Pots and other active items don't only exist in ESO. WoW has active effect items and pots that can be slotted to hotbars, in addition to having way more skills.
Blocking and light/heavy stuff is unique, but the rest has been and is continually used throughout the genre. Dodging is used less so due to the prevalence of tab targeting.
I'm sorry, but what exactly are you talking about?
I only said pots and active items have their own dedicated wheel in ESO as opposed to a game like WoW where you slot them to a hotbar. Hence ESO removed the need to be slotting them to a hotbar in specific.
Moreover I was not saying blocking light/heavy stuff, etc is unique or not. I was saying, as you can read in the original post, that all these abilities are simply features that would normally be embedded within combat skills in a game like WoW. Instead of slotting them as specific skills on a quickbar, they were instead culled and put into an action-styled system.
The comparison you complain about was me using the two games to show how their feature set is actually more similar to one another than it is different, ESO just represents the features and depth in a different manner.
You seem to be trying to correct some other argument that was never made.
Could you quote what part you managed to misinterpret?
No auction house, not even a limited one where guilds could put in samples and point us to where to find them for more, or how about allowing merchants to set up small shops like the NPCs have?
???
Guild shops do exist, they litter every city.
I was thinking more of a standard kiosk setup in each major city showing limited wears from every guild. Including the location of their stores if you want to buy more.
Ah, oki doki.
Yeah can think of plenty of ways in which they could have implemented a better shop system even if they wanted to not have a global one. I've never minded it's current implementation much, but I also never went searching for gear in shops much.
Yeah i've been complaining about the limited skills since the game launch. Its my only problem with the game. I'M an old school mmo player that wants my unlimited hotbars loaded with skills like in EQ2. No matter how i mix and match skills in ESO combat is just boring because of this. I also heard it was done this way to make it easier for console players.
Pots and other active items don't only exist in ESO. WoW has active effect items and pots that can be slotted to hotbars, in addition to having way more skills.
Blocking and light/heavy stuff is unique, but the rest has been and is continually used throughout the genre. Dodging is used less so due to the prevalence of tab targeting.
I'm sorry, but what exactly are you talking about?
I only said pots and active items have their own dedicated wheel in ESO as opposed to a game like WoW where you slot them to a hotbar. Hence ESO removed the need to be slotting them to a hotbar in specific.
Moreover I was not saying blocking light/heavy stuff, etc is unique or not. I was saying, as you can read in the original post, that all these abilities are simply features that would normally be embedded within combat skills in a game like WoW. Instead of slotting them as specific skills on a quickbar, they were instead culled and put into an action-styled system.
The comparison you complain about was me using the two games to show how their feature set is actually more similar to one another than it is different, ESO just represents the features and depth in a different manner.
You seem to be trying to correct some other argument that was never made.
Could you quote what part you managed to misinterpret?
You used that as part of your argument to say ESO has 14+ skills, which is like saying WoW characters get over 60 skills because there's that many other active items you could slot into those hotbar slots.
If you weren't trying to link the two, I mistunderstood, but there was a heavy implication in the post that you were connecting the dots there.
Pots and other active items don't only exist in ESO. WoW has active effect items and pots that can be slotted to hotbars, in addition to having way more skills.
Blocking and light/heavy stuff is unique, but the rest has been and is continually used throughout the genre. Dodging is used less so due to the prevalence of tab targeting.
I'm sorry, but what exactly are you talking about?
I only said pots and active items have their own dedicated wheel in ESO as opposed to a game like WoW where you slot them to a hotbar. Hence ESO removed the need to be slotting them to a hotbar in specific.
Moreover I was not saying blocking light/heavy stuff, etc is unique or not. I was saying, as you can read in the original post, that all these abilities are simply features that would normally be embedded within combat skills in a game like WoW. Instead of slotting them as specific skills on a quickbar, they were instead culled and put into an action-styled system.
The comparison you complain about was me using the two games to show how their feature set is actually more similar to one another than it is different, ESO just represents the features and depth in a different manner.
You seem to be trying to correct some other argument that was never made.
Could you quote what part you managed to misinterpret?
You used that as part of your argument to say ESO has 14+ skills, which is like saying WoW characters get over 60 skills because there's that many other active items you could slot into those hotbar slots.
If you weren't trying to link the two, I mistunderstood, but there was a heavy implication in the post that you were connecting the dots there.
Yeah, no that's not what I said in the least.
I pointed out the "14+ skills" as the actual functional abilities any given player can use in the middle of combat. It was also a metric I used because Cameltosis referenced using 15-20 skills on average.
That number does not include the radial wheel in it's count, only combat skills.
I referenced the quickbar as a counterpart to the use of hotbars for storing consumables, as it allows users to slot multiple things into a single button location so the quickslot button is effectively it's own isolated hotbar of items.
I don't know why so many complain about 6 abilities per bar. Games are evolving and as a result, gone are the days of having 4 or more hot bars filled with abilities where you only end up using a handful of them anyway. Even the juggernaut wow has been pruning abilities over the last few expansions. Playing whack-a-mole with abilities isn't fun, which is probably why you see games moving away from this.
ESO forces you to put together a 12 skill kit to fit whatever role or play style you choose. GW2 does something very similar, but that system is even more limiting as your equipped weapons decide 5 of your skills per bar.
As far as ability cooldowns go, they really aren't necessary with fixed resource pools. You can't endlessly spam abilities or you will exhaust your stam or mag.
Animation cancelling was the dealbreaker for me. After playing all the really great story stuff and "been there done that" at least once the regular MMO stuff went stale because of animation cancelling. It feels like cheating for me. I could have played ESO for years, but animation cancelling prevented to minmax my skills in any way to do raids and more.
ESO is a game with brilliant story, great crafting, nice visuals aside from mostly ugly charakters, interesting responsive combat aside from weaving and animation cancelling, but technically those devs are not nearly average. I am pretty sure animation cancelling was never intended but they lack the skill to fix it, as they lack the skills to fix quite some other technical issues in the game.
It's a shame, but there are other good games out there.
The funniest part, if they change the combat to a 80 hotbar slotted wow clone , peopoe would be " bahaha its a wow clone, trash" .
Just leave ESO alone, it works as intended , if the combat isn't for you, it isn't for you... stop trying to change everything for "you" .
Calm down.. I'm not trying to get it changed. In fact I don't even know what changes I'd recommend. Certainly not a transition to a "80 hotbar slotted wow clone".
Just saying that it's a shame I can't get into the game because of the combat but there's plenty of other games out there for anyone's fancy. ESO is a pretty good game I couldn't get into... life goes on.
I don't know why so many complain about 6 abilities per bar. Games are evolving and as a result, gone are the days of having 4 or more hot bars filled with abilities where you only end up using a handful of them anyway. Even the juggernaut wow has been pruning abilities over the last few expansions. Playing whack-a-mole with abilities isn't fun, which is probably why you see games moving away from this.
ESO forces you to put together a 12 skill kit to fit whatever role or play style you choose. GW2 does something very similar, but that system is even more limiting as your equipped weapons decide 5 of your skills per bar.
As far as ability cooldowns go, they really aren't necessary with fixed resource pools. You can't endlessly spam abilities or you will exhaust your stam or mag.
I'm also one of the players who sees a limited active skill system as a plus. It adds fun to the decision making process of how to build a character. It treats the skills you know and could use pretty well the same way all games treat gear you own and could use.
In ESO you're not just deciding what to wear you're also deciding which skills to take into a fight.
The games with unlimited skill bars are also the ones that pre-limit what skills you have access to by class and level locking them. It's ironic that people see those games that actually limit your character to maybe 1/10th of the skills in the game as more complex than a game where you have to self-limit to 12 skills from the 75% of skills in the game you actually have access to.
ESO has its flaws but this isn't one of them.
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Level scaling finished the game for me. It is such an artificial mechanic. It ruins any sense of character progression and makes the once amazing ESO world just a painted dropback. Yes I can see some advantages in that more zones offer a challenge ect. But you know that a mob is not powerful or weak of different... it just scales to you. It is a cheap, easily applied mechanic that ruins any immersion for me. Once I found that crafting material drops no longer had anything to do with a location, but just dropped according to your level I left. Not had the slightest interest in the game since. It is uncommon for a game to go so far downhill in the name of 'improvements' but they have managed it. As others have stated, it has become a tacky console copy of an MMO that does nothing very well.
I don't know why so many complain about 6 abilities per bar. Games are evolving and as a result, gone are the days of having 4 or more hot bars filled with abilities where you only end up using a handful of them anyway. Even the juggernaut wow has been pruning abilities over the last few expansions. Playing whack-a-mole with abilities isn't fun, which is probably why you see games moving away from this.
ESO forces you to put together a 12 skill kit to fit whatever role or play style you choose. GW2 does something very similar, but that system is even more limiting as your equipped weapons decide 5 of your skills per bar.
As far as ability cooldowns go, they really aren't necessary with fixed resource pools. You can't endlessly spam abilities or you will exhaust your stam or mag.
I'm also one of the players who sees a limited active skill system as a plus. It adds fun to the decision making process of how to build a character. It treats the skills you know and could use pretty well the same way all games treat gear you own and could use.
In ESO you're not just deciding what to wear you're also deciding which skills to take into a fight.
The games with unlimited skill bars are also the ones that pre-limit what skills you have access to by class and level locking them. It's ironic that people see those games that actually limit your character to maybe 1/10th of the skills in the game as more complex than a game where you have to self-limit to 12 skills from the 75% of skills in the game you actually have access to.
ESO has its flaws but this isn't one of them.
Yes, there is nothing like adding skills to your limited skill bar that you will never use, just so you can level them up to reach other skills you want. Limiting you even more until you get what you want. I know the work-arounds for that, but the system is no better than having 20 skill slots with access to all of them. ESO skills may not be level locked, but they are locked until you have reached that predetermined number of skills uses in that line. Same thing, just done differently.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
The amount of skills needed depends on the game. I've played games with twenty or more skills shown and in some games I've probably used all of them, especially as a healer keeping a group alive (EQ2), or as a buffer (Aion, L2). I'd really rather have them and not need them then the other way around. Especially if a lot of skills are on long timers. Other games you can just spam one skill or two skills and get through everything. This game cry's out for more skills to be made available, IMO. I can play it but I always feel gimped to a degree.
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I don't know why so many complain about 6 abilities per bar. Games are evolving and as a result, gone are the days of having 4 or more hot bars filled with abilities where you only end up using a handful of them anyway. Even the juggernaut wow has been pruning abilities over the last few expansions. Playing whack-a-mole with abilities isn't fun, which is probably why you see games moving away from this.
ESO forces you to put together a 12 skill kit to fit whatever role or play style you choose. GW2 does something very similar, but that system is even more limiting as your equipped weapons decide 5 of your skills per bar.
As far as ability cooldowns go, they really aren't necessary with fixed resource pools. You can't endlessly spam abilities or you will exhaust your stam or mag.
I'm also one of the players who sees a limited active skill system as a plus. It adds fun to the decision making process of how to build a character. It treats the skills you know and could use pretty well the same way all games treat gear you own and could use.
In ESO you're not just deciding what to wear you're also deciding which skills to take into a fight.
The games with unlimited skill bars are also the ones that pre-limit what skills you have access to by class and level locking them. It's ironic that people see those games that actually limit your character to maybe 1/10th of the skills in the game as more complex than a game where you have to self-limit to 12 skills from the 75% of skills in the game you actually have access to.
ESO has its flaws but this isn't one of them.
Yes, there is nothing like adding skills to your limited skill bar that you will never use, just so you can level them up to reach other skills you want. Limiting you even more until you get what you want. I know the work-arounds for that, but the system is no better than having 20 skill slots with access to all of them. ESO skills may not be level locked, but they are locked until you have reached that predetermined number of skills uses in that line. Same thing, just done differently.
Not quite. Yeah there is leveling in ESO of course but you can get any skill line way ahead of your character level since the only line that is synced to levels is the racial passive line.
And as far as slotting skills you don't use to advance a line, sure you can do it that way but the smarter way to do it is to slot those only when you're about to get a large XP bump (as in quest turn in) and just slot what you actually use the rest of the time. That's also how you get at the juicy rank 42 skills in a line when your own level might just be in the low 30s by loading up your bar with any and all skills in the line you're trying to advance. When you're done getting what you're after, just re-spec - it's cheap at low levels and the new level-up rewards even gives you a free re-spec scroll at level 40.
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Something people seem to frequently miss with the difference between ESO combat and combat of say WoW, is that a suite of the skills one expects to regularly use is baked into the "action" controls so they do not take up hotbar space. Things that differ like the power attacks, stagger/interrupt effect with slamming, block effect for damage mitigation, or even the dodge effect for avoiding damage outright. Those culminate in at least four additional skills that are always on access to the player, with the addition of specific effects that can be applied to weapons.
They aren't without an easy access to consumables in their own separate function either. Instead of it being a hotbar it's simply a quick access selection wheel bound to a single button so that you can have another eight items in a compact space.
Coupled with weapon swapping for complimentary or even polar skill suites to fit different mid-action roles, and the game actually carries a good amount of depth to it.
If we use Cameltosis complaints as a baseline, then ESO is already coming close then with a baseline of 14+ active skills, plus the radial wheel for quick access to consumables/cosmetics (plus the dedicated mount button).
Class interdependence doesn't exist in ESO so much as role interdependence. The fact that even a Nightblade can build themselves out as an effective tank goes to that point. The depth there is from the choice in skill setup, gear types, and statting and bonus gear trait choices that all factor into your chosen playstyle.
This isn't to say some character's don't break things, like a Sorc can basically just dump their stats into magic and health and call it a day to do almost anything. Balance issues exist. That's not the encompassing trait of the system though, and you have a good amount of synergy and depth of gameplay both in the core mechanics and in group play. That this is a more active game does affect it's depth as well, as more fights the developers have introduced has continued to lean into this, with many factors you have to account for and respond to, giving combat again another form of depth that a title like WoW only really brings up in boss raid battles sometimes.
How many buttons are bound to a bar is not reflective of the full suite of skills at a character's disposal. Moreover it's a tool that still limits the scope of a game's interactive options and features, and those things need to be designed to work on that bar in a more universal basis. It homogenizes into lightly tweaked versions of the same basic things. In many instances an overpopulated bar can be shown to have redundancies in that regard too, but "necessary" ones only for the sake of managing/overcoming cooldowns or modulating resource use. That's not depth, that's an effort to bypass depth.
You can get a lot more depth out of any system by contextualizing many player actions than you ever will by trying to jam them onto a directly mapped controller or keyboard.
ESO is not the king of this, hell they don't really contextualize much of anything and I would call it a relatively shallow combat system, but shallow in the same manner as one that uses quick-bars. It's beholden to making everything fit into a context-less scenario where one's abilities can be applied to any and every fight. That fundamentally simplifies the depth of a user experience.
EDIT: Quick note to Cameltosis too though, perhaps it's something that was updated at some point and I never really paid attention, but resource management already works for extended skill use, pending you take advantage of certain gearing choices and/or use certain class options. There's character building and gearing tutorials for how to absolve that.
I think you've missed the point about why I want changes to be made.
The key word is depth.
Depth is a measure of the number of meaningful choices you have to make. For a choice to be meaningful, it has to be difficult to make AND have an effect on the outcome of the battle.
In a game like ESO, with only 6 active skills (but, we can call it 14 if you include both bars and mouse attacks) and no cooldowns on the majority of skills, there is no depth. First, the choice of what skill to use next is very easy. With such a limited choice available to you, it is really very easy to select what to use next. Second, with no cooldown, even if you select the wrong skill it doesn't matter, you can just select the right one almost immediately afterwards, so your choice of skill has no impact.
So, ESO is just very, very shallow in combat. You basically just follow your very easy rotation, react with a block or dodge if needed, and pop your emergency skill as needed. No thought process needed. No intellectual engagement. Boredom.
Now, with all the choices of weapons / armour etc, ESO does have depth in the meta game. I'm not disputing that, there are some really key decisions that you need to make to optimise your character and that is great. But, because the depth is in the meta-game, you can just look up the information online and take your time.
My suggestions of a MINIMUM of 15-20 skills was excluding the mouse attacks. But, you have to combine those skills with a valid purpose. In my ideal game, I would have:
10 solo standard abilities - these form your rotation 10 solo situational abilities - things like emergency heals, proc abilities etc 10 group standard abilities - things like building aggro, transferring aggro, healing others, buffing others 10 group situational abilities
The goal with this sort of ability design is to ensure that players are making meaningful decisions in combat and not just spamming a rotation. For example, a stun ability would fall into the solo situational category. A 30s stun on a 5minute cooldown. Using that ability requires you to engage with the fight. If you pop the stun at the wrong time, your DoT might wake up the mob. If you need to use that 30s to heal, then timing the stun with other healing/pot cooldowns is essential. In a group setting, you need to ensure what you're stunning won't be woken up by AoE. It is the 5minute cooldown that adds the depth here, as without the cooldown it doens't matter if you get it wrong, you can just use the skill again.
It is also worth pointing out that without the valid purpose to skills, you just have skill bloat and instead of adding depth, you are only adding complexity. Complexity by itself is pretty pointless, it may take you time to learn to execute a really long rotation but there is no decision making involved.
SW:TOR is a perfect example of a tab-target game that got it wrong. Each class had tons of skills but the combat was still really shallow. Rotations were quite long (think one of my shadow's builds had a 16 skill rotation...) but the game offered nothing beyond rotations. Each class had maybe 2-4 situational abilities but that was it, so in combat you only had to choose between your rotation or those situationals. Making a choice between 4 or 5 options.....pretty fucking easy.
As mentioned though, I don't expect ESO to change to suit me. It was designed as a mass market MMO and was designed to work on consoles, so the combat has to be easy and shallow to please the target audience. If they added the depth I require, it would be too difficult for the target audience.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
ESO combat is trash, its spammy, boring and mindless, the animations arent interesting to look at and the builds if you can call them that are bland, and hurts the game overall.
It holds me back from returning to it.
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I don't know why so many complain about 6 abilities per bar. Games are evolving and as a result, gone are the days of having 4 or more hot bars filled with abilities where you only end up using a handful of them anyway. Even the juggernaut wow has been pruning abilities over the last few expansions. Playing whack-a-mole with abilities isn't fun, which is probably why you see games moving away from this.
ESO forces you to put together a 12 skill kit to fit whatever role or play style you choose. GW2 does something very similar, but that system is even more limiting as your equipped weapons decide 5 of your skills per bar.
As far as ability cooldowns go, they really aren't necessary with fixed resource pools. You can't endlessly spam abilities or you will exhaust your stam or mag.
While WoW is pruning skills, I still have in excess of 12 skills on my Paladin that are used regularly in fights.
There's a difference between bloating skills by adding almost completely superfluous skills and adding situational skills that are useful and add layers to combat actions, counters, etc.. There's not a large portion of gamers screaming to have skills added that are only useful once in a blue moon.
I don't know why so many complain about 6 abilities per bar. Games are evolving and as a result, gone are the days of having 4 or more hot bars filled with abilities where you only end up using a handful of them anyway. Even the juggernaut wow has been pruning abilities over the last few expansions. Playing whack-a-mole with abilities isn't fun, which is probably why you see games moving away from this.
ESO forces you to put together a 12 skill kit to fit whatever role or play style you choose. GW2 does something very similar, but that system is even more limiting as your equipped weapons decide 5 of your skills per bar.
As far as ability cooldowns go, they really aren't necessary with fixed resource pools. You can't endlessly spam abilities or you will exhaust your stam or mag.
While WoW is pruning skills, I still have in excess of 12 skills on my Paladin that are used regularly in fights.
There's a difference between bloating skills by adding almost completely superfluous skills and adding situational skills that are useful and add layers to combat actions, counters, etc.. There's not a large portion of gamers screaming to have skills added that are only useful once in a blue moon.
Agreed, at the point when I quit LotRO, my captain had about 40 skills that I used regularly. Only 5-7 of them were part of my rotation, the rest were all situational. As a raider and pvper, those situations would come up every day so I was able to experience the full depth of the combat system.
Correct skill selection was a massive part of being a skilled player in that game, being able to judge a situation correctly and make a call on the best skill within a second or two added tons of depth. Easily the most engaging combat system I've ever played, even if visually it was a little dull.
I guess if I was a casual soloer then I'd consider it skill bloat as I'd only ever need those 5-7 skills and maybe that is where the design challenge comes in - a combat system should be engaging for all player types. I tend to find that the majority of MMOs either design their combat systems for soloers/casuals, leaving people like me bored out of their mind, or they're design for the top end, so only a small proportion of player base gets to experience the full depth on offer and everyone else gets something a bit boring.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
That is a rather odd interpretation of depth, honestly.
Foremost, the example you gave kind of throws a wrench into the notion of engaging combat because a 30s stun would in many cases be longer than an individual fight in a game like ESO. The depth of the combat has to play in part to the pace, and actions need to be responsive to the time span in which live or die takes precedent. That's why a 5s stun in many cases is already a long enough effect to cause people worry.
That leads into the next point that the manner in which depth works generally manages to vary. Your complaint that there is no cooldowns for example doesn't really directly correlate to game depth because it's not a matter of if an ability is on cooldown, but if it's the right skill to use contextually. Spamming the wrong skill can sometimes work, but the same can be said of any rotation or hot-bar laden game.
Which also goes to point of your assertion about how many skills are apparently required to experience good game depth. Dumping 40+ skills on a person that are remixes of each-other only adds a minor level of depth, something that can generally be obtained by augmenting pre-existing skills, not to mention that most of the time the meta of games with even large numbers of skills boils down to the finite few that are most meta-game optimized. You acknowledged this point, but seemed to fail to consider that the principles of each skill draws on a finite pool of effects to begin with, and as said prior has to fit with the pacing of the gameplay.
This also plays into the commentary you made about cooldowns. As you applied them in your examples, cooldowns are not adding much to the depth. They are an if/then factor of whether a skill is used and therefore if you can reuse it during the duration of a fight, especially at a five minute mark. This is moreso when you consider that if an ability is ineffective in it's initial use, then spamming it isn't necessarily going to to you any better.
That is where the depth comes in. You touched on timing as it relates to this, but moreover it's a matter of if a skill is most suited to the situation, not how long you get to wait until you can use it again. The timer only means that you cannot correct a mistake. That falls right into forcing the very mindless rotations that you denigrated in your next paragraph.
To which your argument also misses a rather fundamental point on depth as well. You don't need buttons lined up in a row for those actions to exist in the game. As I pointed out with ESO's action controls, abilities can just as well be embedded into other control schemes. Context-sensitive actions as well add a good layer of conditional action sets and allows for greater depth than any homogenized skill set that has to be available on a character for 24/7 use ever could.
Granted ESO lacks in that department as much as any other. As it applies to ESO though, you are effectively hand-waving elements of that game's depth in favor of a different presentation of depth. Not actually arguing for more or less.
Now, you can argue that things like animation canceling has screwed over ESO's depth. With people picking the strongest options and spamming that skill like it's a spin to win button, then it bypasses much of ESO skill synergy, contextual values for skills, and cuts the pacing to a break-neck where more or less you're just playing pinball between mobs. The actual mechanics of the game though allows for there to be a good amount ado about wise skill usage and choices though.
It being undermined by a particular flaw in the implementation does not make it so that depth is not there, just that the depth of the game's design is superfluous.
You almost grasped that point when you wrote "...a combat system should be engaging for all player types." There is an integral point there that the depth of the game has to exist at an approachable level while still offering complexity of choice. Your LOTRO comment as well showed the same fundamental problem as what ESO has, save for ESO suffering it to a more extreme condition.
It's not like contextual skills don't exist in that game and that they don't have value. The only reason I was ever a good healer in that game was because I chose not to be spammy with my heals and instead use a suite of shield, heal over time, area, and buffs/debuffs that would help rebalance combat as well as directly assist my team versus a wide variety of problems.
The fact that the game has glaring flaws that allows most people to chain a single heal spammed over and over does not render that the best method, only the most approachable and therefore popular one. With damage dealing it ends up leaning hard into being the best method over utilizing the suite of skills because the fatal flaw of it's engine design having crippled their ability to remove the factors causing people to ignore the game's depth in favor of skill spam.
It's the same point you made, just applied to a different game. Yet you respond much more succinctly to ESO in this case than you do to it in LOTRO, likely because those flaws in ESO are that much more pronounced. But it is no different on what the cause is or the point that there is actual depth to the game's design. The depth is there, it's the player that chooses not to utilize it in favor of exploiting the flaws that simplifies or outright bypasses it.
The onus isn't entirely on the player for such problems, as if that's the most optimal method to playing a game then that's a problem, as is the case with ESO. It is incorrect to pretend that depth in a game's mechanics doesn't exist simply because of that though. It's rather insulting to those that spent time and effort to implement all the underutilized features.
The concept of depth is definitely a difficult one and I usually fail to articulate it properly.
Basically, when I'm in combat, the choice of my next skill should be difficult to make AND have an impact on the outcome of the battle.
When you only have a limited number of skills to choose from, the choice of what to use next is easy, therefore it doesn't have depth. That is the root of my problems with all action combat games - deciding what to do next is too easy.
In a game like ESO where, from my experience, at least 50% of your skills form your rotation, the choices become very easy. Everything that forms part of your rotation - including skills, mouse attacks and animation cancelling - effectively falls under a single choice.
So, out of the 12 skill slots, light and heavy attacks, plus block and dodge, I have 16 options. However, 8 of my skills are damage skills that are part of rotations, as are light and heavy attacks. So, my choice is now rotation, 4 skills, block and dodge. I have 7 options. Block and dodge are reactive, so the decision making in most scenarios is really easy, i.e. no depth. So, I am now reliant on 4 skills to provide all the depth in combat. In order for that decision to be difficult, there should be some cross over - do I use this heal or that one? But again, with no cooldowns, the impact of making the right decision is severely limited, it only becomes a difficult decision if I'm struggling for resources.
I'll use an example from LotRO to demonstrate how a skill adds depth: Shield of the Dunedain.
This is a skill my captain had that bubbles another player, reducing incoming damage by 50% for 20s, on a 5m cooldown. When a player in my group takes damage, this is a great way to protect them and give the healers some breathing room to bring them back up.
Deciding when to use the skill is hard. The impact of the skill can mean the difference between success and failure. When deciding whether to use this skill, I had to make a judgement call in the moment, based on:
Is that player worth saving? e.g. I can let the DPS die, but should probs save the tank.
Are there other players who need it more?
Do I think the healer can save them without me?
Do I need to save the skill for later in the fight?
Will the healers be able to recover if I use the skill, or would using it be a waste?
That is depth. That makes the decision hard to make. Without the 5minute cooldown, there is no depth, I can just use the skill on everyone who needs it, assuming I have the resources.
That is just one skill. The captain in LotRO had about 20 of these types of skills for all sorts of different scenarios. It meant that in challenging content, you had to be seriously skilled to make the best choices and it had a massive impact on the outcome of a fight.
In ESO, without the cooldowns you just don't have to make those sorts of decisions. With only a few skills, even the skills that require good timing or usage you tend to learn very quickly how/when best to use them.
Now, I agree with what you're saying about just dumping skills on a toolbar, that's not how you generate depth. I did specifically say that already and gave SW:TOR as an example of a game with loads of skills but yet still really shallow gameplay. However, without options for what to do next, the decision making becomes easy. This is why I have personally never found an action combat game that has depth in combat, because you have very few options for what you can do so it's dead easy to make that decision.
I agree with your overall comments about contextual skills, and hopefully my example confirms that with you. If the decision is easy to make, there is no depth. If the decision has no impact, there is no depth. In my example of 40 skills, 20 of them add to complexity and 20 of them add to depth. I'm happy for the 20 that form your solo and group rotations to be cut down, in terms of depth you could cut them down to just 1 and retain the same depth. Having 20 is more of a personal preference, the complexity just means you have a longer learning curve when you first pick up the game and allows more unlocks as you level.
If possible, I'd love to hear some examples of how you think ESO (or any action combat game) has managed to achieve depth in combat.
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When you only have a limited number of skills to choose from, the choice of what to use next is easy, therefore it doesn't have depth. That is the root of my problems with all action combat games - deciding what to do next is too easy.
That's not really true.
You can have 100 skills and the use of any one of them could be as shallow as shallow can be.
"depth" is just that "depth". Take your 6 skills and each one could very well decide on another few options, each one drilling down or allowing one to revisit a former option.
Probably one of the reasons "go" is so easy and yet so hard.
Maybe even chess. I mean, what are your options but horizontal or vertical with the exception of the knight.
Yet how each piece is positioned and what it supports is where the complexity comes in.
I think one could have great depth with only two or even 3 choices at a time, unraveling other choices as well.
Action combat is about movement, speed, depending on the game "positioning". It could have more depth but in general it's about excitement and speed and reaction.
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When you only have a limited number of skills to choose from, the choice of what to use next is easy, therefore it doesn't have depth. That is the root of my problems with all action combat games - deciding what to do next is too easy.
That's not really true.
You can have 100 skills and the use of any one of them could be as shallow as shallow can be.
"depth" is just that "depth". Take your 6 skills and each one could very well decide on another few options, each one drilling down or allowing one to revisit a former option.
Probably one of the reasons "go" is so easy and yet so hard.
Maybe even chess. I mean, what are your options but horizontal or vertical with the exception of the knight.
Yet how each piece is positioned and what it supports is where the complexity comes in.
I think one could have great depth with only two or even 3 choices at a time, unraveling other choices as well.
Action combat is about movement, speed, depending on the game "positioning". It could have more depth but in general it's about excitement and speed and reaction.
I agree that limited skills in and of itself does not equal lack of depth. It largely depends upon how the skills are implemented. However, I feel that goes without saying for pretty much any gameplay mechanic.
On the flip side, more skills can absolutely enhance combat depth, as can cooldowns. You can give a class a tide-turning ability on a cooldowns that would otherwise be too powerful for the class to possess. Invuln, flash heals, stuns, interrupts, and instant nukes come to mind. From there, layers get added when you combine these cooldowns with priority or focused targetting. Interrupts might need to be used on a damage dealer to protect your own heals while the nukes and other offensive cooldowns need to be blown on their healer to focus him or her down. Again, it opens things up for strategic use, but it requires intentional implementation.
If possible, I'd love to hear some examples of how you think ESO (or any action combat game) has managed to achieve depth in combat.
To mirror your bubble skill comment, I can point out the usage of the bubble skill on the templar class.
For one, there is much ado about timing on bubbles any ways because 1) it does not stack and 2) it has a very short duration and is therefore pointless to spam as you are otherwise eating your mana pool protecting someone when they don't need it just for the off-chance they do.
It's also still a single-target ability, and you can spam it if you want, but you still have to cast it in succession and each casts drains your mana pool which you have to make sure you're geared for preserving otherwise you'll quickly spend it in an oh-shit scenario.
This then goes to the point that you have to choose when to use it as under many circumstances, to use the skill or to even repeatedly use it in a desperate moment, is not the best choice. Bubbling the lowest person so that they can backpedal to recover, and letting others enact their own possible evasion or protective skills while you drop an aoe heal to aid them ends up help preserving the group much more efficiently and can mean the difference between struggling to keep your pool up enough to keep protecting the group and wiping because you're depleted and everyone is dying.
It's a bit of a disconnect to dismiss something as a "reactive" feature of one system too while your usage of another skill, especially in the scenario you gave, is similarly reactive. You are putting a variety of considerations behind the decisions under both scenarios, unless the combat in LOTRO is lethargic, then you aren't going to have time to ponder a full suite of pros and cons to using that ability in the moment either, that will be a decision you've already mentally made up at some point.
Also brings about another note again that much of this also hinges on how the pacing works for a game. If combat is drawn out enough that you can use skills that last in the tens and can ponder whether or not you want to use a skill now or later, then what depth is there to be had with the consideration that in that same time you could be already using an instant-heal or interrupt ability or even just doubling-down on the damage? The abilities themselves have to all be intentionally paced slower along with the combat itself for such a scenario to work, otherwise there's a slough of possible skills that would bypass the intended depth that the other skills were supposed to introduce. That's not more depth, that's just slower.
Your skill count breakdown kind of highlights what I meant by having a weird interpretation too. Those skills that are inherent to the combat system all have their own value and strategic/contextual usage. Like blocking versus dodging. Dodging quickly winds your character, and blocking will as well when you turtle up, it's a trade-off to your ability to protect yourself or another versus your ability to maintain damage or other skill output. Moreover those skills have secondary values with their interrupt, guard break, or energy regen abilities. You have to know when to use general attacks to build up some power so that you can turn around and do a quick chain of attacks.
And it's nice to say I prefer having X number skills that are all unique, but as I pointed out previously games do not run in infinite variables and most skills are permutations of each-other. How those skills vary tends to get rather trivial at a point, no matter how contextually valuable you may consider them. Especially if a core skill set can operate effectively without them.
This was a big complaint I had with Secret World when it came out. People made much ado about it's skill system, but that game ultimately ran off a handful of status modifiers and there was a lot of crossover in skills as a result. The actual depth of the game boiled down to a dolled up rock paper scissors. That isn't necessarily bad, but it is not nearly as deep as it was often espoused to be either.
When you only have a limited number of skills to choose from, the choice of what to use next is easy, therefore it doesn't have depth. That is the root of my problems with all action combat games - deciding what to do next is too easy.
That's not really true.
You can have 100 skills and the use of any one of them could be as shallow as shallow can be.
"depth" is just that "depth". Take your 6 skills and each one could very well decide on another few options, each one drilling down or allowing one to revisit a former option.
Probably one of the reasons "go" is so easy and yet so hard.
Maybe even chess. I mean, what are your options but horizontal or vertical with the exception of the knight.
Yet how each piece is positioned and what it supports is where the complexity comes in.
I think one could have great depth with only two or even 3 choices at a time, unraveling other choices as well.
Action combat is about movement, speed, depending on the game "positioning". It could have more depth but in general it's about excitement and speed and reaction.
I agree that limited skills in and of itself does not equal lack of depth. It largely depends upon how the skills are implemented. However, I feel that goes without saying for pretty much any gameplay mechanic.
On the flip side, more skills can absolutely enhance combat depth, as can cooldowns. You can give a class a tide-turning ability on a cooldowns that would otherwise be too powerful for the class to possess. Invuln, flash heals, stuns, interrupts, and instant nukes come to mind. From there, layers get added when you combine these cooldowns with priority or focused targetting. Interrupts might need to be used on a damage dealer to protect your own heals while the nukes and other offensive cooldowns need to be blown on their healer to focus him or her down. Again, it opens things up for strategic use, but it requires intentional implementation.
In ESO 2 out of the 12 slotted skills do have a cooldown. They're called "ultimate skills." The more powerful the skill, the longer the cooldown. Although the coolsown timing is variable and it becomes available faster or slower depending on how often you use weapon attacks, whether or not you slot and use certain other skills that impact that and even what armor/weapon sets you choose to wear.
As an aside, it would be easier to take seriously comments about ESO's lack of depth if they were coming from people who have played it enough to have at least done some high-end content with it.
There's depth there (and not just in the meta) that may not be so readily apparent because the game, when played well, forces you to think and react quickly.
I have played WOW, LOTRO and many of the other games being touted as deeper than ESO for years. Had max level characters, did high end content, etc., and frankly, there is nothing less complex about playing ESO to its full potential.
A casual observer may look at it or a new player may dabble with it on the easiest content and see or do nothing but spam random things at random times. But...umm... that's not how it's played when you know what you're doing.
Yes, it can also be enjoyed solo by the mostly clueless with no thought or shits given. But you can also just play WOW to ERP in Goldshire
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I only said pots and active items have their own dedicated wheel in ESO as opposed to a game like WoW where you slot them to a hotbar. Hence ESO removed the need to be slotting them to a hotbar in specific.
Moreover I was not saying blocking light/heavy stuff, etc is unique or not. I was saying, as you can read in the original post, that all these abilities are simply features that would normally be embedded within combat skills in a game like WoW. Instead of slotting them as specific skills on a quickbar, they were instead culled and put into an action-styled system.
The comparison you complain about was me using the two games to show how their feature set is actually more similar to one another than it is different, ESO just represents the features and depth in a different manner.
You seem to be trying to correct some other argument that was never made.
Could you quote what part you managed to misinterpret?
Yeah can think of plenty of ways in which they could have implemented a better shop system even if they wanted to not have a global one. I've never minded it's current implementation much, but I also never went searching for gear in shops much.
If you weren't trying to link the two, I mistunderstood, but there was a heavy implication in the post that you were connecting the dots there.
I pointed out the "14+ skills" as the actual functional abilities any given player can use in the middle of combat. It was also a metric I used because Cameltosis referenced using 15-20 skills on average.
That number does not include the radial wheel in it's count, only combat skills.
I referenced the quickbar as a counterpart to the use of hotbars for storing consumables, as it allows users to slot multiple things into a single button location so the quickslot button is effectively it's own isolated hotbar of items.
You seem to have misunderstood things in general.
ESO forces you to put together a 12 skill kit to fit whatever role or play style you choose. GW2 does something very similar, but that system is even more limiting as your equipped weapons decide 5 of your skills per bar.
As far as ability cooldowns go, they really aren't necessary with fixed resource pools. You can't endlessly spam abilities or you will exhaust your stam or mag.
ESO is a game with brilliant story, great crafting, nice visuals aside from mostly ugly charakters, interesting responsive combat aside from weaving and animation cancelling, but technically those devs are not nearly average. I am pretty sure animation cancelling was never intended but they lack the skill to fix it, as they lack the skills to fix quite some other technical issues in the game.
It's a shame, but there are other good games out there.
In fact I don't even know what changes I'd recommend.
Certainly not a transition to a "80 hotbar slotted wow clone".
Just saying that it's a shame I can't get into the game because of the combat but there's plenty of other games out there for anyone's fancy.
ESO is a pretty good game I couldn't get into... life goes on.
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In ESO you're not just deciding what to wear you're also deciding which skills to take into a fight.
The games with unlimited skill bars are also the ones that pre-limit what skills you have access to by class and level locking them. It's ironic that people see those games that actually limit your character to maybe 1/10th of the skills in the game as more complex than a game where you have to self-limit to 12 skills from the 75% of skills in the game you actually have access to.
ESO has its flaws but this isn't one of them.
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Yes, there is nothing like adding skills to your limited skill bar that you will never use, just so you can level them up to reach other skills you want. Limiting you even more until you get what you want. I know the work-arounds for that, but the system is no better than having 20 skill slots with access to all of them. ESO skills may not be level locked, but they are locked until you have reached that predetermined number of skills uses in that line. Same thing, just done differently.
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And as far as slotting skills you don't use to advance a line, sure you can do it that way but the smarter way to do it is to slot those only when you're about to get a large XP bump (as in quest turn in) and just slot what you actually use the rest of the time. That's also how you get at the juicy rank 42 skills in a line when your own level might just be in the low 30s by loading up your bar with any and all skills in the line you're trying to advance. When you're done getting what you're after, just re-spec - it's cheap at low levels and the new level-up rewards even gives you a free re-spec scroll at level 40.
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The key word is depth.
Depth is a measure of the number of meaningful choices you have to make. For a choice to be meaningful, it has to be difficult to make AND have an effect on the outcome of the battle.
In a game like ESO, with only 6 active skills (but, we can call it 14 if you include both bars and mouse attacks) and no cooldowns on the majority of skills, there is no depth. First, the choice of what skill to use next is very easy. With such a limited choice available to you, it is really very easy to select what to use next. Second, with no cooldown, even if you select the wrong skill it doesn't matter, you can just select the right one almost immediately afterwards, so your choice of skill has no impact.
So, ESO is just very, very shallow in combat. You basically just follow your very easy rotation, react with a block or dodge if needed, and pop your emergency skill as needed. No thought process needed. No intellectual engagement. Boredom.
Now, with all the choices of weapons / armour etc, ESO does have depth in the meta game. I'm not disputing that, there are some really key decisions that you need to make to optimise your character and that is great. But, because the depth is in the meta-game, you can just look up the information online and take your time.
My suggestions of a MINIMUM of 15-20 skills was excluding the mouse attacks. But, you have to combine those skills with a valid purpose. In my ideal game, I would have:
10 solo standard abilities - these form your rotation
10 solo situational abilities - things like emergency heals, proc abilities etc
10 group standard abilities - things like building aggro, transferring aggro, healing others, buffing others
10 group situational abilities
The goal with this sort of ability design is to ensure that players are making meaningful decisions in combat and not just spamming a rotation. For example, a stun ability would fall into the solo situational category. A 30s stun on a 5minute cooldown. Using that ability requires you to engage with the fight. If you pop the stun at the wrong time, your DoT might wake up the mob. If you need to use that 30s to heal, then timing the stun with other healing/pot cooldowns is essential. In a group setting, you need to ensure what you're stunning won't be woken up by AoE. It is the 5minute cooldown that adds the depth here, as without the cooldown it doens't matter if you get it wrong, you can just use the skill again.
It is also worth pointing out that without the valid purpose to skills, you just have skill bloat and instead of adding depth, you are only adding complexity. Complexity by itself is pretty pointless, it may take you time to learn to execute a really long rotation but there is no decision making involved.
SW:TOR is a perfect example of a tab-target game that got it wrong. Each class had tons of skills but the combat was still really shallow. Rotations were quite long (think one of my shadow's builds had a 16 skill rotation...) but the game offered nothing beyond rotations. Each class had maybe 2-4 situational abilities but that was it, so in combat you only had to choose between your rotation or those situationals. Making a choice between 4 or 5 options.....pretty fucking easy.
As mentioned though, I don't expect ESO to change to suit me. It was designed as a mass market MMO and was designed to work on consoles, so the combat has to be easy and shallow to please the target audience. If they added the depth I require, it would be too difficult for the target audience.
Also, the combat is never going to be an RPG style combat people need to learn this, mmos are not like rpgs they never will be.
Finally, I play console eso it's fun because it's quick and easy to swap skills and knock things out quickly that's why I play!
It holds me back from returning to it.
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There's a difference between bloating skills by adding almost completely superfluous skills and adding situational skills that are useful and add layers to combat actions, counters, etc.. There's not a large portion of gamers screaming to have skills added that are only useful once in a blue moon.
Correct skill selection was a massive part of being a skilled player in that game, being able to judge a situation correctly and make a call on the best skill within a second or two added tons of depth. Easily the most engaging combat system I've ever played, even if visually it was a little dull.
I guess if I was a casual soloer then I'd consider it skill bloat as I'd only ever need those 5-7 skills and maybe that is where the design challenge comes in - a combat system should be engaging for all player types. I tend to find that the majority of MMOs either design their combat systems for soloers/casuals, leaving people like me bored out of their mind, or they're design for the top end, so only a small proportion of player base gets to experience the full depth on offer and everyone else gets something a bit boring.
Foremost, the example you gave kind of throws a wrench into the notion of engaging combat because a 30s stun would in many cases be longer than an individual fight in a game like ESO. The depth of the combat has to play in part to the pace, and actions need to be responsive to the time span in which live or die takes precedent. That's why a 5s stun in many cases is already a long enough effect to cause people worry.
That leads into the next point that the manner in which depth works generally manages to vary. Your complaint that there is no cooldowns for example doesn't really directly correlate to game depth because it's not a matter of if an ability is on cooldown, but if it's the right skill to use contextually. Spamming the wrong skill can sometimes work, but the same can be said of any rotation or hot-bar laden game.
Which also goes to point of your assertion about how many skills are apparently required to experience good game depth. Dumping 40+ skills on a person that are remixes of each-other only adds a minor level of depth, something that can generally be obtained by augmenting pre-existing skills, not to mention that most of the time the meta of games with even large numbers of skills boils down to the finite few that are most meta-game optimized. You acknowledged this point, but seemed to fail to consider that the principles of each skill draws on a finite pool of effects to begin with, and as said prior has to fit with the pacing of the gameplay.
This also plays into the commentary you made about cooldowns. As you applied them in your examples, cooldowns are not adding much to the depth. They are an if/then factor of whether a skill is used and therefore if you can reuse it during the duration of a fight, especially at a five minute mark. This is moreso when you consider that if an ability is ineffective in it's initial use, then spamming it isn't necessarily going to to you any better.
That is where the depth comes in. You touched on timing as it relates to this, but moreover it's a matter of if a skill is most suited to the situation, not how long you get to wait until you can use it again. The timer only means that you cannot correct a mistake. That falls right into forcing the very mindless rotations that you denigrated in your next paragraph.
To which your argument also misses a rather fundamental point on depth as well. You don't need buttons lined up in a row for those actions to exist in the game. As I pointed out with ESO's action controls, abilities can just as well be embedded into other control schemes. Context-sensitive actions as well add a good layer of conditional action sets and allows for greater depth than any homogenized skill set that has to be available on a character for 24/7 use ever could.
Granted ESO lacks in that department as much as any other. As it applies to ESO though, you are effectively hand-waving elements of that game's depth in favor of a different presentation of depth. Not actually arguing for more or less.
Now, you can argue that things like animation canceling has screwed over ESO's depth. With people picking the strongest options and spamming that skill like it's a spin to win button, then it bypasses much of ESO skill synergy, contextual values for skills, and cuts the pacing to a break-neck where more or less you're just playing pinball between mobs. The actual mechanics of the game though allows for there to be a good amount ado about wise skill usage and choices though.
It being undermined by a particular flaw in the implementation does not make it so that depth is not there, just that the depth of the game's design is superfluous.
You almost grasped that point when you wrote "...a combat system should be engaging for all player types." There is an integral point there that the depth of the game has to exist at an approachable level while still offering complexity of choice. Your LOTRO comment as well showed the same fundamental problem as what ESO has, save for ESO suffering it to a more extreme condition.
It's not like contextual skills don't exist in that game and that they don't have value. The only reason I was ever a good healer in that game was because I chose not to be spammy with my heals and instead use a suite of shield, heal over time, area, and buffs/debuffs that would help rebalance combat as well as directly assist my team versus a wide variety of problems.
The fact that the game has glaring flaws that allows most people to chain a single heal spammed over and over does not render that the best method, only the most approachable and therefore popular one. With damage dealing it ends up leaning hard into being the best method over utilizing the suite of skills because the fatal flaw of it's engine design having crippled their ability to remove the factors causing people to ignore the game's depth in favor of skill spam.
It's the same point you made, just applied to a different game. Yet you respond much more succinctly to ESO in this case than you do to it in LOTRO, likely because those flaws in ESO are that much more pronounced. But it is no different on what the cause is or the point that there is actual depth to the game's design. The depth is there, it's the player that chooses not to utilize it in favor of exploiting the flaws that simplifies or outright bypasses it.
The onus isn't entirely on the player for such problems, as if that's the most optimal method to playing a game then that's a problem, as is the case with ESO. It is incorrect to pretend that depth in a game's mechanics doesn't exist simply because of that though. It's rather insulting to those that spent time and effort to implement all the underutilized features.
Basically, when I'm in combat, the choice of my next skill should be difficult to make AND have an impact on the outcome of the battle.
When you only have a limited number of skills to choose from, the choice of what to use next is easy, therefore it doesn't have depth. That is the root of my problems with all action combat games - deciding what to do next is too easy.
In a game like ESO where, from my experience, at least 50% of your skills form your rotation, the choices become very easy. Everything that forms part of your rotation - including skills, mouse attacks and animation cancelling - effectively falls under a single choice.
So, out of the 12 skill slots, light and heavy attacks, plus block and dodge, I have 16 options. However, 8 of my skills are damage skills that are part of rotations, as are light and heavy attacks. So, my choice is now rotation, 4 skills, block and dodge. I have 7 options. Block and dodge are reactive, so the decision making in most scenarios is really easy, i.e. no depth. So, I am now reliant on 4 skills to provide all the depth in combat. In order for that decision to be difficult, there should be some cross over - do I use this heal or that one? But again, with no cooldowns, the impact of making the right decision is severely limited, it only becomes a difficult decision if I'm struggling for resources.
I'll use an example from LotRO to demonstrate how a skill adds depth: Shield of the Dunedain.
This is a skill my captain had that bubbles another player, reducing incoming damage by 50% for 20s, on a 5m cooldown. When a player in my group takes damage, this is a great way to protect them and give the healers some breathing room to bring them back up.
Deciding when to use the skill is hard. The impact of the skill can mean the difference between success and failure. When deciding whether to use this skill, I had to make a judgement call in the moment, based on:
- Is that player worth saving? e.g. I can let the DPS die, but should probs save the tank.
- Are there other players who need it more?
- Do I think the healer can save them without me?
- Do I need to save the skill for later in the fight?
- Will the healers be able to recover if I use the skill, or would using it be a waste?
That is depth. That makes the decision hard to make. Without the 5minute cooldown, there is no depth, I can just use the skill on everyone who needs it, assuming I have the resources.That is just one skill. The captain in LotRO had about 20 of these types of skills for all sorts of different scenarios. It meant that in challenging content, you had to be seriously skilled to make the best choices and it had a massive impact on the outcome of a fight.
In ESO, without the cooldowns you just don't have to make those sorts of decisions. With only a few skills, even the skills that require good timing or usage you tend to learn very quickly how/when best to use them.
Now, I agree with what you're saying about just dumping skills on a toolbar, that's not how you generate depth. I did specifically say that already and gave SW:TOR as an example of a game with loads of skills but yet still really shallow gameplay. However, without options for what to do next, the decision making becomes easy. This is why I have personally never found an action combat game that has depth in combat, because you have very few options for what you can do so it's dead easy to make that decision.
I agree with your overall comments about contextual skills, and hopefully my example confirms that with you. If the decision is easy to make, there is no depth. If the decision has no impact, there is no depth. In my example of 40 skills, 20 of them add to complexity and 20 of them add to depth. I'm happy for the 20 that form your solo and group rotations to be cut down, in terms of depth you could cut them down to just 1 and retain the same depth. Having 20 is more of a personal preference, the complexity just means you have a longer learning curve when you first pick up the game and allows more unlocks as you level.
If possible, I'd love to hear some examples of how you think ESO (or any action combat game) has managed to achieve depth in combat.
You can have 100 skills and the use of any one of them could be as shallow as shallow can be.
"depth" is just that "depth". Take your 6 skills and each one could very well decide on another few options, each one drilling down or allowing one to revisit a former option.
Probably one of the reasons "go" is so easy and yet so hard.
Maybe even chess. I mean, what are your options but horizontal or vertical with the exception of the knight.
Yet how each piece is positioned and what it supports is where the complexity comes in.
I think one could have great depth with only two or even 3 choices at a time, unraveling other choices as well.
Action combat is about movement, speed, depending on the game "positioning". It could have more depth but in general it's about excitement and speed and reaction.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
On the flip side, more skills can absolutely enhance combat depth, as can cooldowns. You can give a class a tide-turning ability on a cooldowns that would otherwise be too powerful for the class to possess. Invuln, flash heals, stuns, interrupts, and instant nukes come to mind. From there, layers get added when you combine these cooldowns with priority or focused targetting. Interrupts might need to be used on a damage dealer to protect your own heals while the nukes and other offensive cooldowns need to be blown on their healer to focus him or her down. Again, it opens things up for strategic use, but it requires intentional implementation.
For one, there is much ado about timing on bubbles any ways because 1) it does not stack and 2) it has a very short duration and is therefore pointless to spam as you are otherwise eating your mana pool protecting someone when they don't need it just for the off-chance they do.
It's also still a single-target ability, and you can spam it if you want, but you still have to cast it in succession and each casts drains your mana pool which you have to make sure you're geared for preserving otherwise you'll quickly spend it in an oh-shit scenario.
This then goes to the point that you have to choose when to use it as under many circumstances, to use the skill or to even repeatedly use it in a desperate moment, is not the best choice. Bubbling the lowest person so that they can backpedal to recover, and letting others enact their own possible evasion or protective skills while you drop an aoe heal to aid them ends up help preserving the group much more efficiently and can mean the difference between struggling to keep your pool up enough to keep protecting the group and wiping because you're depleted and everyone is dying.
It's a bit of a disconnect to dismiss something as a "reactive" feature of one system too while your usage of another skill, especially in the scenario you gave, is similarly reactive. You are putting a variety of considerations behind the decisions under both scenarios, unless the combat in LOTRO is lethargic, then you aren't going to have time to ponder a full suite of pros and cons to using that ability in the moment either, that will be a decision you've already mentally made up at some point.
Also brings about another note again that much of this also hinges on how the pacing works for a game. If combat is drawn out enough that you can use skills that last in the tens and can ponder whether or not you want to use a skill now or later, then what depth is there to be had with the consideration that in that same time you could be already using an instant-heal or interrupt ability or even just doubling-down on the damage? The abilities themselves have to all be intentionally paced slower along with the combat itself for such a scenario to work, otherwise there's a slough of possible skills that would bypass the intended depth that the other skills were supposed to introduce. That's not more depth, that's just slower.
Your skill count breakdown kind of highlights what I meant by having a weird interpretation too. Those skills that are inherent to the combat system all have their own value and strategic/contextual usage. Like blocking versus dodging. Dodging quickly winds your character, and blocking will as well when you turtle up, it's a trade-off to your ability to protect yourself or another versus your ability to maintain damage or other skill output. Moreover those skills have secondary values with their interrupt, guard break, or energy regen abilities. You have to know when to use general attacks to build up some power so that you can turn around and do a quick chain of attacks.
And it's nice to say I prefer having X number skills that are all unique, but as I pointed out previously games do not run in infinite variables and most skills are permutations of each-other. How those skills vary tends to get rather trivial at a point, no matter how contextually valuable you may consider them. Especially if a core skill set can operate effectively without them.
This was a big complaint I had with Secret World when it came out. People made much ado about it's skill system, but that game ultimately ran off a handful of status modifiers and there was a lot of crossover in skills as a result. The actual depth of the game boiled down to a dolled up rock paper scissors. That isn't necessarily bad, but it is not nearly as deep as it was often espoused to be either.
As an aside, it would be easier to take seriously comments about ESO's lack of depth if they were coming from people who have played it enough to have at least done some high-end content with it.
There's depth there (and not just in the meta) that may not be so readily apparent because the game, when played well, forces you to think and react quickly.
I have played WOW, LOTRO and many of the other games being touted as deeper than ESO for years. Had max level characters, did high end content, etc., and frankly, there is nothing less complex about playing ESO to its full potential.
A casual observer may look at it or a new player may dabble with it on the easiest content and see or do nothing but spam random things at random times. But...umm... that's not how it's played when you know what you're doing.
Yes, it can also be enjoyed solo by the mostly clueless with no thought or shits given. But you can also just play WOW to ERP in Goldshire
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