that much, but you seem fond of that logical fallacy.
For instance, you say I don't like variety and making choices. That's just flat-out wrong and I've never said that. You say that "less is more" means that people must like like less cyber security. These ARE strawman attacks. You're completely misrepresenting what is being said.
You are free to disgree, but if you don't have a logical counter to what we're saying, then don't pretend like you do.
Well said, though you can have a few more abilities than that if chunking and other tricks are taken advantage of (an RTS can potentially do this by having abilities divided by unit, assuming some care is taken in that division).
Of course, turn-based or non-time senstitive games can make do with a lot more abilities, but it is still a good principle of game design to make sure all choices are meaningful and hence to avoid small or otherwise unimportant differences between multiple abilities. Of course, this is where some games can fall flat.
I like the way it is. Maybe they didn't design this game for the dumbed down console generation. It's good to have different options during battles, reminds me a bit from the golden age of Neverwinter Nights.
It's not about "less or more cybersecurity" a simpler system is usually a more secure one, a stand alone computer in a locked safe is more secure than an internet facing server. And yes to an extend the more "security" features you add the less secure your system can be both in terms of security flaws that each additional component brings and both in the terms of human interaction where complex securiy schemes either force people to turn them off or result in a "yellow postnote" effect where people intentionnaly leave clues for them selves, and usually for others...
A MOBA game is a very good example, heck even games like Mass Effect and TES are a good example for how you should expose abilities to the player. If your combat is about swinging a sword, the swinging it self should not be presented in 40 diffrent buttons, the how you swing it should be more about char development than about pressing a button.
Look at how many swordmenship schools are there, even for simmilar weapons in the same~ enviorment, europe has multiple and very destigutive swordmenship styles even tho allot of the weapons were of simmilar size and shape. Some styles revolved around hitting the enemy with the hilt and the corss of the sword and not with the blade, some required the weapon to be held by the blade it self with a gauntlet, and what do you know some styles actually envolved holding the hilt of the sword! all of this could be and should be exposed to the player in a diffrent way than another button.. weather by his chioice of the class it self, by training a specific skill or by leveling with a specific weapon. The fighting it self with swords and other melee weapons was much more limited that what you think, there are only a hanfull of moves which were found to be effective for each weapon and figthing style, and people who trained trained to use a very specific weapon in a very speicifc style untill they became very good at it.
As for those who mentioned P&P RPG's i still remeber when elf was a class in D&D and where after numbers you had letters for levels, and P&P RPG's are way way way more restrictive than any MMO today, you had attack, maybe a handfull of spells of which you had to pick what to use), computer based D&D clones are quite restritive also, you usually dont have more than half a bar of skills, maybe bit more if you are a spell caster but that's it...
Now i dont say that you would want an MMO where you can only case 3 magic missiles per PVP match, but still there should be much more thought put into what skills you take to the battle, or can have on your char at any givven time. Skill points, and talent points should actually have a meaning besides givving you some additional flat % boost to your damage or defense. I never thought that WoW's Talent 2.0 was any good untill i actually took a look at it...
I think they amount is fine. If you want to take a look at a game with way too many abilities, look no further than EQ2. all you do is stare at your giant box of abilities and click the shit out of it. You almost never get to see what's happening on the screen. If I can set my abilities to 1-5, R, F, C, V and Z on my keyboard and get the job done, I'm happy. SWTOR lets me do that.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Your first example perfectly compliments my point.
RTS games can have more abilities -as long as- they are COMPARTMENTALIZED in unit-abilities.
The same way there is no problem that a class using pets has 5 more abilities on the pet. You are seperately tracking your toons abilities and the pets abilities.
You can offload the issue for example with having stances (WoW Warrior) or binding abilities to the weapons that are used (GW2).
If you look deeply into game-design ethics you will find this trend everywhere. For example console controllers have up to 14 physical buttons. There is no restriction to have more than that abilities in any given game though as you could toggle a set of abilities by holding for example the left trigger.
YET barely any game goes beyond the 4 main buttons (X, Y, A, B on the 360) and the d-pad. Even Bioware itself stuck to that philosophy in Dragon Age Origins on 360
On the PC not so much, but given the fact that combat can be paused, this is not a big deal. In MMOs however it is.
WoW for example has many many skills, but if you boil it down, you will be using 3-4 of them, the others being situational skills or utilities (not counting summon mount, slowfall, permabuffs like hunter-aspects, etc.)
Too late to turn back now. Remove a single ability, and the "omgdumbeddown!!!one1!!!!" types instantly appear.
I actually like having more options than I can easily juggle; I have to make choices.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Again situational abilities are not a choice, they are forced on you - press 5 to kill a green spine spoted dragon between 12.00 and 16.30 on the first monday of every even month is not a chioce its another "requirement".
Having abilities which you need to combo or used in a specific time frame during the fight, or as a responce to an oponent's actions(in a non press 5 to kill dragon frequency) is about "choice". If your choice is do you use the blue lighting or the purple fireball to kill somthing when they both do the same damage cost the same amount of recources are virutally identical than its not a chioice. A choice needs to have a meaning, no meaning = no choice...