Originally posted by SupportPlayerMM Lets be honest here... people would just macro the skills and not use them individually anyways... so what's the point of excluding players without keyboards our gaming mice from performing on par with everyone else. Less is better in this regard.
Unless they made a skill system more like that of Vanguard wherein you needed to dodge, block, parry, or critical before being able to activate various abilities. This made it so macroing wasn't nearly as useful but forced people to also play the game rather than falling into a rhythm of key presses.
Can the OP, or those who are concerned about the limited action skills - put things in better perspective?
1) Name a game which didn't limit the number of abilities you could use.
2) In the game you named, please enter the full rotation you would use for a PvE fight?
3) Outside of the fixed rotation you called out above for PvE, what are some of the skills you would use only once in a while - and under what circumstance would they be used?
4) In the game you named, please enter the skills you would most likely use during a PvP fight?
5) Outside of the general skills you called out above for PvP, what are some of the skills you would use only once in a while - and under what circumstance would they be used?
Most of the people posting in this thread who are against limited action sets, are posting in generalizations. This doesn't necessarily lead to making any sort of point, as you aren't putting things in perspective. Thus, maybe a bit more specific details would be appreciated.
1) WoW... but not just WoW, any game with bars of abilities did this.
2) Check Icy Veins for current rotations, I'll pick one at random. Beast Master Hunter:
for single target it has 10 different abilities and couple things to keep track of (Frenzy on your pet and your Focus)
Multi-target rotation is slighty different than that, adding couple more abilities for you (Explosive traps and multi-shot) plus couple more abilities depending on what pet you have.
3)Cooldowns. 5 different ones. Cannot be used just wily nilly cause some are actually detrimental or not useful while others are on (ie: Do not use Rapid Fire when Bestial Wrath is on, it does very little)
Aspects: toggle abilities, I fully expect Wildstar to have these too and not be active abilities, so let's discard these.
CC: traps, various kind of stunning, sleeping, confusing shots etc. Varies with what talents you picked and are used situationally when needed.
Utility: these do not CC the target but will do things like Taunt it, dumb your threat to some other target, put you out of combat etc etc. Used situationally when needed.
Pet Abilities: these will most likely fall in one of the previous ones, but are separate buttons.
Crafting abilities: Professions might give you an ability that fall in one of the previous category BUT is an additional button.
4) no idea about PvP sorry but I assume it is similar to PvP with different focus on different abilities (slowing down, rooting and CC is more important in PvP I would think)
5) no idea, sorry see above.
NOTE: The other classes of WoW are all similar to this. Some will have a bit more or less stuff, but they are all quite like this.
I hope now you are convinced there is no generalization here. I know what I am talking about.
My bigger problem, though, is the lack of advancement once you hit a certain point. In WoW you always get new stuff as you level up, new abilities, a new talent whatever... in GW2 you stopped getting cool stuff quite early and then all you had to look forward to were getting more points to unlock stuff you did not want and put points in these talent trees that mostly just gave you passive abilities. Nice, yes, but not really that game-shattering.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Playing EQ and FFXi for a combined total of 11 years I'm perfectly fine with auto attack being my main source of damage and skills only used every so often.
I don't really like having 20 skills to use every single fight.
Skill bloat is just as bad. Skills created for no good reason, just to pad out the skill lists and make it look like you have a ton of groovy skills. Best example I can think of is Rift, although SWTOR on a Sith Warrior suffered from this as well at go-live.
LOTRO is another perfect example. Way too many skills. Most useless.
I would rather have a few meaningful skills that are situational like Neverwinter, than the 5 bars of useless crap I had in LOTRO.
Games like Rift and WoW have heaps of skills.... but they all get macroed into one supermacro. The skills themselves are essentially worthless aside from putting them in damage priority order. I probably had 3-4 situational skills on any character on either of those games. The rest were just macroed.
All the games with good combat I can think of have limited skills that are actually meaningful. GW1, Neverwinter, LoL etc.
The main issue of a system where you have to choose a number of skills from your total amount of skills is the need to optimize your role. When you play a DD you pick skills which are good for dealing damage and because of the limitation you have to leave some nice-to-have-but-not necessary-for-your-role-skills out, the kind of stuff you haven't actually key-bound loitering around at the fringe of your action bar, but in some rare situation it is useful or just fun.
But on the other hand when the combat is as fast and a mobile as they claim at least I can't handle 20+ key bound skills very well. And to be honest in most games with no action bar limitations in the end it's all about 5 to 10 core skills plus some abilities which are nice to have but used only in rare occasions.
Edit & off-topi:
Can anyone explain the stars under my username? Where do they come from and what do they mean?
Comments
Unless they made a skill system more like that of Vanguard wherein you needed to dodge, block, parry, or critical before being able to activate various abilities. This made it so macroing wasn't nearly as useful but forced people to also play the game rather than falling into a rhythm of key presses.
1) WoW... but not just WoW, any game with bars of abilities did this.
2) Check Icy Veins for current rotations, I'll pick one at random. Beast Master Hunter:
for single target it has 10 different abilities and couple things to keep track of (Frenzy on your pet and your Focus)
Multi-target rotation is slighty different than that, adding couple more abilities for you (Explosive traps and multi-shot) plus couple more abilities depending on what pet you have.
3)Cooldowns. 5 different ones. Cannot be used just wily nilly cause some are actually detrimental or not useful while others are on (ie: Do not use Rapid Fire when Bestial Wrath is on, it does very little)
Aspects: toggle abilities, I fully expect Wildstar to have these too and not be active abilities, so let's discard these.
CC: traps, various kind of stunning, sleeping, confusing shots etc. Varies with what talents you picked and are used situationally when needed.
Utility: these do not CC the target but will do things like Taunt it, dumb your threat to some other target, put you out of combat etc etc. Used situationally when needed.
Pet Abilities: these will most likely fall in one of the previous ones, but are separate buttons.
Crafting abilities: Professions might give you an ability that fall in one of the previous category BUT is an additional button.
4) no idea about PvP sorry but I assume it is similar to PvP with different focus on different abilities (slowing down, rooting and CC is more important in PvP I would think)
5) no idea, sorry see above.
NOTE: The other classes of WoW are all similar to this. Some will have a bit more or less stuff, but they are all quite like this.
I hope now you are convinced there is no generalization here. I know what I am talking about.
My bigger problem, though, is the lack of advancement once you hit a certain point. In WoW you always get new stuff as you level up, new abilities, a new talent whatever... in GW2 you stopped getting cool stuff quite early and then all you had to look forward to were getting more points to unlock stuff you did not want and put points in these talent trees that mostly just gave you passive abilities. Nice, yes, but not really that game-shattering.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
Playing EQ and FFXi for a combined total of 11 years I'm perfectly fine with auto attack being my main source of damage and skills only used every so often.
I don't really like having 20 skills to use every single fight.
LOTRO is another perfect example. Way too many skills. Most useless.
I would rather have a few meaningful skills that are situational like Neverwinter, than the 5 bars of useless crap I had in LOTRO.
Games like Rift and WoW have heaps of skills.... but they all get macroed into one supermacro. The skills themselves are essentially worthless aside from putting them in damage priority order. I probably had 3-4 situational skills on any character on either of those games. The rest were just macroed.
All the games with good combat I can think of have limited skills that are actually meaningful. GW1, Neverwinter, LoL etc.
The main issue of a system where you have to choose a number of skills from your total amount of skills is the need to optimize your role. When you play a DD you pick skills which are good for dealing damage and because of the limitation you have to leave some nice-to-have-but-not necessary-for-your-role-skills out, the kind of stuff you haven't actually key-bound loitering around at the fringe of your action bar, but in some rare situation it is useful or just fun.
But on the other hand when the combat is as fast and a mobile as they claim at least I can't handle 20+ key bound skills very well. And to be honest in most games with no action bar limitations in the end it's all about 5 to 10 core skills plus some abilities which are nice to have but used only in rare occasions.
Edit & off-topi:
Can anyone explain the stars under my username? Where do they come from and what do they mean?