First off I'm not an alpha tester so what I know as of posting this is only what's publicly available and what little tidbits some people have revealed after the recent release of the verbal NDA.
With that out of the way I wanted to put forth my thoughts and feedback on weapons and the talent system in Ashes of Creation.
With melee weapons I would say it seems there's almost no problem there when it comes to a good amount of variety and pretty much covering all the bases except fist weapons, which I hope they will be adding later. I'm also sad about there being no staffs but I won't be crying about it if it's not added.
With ranged weaponry not so much. Yes I heard about equipping bows with the recent test just deleted you from the game basically so obviously they didn't get to test those. I haven't heard anything yet about the magic weaponry either.
What I'm concerned with though is with the variety when it comes to ranged weaponry which includes both physical and magical. I know it's dubious that the potion launcher will be added to the game so I won't include that.
For physical weaponry there's the bow and crossbow and that's it. While they are solid to start out with those two are hardly representative of the variety there could be. No black powder weaponry such as guns will be present but that's hardly an issue.
Mainly I'm thinking of throwing weapons. While you can also look on the wikipedia page for throwing weapons I'll also use Runescape as an example for a few as it has pretty much all of them and though it doesn't have great balancing it certainly has variety. For example:
Bolas, darts, javelins, kunai, shuriken, blowpipe, chakram, glaives, boomerangs (probably not happening 
), throwing knives, throwing axes and for fun I'll include throwing hammers though that's more hammer bros from Mario.
Then there's a couple silly examples from Runescape such as the salamander, a living fire breathing weapon (flamethrower), and of course Chinchompas which are small cuddly creatures that explode when tossed. Now I'm not asking for flamethrowers but magical explosives would be cool if we didn't get the potion launcher at least but here's hoping.
Now the variety of magical weaponry probably is okay. The four that are already being developed are pretty much standard in all games. That being staves, books, orbs and wands. Of course in some games you have other interesting off-hand stuff such as, using a few Diablo 3 items as examples: phylacteries, fetishes/mojos and catalysts. However, I wouldn't say they are necessary as just the standard staves, books, orbs and wands if done right can be good or even great.
Now of course gauntlets are considered a hybrid weapons of fist and ranged magical attacks (mostly magical attacks in most depictions) so it would be interesting to see what would be done with them if added.
Since I haven't been able to find out anything yet when it comes to the magical weaponry, or even the physical ranged, I don't know what I should praise or criticize. All I can do is speculate. I'm not 100% sure how the ranged/melee weapon switch works yet either so again I can only speculate.
I can only assume wands are main-hand weapons, books and orbs are off-hand weapons and staves are two-handed weapons.
With that in mind having only one ranged weapon slot for swapping doesn't make much sense but then I guess for mages as an example you could have a wand and orb in your main hand and a stave in your ranged slot. Although what if you put a book in your ranged swap slot would you swap books?
If that's the case would it work like this:
Main-hand > Fire Wand + off-hand > Water Book = Steam attack
Switch to Earth Book
Main-hand > Fire Wand + off-hand > Earth Book = Lava attack
Just speculation of course but it would be a pretty cool system if that's how it worked. It would allow a larger variety without having to add more magic weapon types.
However, it would be nice if some magic battlemage type classes could fully swap between a melee and magic setup. For example, swapping between a sword and board to a wand and orb.
Then of course what about ranger classes with a main hand bow? Would they want to just swap to a crossbow or could they have the option to swap to some daggers.
I'm also curious how weapon progression works with skill/talent points. I know the system hasn't been implemented yet but we do know some stuff. For one thing we know there's a progression system for each weapon type. Does that mean you get more talent points for each weapon type you progress with which is capped by your current level?
Would using only a two-handed weapon be better since you get more points for investing into its one tree or does each weapon type get a separate pool of points to use?
I'm assuming from what is known that you get one skill point per level to invest in either Passive, Active or Weapon (only active is implemented at the moment) but that could be subject to change and testing. For that matter another system could be that each talent/skill tree gets a point per level.
Question is you choose weapon can you only invest in your main-hand or your off-hand if you're a sword and dagger as an example? What about shields or is that not considered a weapon to progress with? What about your weapon swap?
For that matter what about progressing armor types such as with Elder Scrolls Online?
I'm sure someone knows about the talent/skill point progression system better than I do but just remember it can change. They'll probably try it a few different ways to see what works best.
I'm just thinking about expanding the options and while It's nice to think of weapon variety I am more concerned with the core systems I went over in the latter half. Hope you enjoyed the food for thought.
