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So, most MMOs out there make you earn your skills by progressing through levels etc and once you have a skill, you can use it, thats it, you've got it. So everyone ends up working out a rotation of the best skills they have and using them.....all the time.
This gets boring
I have just returned to RIft because of their free week offer and realised that their soul system is similar in many ways to what Guildwars, and Guildwars 2 do - They offer you many many different skills but only let you use a small amount of them at once. In Guildwars you can only have 8 usable skills at a time, In Rift you can only have the Skills from 3 souls at a time and those depend on where you put your skill points.
And you can Mix and match between the skills from 2 professions in GW and the 3 souls in Rift.
Which all leads to really complex "Builds". I found myself spending an hour reorganising my skills tree in Rift to respec my warrior to a dual wield....and am constantly thinking of better ways to distrubute my points to take advantage of new skills etc. It can be SO rewarding to finally get that perfect build after so much planning and/or trial and error.
Having this variety to revolutionise how your character works means you dont get bored! Designing new builds to do different things, or get past specific bosses or areas is complex and engaging. You can have a character capable of filling several different roles in a party. A character who is a Healer AND a War Priest
I think this is an excellent mechanic to keep people plaing a game
In games that allow you access to all your skills all the time, that whole element just isnt there...
What do you think? Is it better to just have access to everything all the time, or do you prefer restricting the amount of skills you can use so you have to carefully plan your character?
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
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It's still there, even if a game gives 5000 different "fireball" skills that are all available for immediate use, you still aren't going to click 5000 different buttons in a 30 second fight, so you still have to choose.
An even better example is EVE online - just because you ALWAYS have the skills to run like 20 different ship setups, you're always flying only ONE ship, with ONE loadout.
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An excessive amount of skills usually leads to a more cluttered unoriginal skills list. Often times you'll end up finding redundant skills with changed names. In my opinion, a game should have little, but very original skills.
it gets boring?tell that to gw player in 8v8 they had 8 skill that is it with 8 player each side
but you had ton of skill you could chose you ended up with ton of pissible strategy but the twist is only 64 skill total (8 player time 8 skill)could be braugh in.let me tell you it became insane,theorycrafting the builds they had insane amount of build and it changed weekly cause when a build found a loop hole(yes it hapened freq )arenanet had to mod the skill. i bet today they would prob use the racing way
the winner get a debuff penalty for being good or such thing!
Yep, as the OP talked about Rift, it is a prime example of this. Sure you do get a unique attack for each class, one that does -armor, one that does -att.power/spel.power, one that applies a dot, etc, but in the end your probably only linking one inside a macro.
When you deal with multi class type building(pre-nge swg, rift, a few others) you usually have more stuff than is viable to use, or redundant as Neverdyne said. It doesn't give or break choice, just offers a small variety and usually something(such as weapon type in swg/rift) usually determine what skills of all those extra ones you have do and more often than not dictate it.
Look at DnD online(well not 100% certain, but at least 4th ED pnp) removed a ton of skills either never used or basically less effective.
Granted, I would love to have certain abilities that require a certain investment in obtaining. Maybe such as climbing, or swimming. Each offer a certain place they can only be gotten to, you sure can put enough in both, but you will in the end gimp your toon from the most effective ways(and no reset available) A good DM in DnD could make campaigns tailored to this sort of stuff(to bad 4.0...)
ya that is one thing i wish would be removed it is macro ,i am sorry but average player dont have to to build macro etc
Yeah, Macroing sucks. If you havent got the skill to do it properly, dont cheat (I know its allowed in a lot of games but I still consider it cheating!)
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
Well isn't that what the talent system is all about, you get to advance a certain part of your skills, or possibly learning new ones.
Just a point on Guild Wars skill system (I'm not sure about Guild Wars 2), I do think that system is much more unique and fun than Rift's soul system. you to actually capture the skills from bosses around the continuent, so the same class can have different skills due to that.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
In a game like Rift, I find Macros to be a necessity. The main problem is that you get too many skills that are situational. Like in the Warrior Riftblade tree you get "Frost Strike" that makes "Searing Strike" more powerful, so I'd ensure that I perform the skills in that order via macro. Or if I want to interrupt a spell caster I'd like to cast "Face Slam" at melee or "Wind Spear" at range and instead of wasting 2 spaces on skills like these, I find it best to bind them onto 1 macro. Even when using an excessive amount of macros, in Rift, I still find myself with a UI cluttered with skills that are mostly just situation (e.g. use this skill for 20% extra damage for 15secs).
I think Guild Wars 2 will do a great job of not cluttering my UI with redundant, situational skills, because you will only have 10 core skills available, at any one time. Whereas in other MMORPGs, having 20+ skills mapped to multiple action bars seems mandatory and a bit difficult to manage. Also GW2, will have chain skills (2-3 skills mapped to 1 skill button) that will make macros unnecessary.
I know that this issue was a big (and one of the only) faults of Dragon Nest.
There were too many skills and literally not enough convenient action slots to place them in.
Your action slots go from 1-9 and you have 2 that you can alternate between.
You could fill both to the brim with skills and there would still be skills unusable because there is not enough space.
Along with the fact that, if you chose to keep the default 1-9 keys (which no one did due to lack of 5' long fingers) it was impossible to play because your rotation consists of pressing keys 1-9 on the number bar while using WASD to move and aiming with the mouse.
Full hands; only a second to quickly press 1-5 with your fingers while auto-attacking, dodging etc. But what about the other numbers? Do they become wastes of slots?
Well, no. People figured out the game became 100% playable again thanks to customizable key allocations.
Only complete morons or salad-fingers played using the default key allocations.
So, yeah. Wanting a good example of "too many skills" ruining a game? Look no further than Dragon Nest.
Some classes in rift you can put everything in one macro and just press one button over and over. This gets boring. I'm thinking of the shaman class.
People say, 'well don't put everything in one macro'
You do more damage with a macro cause you don't forget to hit your abilities in the right sequence.
Well, I have to agree with OP that having many skills don't make a game more fun.
My swashie in EQ2 had 3 * 12 full hotbars with just attacks, taunts and similar and frankly is the 8 skills in Guildwars not less fun.
I like the idea that I can select my skills, but 10-12 skills are more than enough to be able to use in the same build.
Pressing through all those EQ2 hotbars were not funny at all, and neither was that macro that made me push one button once in a while.
Fewer skills that you most effectivly use at just the right moment beat a large bunch that you always press in the same order anytime.
Yeah I have to agree, even in wow with something like a mage, pre current expansion I had all my bars full of spells, sure some were situational and not used all the time but they still had to be barred so that I could get at them fast in a pinch.
I think there is a lot to be said for having a smaller stronger set of spells, like guild wars or diablo.
My own thoughts are that any class in an mmo should have around 4 attacks and 2 support spells, taunt or block or something like that, their tallents should allow them to change the apperence of these spells but their effects should be the same, that way people can appear to cast different things to acheive their same damage or same taunt or heal.
Guild Wars 1 certainly has too many skills. You can spend an entire weekend building and contemplating skills and characters for an 8-player team, and be burned out before you even play.
not really a team of 8 tried a double blind test once,they chosen randomly 8 skill then went in pvp and didnt win less or more then if they had chosen it just was harder to play sometime.so elitist just like to plan everything!
I hated the too many skills when playing EQ2, I had 5 full bars, ten icons each. 50 of different icons to press is tiresome for my lil brain. And being altoholic, having 7 different characters, it's just too much.
I liked the old EQ1 system much better, with 8 spellgems (later expanded to 10 or more). Memorize just the most needed spells, like 6 damage spells, 1 support and one escape spell.
I remember it was one of the many things people complained about guild wars 1 for.
*limited skill bar
*instanced world
*npc party
*lack of crafting
*lack of level
*PvP and pve being separated characters
Interesting list btw. But on topic, the limited skills was something I seen people complain about. Was that the minority of the MMORPG community or the majority? I wonder
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I agree too many skills ruin a game, look at world of warcraft for example, it just takes the amount of time you play on it plus the money you make then your stupidly powerful and just have to click a huge amount of skills to over power your enemy (esp in pvp) its insane, with a limited amount of skills to use at one time you have to think more carefully and be a much more skilled player of the game rather than your 24/7 constant playing and saying your epic just because you have the most rare equipment plus your 4million available skills. yet again i associate that amount of skills with major grind mmoprg's since you need these moves just to keep you god damn interested lol
Yet each to there own ya know
Not for me, no.
In fact, any game that I've played in the past where the developers decided to "streamline" the game by removing skills and abilities invariably made me quit.
IMO, the closer we get to spamming a handful of abilities, or having to focus on one particular playstyle, the more monotonous and boring the game gets.
You really want to use the same half dozen skills / abilities for months / years?
I need diversity, flexability, and the ability to play outside the "box".
Too many skills could ruin a game for me. Then again with a good UI, the problem of too many skills vs keybindings could be solved. The only thing that AoC did do right was that you could shift your defenses and use different swings to strike at weakspots. Add some special attacks/moves and I am quite happy.
Still the best combat I have seen was in Mortal Online beta, before X-mas patch. Sprint in, deliver a blow, move out and try to block the counterstrike. Not many skills, but every fight was different, challenging and exciting.
I think the best skill system would be being able take a huge veriety of skills then level as u progress, so that u still can fit ur hotbar for ur best skills, and also have the option to revert and get new skills for ur old skills at the cost of reseting the levels and.... gold.... and also giving u a time before u can reset ur skills again so that u learn ur new skills and by the time u can reset them again would be when u realize the new skills is pretty useful ( though only if u thought the newer skills were less effective)
....
yah I might have slightly gonne oftopic... but its pretty depending on the game, though I don't like it when a game has too many skills, it causes imbalances and breaks the game.... huh well there u have my opinion. too many skills = bad.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
exactly.
-.-
Wow some of you did NOT read the OP at all did you? Hes not complaining abotu mashing 1 2 3 4.
Hes basically saying that one char shouldnt be able to do everything.
And that builds should have a bigger impact on gameplay.
The skill thing is about giving builds a greater effect on your character with actual pros and cons and not having a 1 build for everything thing.
Edit:
Reworded last line
I ask you guys this..
Would you guys want the talent tree completely removed and have all those talents active at all times or would you rather be able to select them and create your own build?
Same goes with classes. In WoW, instead of having to choose "hunter" "priest" "w/e" have the ability to choose skills from alll those classes and make your own class or would you rather have the classes stay as they are or would you rather have your char with access to all of the classes skills and use them at any time you want?
Those are 2 seperate questions btw o.o
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I've always thought that once you get past one hotbar of skills the rest are just a waste of space. I like an unclutered UI and find that having 30+ skills is just a pain to manage. GW got it right in only allowing the use of 8 skills regardless of how many you may know, but even that was excessive imho. EQ was the same with the spells, 8 slots regardless of how many you had in your spellbook.
I mean really, your skills are going to cause damage, taunt a mob, put it to sleep or maybe root it in splace. Why would you need more than 10 or 12 skills to do all of that?
I know a lot of people like having a lot of skills to choose from but I find that I agree with the OP that too many ruin the game for me. Instead of creating 50 skills for a class I'd rather see the devs make 10-15 good skills and spend the rest of their time on content/bugs etc. At least then we might get a game that doesn't demand we replay the same content ad nauseum like some MMO's I could mention.
If you haven't got the skills to do proper macros, don't complain. When macros are not managed by a third party program and the game client itself has macros management implemented, it is not cheating, period, wether you like it or not.
I am a musician, and I have very fast fingers becouse of that. I can do the weirdest key combinations before you even got time to see I am moving my hand, yet I prefer having macros. I want to focus on my targets, where the rest of my team is, etc. I want to focus on the game itself, not on the keyboard.
If you don't like macros, play some game without them, simple as, but, I repeat, as long as the game itself has macros implemented, it is not cheating, end of.