How large will the selection of skills be?

ArchivedUser

How large will the selection of skills be for each class? 

I'm currently playing GW2 and while the specialization trees are really nice, I still feel like there is a lack of customization with builds as your main skills are determined by the weapon type you use, and these cannot be changed. 

Furthermore, in other games where the main skills can be changed, a common letdown is that it feels like you basically have no customization anyway, as there are maybe 20 skills to choose from, but only two or three combinations are viable or decent, meaning that everyone will use the same ones anyway.

In my perfect dream we would get a large number of unique skills with different variations of each, for example 5 different "fireball" spells. One slow-recharging but stronger, or one with longer range and faster speed, you get the idea.

Does anyone know what plans Intrepid has for skills in the game? I did read the wiki but I was wondering if anyone has any more information or opinions on what you would like to see.

ArchivedUser

This is a big topic and can´t be explained in a few sentences so i recommend you to read following articels:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Skills
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Augments

Baseline is from what we have seen so far:
Every Class will have about 15 aktive skills.
Every skill will have about 3 ranks. Not every skill can be at max rank.
Each skill has at least 4 augmentation choices from the secondary class, as well as from religion/social/race.

I´m not sure if someone has already done the math but the whole rank and augmentation choices lead to a lot of possile builds for one class. 

ArchivedUser

Augentier said:

i recommend you to read following articels: [wiki]
Every Class will have about 15 aktive skills.

I literally said in my post that I already read that. Also I'm not talking about active skills. I'm talking about how many total skills there are for each class.

ArchivedUser

Your "Fireball" as an example:
Lets assume the Mage has a "Fireball" Spell. 
The Mage has 8 secondary classes. (Archetype combinations)
For each secondary class you have at least 4 choices of augmentation.
So you have at least 32 possible different fireballs.These fireballs can then be skilled from rank 1 to 3 which leads to a minimum of 96 "fireballs".

Is this correct or have misinterpreted something?

ArchivedUser

@Jokuc Excuse my first response. I have to admit i oversaw the sentence that you read the wiki.

ArchivedUser

Personnaly, I want thousands of skills. All of them. Read D*D lore (or forgotten realms fantasy). 

To often games focus only on offensive and defensive skills/spells. There is endless amounts of innocuous skills to use that might normally serve no combat purpose, but would be awesome to have the ability to use just for fun. 

ArchivedUser

@Augentier Skill augments are still augments, not new skills. 

Steven said:

"A fighter has a skill called “Rush”, that allows him to rush towards a target and upon reaching the target, deals x damage with a chance to knock the target down. If that fighter were to choose Mage as his secondary archetype, he could choose to apply a teleportation augment to the Rush skill, which would allow the skill to now teleport you to the target"

So basically, they are not mentioning much about the variety of unique skills, but rather that you can alter the effect of already existing skills based on what secondary class you choose. ..Which is great, but still (in my opinion) suffers from the same issue that Guild Wars 2 has. Everyone with that class will still be using the same base skills. In GW2 you have your base skills, and then you can alter their effects by spending "hero points" on "specializations". This can only be solved by adding more base skills, thus why I'm asking how many base skills the game will have.

I want to see more unique skills added for each archetype. I do like their idea of adding variations of base skills, but I would be sad if there were only 20 base skills to choose from. I would also like to add that I hope they keep the option to still use the unaltered base skills by shift- or right-clicking the skill icon and selecting it from a popup. Even though there might not be much purpose to use the basic "Rush" over "Ultimate Teleportation Lightning Strike", it would still be fun to be able to use old skills when fighting weak opponents or just for the lulz.

I have an idea regarding the way skills could be chosen and unlocked, but I'll leave that be for now.

ArchivedUser

@Jokuc
I played GW2 myself and i also think there was a lack of choices. 

But I actually don´t think you can compare GW2 system to AoC:

First of all i felt about the specialisation more as passive changes.Its been a while so i might be remebering it wrong but i can´t remember, that the specialisation changed the skills much. It was more like, some damage more here, some healing more there, a little bit utility more there. This would be acutally more like the ranks in AoC.

Jokuc said:

... Skill auguments are still auguments, not new skills. ....

I disagree. Steven said multiple times that all classcombinations should feel unique. And the Augments are not only slight changes to the base skill. The augments can alter the base skill. So its basically a new skill.

Steven said:

You only get active skills from your primary class and that active skill could look totally different after an augment gets applied. . ....

And i think the Fighter example we have is perfect for this. If you augment the Fighter "Charge" with a mage augment and get a "Teleport to Enemy", then i actually think this is a new skill. 

Another example from the Wiki fits perfectly to you fireball example.
"If you are mage-summoner, you are going to be able to pull from that summoner. Being able to temporarily put a servant on the battlefield like a fire elemental instead of doing a fireball."
So basically one augment from the summoner will alter fireball in a way, that you summon a fireelemental instead.
So i think "fireball" and "summon fireelemental" are not the same skills.
And as i posted earlier, you will have about 96 different "fireballs".

Just to to compare GW2 to AoC :
In GW2 specialisations you had 5 trees with 3 steps where you had 3 things to chose from. That are overall 5x3x3= 45 choices for the whole class.
In AoC you will have approx. 96 "fireballs" to chose from. If you count that up for the whole base-archetype. Lets assume you have as you said overall 20 base-skills.
20 base skills times 8 secondaryclasses times 4 augmentations makes 640 skills for one base archetype. And then there are additionally the approx. 3 ranks of the skills.
So you have approx 1920 choices to make for one base archetype.
I don´t think it is right to compare 45 class Choices from GW2 with approx. 1920 choices from AoC.

ArchivedUser

Augentier said:

So basically one augment from the summoner will alter fireball in a way, that you summon a fireelemental instead.
So i think "fireball" and "summon fireelemental" are not the same skills.

That is true, but as we don't have much information about it - or at least not enough examples to make any kind of conclusion - I will still question to what extent these augments can change a skill. If we are able to ascertain that the anser is "pretty damn much", I will be glad. If that's the case I almost feel like there needs to be a system in place for us to use the non-augmented skills as well.