How many spells do you want?

Wandering Mist

Simple question. How many spells or abilities do you want access to at a time? Would you prefer it to be like the original Guildwars where you could only have 8 abilities on your bar at a time, or as it is in WoW or FFXIV where some classes have up to 30 abilities they can use in combat?

For me personally, I prefer to have fewer buttons to press since I don't like using a lot of modifier keys when I'm playing. I also prefer to be able to use my abilities in multiple different ways rather than having a separate spell for each occasion. For example, instead of having a separate spell for healing and dealing damage, I like having an ability that, depending on the target, would either heal or deal damage.

Wololo

Imo the more the better. Even if you dont use some old skills, they might still come in handy for 200 IQ plays. Iam hoping for at least 20. Want plenty of skills to click, play, and show off with.
Having 8/10 skills only like gw1/2 makes me feel like playing a arcade game where everything is pre-set. Also i feel having less skills pushes people into meta builds more. But this is probally because i come from MMOs that have alot of skills on bar (60+)

Damokles

Tons of spells, but a limited number of "equippable" spells.
Like in D&D, where a mage has to write down all his spells he knows and then choose, which he actually can use^^

Wandering Mist

@damokles With regards to equipping spells, do you think you should be able to do this only in towns/cities or anywhere out of combat? I think you should be able to re-equip spells anywhere outside of combat, otherwise players will just stick to the same generalist setups without experimenting or specialising based on what they are doing.

@shkevi You have a good point about meta-building. it was notorious in GW1 especially in the PvP scene. Teamcomps were designed in such a way that most of the abilities on your bar were mandatory and unchangable. The flip-side of this is that limiting players in such a way encourages more teamwork since a single person cannot do everything. If I take lots of damaging abilities I have to rely on my teammates to provide the CC for me to deal the damage. One of the things I loved about GW1 was that not only did I have to think about my own abilities, but the abilities my teammates were bringing, so that we had a balanced teamcomp. It provided an extra dimension of play that you don't really get in other mmorpgs.

cyanideinsanity

I'd like to have around 20-24 or so hotbar abilities, and maybe another few auxiliary abilities. So taking ffxiv's approach but limited to 2 hotbars excluding things like a pet hotbar perhaps, coupled with gw2's aux. F key abilities.

While I really liked the multi-hotbar design in ffxiv I don't like being able to have every single skill active on hotbars.

StreetCornerPoet

I'd rather keep the skill slot low. The more skills you give a class they start either becoming redundant and only the "best at X" skill is ever really used or they become so niche you forget about them. I want skills that are useful in general instead of bogging down my character with revamps of old skills or with niche ones just to have "variety." Its not variety when they aren't used 99% of the time.

Damokles

@wanderingmist
I think that the spells should only be swappable in nodes. Or maybe you could swap between two specs on the fly (with a interruptable casttime) and choose the spells in each of those two inside the node.

burnthefern

For active spells, I'd like to see more than a single bar but not so many that I never 60% of them. I like to have lots of answers in PvP. For the entire catalog of inactive to choose from, the more the merrier.

Ravudha

Around 15 feels nice. If it's 30 with 15 combat and 15 utility that's good too.

Coming from a pen and paper RPG background I can't stand games with only 5-6 abilities on the bar; it feels less RPG and more hack and slash.

Godbrithil

A nice large and especially complex selection of skills should definitely be included, if the game wants to orient itself on oldschool. Games like Guild Wars 2 or other games, which only have 5 skills in the action bars, are extremely unsatisfactory and limit the game and individualization possibilities enormously.
Runes of Magic was a pioneer in complexity, as was Guild Wars 1.

Varkun

Personally, I would like to see 10+ but beyond that, I have no real preference.

What I would like to see is a very large pool of skills and augments to choose from to put on your combat bar, so to give us a good deal of build diversity.

insomnia

damokles wrote: »

Tons of spells, but a limited number of "equippable" spells.
Like in D&D, where a mage has to write down all his spells he knows and then choose, which he actually can use^^

Didn't they also say it would be something like this. You have more than you can equip. But i might remember wrong

Nagash

All of the spells, every. single. one

Azryil

I prefer to have a large toolkit of abilities to work with, I've always hated systems like ESO where you only get a handful of spells at any given time. I think each class should have 10-15 active combat abilities with another 5-10 situational utility abilities such as CC, defensive cooldowns, and support utilities.

noemad

For me ESO and GW2 don't offer enough hotbar space for abilities but games like EQ2 and SWTOR offer too many. Too few abilities and combat gets monotonous. Too many and I find I don't use many of them. Some I don't even remember I have. I prefer a happy medium between the 2 styles. I'd like to see 2 hot bars for abilities with each having 10-12 slots. So one bar would be for combat abilities and the other would be for heals, buffs\debuffs, CCs and utility spells\items (things like food, potions summoning your mount).

I also think we should have a large number of abilities but shouldn't be able to put all of them on a hotbar. Make us pick and choose which abilities we want. That way we can create the character that plays the way we want them to.

Magic Man

Many. And I mean it. I want 70 spells for each archetype and as many augments possible. I don't want what everyone use. I want to be special with my well-thought augmented spells.

Rem_

AS MANY AS POSSIBLE WOOOO

Shoklen

I like a heavy spellbook, but limited to a set number for immediate use.. 4 to 8 seems a little low... 30 to 48 seems a little high.. Personally around 8 to 12 seems good for my play style. Can sit and swap out at anytime (or a place within reason) for flexibility.

Endgame, a class could have 30 to 40 skills/powers, but can 'equip' like, 12.. I'd be down with that.

georgeblack

As long as there are meaningful COOLDOWNS for abilities, depending on the IMPACT of the ability, it shouldnt be an issue of how many.
After all, there are a set number of good Keys, easy to reach.

mozsta69

I think 10-15 slots is a nice balance with heaps more selectable spells/skills at our disposal.

Jjampong

I'm personally hoping for a relatively low amount of spells in favor of comboing or augmenting spells. I think systems like that add a lot more fluidity to combat instead of having 15 different hotkeys to push.

ArgentDawn

georgeblack wrote: »

After all, there are a set number of good Keys, easy to reach.

Somewhere around 40? 12 mouse, 12 mouse with
button modifier, Q E R, 1-6, 1-6 with button modifier.

Jokes aside I'm used to playing with somewhere between 30-45 active keybinds/macros depending on what class I play and that feels good. The problem is making the abilities appropriate. Not everything should be used all the time and the fact a lot of games have moved away from situational abilities has been disappointing. I understand it appeals to a broader audience and in the end makes more money but it's led to the dumbing down of most online games and eliminating skill based play in favor of who got the first attack off because everyone plays using the exact same 4 skills.

Altodor

You know I had a lot of fun in WoW when I had lots of spells. A lot of them were pointless when I started playing, but the more I played I found specific uses for them that were handy. Like the taunt ability in pvp being useless to me until id use it to tag rogues so they wouldnt stealth. Or this fireblossom skill was good for placing mines behind me when i ran. It was better than just running. Made me feel optimal on a micro level. Definitely felt better than 2 expansions later where I had few spells and hit the same buttons all the time. More things to play around with sounds fun.

Damokles

I just read a bit how people talked about easily reached hotkeys etc. here is my bid:

24 spells/abilities

q, e, r, f, v, c, x, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, shift-q, shift-e, shift-r, shift-f, shift-v, shift-c, shift-x, shift-1, shift-2, shift-3, shift-4, shift-5
These hotkeys are what i always use in all of my mmorpgs.

georgeblack

The main point remains that cooldowns are more important than how many abilities can be slotted

caedwyn

i want to have so many spells and abilities that give me a challenge to select and use them

sivanna

I want a Large spell book, but I think having the properly equipped spells is part of knowing your class, playstyle and the situation you're heading into. They keep saying our choices in game need to matter, and that should also influence our abilities. ESO had too few on each bar, but I enjoyed the weapon swapping mechanic (after awhile).

tankenka

I like the idea of a massive number of spells and possible combinations - then choosing the ones that work best for our play/character style (and having to be selective, or forfeit other things - such as quick-access mounts or healing potions). Being able to play and tinker to see what creative combinations I can come up with is a big part of the fun - plus, I like the idea of building up my own style through trial and error. I'm an old-school gamer, so I like having to think about how best to fill my hot-bars (and I *really* hope they let us customize our hotbars and move em about etc - a la EQ / DAoC, or *even better* a la UO!)

tugowar

28.

Some of these should be situational- ensnare, free from ensnare, fear, etc.

Some should be consumables.

Your most important spells should be amplified by good effect management.

Frostbolt does 20% more damage to entangled targets.
Fireball triggers burning. Conflagration critically hits against burning targets. Etc.

Jokuc

As many as possible. I heard somewhere in a livestream that you won't be able to use the weaker versions of spells once you upgrade them with the augments. I very much oppose this. If I want to use the old standard versions of a spell for fun, why shouldn't I be able to?

As for active/usable spells, I do think 30 at a time is a little bit too much since it's difficult to keybind them all. But at the same time I think 10 is too little. So maybe 20 ish?

Plateau

.