My issue with ESO is the limited skills per bar. The fact that there isn't any cool downs, so in general there isn't a whole lot of reasons to use anymore then a few skills on each bar.
I think this is because they designed the system for a console/controller in mind. I miss the days of WOW and EQ where I had a ton of different skills/spells.
dude you realize, console came out over a year after pc. the reason you are limited to 5 skills a bar and swap bars to get another 5, is swapping bars is suppose to be a way to change role in mid combat, or focus. i.e. from heals to tanking or single target to area of effect. I would say the biggest problem is this system has evolved to just being adding more skills to rotation to push dps higher while enabling animation cancelling which is sadly a form of cheating as you are bypassing the intended global cooldown of 1s between skill casts.
The lack of an Auction House killed my desire to play the game.
an auction house would ruin the game. auction houses would make a few rich players able to very easily manipulate the market for massive profits while keeping players who actually need items paying premium prices.
Animation Canceling. I remember reporting it as an exploit/broken mechanic way back in an early beta. I know many others that did to. Instead of fixing it, they decided to leave things as they were and let people use the exploit since it would be to difficult to change the system already in place.
Fixing that though wouldn't get me back to the game though. Too many other things I didn't like about it to ever bother playing it again.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
I cancelled my ESO plus sub today so this article is timely:
1. Veteran Dungeons can be completely hit or miss on difficulties. I could join one random Vet dungeon and it would be like a cake walk. Join another and I would be completely ineffective at DPS at CP300. I’d either leave or get booted from a group. With an MMO that made level differences nearly insignificant around the rest of their entire world, why are Vet dungeons so profoundly different in difficulty?
2. Character level scaling. I cannot stand this. A level 10 and a CP200 nearly the same almost everywhere. The Champion points make little distinction between the two. Especially when all new characters on an entire account has all the CP points available from level 1?!
3. Lack of difference or sense of character growth because the CPs differences are miniscule. I do not have time to level a character to CP1000 to gain a noticeable difference in a character’s abilities.
4. The end of the world faction boundaries. Another goal and immersion breaking mistake.
5. No auction house, and pushy trade guilds sending you threat mail if you don't pay them "dues" F-that!
My issue with ESO is the limited skills per bar. The fact that there isn't any cool downs, so in general there isn't a whole lot of reasons to use anymore then a few skills on each bar.
I think this is because they designed the system for a console/controller in mind. I miss the days of WOW and EQ where I had a ton of different skills/spells.
dude you realize, console came out over a year after pc. the reason you are limited to 5 skills a bar and swap bars to get another 5, is swapping bars is suppose to be a way to change role in mid combat, or focus. i.e. from heals to tanking or single target to area of effect. I would say the biggest problem is this system has evolved to just being adding more skills to rotation to push dps higher while enabling animation cancelling which is sadly a form of cheating as you are bypassing the intended global cooldown of 1s between skill casts.
And? That has nothing to do with anything, except perhaps the prioritization of the PC port because it has the widest net that can be cast (PC + Mac, practically the ENTIRE PC gaming market - casual and otherwise), which could be used to bank roll the rest of console development and content development for PC. The game wasn't exactly bustling with content on release, either, to be frank... This is fairly normal in MMORPG development. FFXIV PC came several months before console (close to a year or so)? The core game systems were still designed to accommodate console gameplay.
Things like the grpahics engine, core game system (combat, weapon swapping), UI, etc. were likely finalized well before the game released on PC - at last several months before the PC port released, IMO, and likely even longer (a year or more - they probably started developing the console port fairly early on, just at a lower priority since they had to port to both console systems - which is a monumental task and is an indicator that this didn't start post-release, or even close to it).
The game is actually pretty good on console, in terms of the quality of the product delivered (performance, optimization, etc.) which indicates to me (having a clue about software development on multiple platforms) is a fairly clear signal of this.
Almost every other MMORPG except those designed with console in mind (FFXIV, ESO) from very early on have been shoddy ports.
It is much easier to make a decent PC port out of a console game, than the other way around, because PC System targets are often beyond what you find in consoles (and certainly were in 2014). It's easier to upscale it for PC (higher rez textures, etc.) than it is to downscale it for console and end up with a game that runs well.
I cancelled my ESO plus sub today so this article is timely:
1. Veteran Dungeons can be completely hit or miss on difficulties. I could join one random Vet dungeon and it would be like a cake walk. Join another and I would be completely ineffective at DPS at CP300. I’d either leave or get booted from a group. With an MMO that made level differences nearly insignificant around the rest of their entire world, why are Vet dungeons so profoundly different in difficulty?
2. Character level scaling. I cannot stand this. A level 10 and a CP200 nearly the same almost everywhere. The Champion points make little distinction between the two. Especially when all new characters on an entire account has all the CP points available from level 1?!
3. Lack of difference or sense of character growth because the CPs differences are miniscule. I do not have time to level a character to CP1000 to gain a noticeable difference in a character’s abilities.
4. The end of the world faction boundaries. Another goal and immersion breaking mistake.
5. No auction house, and pushy trade guilds sending you threat mail if you don't pay them "dues" F-that!
1. Agree.
2. I thought this was the worst thing about the game. You create a level 1, and it has the stats (or at least what seems like the stats) of a Level 50 character. All feeling of character progression while leveling goes out the window. You're basically upgrading your gear for the Armor Value, since that's the only thing that feels like it matters.
4. Agree, I'd have loved if they kept factions separate and had non-factor players be KOS to almost everything there. It also would have given the game more "replay value" in terms of leveling alts. The way they did Cadwell's Silver/Gold was a bad idea, as it forced you to run through all the content, which made running another character through it was simply not something I ever would have done. It also made for an incredibly exhausting quest grinding experience. A lot of quests award Skill Points, etc. It's a horrible idea to just skip all of it, given how the game is designed.
5. This is inexcusable.
I'd also add that I think being able to join multiple guilds weakens the integrity of the guild system itself, IMO. It doesn't feel good to me, and you should never feel like you have to join multiple trading guilds (with rent - and not cheap - mind you) just to participate in the market.
I'd much rather just use the EQ1 Bazaar zone (again), even though it's a ridiculously old system (but basically what ESO is using, except now they've made you a slave to trading guilds to participate.
Personally, the combat is what makes me end up leaving sooner than later. It just feels so meh. I really wish it played more like Tera. The melee weapons just have no weight to their attacks. It feels floaty and has no real impact. Kind feels like a wet noodle. I'm not sure what could be done to improve this at this point. But, I'll still pop in game once a year for a few weeks before getting bored *shrug*.
The AH or lack of is annoying and I always hated the guild system that replaces it.
The combat in ESO was likely designed with Consoles in mind. Because consoles are limited in terms of buttons on the only input mechanism that can be assumed to be there (controller), they had to do something to get around it.
Yes, it undoubtedly was. All of ESO was. It's not a windowed game, you can't have two things up at the same time unless it's programed to pop up at the same time. You can't access your crafting skills unless you're at a crafting station, you can't even check what recipes you have or what you've researched. You can't move the camera around when you are moving, which means no cool screenshots galloping on your mount unless you're into tail shots and the backs of heads.
The console-based limitations are extensive and definitely hurt the game, making it feel restrictive, which it is. It probably effects more aspects of combat than just the skill limitations and the funky weapon switch.
As of any idiotic argument which boils into "game is simplistic because of console".
FFXI has a bit of limitation as well being designed for the PS2 but i could still move in one direction and look elsewhere,it was just a bit tricky.
No being able to see your crafting abilities while not at a node is pretty lame.
Really everything in a game needs code,a command and it is simply a case that developers.ALL of them are cutting a lot of corners,building half a game to save costs and time.
Who is causing so many poorly done game designs in mmorpg's,the investors,the owners,pressure from players to get the game out soon...faster idk but bottom line is i see a lot of poorly done games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
For sure main reason I play only from time to time is that I miss tab targeting. But even that would not be problem if I could still move at all times mouse cursor around screen to fast check tooltip i.e. Recticle would move only when actually moving. And, yes, worst thing for me is when MMO is not built with moving around by pressing both mouse buttons (at least later they added support). FF14 is also made for console but we PC players does not have to sacrifice anything, it is great.
While I think ESO is, overall, the best modern MMO on the market - it does suffer some rather serious issues from my point of view.
I have to agree with several posters about the two-skillbar approach.
I think it's terrible and awkward - not to mention illogical. I'm a very experienced gamer - and yet I've had the hardest time growing comfortable switching skillbars during high-pressure combat. I simply don't enjoy this particular mechanic at all - and it makes all the challenging content much less entertaining than it otherwise would have been.
I actually enjoy the combat in itself - so long as I don't have to constantly switch back and forth between the bars. That means that solo/casual content is quite enjoyable - because I can handle most encounters with just a single bar - or without feeling pressured into optimising a switch-based rotation.
Beyond that, I think they made a mistake by pushing the "Stamina or Magicka" approach so hard. It makes for a lot of unnecessary restrictions in an otherwise wonderfully open character system. For instance, I really enjoy the Magicka style of the Nightblade - but I absolutely despise playing with Staves - so I have to make do without it and go full Stamina. That's highly unfortunate - from my perspective. They really should enable all styles with all weapon types.
Beyond that, I think it's unfortunate that they've implemented BIS equipment that's only attainable through playing in larger groups - because I think it goes against the otherwise highly solo-friendly game design.
Other less than great aspects of the game include a somewhat limited color palette, making too many areas look and feel too similar. I also think some of the scaling mechanics should be adjusted - especially the initial 1-50 non CP progression, where you keep going back and forth in power due to gear scaling. It's simply impractical to keep your gear "up-to-date" every single level to have a proper scaling progression, and even if you did - you wouldn't actually grow in power until you reached 160 CP, which is a rather long time for a new player.
Those would be some of the issues I have with the game. Still think it's great overall, though.
Nope, the current system keeps the F2P trolls at bay. ESO has one of the best monetization available. Honestly, the only people who complain about it are the parasites that never spend a single dollar. Even when they get F2P, they still will never support the developer.
The main issues I have with the game are lag in Cyrodiil, a lack of attention to the pvp campaigns, pvp rewards, and the ability to swap factions in pvp.
The AH is of course also quite annoying because I have to travel all over the place to buy gear whenever I want to make a new build (can take me hours). I don't know if that is good or bad though- just inconvenient for me personally.
I also don't like animation cancelling, and although I do like the weapon swap system, I find it quite unresponsive compared to GW2's version. Testing has led me to conclude that the lack of responsiveness is tied to the animation system rather than lag. For example you can animation cancel some skills into a weapon swap to get a smooth swap and fast skill execution; but I wish it just reliably switched bars when I press the hotkey for it!
In terms of the pvp campaigns, there basically is only one campaign that has consistently full population and that "works", with the others empty a lot of the time or dominated by one faction.
These low pop servers are often "gamed" by guilds/players, who will wait for the current emperor to log off then swap to the server and quickly take the whole map. When they get some competition they will then go back to a different server. Other players will just swap toons to the faction that is winning at the time: the ease of faction swapping creates a whole host of issues that are undermining the game.
Unfortunately the well populated server is often very laggy and also really requires a max CP character and an extremely coordinated role based group (depending on what you want to do).
The actual map mechanics could also be spiced up imo; I am pretty sure there hasn't been any changes since they added the towns as objectives. If you play a lot you notice there are a few hotspots with good action, but far too many "dead areas" on the map.
Re: Dungeons, I'd love to see specific ones highlighted every few days, for bonus rewards through Group Finder or something. This way, everyone gets a chance to see them all.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Ill start with ESO is a solid game , but its most glaring issues for me ..
The Overland Combat , is far to easy , every single fight feels exactly the same from lvl 1 to CP lvl 323....There is no challenge here , no risk , no danger .. None ,Zilch,........ Zero.. Since Tamriel One
The Lore is completely borked since Tamriel One , and cannot be fixed
The Ranged combat does not feel good , I cringe everytime i watch my arrow do a Hook or Shank..
Combat is what prevented me from ever committing to this game.
I tried this game out over a couple of the beta weekends and have tried it once since launch. The combat sucks. Firstly, it's just too shallow. With so few skills I'm just bored really damn quickly. Think the highest I made it was level 21 but I had to really force myself to get there. Second, even for an action game the combat just wasn't engaging. It was slow and lacking impact. I was beta testing Wildstar around the same time as ESO which really highlighted how bad ESO was. Whilst WildStar also sucked, it was fast paced and exciting.
I don't ever expect them to "fix" combat though. It's a personal preference and shallow, easy combat seems to be what the masses like.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I agree with most of the issues listed here even though I still play the game a lot. But you gotta admit who ever invented the crafting bag, really hit a homerun for premium access needs. One of the few games I play that I pay for because of 1 item
I really like ESO and would love to keep playing but too many other things to play at the moment.
My main gripes tend to be echoing what other people say:
I want an Auction House, while the idea of trading guilds is good, there's no actual interaction coming from it, other than joining another guild just for that sole purpose and using their internal auction house.
The skill system is extremely obnoxious. I like that you can do what you want, but I don't like the heavy emphasis on switching between two weapons, and two different skill bars. It gets daunting trying to pick out the 6 skills you want on each bar without just following a guide because you could completely choose things that don't work well together and not really know until later on.
Other than those things I think that the actual game is quite fun. The quests are some of the best stories in MMO's I've ever played, the PvP is quite entertaining, and the dungeons are fun.
For me personally, the one glaring issue that I have is the AH. It pretty much takes the AH aspect of the game away from a large portion of the player base, especially newer players. For the longest time I was simply reduced to selling everything I did not need to NPC merchants, and still habitually do for the most part. While grouping, I still meet lots of players who don't even bother, especially those who chose to go guild less. I understand the game's intent to encourage players to join a guild, but this type of "encouragement" borders on the forced. That's not cool, and no way to run an AH system.
Though not as glaring as the above, a secondary issue I have with the game is the two bar weapon switching deal. I think it would have been much more forgivable had they allowed for a minimum seven skills on each bar, NOT counting the pet. Although it doesn't affect me much since I run as Nightblade, I still feel for those classes that have to forfeit a skill slot for their pet. The necessity to constantly having to switch bars to be effective in combat also makes combat unnecessarily hectic for a reason having nothing to do with combat tactics.
IMHO, tweaking the above would vastly improve the enjoyment of the game for a large portion of the player base.
What confuses is me is the complexity of equipment and how it interacts with the skill systems. I will take on a group that is a difficult fight for me and someone will come in and within 5 seconds and wipe it out. I usually have two matched sets and all purple items. My question is why have all these different equipment sets if only a few are really that beneficial.
Comments
dude you realize, console came out over a year after pc. the reason you are limited to 5 skills a bar and swap bars to get another 5, is swapping bars is suppose to be a way to change role in mid combat, or focus. i.e. from heals to tanking or single target to area of effect. I would say the biggest problem is this system has evolved to just being adding more skills to rotation to push dps higher while enabling animation cancelling which is sadly a form of cheating as you are bypassing the intended global cooldown of 1s between skill casts.
an auction house would ruin the game. auction houses would make a few rich players able to very easily manipulate the market for massive profits while keeping players who actually need items paying premium prices.
Fixing that though wouldn't get me back to the game though. Too many other things I didn't like about it to ever bother playing it again.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
When I left I wanted more class skills. Less prime time Cyrodill lag, and the justice system.
1. Veteran Dungeons can be completely hit or miss on difficulties. I could join one random Vet dungeon and it would be like a cake walk. Join another and I would be completely ineffective at DPS at CP300. I’d either leave or get booted from a group. With an MMO that made level differences nearly insignificant around the rest of their entire world, why are Vet dungeons so profoundly different in difficulty?
2. Character level scaling. I cannot stand this. A level 10 and a CP200 nearly the same almost everywhere. The Champion points make little distinction between the two. Especially when all new characters on an entire account has all the CP points available from level 1?!
3. Lack of difference or sense of character growth because the CPs differences are miniscule. I do not have time to level a character to CP1000 to gain a noticeable difference in a character’s abilities.
4. The end of the world faction boundaries. Another goal and immersion breaking mistake.
5. No auction house, and pushy trade guilds sending you threat mail if you don't pay them "dues" F-that!
And? That has nothing to do with anything, except perhaps the prioritization of the PC port because it has the widest net that can be cast (PC + Mac, practically the ENTIRE PC gaming market - casual and otherwise), which could be used to bank roll the rest of console development and content development for PC. The game wasn't exactly bustling with content on release, either, to be frank... This is fairly normal in MMORPG development. FFXIV PC came several months before console (close to a year or so)? The core game systems were still designed to accommodate console gameplay.
Things like the grpahics engine, core game system (combat, weapon swapping), UI, etc. were likely finalized well before the game released on PC - at last several months before the PC port released, IMO, and likely even longer (a year or more - they probably started developing the console port fairly early on, just at a lower priority since they had to port to both console systems - which is a monumental task and is an indicator that this didn't start post-release, or even close to it).
The game is actually pretty good on console, in terms of the quality of the product delivered (performance, optimization, etc.) which indicates to me (having a clue about software development on multiple platforms) is a fairly clear signal of this.
Almost every other MMORPG except those designed with console in mind (FFXIV, ESO) from very early on have been shoddy ports.
It is much easier to make a decent PC port out of a console game, than the other way around, because PC System targets are often beyond what you find in consoles (and certainly were in 2014). It's easier to upscale it for PC (higher rez textures, etc.) than it is to downscale it for console and end up with a game that runs well.
1. Agree.
2. I thought this was the worst thing about the game. You create a level 1, and it has the stats (or at least what seems like the stats) of a Level 50 character. All feeling of character progression while leveling goes out the window. You're basically upgrading your gear for the Armor Value, since that's the only thing that feels like it matters.
3. Covered largely in #2.
4. Agree, I'd have loved if they kept factions separate and had non-factor players be KOS to almost everything there. It also would have given the game more "replay value" in terms of leveling alts. The way they did Cadwell's Silver/Gold was a bad idea, as it forced you to run through all the content, which made running another character through it was simply not something I ever would have done. It also made for an incredibly exhausting quest grinding experience. A lot of quests award Skill Points, etc. It's a horrible idea to just skip all of it, given how the game is designed.
5. This is inexcusable.
I'd also add that I think being able to join multiple guilds weakens the integrity of the guild system itself, IMO. It doesn't feel good to me, and you should never feel like you have to join multiple trading guilds (with rent - and not cheap - mind you) just to participate in the market.
I'd much rather just use the EQ1 Bazaar zone (again), even though it's a ridiculously old system (but basically what ESO is using, except now they've made you a slave to trading guilds to participate.
The AH or lack of is annoying and I always hated the guild system that replaces it.
As of any idiotic argument which boils into "game is simplistic because of console".
FF14.
GW2.
Learn to argument.
No being able to see your crafting abilities while not at a node is pretty lame.
Really everything in a game needs code,a command and it is simply a case that developers.ALL of them are cutting a lot of corners,building half a game to save costs and time.
Who is causing so many poorly done game designs in mmorpg's,the investors,the owners,pressure from players to get the game out soon...faster idk but bottom line is i see a lot of poorly done games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I have to agree with several posters about the two-skillbar approach.
I think it's terrible and awkward - not to mention illogical. I'm a very experienced gamer - and yet I've had the hardest time growing comfortable switching skillbars during high-pressure combat. I simply don't enjoy this particular mechanic at all - and it makes all the challenging content much less entertaining than it otherwise would have been.
I actually enjoy the combat in itself - so long as I don't have to constantly switch back and forth between the bars. That means that solo/casual content is quite enjoyable - because I can handle most encounters with just a single bar - or without feeling pressured into optimising a switch-based rotation.
Beyond that, I think they made a mistake by pushing the "Stamina or Magicka" approach so hard. It makes for a lot of unnecessary restrictions in an otherwise wonderfully open character system. For instance, I really enjoy the Magicka style of the Nightblade - but I absolutely despise playing with Staves - so I have to make do without it and go full Stamina. That's highly unfortunate - from my perspective. They really should enable all styles with all weapon types.
Beyond that, I think it's unfortunate that they've implemented BIS equipment that's only attainable through playing in larger groups - because I think it goes against the otherwise highly solo-friendly game design.
Other less than great aspects of the game include a somewhat limited color palette, making too many areas look and feel too similar. I also think some of the scaling mechanics should be adjusted - especially the initial 1-50 non CP progression, where you keep going back and forth in power due to gear scaling. It's simply impractical to keep your gear "up-to-date" every single level to have a proper scaling progression, and even if you did - you wouldn't actually grow in power until you reached 160 CP, which is a rather long time for a new player.
Those would be some of the issues I have with the game. Still think it's great overall, though.
Nope, the current system keeps the F2P trolls at bay. ESO has one of the best monetization available. Honestly, the only people who complain about it are the parasites that never spend a single dollar. Even when they get F2P, they still will never support the developer.
The AH is of course also quite annoying because I have to travel all over the place to buy gear whenever I want to make a new build (can take me hours). I don't know if that is good or bad though- just inconvenient for me personally.
I also don't like animation cancelling, and although I do like the weapon swap system, I find it quite unresponsive compared to GW2's version. Testing has led me to conclude that the lack of responsiveness is tied to the animation system rather than lag. For example you can animation cancel some skills into a weapon swap to get a smooth swap and fast skill execution; but I wish it just reliably switched bars when I press the hotkey for it!
In terms of the pvp campaigns, there basically is only one campaign that has consistently full population and that "works", with the others empty a lot of the time or dominated by one faction.
These low pop servers are often "gamed" by guilds/players, who will wait for the current emperor to log off then swap to the server and quickly take the whole map. When they get some competition they will then go back to a different server. Other players will just swap toons to the faction that is winning at the time: the ease of faction swapping creates a whole host of issues that are undermining the game.
Unfortunately the well populated server is often very laggy and also really requires a max CP character and an extremely coordinated role based group (depending on what you want to do).
The actual map mechanics could also be spiced up imo; I am pretty sure there hasn't been any changes since they added the towns as objectives. If you play a lot you notice there are a few hotspots with good action, but far too many "dead areas" on the map.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
The Overland Combat , is far to easy , every single fight feels exactly the same from lvl 1 to CP lvl 323....There is no challenge here , no risk , no danger .. None ,Zilch,........ Zero.. Since Tamriel One
The Lore is completely borked since Tamriel One , and cannot be fixed
The Ranged combat does not feel good , I cringe everytime i watch my arrow do a Hook or Shank..
And of course the AH or lack of Global
I tried this game out over a couple of the beta weekends and have tried it once since launch. The combat sucks. Firstly, it's just too shallow. With so few skills I'm just bored really damn quickly. Think the highest I made it was level 21 but I had to really force myself to get there. Second, even for an action game the combat just wasn't engaging. It was slow and lacking impact. I was beta testing Wildstar around the same time as ESO which really highlighted how bad ESO was. Whilst WildStar also sucked, it was fast paced and exciting.
I don't ever expect them to "fix" combat though. It's a personal preference and shallow, easy combat seems to be what the masses like.
My main gripes tend to be echoing what other people say:
I want an Auction House, while the idea of trading guilds is good, there's no actual interaction coming from it, other than joining another guild just for that sole purpose and using their internal auction house.
The skill system is extremely obnoxious. I like that you can do what you want, but I don't like the heavy emphasis on switching between two weapons, and two different skill bars. It gets daunting trying to pick out the 6 skills you want on each bar without just following a guide because you could completely choose things that don't work well together and not really know until later on.
Other than those things I think that the actual game is quite fun. The quests are some of the best stories in MMO's I've ever played, the PvP is quite entertaining, and the dungeons are fun.
For me personally, the one glaring issue that I have is the AH. It pretty much takes the AH aspect of the game away from a large portion of the player base, especially newer players. For the longest time I was simply reduced to selling everything I did not need to NPC merchants, and still habitually do for the most part. While grouping, I still meet lots of players who don't even bother, especially those who chose to go guild less. I understand the game's intent to encourage players to join a guild, but this type of "encouragement" borders on the forced. That's not cool, and no way to run an AH system.
Though not as glaring as the above, a secondary issue I have with the game is the two bar weapon switching deal. I think it would have been much more forgivable had they allowed for a minimum seven skills on each bar, NOT counting the pet. Although it doesn't affect me much since I run as Nightblade, I still feel for those classes that have to forfeit a skill slot for their pet. The necessity to constantly having to switch bars to be effective in combat also makes combat unnecessarily hectic for a reason having nothing to do with combat tactics.
IMHO, tweaking the above would vastly improve the enjoyment of the game for a large portion of the player base.
What confuses is me is the complexity of equipment and how it interacts with the skill systems. I will take on a group that is a difficult fight for me and someone will come in and within 5 seconds and wipe it out. I usually have two matched sets and all purple items. My question is why have all these different equipment sets if only a few are really that beneficial.