I dont think enjoyment comes from a higher total amount of "live" skills you can have at once, more the way they interact and compliment each other so that you can form cunning builds. I think GW1 really got it right in this respect.
If you have a total of (for instance) 8 skills, and those 8 skills are all you can ever use and they never change like GW2, this gets boring quickly. If you have a huge array of skills to choose from, but can select any 8 at a time, this promotes the creation of builds that utilise the way the skills interact with each other with interesting effects that sometimes even the devs havent thought of, and creating these builds is a skill, and enjoyable in and of itself.
Of course, this means that the devs have to spend a lot more time balancing the way the skills work and interact with each other, having to not just think "Skill X does Y", but "Skill X does Y, Skill X does Y and Z when used with skill A etc"
Actually you can change your skills in GW2. For one you get a second weapon to swap to in the middle of a fight which gives you 4 more weapon skills to use. Also in between fights you can change your utility skills however often you want.
Elementalists actually get 4 attunements to sweap between each with 4 unique skills and effects. And this happens in the middle of fights. So for them that's actually 20 skills right there that are active. And trust me, they have to use them all.
Yeah, kinda missed the point of the post...
Not really, since you said "if you have 8 that never change like GW2" when in fact you have a lot more which you can change. What am I missing here?
How can I miss the point, when your point was false and therefore invalid.
OK, forget that I mentioned GW2 because clearly you are intent on defending it, even though I wasnt actually bashing GW2, I was trying to make a point about fixed skills. Remove the words "like" & "GW2" then re-read my post. I look forward to any constructive meaningful replies
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
Since D3 introduced the "mechanic" on a global scale in gaming and quite a couple of games adapted this ... idea ... so did Neverwinter. And seeing this in an MMORPG is SO extremely unnerving.
What I am speaking of are only 5 to maybe 8 usable skills, which can not be exchanged in combat. With which you have to stick and are forced to use them in this tiny window of opportunity they provide. Making a skill-ful gamplay (excluding item stats and cooldowns) next to impossible.
MMOs where always the type of games that brought more variety to gamers than singleplayer or simple multiplayer titles. Especially in terms of given abilities and skills to use in the game world.
And what kinda insane fractile is now jumping inside the mind of the Devs? Give the players less abilities to use. Why on earth, why??
Is this a new hidden strategy they have made up to navigate around balancing issues?
I am sure that I am not the only player who loves to have a wide variety of skills to use. It does not matter if some of them are used very rarely. But the fact that they Are used once in a while is a sign that having more than enough abilities is always better than having only as much as you can count on both of your hands.
The whole idea of this makes combat and especially PvP so super boring and repetitive.
I dont know about you out there, but I play MMOs pretty much since their existance and I only find myself installing and playing a title for a few hours, just to find myself deinstalling it again after just a few days. Simply because most of them are sooo easy and sooo tediously designed... agh!
Yes and thumbs up to 80% of what I have heard about WildStar so far, but I am really Really concerned about the lack of variety of skills to use in combat.
Do you play MMOs since more than 5-8years? Then I am looking forward to your reply.
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.
The continuing simplification and Consolification of all games inevitably leads to less abilities. Having said that, simple is not always bad. Fighting games have simple abilities like Punch, Kick, Block and an 8-way joystick. But you can combo those together into a staggering amount of different character actions that require a lot of training/practice (first time I rocked an Akira Stun Palm of Doom in VF2 I was well chuffed). Action MMO's could take a leaf out of that book.
MMO's have tried the combo style in the past, but they screwed up and made it group combos which doesn't work as well.
Hopefully Wildstar hits that happy medium where you have a manageable but still well rounded number of skills and reason to regularly use a variety of them.
I don't agree at all with your assessment of Rift and "Skill Bloat". I'll say that you *can* just use a few abilities and be okay out in the open world, but you are gimping yourself by not using the array of skills available to you.
Personally I think Rift is a great example of having many skills, a great deal that are situational - which is how I think it should be. Essentially if you think most of your skills are just "bloat" you are not getting the most out of your role or calling.
That all said, I too thought of EQ and how it was limited in what you could use at a given time. But I don't like the trend of giving us less. I enjoy an array of skills and knowing when to use them to maximize the experience.
I personally find 10-20 abilities to be a great balance which is perfect for 2 hot-bars max.
I'm all for changing the focus of the players from UI management to actually playing and reacting to encounters. I find having to deal with 4-5 entire bars of abilities really annoying, especially when most of them are either sub-par or situational once a year.
The more clutter and useless junk i can get off my screen, the better. I'd like to see the beauty of the game I'm playing and not 50 icons taking up half of it.
A) I have played literally all available titles to this moment. Both offline and online. Happens when you are an enthusiast and love what you are doing. We are not speaking about an assumption here. Diablo 3 provided for the very first time a restricted skill based system to a wide range of players. Period.
- why am I mentioning this, when we even had games with even fewers skills? Because we have already tasted how good variety feels like. Now taking more and more variety back is like taking candy from a child. It will only result in anger and frustration. The universe is expanding -
and basicly the answer to your initial question: Watch reviews, watch videos. The only assumption I made and will make is the vague output on how the gameplay will be. And that Will Stay an assumption until I played the game, obviously. And by watching videos/reading reviews or simply looking on non-stylized screenshots with visible interface, you see how the hotbar is layed out.
C) I am quoting a dev from a previous WS-video on how the skills and skill-bars work and he said, that he personally uses multiple sets (of skills in the skillbar and probably also talents) when playing. He said one for PvP and one for PvE. His own words. And you did not see more than 5-7 skills to use at the same time in no video or screenshot to this day. If you want to check it out, search youtube and TotalBiscuit.
At least One and a Half full skillbars were always available in 95% of all previous MMORPGs. I am not saying this because how it was in the past, the future must be, no.
To me, this whole restrictive attitude is a step backwards. I always stated that it is CRUCIAL for new MMO releases to provide even MORE variety for the players than the MMOs before. But yet, no real dev listened. That is why most MMOs lose 70% of their entire playerbase in the first month.
No genuine ideas, no outstanding profit. Always will be and always was like that. If one copies what already exists, one can not hope for more gain than the initial game one copied from. Only less. Common sense.
I hope this didnt sound too harsh, I simply prefer to stay neutral these days. And if truth hurts, truth hurts.
Ciao
Diablo III is an ARPG not an MMORPG. Pong only had two abilities, is this a valid comparison?
"Offline" titles definitely are not MMORPGs so your enthusiasm is definitely not for just the MMORPG genre.
"We" have never had fewer skills than Diablo III because "we" are the MMORPG community.
I don't have much time to watch videos because of all of my beta tests and my forum involvement so I sure don't waste my time watching people like TotalBiscuit. No offense to him, but why would I waste my time watching other people game when I could be doing the gaming myself? As my profile says; I'm currently enrolled in two MMORPG Beta Tests (and two ARPG Beta Tests) and none of them have a hotbar of seven or less skills.... not even the ARPGs. So the perspective of developers "taking more and more variety back" over time is not the evolution that MMORPG (or ARPG) gaming is heading in overall.
I am not a participant in the WildStar beta so I don't know if there is a GCD implemented or not; but I can only assume that there is one. In which case you couldn't pop off seven skills with each an average cool down before the first skill had refreshed anyway. Now if it's accessibility to skills you don't frequently use that worries you then you have to provide feedback. Comment on their Facebook, Twitter, or email them your opinion that the skill bar is too small. Future patching could easily yield multiple skill bars as an User Interface Option but only if they think the 'majority' want it that way. You've obviously watched DevSpeak and have heard them at the end of their videos, "...the Devs are listening." Well they really are, it shows in their Uplink Analysis posts.
Oh crap, time flew by quickly; gotta go to work... sorry for the incomplete post ~ T_T
Honestly.. if u prefer having 3-6 hotbars full of skills to use, go back to wow style 'Mash tab, faceroll accross fkeys, WIN' games.
If you want games that require PLAYER skill, both in deciding WHICH abilities hes going to 'slot' and his reaction time and twitch ability, then welcome to todays games.
Sadly, honestly, the 'twitch' games really seem to have less content, but what they DO have is fun and keeps you moving.
I am FAR past wanting to play wow style clones where i fall asleep mashing tab key and cycling the same keys over and over.
I dont mind having only 6-8 active skills as long as i keep learning newer and better skills i can swap as I gain higher levels. Because I hated it in GW2 where I learn every skill in the starting area and then have nothing new to look forward to with my character development other than new gear.
To the guy quoting me. I was being sarcastic. I agree with OP completely.
Having many skills doesn't mean you HAVE to use all of them. What is the downside of having more skills to choose from anyway? It makes it less skillbased or something? The whole term skillbased doesnt even apply to MMORPG's I think and it shouldn't. If anything, skills come from situational decisions on how/when to engage and when to disengage and perhaps positioning, anticipating dmg and moves etc. Does it really come from using certain skills in a row?
I think we can all agree the GW2 system is new and what OP doesn't like. I agree and I will tell you why.
Because the weapon you use decides HALF the skills in your arsenal there is first of all no reason to use a certain type of weapon for its stats. You can swap between weapons but this swaps half your arsenal. I don't call this customization. Especially since the weapons generally have absolutely no synergy with the second half of your taskbar. In some cases it does (elementalist, mesmer to some degree) but in general it doesn't matter that much. Secondly very often the very limited way in wich you can customize (skill tree) only applies to 1 particular weapon. Meaning you spec into 1h weapons axe or mace bonuses or something.
The other half of your hotbar has 2 slots that you will very very rarely change. The heal skill and the elite skill. I don't think I have to explain this. Most classes just have that 1 good elite skill and 1 good heal skill. Although the engineer could be the exception to the heal skill. This leaves 3 slots that have to determine the entire way you actually play. I will tell my guardian's skills for example. He is supporty so I use shouts that grant reneration, protection, stability and something other.. I forgot. While shouting stability could be situationally applied it really doesn't really feel like I have a certain role to play. It doesn't even feel like I am any class that is good in anything to be honest. Yes I support, but these skills feel so uninvolved. And I feel the same goes for the weapon skills. These are so simple it doesn't leave much to the imagination.
I really really hate it because it ruined such a putative amazing game.
What ever happend to all the cool class skills or spells and I am not talking about just for fighting. Let me use EQ as an example where the magician could make light stone for food and water, or another class that could turn into diffrent races and you would send them to sell loot and stuff when you where to close to hostile citys.
There are so many of the small things missing in todays games:( I have not played Wildstar and maybe they will have some more skills other then just for fighting, and that I am more concerned with.
I am a bit scared as well that the limited action set will dumb down the content. But then again I am just as scared that the same will happen because of their emphasis on action combat over more thoughtful traditional combat we see in older games rather than what we see from these simplistic but flashy newer games.
Yes and thumbs up to 80% of what I have heard about WildStar so far, but I am really Really concerned about the lack of variety of skills to use in combat.
I read your entire post and aside from this one sentence that I quoted, I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with WildStar. Help me clarify what perspective you're viewing this from...
A) You've played a handful of horrible games with a limited number of abilities, are assuming that it is a trend, and you're hoping WildStar is NOT like them.
You've experience WildStar, which is still under the Non-Disclosure Agreement, and are basically saying it has a limited number of abilities from personal experience; in which case breaking NDA protocol.
C) You're basing the assumption of a limited number of skills on authorized released information from developers of a game that is still in development.
So! My assumption is that it's A, and in that case I apologize for your poor choice in video games thus far but I've been playing games with so many skills lately that I can't even find space for them because multiple action bars have yet to be implemented. So it's not the genre, it's just luck of the draw... and you happened to draw a poor hand of games. =(
A) Maybe they are not too many and I will not discuss on the horribleness but look at them: Guild Wars 2? The Secret World? Diablo 3? Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar (plus many I have surely forgotten)?Quite many of them are MMOs so it IS a trend for MMOs at least.
"The Limited Action Set now allows for a maximum of 7 class abilities (down from 9)."
Now it is Beta, so it is changeable, but even then, clearly they are aiming for a limited set of abilities, something between 7 and 10 I would say.
to the OP: It is something that concern me too, mostly because one of the problems I had with GW2 was that after I unlocked the abilities I wanted and the Elite ability I wanted, that was it for character advancement... and it happened at level 40 out of 80 basically.
Luckily it seems the Wildstar's take on this "Deck style" of character cutomization is better. For once the abilities you will have available are quite many, around 35 or so for each class/path combination. Considering 8 active abilities, that is some good amount of possible combinations that you can get.
We also know very little of whatever other advancement system Wildstar will have (something about when your stat reach XXX you get a perk of some sort), so we cannot give a final judgment.
So I am hopeful, but a bit concerned.
"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"
Having a large amount of skills is far less important in a non-tab target environment.
It takes a lot more skill to land the skills you have (particularly in PvP but occasionally in PvE as well). Rather than just pressing tab and then 1-2-3-4-5 or whatever for your particular class.
Also defensive cooldowns that tab target games use to simulate dodging are also no longer needed as positioning your character is used instead.
The problem is, you could give players a hundred skills per class, but unless you are putting really long cooldowns on them, players will always find that optimal 3-6 skill rotation that's the best
24 different keypresses to pretty much do the same sorts of things is not one of them.
Probably a good 3/5 th of my time playing World of Warcraft was spent creating macros / add-ons and customizing them so I only had to press 12345 most of the time with a 67890 for the occasional save / utility skill / situational attack.
I don't mind seeing more PC games taking the initiative and allowing more to be done with less.
I think Champions Online had a nice system for this method of MMO input, but they weren't consistent with it. Plus playing Guild Wars 2 and sticking with 12345 90% of the time isn't a bother to me at all.
I'd like to see some mobag style controls like charging the buttons, drawing lines, and range based skill changes added to the mix.
But developers are learning.
Really there's been nothing taken away. Just less redundant gameplay. That's important.
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.
I like having a lot of skills and no ability to macro them.
To me, MMOs are not at their best when they mimic action games. In an action game, skill bloat would be pointless and counter-productive... But when I'm playing an MMO I like finding myself in a situation where I go "hey, I got a spell for that!" I also love having loads and loads of situational spells (so much so that if I were making games, I'd really tone down the "bread and butter" spells. How can you even have "bread and butter magic"? Ugh. )
SWTOR has skill bloat but that bloat is choke-full of unimaginative skills. That doesn't help at all. They're just very similar to one another (ooh, this one puts yet another DOT on your enemy, how interesting), and it doesn't lend your class much character. The bounty hunter can't even levitate without having to drop fire from above! Along all the classes in SWTOR, the number of total skills that even seemed interesting to me would number around ten or something - and that's largely due to not what the skill achieves but the animation, like "dirty kick".
Once again, balance be damned!
It's a bit disappointing that WildStar is going with a limited skill set bar, but here's hoping the skills themselves will at least be really numerous and interesting.
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.
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.
World of Warcraft, pre-dumbed down version, the one that's hardest to miss.
2) In the game you named, please enter the full rotation you would use for a PvE fight?
Impossible to do. Certain fights called for certain skills.
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?
See question 2.
4) In the game you named, please enter the skills you would most likely use during a PvP fight?
Refer to WOWWIKI for full list of abilities, too many to name... most being situational.
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?
There is no skill you wouldn't use commonly in PVP... if you were any good.
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.
While I understand what you're trying to do, the questions are too bland. "What are some of the skills you would use only once in a while?" Translates to assuming I'm up against the same set of enemies every time. First skill that comes to mind for 'not commonly' used is the Priest using Mass Dispel to pop a Paladin's 'bubble'. But say the opposing team were comprised mainly paladins? It wouldn't be used so seldom then. Same factor goes for PVE; I'm not going to use the same 'rotation' if the Raid Encounter was multiple targets as I would if it was one target. I'm not going to use the same skills on a caster as I would on a melee. In the end, there was no skill that didn't have a use. It's just a shame that they dumbed it down to have even less abilities.
I prefer the newer style of having to choose which abilities we can take into battle with us. Give us options, but make the choices matter. This makes it so that one rogue isn't exactly the same as another rogue. It all comes down to how each one chooses to build their character, and what abilities they chose to take. I really love the neverwinter system personally.
The way I see that this newer ability direction could advance would be to add chains into the game. Give an option to create your own chain of abilities. (you must execute one ability in order to execute another) Think of the GW2 1st ability for melee weapons for an example. But make the chains customizable, so you could have thousands of iterations of different chains possible, all with different final effects.
This way you have many more skills for those that like having a ton of skills, but are still limited to a few skill slots, as per the newer wave.
I don't know why people feel the need to have so many skills. It's not as if you'll ever use all of them in any given encounter and I don't think designing abilities that only favor certain encounters is good game design either.
In FF14, by level 30 between what you have on your main class and what you can gain from cross-classing abilities, you had nearly 15 abilities available, with still 20 levels to go and 5 more cross class abilities to gain access to. I liked the fact that near the end of 1.0 that they decided to just scale up spells and abilities rather than having learned multiple tiers or having to access a "trainer" to learn more powerful versions of your abilities.
The line has to be drawn somewhere, but you don't want to make it too simple nor do you want to overwhelm the player with too many abilities.
I'd say designing abilities that favor certain encounters is actually wonderful game design. First, it's a way to allow you to mix things up and thus stop things from being boring. And then it makes sense story-wise, because obviously all types of creatures will not be susceptible to the same spells or abilities. I'd even say that's pretty basic RPG tradition.
As for PVE "rotation"... If I'm falling into a strict rotation in almost every encounter, well, then that's just bad. Encounters should keep me on my toes (at least the first time!) and push me to try different things. A fixed rotation for most encounters is as far as you can get from an RPG in my book.
Then there's PVP. I just love using under-utilized situational spells in PVP and it's just beautiful when your opponent is somewhat taken aback by it.
Stuff like Mind Vision, Mind Soothe and Eyes of the Beast from WOW (the last two removed, IIRC); you wouldn't keep them on a limited bar but they could give you a great advantage depending on the situation.
Myself, I don't play RPGs to get to cut down thousands of mobs as efficiently as possible, or to dodge and dash my way flawlessly around a boss monster. I cherish the moments I get to think of trying an obscure spell and witness something interesting in return. Those are the "story-making" moments for me, not the "then we did the hop-scotching without dropping even one player and we DPS-rushed it in 30 seconds flat!"
i don't think I ever had a problem finding that 1 certain spell. if I use it enough I know were its at
I have played wow which has tons of abilities and I nearly use all spell in battle depending on my situation
tha main reason I left gw2 was b/c I had only like 10 spells/abilities and everything got old very quick. I may as well not even have a kewboard or a gaming mouse
Comments
OK, forget that I mentioned GW2 because clearly you are intent on defending it, even though I wasnt actually bashing GW2, I was trying to make a point about fixed skills. Remove the words "like" & "GW2" then re-read my post. I look forward to any constructive meaningful replies
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
I don't agree at all with your assessment of Rift and "Skill Bloat". I'll say that you *can* just use a few abilities and be okay out in the open world, but you are gimping yourself by not using the array of skills available to you.
Personally I think Rift is a great example of having many skills, a great deal that are situational - which is how I think it should be. Essentially if you think most of your skills are just "bloat" you are not getting the most out of your role or calling.
That all said, I too thought of EQ and how it was limited in what you could use at a given time. But I don't like the trend of giving us less. I enjoy an array of skills and knowing when to use them to maximize the experience.
I personally find 10-20 abilities to be a great balance which is perfect for 2 hot-bars max.
I'm all for changing the focus of the players from UI management to actually playing and reacting to encounters. I find having to deal with 4-5 entire bars of abilities really annoying, especially when most of them are either sub-par or situational once a year.
The more clutter and useless junk i can get off my screen, the better. I'd like to see the beauty of the game I'm playing and not 50 icons taking up half of it.
Diablo III is an ARPG not an MMORPG. Pong only had two abilities, is this a valid comparison?
"Offline" titles definitely are not MMORPGs so your enthusiasm is definitely not for just the MMORPG genre.
"We" have never had fewer skills than Diablo III because "we" are the MMORPG community.
I don't have much time to watch videos because of all of my beta tests and my forum involvement so I sure don't waste my time watching people like TotalBiscuit. No offense to him, but why would I waste my time watching other people game when I could be doing the gaming myself? As my profile says; I'm currently enrolled in two MMORPG Beta Tests (and two ARPG Beta Tests) and none of them have a hotbar of seven or less skills.... not even the ARPGs. So the perspective of developers "taking more and more variety back" over time is not the evolution that MMORPG (or ARPG) gaming is heading in overall.
I am not a participant in the WildStar beta so I don't know if there is a GCD implemented or not; but I can only assume that there is one. In which case you couldn't pop off seven skills with each an average cool down before the first skill had refreshed anyway. Now if it's accessibility to skills you don't frequently use that worries you then you have to provide feedback. Comment on their Facebook, Twitter, or email them your opinion that the skill bar is too small. Future patching could easily yield multiple skill bars as an User Interface Option but only if they think the 'majority' want it that way. You've obviously watched DevSpeak and have heard them at the end of their videos, "...the Devs are listening." Well they really are, it shows in their Uplink Analysis posts.
Oh crap, time flew by quickly; gotta go to work... sorry for the incomplete post ~ T_T
Honestly.. if u prefer having 3-6 hotbars full of skills to use, go back to wow style 'Mash tab, faceroll accross fkeys, WIN' games.
If you want games that require PLAYER skill, both in deciding WHICH abilities hes going to 'slot' and his reaction time and twitch ability, then welcome to todays games.
Sadly, honestly, the 'twitch' games really seem to have less content, but what they DO have is fun and keeps you moving.
I am FAR past wanting to play wow style clones where i fall asleep mashing tab key and cycling the same keys over and over.
I miss GW1, So many skills to choose from. I was making builds for like 4 years...
To the guy quoting me. I was being sarcastic. I agree with OP completely.
Having many skills doesn't mean you HAVE to use all of them. What is the downside of having more skills to choose from anyway? It makes it less skillbased or something? The whole term skillbased doesnt even apply to MMORPG's I think and it shouldn't. If anything, skills come from situational decisions on how/when to engage and when to disengage and perhaps positioning, anticipating dmg and moves etc. Does it really come from using certain skills in a row?
I think we can all agree the GW2 system is new and what OP doesn't like. I agree and I will tell you why.
Because the weapon you use decides HALF the skills in your arsenal there is first of all no reason to use a certain type of weapon for its stats. You can swap between weapons but this swaps half your arsenal. I don't call this customization. Especially since the weapons generally have absolutely no synergy with the second half of your taskbar. In some cases it does (elementalist, mesmer to some degree) but in general it doesn't matter that much. Secondly very often the very limited way in wich you can customize (skill tree) only applies to 1 particular weapon. Meaning you spec into 1h weapons axe or mace bonuses or something.
The other half of your hotbar has 2 slots that you will very very rarely change. The heal skill and the elite skill. I don't think I have to explain this. Most classes just have that 1 good elite skill and 1 good heal skill. Although the engineer could be the exception to the heal skill. This leaves 3 slots that have to determine the entire way you actually play. I will tell my guardian's skills for example. He is supporty so I use shouts that grant reneration, protection, stability and something other.. I forgot. While shouting stability could be situationally applied it really doesn't really feel like I have a certain role to play. It doesn't even feel like I am any class that is good in anything to be honest. Yes I support, but these skills feel so uninvolved. And I feel the same goes for the weapon skills. These are so simple it doesn't leave much to the imagination.
I really really hate it because it ruined such a putative amazing game.
What ever happend to all the cool class skills or spells and I am not talking about just for fighting. Let me use EQ as an example where the magician could make light stone for food and water, or another class that could turn into diffrent races and you would send them to sell loot and stuff when you where to close to hostile citys.
There are so many of the small things missing in todays games:( I have not played Wildstar and maybe they will have some more skills other then just for fighting, and that I am more concerned with.
A) Maybe they are not too many and I will not discuss on the horribleness but look at them: Guild Wars 2? The Secret World? Diablo 3? Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar (plus many I have surely forgotten)?Quite many of them are MMOs so it IS a trend for MMOs at least.
B-C) From the OFFICIAL beta patch notes released by Carbine which you can find at: http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/m30_patch_notes.php
"The Limited Action Set now allows for a maximum of 7 class abilities (down from 9)."
Now it is Beta, so it is changeable, but even then, clearly they are aiming for a limited set of abilities, something between 7 and 10 I would say.
to the OP: It is something that concern me too, mostly because one of the problems I had with GW2 was that after I unlocked the abilities I wanted and the Elite ability I wanted, that was it for character advancement... and it happened at level 40 out of 80 basically.
Luckily it seems the Wildstar's take on this "Deck style" of character cutomization is better. For once the abilities you will have available are quite many, around 35 or so for each class/path combination. Considering 8 active abilities, that is some good amount of possible combinations that you can get.
We also know very little of whatever other advancement system Wildstar will have (something about when your stat reach XXX you get a perk of some sort), so we cannot give a final judgment.
So I am hopeful, but a bit concerned.
"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"
Having a large amount of skills is far less important in a non-tab target environment.
It takes a lot more skill to land the skills you have (particularly in PvP but occasionally in PvE as well). Rather than just pressing tab and then 1-2-3-4-5 or whatever for your particular class.
Also defensive cooldowns that tab target games use to simulate dodging are also no longer needed as positioning your character is used instead.
MMORPGs need a lot of things to improve.
24 different keypresses to pretty much do the same sorts of things is not one of them.
Probably a good 3/5 th of my time playing World of Warcraft was spent creating macros / add-ons and customizing them so I only had to press 12345 most of the time with a 67890 for the occasional save / utility skill / situational attack.
I don't mind seeing more PC games taking the initiative and allowing more to be done with less.
I think Champions Online had a nice system for this method of MMO input, but they weren't consistent with it. Plus playing Guild Wars 2 and sticking with 12345 90% of the time isn't a bother to me at all.
I'd like to see some mobag style controls like charging the buttons, drawing lines, and range based skill changes added to the mix.
But developers are learning.
Really there's been nothing taken away. Just less redundant gameplay. That's important.
a yo ho ho
I like having a lot of skills and no ability to macro them.
To me, MMOs are not at their best when they mimic action games. In an action game, skill bloat would be pointless and counter-productive... But when I'm playing an MMO I like finding myself in a situation where I go "hey, I got a spell for that!" I also love having loads and loads of situational spells (so much so that if I were making games, I'd really tone down the "bread and butter" spells. How can you even have "bread and butter magic"? Ugh.
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SWTOR has skill bloat but that bloat is choke-full of unimaginative skills. That doesn't help at all. They're just very similar to one another (ooh, this one puts yet another DOT on your enemy, how interesting), and it doesn't lend your class much character. The bounty hunter can't even levitate without having to drop fire from above! Along all the classes in SWTOR, the number of total skills that even seemed interesting to me would number around ten or something - and that's largely due to not what the skill achieves but the animation, like "dirty kick".
Once again, balance be damned!
It's a bit disappointing that WildStar is going with a limited skill set bar, but here's hoping the skills themselves will at least be really numerous and interesting.
I love the more action oriented fighting. I thought GW2 did a good job with it. I just hope Wildstar fine tunes it more.
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.
While I understand what you're trying to do, the questions are too bland. "What are some of the skills you would use only once in a while?" Translates to assuming I'm up against the same set of enemies every time. First skill that comes to mind for 'not commonly' used is the Priest using Mass Dispel to pop a Paladin's 'bubble'. But say the opposing team were comprised mainly paladins? It wouldn't be used so seldom then. Same factor goes for PVE; I'm not going to use the same 'rotation' if the Raid Encounter was multiple targets as I would if it was one target. I'm not going to use the same skills on a caster as I would on a melee. In the end, there was no skill that didn't have a use. It's just a shame that they dumbed it down to have even less abilities.
I prefer the newer style of having to choose which abilities we can take into battle with us. Give us options, but make the choices matter. This makes it so that one rogue isn't exactly the same as another rogue. It all comes down to how each one chooses to build their character, and what abilities they chose to take. I really love the neverwinter system personally.
The way I see that this newer ability direction could advance would be to add chains into the game. Give an option to create your own chain of abilities. (you must execute one ability in order to execute another) Think of the GW2 1st ability for melee weapons for an example. But make the chains customizable, so you could have thousands of iterations of different chains possible, all with different final effects.
This way you have many more skills for those that like having a ton of skills, but are still limited to a few skill slots, as per the newer wave.
I don't know why people feel the need to have so many skills. It's not as if you'll ever use all of them in any given encounter and I don't think designing abilities that only favor certain encounters is good game design either.
In FF14, by level 30 between what you have on your main class and what you can gain from cross-classing abilities, you had nearly 15 abilities available, with still 20 levels to go and 5 more cross class abilities to gain access to. I liked the fact that near the end of 1.0 that they decided to just scale up spells and abilities rather than having learned multiple tiers or having to access a "trainer" to learn more powerful versions of your abilities.
The line has to be drawn somewhere, but you don't want to make it too simple nor do you want to overwhelm the player with too many abilities.
I'd say designing abilities that favor certain encounters is actually wonderful game design. First, it's a way to allow you to mix things up and thus stop things from being boring. And then it makes sense story-wise, because obviously all types of creatures will not be susceptible to the same spells or abilities. I'd even say that's pretty basic RPG tradition.
As for PVE "rotation"... If I'm falling into a strict rotation in almost every encounter, well, then that's just bad. Encounters should keep me on my toes (at least the first time!) and push me to try different things. A fixed rotation for most encounters is as far as you can get from an RPG in my book.
Then there's PVP. I just love using under-utilized situational spells in PVP and it's just beautiful when your opponent is somewhat taken aback by it.
Stuff like Mind Vision, Mind Soothe and Eyes of the Beast from WOW (the last two removed, IIRC); you wouldn't keep them on a limited bar but they could give you a great advantage depending on the situation.
Myself, I don't play RPGs to get to cut down thousands of mobs as efficiently as possible, or to dodge and dash my way flawlessly around a boss monster. I cherish the moments I get to think of trying an obscure spell and witness something interesting in return. Those are the "story-making" moments for me, not the "then we did the hop-scotching without dropping even one player and we DPS-rushed it in 30 seconds flat!"
i don't think I ever had a problem finding that 1 certain spell. if I use it enough I know were its at
I have played wow which has tons of abilities and I nearly use all spell in battle depending on my situation
tha main reason I left gw2 was b/c I had only like 10 spells/abilities and everything got old very quick. I may as well not even have a kewboard or a gaming mouse