First of all, you get to triple it. Ctrl+? and Shift+? both, so your 13 keys are 39 before you go reserving those 3 you mentioned.
All good points, thanks for the feedback!
However, as i said ctrl is for sprinting. Look at the hotbar screenshot you posted. That means you only double it rather than tripple.
Additionally you have block, dodge and the weapon attack.
Thats why I wanted to talk about this in the first place. So many actions already have keybinds that are usually used for spells. I noticed that this limits the opinions for the amount of spells that are reasonable to be used in a rotation.
As for PvP, you having less options to react to any given scenario also means they have less actions to respond. Also, with talents certain spells can become multi tools. I find it way more intresting to decide if i have to use an ability if i knew it could save my ass later because its also a fear cleanse or something. Example: your warrior shout that usually is a dmg boost, can be talented to also clear fears. It creates a dynamic decision.
Boom. Instantly more intresting than having that in 2 seperate abilities and way more convinient than just having a fear cleanse on alt+f4...
I REALLY dont see how that becomes boring faster than having the same effects on more buttons.
I think there was a misunderstanding. I do not beleve that you can carry over old MMO ability designs and just trim them down. I do however beleve that with thoughtful design, less is more and stays more even over countless hours.
Here are ideas to cut down on spell bloat that i find intresting:
In thermes of 1h self buffs on your hotbar... make them a toggle passive and if hit by a buff-dispell it turns them off and/or sets them on a 10 sec cd.
(Never again you will have to rebuff every hour or forget)
Make certain abilities have talented dual purposes.
Gives flavour, engagement and forces decisions mid combat rather than having to only remember what key your cc/ccbreak was on.
(Ranger Scatter shot comes to mind with its hold for more single target dmg)
Look, what im trying to say is, that I believe the reason you get bored if you have only a few abilities is, because if you single out those abilities, they ARE boring. I dont want you to have less abilities to choose from. I want you to have MORE meaningful abilities. Abilities with flavour, charm, flexibility and a crisp feeling to them.
I think AoC is doing a decent job with those but i havent seen all to much of the itty bitty customisation of spells yet (I know that comes later, but i want to ensure it will come by talking to you guys)
I could be wrong, its just what i think could be the reason!
I'll share one more though with you guys of something i dont want to see happening in AoC.
In WoW if you play a melee hunter, you are essentially forced to use a thing called Wildfire Bomb (basically a granade) its baked into the class and you have to put talent points into it to even progress the tree.
The thing is... I don't wana f*** throw granades!?! I wana stab things with my spear and sick em with my pet. Granades arent my hunter fantasy, jet i am forced to use it or my talent points are waisted.
I don't want to see AoC force me to talent into an ability i dont want.
If they want the player to unlock every spell, that is fine... do it with seperate points that unlock a new ability of your choice.
But dont force people to invest into something they know they dont want to use. It feels so bad.
Most people play tab-target/locked-target style MMOs wrong, and as a result they don't realise how amazing games with high numbers of abilities can be.
In my superior opinion as someone who grew up playing MMOs on a laptop (the closeness of trackpads to the keyboard and the way trackpads accept inputs from anywhere regardless of where you left it after the last movement make trackpads absolute god-tier for locked-target games):
The objectively superior way to bind your keys is to use 1-6 for fast-trigger abilities, 7-0 (or beyond) for buffs and abilities that are okay to not have your hand on your mouse for, and then reuse those keys not with Shift or Alt, but by swapping out your primary active skill bar with F1-F4.
The resulting gameplay is elegantly fluid, you have up to 24 fast-trigger skill buttons readily available, 16-24 slow skill buttons, and crucially, the entire rest of your keyboard is left for menuing and character movement reactions like dodge rolls, block, autoattack, etc.
The second-best way of playing MMOs if using F1-F4 is too much brainwork for you is to use an MMO mouse with 12 clearly labeled buttons to bind, and then using some of those buttons for swapping the active skill bar.
Unfortunately, not enough MMOs either have been designed to allow changing the active skill bar, or they don't allow more than 2-3 bars on a character. Massive design oversight.
If more people experienced MMOs in either of these two playstyles, I guarantee there would be MUCH more appreciation for games with a high number of abilities.
More on the benefits of high abilities for the appeal of the combat itself in my thread on the subject.
As for the number of abilities that's a hard no. The reason you want more abilities is to prevent rotations becoming stale early on. if you spend 30 levels using the same rotation your going to get board. Also the heavy emphasis on PvP means you want some utility abilities to be able to deal with unexpected situations.
The amount of abilities should be based on the class you're playing more then anything. Look at the difference wow has between the classes. At level 30 Shamans have like 35 abilities, Rouges have like 5 at the same level.
That's probably the only subject we're ever going to agree on.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
The specific design of Ashes is that you can spec in to a few abilities and make them stronger, or you can spec in to many abilities.
As such, if you want to run around with 6 abilities, feel free to do so.
As this thread is evidence of, many others prefer more abilities. I myself am used to a game where I have 80 or so hotbuttons in total, of which around 45 are set to hotkeys for easy access (the rest are things I don't need in combat, but still want reasonably easy access to).
As such, I am perfectly fine with the notion of 40 or more active abilities - and if anything consider that to be a little light. However, this game also allows for you to build a character using as few as 6 active abilities, should you want to do so.
As for PvP, you having fewer options to react to any given scenario also means they have less actions to respond. Also, with talents certain spells can become multi tools. I find it way more intresting to decide if i have to use an ability if i knew it could save my ass later because its also a fear cleanse or something. Example: your warrior shout that usually is a dmg boost, can be talented to also clear fears. It creates a dynamic decision.
Boom. Instantly more intresting than having that in 2 seperate abilities and way more convinient than just having a fear cleanse on alt+f4...
I REALLY dont see how that becomes boring faster than having the same effects on more buttons.
I think there was a misunderstanding. I do not beleve that you can carry over old MMO ability designs and just trim them down. I do however beleve that with thoughtful design, less is more and stays more even over countless hours.
If you have 12 abilities, 4 of them are buffs, and you save 2 of them for crucial counters, you're not using a lot of abilities to do things.
And that's already more abilities than you'll actively use in a game like ESO.
More abilities = More thinking about what to do against your particular opponent. You actually interact. A different half of your skill bars might never see use in each different scenario, and every time you run into a new scenario, you have to make a new decision about which abilities those should be.
Fewer abilities = Repeating the same rotation against everyone with minor adjustments of the order and which abilities you hold back for counters a little longer than others.
Games with fewer abilities are largely about creating the "optimal" build. EVERYTHING becomes about best-in-slot. Best-in-slot gear to support your best-in-slot abilities to repeat over and over again. You barely think about what each individual opponent is doing when it comes to your skill usage; if there's any player interaction in combat, it's mechanical dodging/parrying and saving 1-2 cooldowns for the same ability counters every time.
If you spam the right buttons in the right order, and you play the mechanics minigames, you're the best player.
In games with more abilities, "optimal" is a barely relevant tendency. All that really matters is adjusting to each situation appropriately.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
2
DerToastinatorMember, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
@Noaani
That's fine by me!
6 abilities is to less for me too
You are very right by saying the preferences differ a lot.
Its nice to see so many of you responding in a well thought out manner!
If you have 12 abilities, 4 of them are buffs, and you save 2 of them for crucial counters, you're not using a lot of abilities to do things.
Buffs can be baked into abilities in my opinion.
If you have a deliberate buff ability it should be an impcatfull one.
Casing a thorny shield in WoW fells boring, it barely makes a scratch in dps, but if you wana be optimal you should have it up, right? Its free dmg after all and every bit counts. I hate to bring up LoL again (and i dont like rammus) but casting his selfbuff that hurts the enemy for autoatacking him does define a playstyle and in return you do meaningfull dmg.
A character that has one of his fewer abilities allocated to be very good against one thing, but lacks in another, has to think about his approach to situations. Or think about how to eliminate his weakness in other ways. Gear, consumables, ect.
If he had a anti magic shield there would be no such thought process.
That's one of the reason i advocate for less abilities.
If you have many abilities you start to ether see every class become the same due to having an answer to everything, or you see more and more conviluted mechanics come up so some classes have a lack in some department wich then justifies having so many abilities.
More abilities = More thinking about what to do against your particular opponent. You actually interact. A different half of your skill bars might never see use in each different scenario, and every time you run into a new scenario, you have to make a new decision about which abilities those should be.
Fewer abilities = Repeating the same rotation against everyone with minor adjustments of the order and which abilities you hold back for counters a little longer than others.
Well, yes but actually no. With many abilities you have many counter strategies and have to think of what to use, yes.
With fewer abilities you might not even have an answer for a specific scenario and have to get creative. Enemy casts a fear... do i break LoS? ...can i get out of range? ...do i use that item i got earlyer to interrupt him?.......... do i bring a guildy next time that knows a fear ward?
You start to think outside the box that are your abilities.
How many trinkets with intresting effects have i thrown away in my lifetime, because i had an ability that did the same job on a shorter cooldown? How many crafted items are disregarded because you cant fit them in your rotation without loosing dps?
I would LOVE to use those strategies/items, but oh hey i have a fear ward and a cleanse on a 20 sec cd in my kit. That covers his 10 sec cooldown for fear, im good.
Games with fewer abilities are largely about creating the "optimal" build. EVERYTHING becomes about best-in-slot. Best-in-slot gear to support your best-in-slot abilities to repeat over and over again. You barely think about what each individual opponent is doing when it comes to your skill usage; if there's any player interaction in combat, it's mechanical dodging/parrying and saving 1-2 cooldowns for the same ability counters every time.
If you spam the right buttons in the right order, and you play the mechanics minigames, you're the best player.
In games with more abilities, "optimal" is a barely relevant tendency. All that really matters is adjusting to each situation appropriately.
Well, there is BiS gear in every game, and its not like you cant play off-meta builds and be sucsesfull in games that only have a few abilities.
So i dont know what you are on about here. You always are on the lookout for gear that supports your best abilities. Thats what grinding for gear is. You choosing which abilities to specialise in will change what you look for, regardless of how many other abilities you have.
Yes, i agree that you spend less time thinking about your abilities when having less of them. As i mentioned i dont think thats necessary a bad thing. I think there needs to be a ballance on how much you have to think about your abilities to be able to engage with the othe aspects of combat. What good would having a dodge roll be if you don't have time or reason to use it? Same with items, consumables, LoS, racial abilities, or even the other partymembers kit.
I have to repeat myself by saying: Im not advocating to make the game less complex or boring by trimming down abilities. I wana see space for all the other complexeties of an mmo.
And thereby nudging the player to engage with ihe world and "adjust to situations" other than through his abilities.
I'm a 'less is more' kind of bloke. I don't particularly care for the bloated hotbars, where you have like 2-3 at the bottom, 2 more on the side, 2 more on the other side, as you fill up your screen with crap. You end up spending more time looking at the UI, rather then what is on screen.
I like more limited skill bars like that of Guild Wars, rather then that of GW2 or ESO. Where the former allows you to customize your skill set however you set fit, rather then the latter making half your choices for you, so you end up only choosing 3-4 of your skills, which sucks and tends to make combat become bland and samey after awhile.
While I do like the idea of having 'weapon skills', where you can swap between two sets of weapons for more total skills, I'm less fond of having them all be fixed and unchanging. I'd rather the weapons have their own skill bar, which you can customize using any of the skills from that weapons skill tree. So while two people using the same weapon might fight similarly, they need not fight the same. Throw in arguments, and then you have some serious customization.
As to actual numbers. I'd say about 3-5 weapon skills, for two sets of weapons. (ie main hand + offhand, or a two hander) Then about 5-8 class skills, any of which can be replaced by universal skills. Plus one ultimate.
In addition to dodge roll, sprint, block, basic weapon attack (thou this could just be a weapon skill).
In total we are looking at around 15-22 skills. Which should be ample for just about anybody to make an interesting build around, without everyone having a solution to every problem.
Of course with any limited skills system like this, you'd want to be able to save and load pre made builds.
Build crafting is really half the fun.
1
SongRuneMember, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
First of all, you get to triple it. Ctrl+? and Shift+? both, so your 13 keys are 39 before you go reserving those 3 you mentioned.
All good points, thanks for the feedback!
However, as i said ctrl is for sprinting. Look at the hotbar screenshot you posted. That means you only double it rather than tripple.
Additionally you have block, dodge and the weapon attack.
Thats why I wanted to talk about this in the first place. So many actions already have keybinds that are usually used for spells. I noticed that this limits the opinions for the amount of spells that are reasonable to be used in a rotation.
As for PvP, you having less options to react to any given scenario also means they have less actions to respond. Also, with talents certain spells can become multi tools. I find it way more intresting to decide if i have to use an ability if i knew it could save my ass later because its also a fear cleanse or something. Example: your warrior shout that usually is a dmg boost, can be talented to also clear fears. It creates a dynamic decision.
Boom. Instantly more intresting than having that in 2 seperate abilities and way more convinient than just having a fear cleanse on alt+f4...
I REALLY dont see how that becomes boring faster than having the same effects on more buttons.
I think there was a misunderstanding. I do not beleve that you can carry over old MMO ability designs and just trim them down. I do however beleve that with thoughtful design, less is more and stays more even over countless hours.
Here are ideas to cut down on spell bloat that i find intresting:
In thermes of 1h self buffs on your hotbar... make them a toggle passive and if hit by a buff-dispell it turns them off and/or sets them on a 10 sec cd.
(Never again you will have to rebuff every hour or forget)
Make certain abilities have talented dual purposes.
Gives flavour, engagement and forces decisions mid combat rather than having to only remember what key your cc/ccbreak was on.
(Ranger Scatter shot comes to mind with its hold for more single target dmg)
Look, what im trying to say is, that I believe the reason you get bored if you have only a few abilities is, because if you single out those abilities, they ARE boring. I dont want you to have less abilities to choose from. I want you to have MORE meaningful abilities. Abilities with flavour, charm, flexibility and a crisp feeling to them.
I think AoC is doing a decent job with those but i havent seen all to much of the itty bitty customisation of spells yet (I know that comes later, but i want to ensure it will come by talking to you guys)
I could be wrong, its just what i think could be the reason!
I'll share one more though with you guys of something i dont want to see happening in AoC.
In WoW if you play a melee hunter, you are essentially forced to use a thing called Wildfire Bomb (basically a granade) its baked into the class and you have to put talent points into it to even progress the tree.
The thing is... I don't wana f*** throw granades!?! I wana stab things with my spear and sick em with my pet. Granades arent my hunter fantasy, jet i am forced to use it or my talent points are waisted.
I don't want to see AoC force me to talent into an ability i dont want.
If they want the player to unlock every spell, that is fine... do it with seperate points that unlock a new ability of your choice.
But dont force people to invest into something they know they dont want to use. It feels so bad.
Anyway... rant over. XD
Well that's unfortunate. You seem to have missed my point entirely.
I don't "get bored" because I have less abilities. I get bored because I have no applicable abilities. If every Bard ability applies to every situation, you've made a mindless rotational buffbot, or you didn't make a Bard in the first place.
0
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Well that's unfortunate. You seem to have missed my point entirely.
I don't "get bored" because I have less abilities. I get bored because I have no applicable abilities. If every Bard ability applies to every situation, you've made a mindless rotational buffbot, or you didn't make a Bard in the first place.
Thats unfortunate, because then we both seem to miss the point of each other, because im not saying i want every ability to apply to every situation. I explicitely said i want the kit to have weaknesses that you have to suppliment with:
items, consumables, LoS, racial abilities, or even the other partymembers kit.
I have to repeat myself by saying: Im not advocating to make the game less complex or boring by trimming down abilities. I wana see space for all the other complexeties of an mmo.
And thereby nudging the player to engage with ihe world and "adjust to situations" other than through his abilities.
I dont know how you get "I want bards to be mindless buff bots" out of that statement.
I even stated earlyer, that id rather have a deliberate impactfull buff, than multiple small buffs.
In the case of AoCs bard i hope they manage to give him options to specialize into 1 or 2 of the songs.
The showcase showed the layering mechanic of 2 songs, but when they said they are thinking about bumping that up to all 5 songs i shivered, because that sounds like a buff bot. https://youtu.be/xQOIz8nUHIA?si=OuEbpKHsKMjyMfHP&t=1280
Now dont take me wrong, i think if you wana be a melody weaving bard thats fine by me, but if i wana stick to one melody and focus on the dances, i think i should be able to do so too. If i dont wana use abilities that i didnt spec into, i should be able to disreguard them. Ether because its suboptimal for my particular build or because its just not the version of bard fantasy im going for.
Immagine wanting to focus on building a fire mage, but the game forces frost magic into your rotation, because it doesnt give you the tools to build that fantasy in a viable way. This is in my experience the case with games that think only having many abilities = fun. BOTH can be fun in my opinion!
I said, that "i beleve the reason you get bored" because i meant it as a guess. I was guessing on what could be an underlying reason. You deny that guess and thats ok.
I realy wana stab people and have my pet sick em with my melee hunter build, but oh no the game forces me to use things i dont want to use, reguardless how usefull they could be. That is contributed ether by the look, the gameplay feel or the fact that at some point its just too many things to press.
You are forced to allocate points to abilities that you dont want and it feels bad to not use then, because you had to invest 2 or 3 points that you would have used otherwise. Yet if the game is designed for players to have many abilities, you cant let players who want to throw all their points into select abilities do so, because then they would have too much of the power budget in those abilities.
So there is a spectrum/fine line you have to walk to ballance both mindsets.
My idea for solutions would be:
1. to have seperate points for Abilities and their talented augmentations
2. to have the talents have "softcaps" the higher you go up in a ability specific branch
(small improvement => medium imp. => large imp. => med/small imp. => small imp.)
then ballance the ratio of "ammount of talent points to talent-tree-brance-nodes" in oder to enable a minimum and maximum of used abilities ranging from lets say 15 to 30 usable upgraded abilities per build.
This could ensure the possibility of varrying ability quantity while preventing powercreep in one ability.
Making both build styles viable.
Feel free to let me know how you feel about this approach or how you would improve/solve it.
If you have 12 abilities, 4 of them are buffs, and you save 2 of them for crucial counters, you're not using a lot of abilities to do things.
Buffs can be baked into abilities in my opinion.
That doesn't make it less diverse to use against other players. Now you have an "active" ability that's also a buff, but you're still gonna autorecast it regularly because you still want your buff. It might be a buff you only use against certain classes, but still, it doesn't add much, and this doesn't help the fact that 12 abilities isn't enough to create diversity, true interaction, and ad-hoc decisionmaking in your fights.
If you have a deliberate buff ability it should be an impcatfull one.
Casing a thorny shield in WoW fells boring, it barely makes a scratch in dps, but if you wana be optimal you should have it up, right? Its free dmg after all and every bit counts. I hate to bring up LoL again (and i dont like rammus) but casting his selfbuff that hurts the enemy for autoatacking him does define a playstyle and in return you do meaningfull dmg.
I agree. I love impactful buffs. But that's another reason why you want your game to have lots of abilities; so it doesn't have to skimp out on playstyle-defining buffs because it has to leave room for active skills.
A character that has one of his fewer abilities allocated to be very good against one thing, but lacks in another, has to think about his approach to situations. Or think about how to eliminate his weakness in other ways. Gear, consumables, ect.
If he had a anti magic shield there would be no such thought process.
That's one of the reason i advocate for less abilities.
More abilities = More thinking about what to do against your particular opponent. You actually interact. A different half of your skill bars might never see use in each different scenario, and every time you run into a new scenario, you have to make a new decision about which abilities those should be.
Fewer abilities = Repeating the same rotation against everyone with minor adjustments of the order and which abilities you hold back for counters a little longer than others.
Well, yes but actually no. With many abilities you have many counter strategies and have to think of what to use, yes.
With fewer abilities you might not even have an answer for a specific scenario and have to get creative. Enemy casts a fear... do i break LoS? ...can i get out of range? ...do i use that item i got earlyer to interrupt him?.......... do i bring a guildy next time that knows a fear ward?
You start to think outside the box that are your abilities.
How many trinkets with intresting effects have i thrown away in my lifetime, because i had an ability that did the same job on a shorter cooldown? How many crafted items are disregarded because you cant fit them in your rotation without loosing dps?
I would LOVE to use those strategies/items, but oh hey i have a fear ward and a cleanse on a 20 sec cd in my kit. That covers his 10 sec cooldown for fear, im good.
Yeah, but the eventual result of that "thinking"/"strategising" is just: "Am I strong enough to take this fight even though I don't have the skill that would counter this class.? If yes, fight, using your usual rotation, if no, run away."
By having broadly equipped classes (which still doesn't mean you can do everything your class can do, just that you have a significant amount of strong options) you get to think about the right way to approach each new fight depending on the context of the situation and your opponent's build.
What you're describing is one skill check of players, but it purely applies as a skill check in building the character, and it can be counteracted by just still having even more skills in the game than you can skill.
You're sacrificing engaging gameplay to increase the amount of skillchecks in the build optimisation / theorycrafting portion of the game, which is a terrible sacrifice, because build optimisation is already fun and challenging enough when you do have options, whereas engaging gameplay is very difficult to create.
[quote="DerToastinator;c-470551"If you have many abilities, you start to either see every class become the same due to having an answer to everything, [/quote]
That is not at all what happens. Like, it's so obvious that if anything the complete opposite is the case. I've played several games with broad skillsets, and in none of them have there been berserkers that played like knights or marksmen that played like hunters or like mages.
If anything that happens in small-skillbar games where action combat takes over the substantial part of the skillchecks, so all classes move the same, and all classes engage in the same minigame actions.
or you see more and more conviluted mechanics come up so some classes have a lack in some department wich then justifies having so many abilities.
Nope, not necessary at all. You just give every class powerful abilities, so no class is imbalanced just because it has some powerful tools. None of the games I'm thinking of had convoluted mechanics to keep class power in check.
Games with fewer abilities are largely about creating the "optimal" build. EVERYTHING becomes about best-in-slot. Best-in-slot gear to support your best-in-slot abilities to repeat over and over again. You barely think about what each individual opponent is doing when it comes to your skill usage; if there's any player interaction in combat, it's mechanical dodging/parrying and saving 1-2 cooldowns for the same ability counters every time.
If you spam the right buttons in the right order, and you play the mechanics minigames, you're the best player.
In games with more abilities, "optimal" is a barely relevant tendency. All that really matters is adjusting to each situation appropriately.
Well, there is BiS gear in every game, and its not like you cant play off-meta builds and be sucessfull in games that only have a few abilities.
So i dont know what you are on about here.
Yes, i agree that you spend less time thinking about your abilities when having less of them. As i mentioned i dont think thats necessary a bad thing. I think there needs to be a ballance on how much you have to think about your abilities to be able to engage with the othe aspects of combat. What good would having a dodge roll be if you don't have time or reason to use it? Same with items, consumables, LoS, racial abilities, or even the other partymembers kit.
What I said. When I say "EVERYTHING becomes about best-in-slot" I'm not concerned with whether adhering religiously to BestInSlot is important to be successful at the game or if Anti-Meta is also viable. I don't care about that stuff; at least not much. I'm concerned with whether the gameplay has anything other to offer than optimising BestInSlot gear and skillings. And the fewer skills a game has, the less that is the case.
It just takes away ad-hoc interactive decisionmaking from the game that really shouldn't be taken away unless it is desperately needed for another mechanic.
One such mechanic would be action combat, which Ashes might have to some extent, but which isn't the primary design directive of the game. If this was TERA, I'd fully understand making compromises on the number of skills available to each player. But it's not an action game; it's a hybrid game that has tended to move further away from action, so it shouldn't give up the advantages of high skill numbers without replacing it with something else that's equally engaging. (Also, action combat in MMOs is uninteresting anyway, and anyone who wants more of it than the market already offers should just play an arena battler, but that's a separate story.)
I have to repeat myself by saying: Im not advocating to make the game less complex or boring by trimming down abilities. I wana see space for all the other complexeties of an mmo.
And thereby nudging the player to engage with ihe world and "adjust to situations" other than through his abilities.
Honestly, you got pretty close to getting the point I've explained in the rest of this response here, but the essence of my counterargument is: There's really nothing you need to make room for. The game has decently complex mechanics and will likely introduce a few more, but not so much that you can't focus on 30-40 abilities to choose between.
It all leads back to the first thing I said: Filling several skill bars is a misunderstood design mechanic.
Misunderstood because games like WoW is so uncreative and preoccupied with 1v1 balance that it waters down the effectiveness of all the skills so much that any reasonable game would achieve the same results with a third of the skill bars.
And misunderstood because players get overwhelmed trying to use Ctrl and Shift, or letter keys, or combining those keybinds with mouseclicks, when the obvious elegant solution is the F1-F4 active skillbar toggle that's unfortunately not supported in many games, and not the default setting in any. Again, the other working alternative would be an MMO mouse, but I understand that that's too much commitment for the average person, so the skillbar toggle really would be the way to make the system more straightforward for most people to stay in control of and wrap their head around. If only because you're not constantly looking at all 40 skills at once, and they're not cluttering your view.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
I appreciate your thoughtful breakdown of the keys! Honestly, completely slipped my mind that Sprint was a thing and would likely take up most of the "Shift+" Hotkeys. Most MMOs with sprint have less abilities probably because of this. That being said, I don't think I mind too much that there's a lot of abilities?
I normally play healer and I like having my situational abilities. I often put the longest cooldowns or most niche abilities on the 8, 9, 0, -, = section, even if it's not super intuitive to reach. So rez, cure debuff, Ult-heal you may never charge up except for that one raid boss, pre-battle buff, and my give-me-mana hotkey. When you say only give a class 12 or any limited number of abilities; I'm always afraid it's just going to eat into what I can actually do, since in some of the most niche situations; healers are usually expected to be the solution for it. So, if you limit it to 12; I would normally still have the things listed above, leaving me with only about 7 feasible gameplay abilities ^^; Make two of those a stun and a stun break and I'm down to 5 abilities. I think my regular gameplay would be pretty boring in that case.
But if I could have 12 or so regular abilities + the stun + stun break + the situational abilities (19 total) I think that would feel pretty good.
The sort of clutter I don't like is when they split every damage and heal ability into separate things. Because then you become inundated with abilities and you really can't fit them on one hotbar. So, then you need a hotbar toggle, which is super frustrating in the middle of a fight in my personal opinion. Especially if it lags and it swaps to your heal bar, then back to your dmg bar when you needed it to just function to save lives. Swapping hotbars mid-battle is way too stressful, so I believe everything given should fit onto one hotbar. Which is why I really like that Intrepid is making smart abilities! If you select an enemy--this spell does damage-- if you select friendly-- the same spell does healing. It's a small, but super beneficial quality-of-life change for healers that I wish I saw in more games. I think it's really, really, going to help the clutter issue.
Overall, I think Ashes is right about where they need to be. Not too many, but also not too few.
I normally play healer and I like having my situational abilities. I often put the longest cooldowns or most niche abilities on the 8, 9, 0, -, = section, even if it's not super intuitive to reach. So rez, cure debuff, Ult-heal you may never charge up except for that one raid boss, pre-battle buff, and my give-me-mana hotkey.
[...]
The sort of clutter I don't like is when they split every damage and heal ability into separate things. Because then you become inundated with abilities and you really can't fit them on one hotbar. So, then you need a hotbar toggle, which is super frustrating in the middle of a fight in my personal opinion. Especially if it lags and it swaps to your heal bar, then back to your dmg bar when you needed it to just function to save lives. Swapping hotbars mid-battle is way too stressful, so I believe everything given should fit onto one hotbar.
Imma need you to read this comment and give it a thought. Trust me, your mind's about to be gaping-wide open.
As a healer main, I had my dispel on F2 to swap to my 2nd hotbar, followed by 7, and then another F-key press to get back to my primary heals. It's really not that big a deal, if you use F-keys on a laptop, or flat keyboard, or you use an MMO mouse.
And once you play it that way, it feels so much more fun than anything games like ESO can offer you.
Which is why I really like that Intrepid is making smart abilities! If you select an enemy--this spell does damage-- if you select friendly-- the same spell does healing. It's a small, but super beneficial quality-of-life change for healers that I wish I saw in more games. I think it's really, really, going to help the clutter issue.
I personally dislike them. They're lead to you having more heal abilities available than you would if they were split. This leads to each ability being watered down versions of what they would be if they were specialised, because otherwise cooldowns wouldn't work to balance your total healing output.
This is the fake version of filling a skillbar. The WoW version of adding more, but doing it by reducing the potency of each skill, so you don't actually end up doing more than you were doing before they added more skills.
The positive effects of game design where you get more skills in your hotbar comes in when *all* of them are powerful (relative to their mana cost, cast time, and cooldown.) Hybrid abilities tend to clash with that condition.
This relationship of number-of-heal-abilities-available to health-restoration-potency-per-ability can be mitigated slightly by making the cast times shorter hybrid skill version you're promoting.
But it's still a downside I disapprove of.
So, then you need a hotbar toggle, which is super frustrating in the middle of a fight in my personal opinion. Especially if it lags and it swaps to your heal bar, then back to your dmg bar when you needed it to just function to save lives.
Lag shouldn't affect the toggle. The toggle should be instant, and handles client-side only, like a virtual in-client extension of your keyboard functionality. This isn't ESO where you have to switch weapons to switch hotbars.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
Btw in Archeage you used sprint by double tapping your movement key, or you could even slot it on your hotbar.
It doesn't have to be Shift.
Also for block, they can literally just use right mouse button.
Anyways, I have nothing else to add to this, as I've said what I think about this topic.
Less than 15 abilities = not good, and I've listed the reasons why.
30 or more, probably pointless, and just adds bloat (unless the abilities are actually well designed).
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DerToastinatorMember, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
And misunderstood because players get overwhelmed trying to use Ctrl and Shift, or letter keys, or combining those keybinds with mouseclicks, when the obvious elegant solution is the F1-F4 active skillbar toggle that's unfortunately not supported in many games, and not the default setting in any. Again, the other working alternative would be an MMO mouse, but I understand that that's too much commitment for the average person, so the skillbar toggle really would be the way to make the system more straightforward for most people to stay in control of and wrap their head around. If only because you're not constantly looking at all 40 skills at once, and they're not cluttering your view.
I like that solution.
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DerToastinatorMember, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Btw in Archeage you used sprint by double tapping your movement key, or you could even slot it on your hotbar.
It doesn't have to be Shift.
Also for block, they can literally just use right mouse button.
Anyways, I have nothing else to add to this, as I've said what I think about this topic.
Less than 15 abilities = not good, and I've listed the reasons why.
30 or more, probably pointless, and just adds bloat (unless the abilities are actually well designed).
yes and block could be too in my opinion. sprint will be used by everyone, but blocking is more of a tank thing. dont know how that will play out though. maby its integral for dps too in pvp or so. we will see i guess.
yea, ive also landed on prefering 15 to 30 with adjustability based on prefrence. seems AoC devs have a decent number already with 20.
I do however realy hope item actives and stuff will be aplicable and impactfull. I loved the "Crucible of Storms" BfA (WoW) item design. https://www.wowhead.com/item=167868/idol-of-indiscriminate-consumption was so fun to use.
I'm very confident Intrepid is aiming for 20 active abilities.
That's what the completed archetypes trees have had ~20 active and ~10 passive nodes in them.
The Alpha preview waves specifically advertises this as the number of abilities and passives per archetype.
Their is no way they would be significantly expanding on this while still working on 2 more archetypes and the entire augmentation system which are the stated goals of the Alpha. Thus any speculation on ~30 abilities is baseless.
I'm very confident Intrepid is aiming for 20 active abilities.
That's what the completed archetypes trees have had ~20 active and ~10 passive nodes in them.
The Alpha preview waves specifically advertises this as the number of abilities and passives per archetype.
Their is no way they would be significantly expanding on this while still working on 2 more archetypes and the entire augmentation system which are the stated goals of the Alpha. Thus any speculation on ~30 abilities is baseless.
But that won't be the final number of abilities and passives, as we're going to have almost double the abilities by the time we're finished with Alpha 2.
Remember, you will have a choice on which abilities you want to select, it's not just going to be here's 20 abilities, go play with them.
The goal is to have 35-40 abilities, and there will be a max number that you can select at a time.
Imma need you to read this comment and give it a thought. Trust me, your mind's about to be gaping-wide open.
As a healer main, I had my dispel on F2 to swap to my 2nd hotbar, followed by 7, and then another F-key press to get back to my primary heals. It's really not that big a deal, if you use F-keys on a laptop, or flat keyboard, or you use an MMO mouse.
Haha! I can see the hotbar swap working well for the slow abilities normally relegated to the 8 thru = zone! Buffs, etc. Admittedly, I've never tried that before and maybe I'll give that a shot! Still pretty against hotbar swapping being a "good" feeling for active or common abilities, though.
Some of my favorite content is PvP and speedruns, so just a ton of kite + heal multitasking. I have a laptop, though maybe larger than your average laptop, that has a flat keyboard. But I still feel like trying to keep a finger on one of the wasd keys and reaching up to the Fkeys is a bit of a stretch. I can uncomfortably reach F1 and F2 with my ring and middle finger, with W&D (right, forward) and uncomfortably reach F3 an F4 with W&A (left, forward). But I'm not thrilled about the idea of locking my movement to which abilities I wanna swap between, or worse, locking out which abilities I can use depending on which direction I'm being chased. It might be too much "brainpower" for me as you put it Or maybe your hand is bigger than mine? Which is also quite possible! (Man, that feels like some hand gymnastics to me lol!)
Glad it works for you, though! I'm still a big proponent of keeping active abilities all available on one hotbar
But that won't be the final number of abilities and passives, as we're going to have almost double the abilities by the time we're finished with Alpha 2.
Remember, you will have a choice on which abilities you want to select, it's not just going to be here's 20 abilities, go play with them.
The goal is to have 35-40 abilities, and there will be a max number that you can select at a time.
No this is a misinterpretation of Intrepids prior statements, the SKILL TREE will have about that many nodes in it (and they DO have ~35 for the Fighter, Tank, Ranger skill trees), but their will most certainly not be that many active abilities to put in a hotbar or bind to a key. To imagine that they have only completed half the active skills by this late date is just unreasonable.
Under your assumption would mean a total of 280 - 320 active abilities across 8 arhcetypes of which only ~130 will be in the inital Alpha II wave I, rising by 20 active with each of the two remaining archetypes for a total of 170. Meaning that at the end of Alpha wave III your saying they will have only finished between 50-60% of active abilities. Are you expecting an entire additional alpha and 2 more years to finish that? Or will it just get squeezed in durring Beta?
Or is it more likely that your just conflating 'nodes in the skill tree' which are EXPLICITLY listed as 30 TOTAL nodes split 20 active/10 passive in the Alpha roadmap SLIDES. Be reasonable here please and stop spreading this false expectation of more active abilities.
This dose present a limitation for the player because your likely to only get skill points to put into the base tree up to 25 and the tree has on average 10 more nodes then that. That's enough to get all the actives but not all the passives, so the choices players make will likely be what passives to skip rather then what active abilities to skip, though I imagine some builds will occasionally skip a few. After lvl 25 your likely putting points into augmentation system instead of the base archetype skill tree as the main means to differentiate your character, plus weapon trees, plus gear.
Imma need you to read this comment and give it a thought. Trust me, your mind's about to be gaping-wide open.
As a healer main, I had my dispel on F2 to swap to my 2nd hotbar, followed by 7, and then another F-key press to get back to my primary heals. It's really not that big a deal, if you use F-keys on a laptop, or flat keyboard, or you use an MMO mouse.
But I still feel like trying to keep a finger on one of the wasd keys and reaching up to the Fkeys is a bit of a stretch. I can uncomfortably reach F1 and F2 with my ring and middle finger, with W&D (right, forward) and uncomfortably reach F3 an F4 with W&A (left, forward). But I'm not thrilled about the idea of locking my movement to which abilities I wanna swap between, or worse, locking out which abilities I can use depending on which direction I'm being chased. It might be too much "brainpower" for me as you put it Or maybe your hand is bigger than mine? Which is also quite possible! (Man, that feels like some hand gymnastics to me lol!)
Glad it works for you, though! I'm still a big proponent of keeping active abilities all available on one hotbar
Wihout trying to linger forever on this sidenote, I will say that keeping two or three fingers directly on a WASD key and the surrounding area is not a problem while doing this. It does get more difficult the thicker and taller the keyboard gets, though.
For context, I can realistically-but-not-practically reach an octave plus two full steps comfortably on the bottom edge a piano's keys; plus 3 is also possible, but completely unusable for fast motion. No monster hands, but no stubs either.
I do have to admit that this limitation might be why it's not the advertised default in most MMOs. I'd still make it the default though, and just prominently suggest MMO mice and an alternative keybind set with Shift/Alt toggles to players with smaller hands or restricted mobility.
You do theoretically somewhat lock your movement (you can still stop or alternate between forward, reverse, and one direction) for a very short stretch of time, but it barely compares to things like cast time, and
If some people can reach competitive tiers in shooters like Fortnite spamming default F-key build keybinds, those keys are certainly not intrinsically too slow in a hybrid-combat MMO.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
But that won't be the final number of abilities and passives, as we're going to have almost double the abilities by the time we're finished with Alpha 2.
Remember, you will have a choice on which abilities you want to select, it's not just going to be here's 20 abilities, go play with them.
The goal is to have 35-40 abilities, and there will be a max number that you can select at a time.
No this is a misinterpretation of Intrepids prior statements, the SKILL TREE will have about that many nodes in it (and they DO have ~35 for the Fighter, Tank, Ranger skill trees), but their will most certainly not be that many active abilities to put in a hotbar or bind to a key.
To imagine that they have only completed half the active skills by this late date is just unreasonable.
Under your assumption would mean a total of 280 - 320 active abilities across 8 arhcetypes of which only ~130 will be in the inital Alpha II wave I, rising by 20 active with each of the two remaining archetypes for a total of 170. Meaning that at the end of Alpha wave III your saying they will have only finished between 50-60% of active abilities. Are you expecting an entire additional alpha and 2 more years to finish that? Or will it just get squeezed in durring Beta?
[...]
Or is it more likely that your just conflating 'nodes in the skill tree' which are EXPLICITLY listed as 30 TOTAL nodes split 20 active/10 passive in the Alpha roadmap SLIDES. Be reasonable here please and stop spreading this false expectation of more active abilities.
I think you're both right. You might be a little closer on the numbers of active skills in the final tree, but they'll probably allow some classes where they have particularly creative ideas to exceed those limitations.
And there will probably be some amount of non-class skills that will feel like active skills and a part of the class kit.
Also, no, they don't have 35-40 skills in those classes yet, even if you count all passives, because like a decent third of what's in the skill-trees are upgrades, and upgrade levels for skills you already have are, while crucially important, not skills by any reasonable definition, so expecting at least that many additional options for several of the classes isn't too unrealistic.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
I cant speak to any other sources of active abilities other then ones primary archetype, we have seen nothing to indicate other sources, but I would be pleasantly surprized in things like religions, backgrounds etc gave new active abilites, but I'd be very doubtfull they would be for combat.
I'm sorry but thouse nodes in the skill trees which are passives are purchased with a skill point, so they are most definitly skills, your 'reasonable definition' not withstanding. The terminology that Intrepid seems to use is 'abilities' or active skils Most of them significant alter an active ability, procing new effects, changing when they can be applied etc.
But that won't be the final number of abilities and passives, as we're going to have almost double the abilities by the time we're finished with Alpha 2.
Remember, you will have a choice on which abilities you want to select, it's not just going to be here's 20 abilities, go play with them.
The goal is to have 35-40 abilities, and there will be a max number that you can select at a time.
No this is a misinterpretation of Intrepids prior statements, the SKILL TREE will have about that many nodes in it (and they DO have ~35 for the Fighter, Tank, Ranger skill trees), but their will most certainly not be that many active abilities to put in a hotbar or bind to a key. To imagine that they have only completed half the active skills by this late date is just unreasonable.
Under your assumption would mean a total of 280 - 320 active abilities across 8 arhcetypes of which only ~130 will be in the inital Alpha II wave I, rising by 20 active with each of the two remaining archetypes for a total of 170. Meaning that at the end of Alpha wave III your saying they will have only finished between 50-60% of active abilities. Are you expecting an entire additional alpha and 2 more years to finish that? Or will it just get squeezed in durring Beta?
Or is it more likely that your just conflating 'nodes in the skill tree' which are EXPLICITLY listed as 30 TOTAL nodes split 20 active/10 passive in the Alpha roadmap SLIDES. Be reasonable here please and stop spreading this false expectation of more active abilities.
This dose present a limitation for the player because your likely to only get skill points to put into the base tree up to 25 and the tree has on average 10 more nodes then that. That's enough to get all the actives but not all the passives, so the choices players make will likely be what passives to skip rather then what active abilities to skip, though I imagine some builds will occasionally skip a few. After lvl 25 your likely putting points into augmentation system instead of the base archetype skill tree as the main means to differentiate your character, plus weapon trees, plus gear.
That is simply false.
I'm not talking about the road map, I'm talking about the final product, when classes are done.
What's the point of having a skill tree, where you only have 20 abilities to select, when you have 20 skill slots on your bar? There's literally no need to choose anything there.
What's the point with specializing into certain areas, where you only have that many abilities in total to select from?
More abilities give options for a longer ttk. Smaller number of abilities = more impact from each ability or a more spammy combat. Conversely, more abilities can make some boring.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I dont know how you get "I want bards to be mindless buff bots" out of that statement.
I even stated earlier, that id rather have a deliberate impactfull buff, than multiple small buffs.
In the case of AoCs bard i hope they manage to give him options to specialize into 1 or 2 of the songs.
The showcase showed the layering mechanic of 2 songs, but when they said they are thinking about bumping that up to all 5 songs i shivered, because that sounds like a buff bot.
I realy wana stab people and have my pet sick em with my melee hunter build, but oh no the game forces me to use things i dont want to use, reguardless how usefull they could be. That is contributed ether by the look, the gameplay feel or the fact that at some point its just too many things to press.
You are forced to allocate points to abilities that you dont want and it feels bad to not use then, because you had to invest 2 or 3 points that you would have used otherwise. Yet if the game is designed for players to have many abilities, you cant let players who want to throw all their points into select abilities do so, because then they would have too much of the power budget in those abilities.
So there is a spectrum/fine line you have to walk to ballance both mindsets.
My idea for solutions would be:
1. to have seperate points for Abilities and their talented augmentations
2. to have the talents have "softcaps" the higher you go up in a ability specific branch
(small improvement => medium imp. => large imp. => med/small imp. => small imp.)
then ballance the ratio of "ammount of talent points to talent-tree-brance-nodes" in oder to enable a minimum and maximum of used abilities ranging from lets say 15 to 30 usable upgraded abilities per build.
This could ensure the possibility of varrying ability quantity while preventing powercreep in one ability.
Making both build styles viable.
Feel free to let me know how you feel about this approach or how you would improve/solve it.
How is this not already addressed by Augments???
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
What's the point of having a skill tree, where you only have 20 abilities to select, when you have 20 skill slots on your bar? There's literally no need to choose anything there.
What's the point with specializing into certain areas, where you only have that many abilities in total to select from?
It's 20 slots on the Hotbar. Other stuff besides Active Skills can be in those slots - and typically are in the demos.
To imagine that they have only completed half the active skills by this late date is just unreasonable.
Under your assumption would mean a total of 280 - 320 active abilities across 8 arhcetypes of which only ~130 will be in the inital Alpha II wave I, rising by 20 active with each of the two remaining archetypes for a total of 170. Meaning that at the end of Alpha wave III your saying they will have only finished between 50-60% of active abilities. Are you expecting an entire additional alpha and 2 more years to finish that? Or will it just get squeezed in durring Beta?
Yes?
Are you somehow not expecting that?
Now obviously, the plan regarding the overall number of abilities may change, and it's possible that the 35-40 skills wasn't a statement based on some design schema they already did, but instead just an idea of how they would like things to work ideally.
Which is why threads like this are important. Letting Intrepid know that we might not hold them to those numbers could be helpful.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
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DerToastinatorMember, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
More abilities give options for a longer ttk. Smaller number of abilities = more impact from each ability or a more spammy combat. Conversely, more abilities can make some boring.
now... thats an argument for fewer abilities i dont fully agree with. TTK is determined by effective health+healing to dmg recived ratio over time. with many abilities you still have cooldowns and abilities can still be impactfull. more abilities only means more options, not how strong those options realy are.
Granted it can be an indication, but its not necesaily a direct measurement.
well... we dont know how powerfull augments will be.
Invisible dash concept of Fighter + rouge sounds pretty impactfull to me so i dont see that as a softcap.
Plus you get them later in the game. i think you should be able to see what abilities you like and wana specialize in early. since you can change them in towns anyway you can experiment early. experimentation is fun and i dont think you should wait too long for the fun parts.
I see where you are going with this and agree that augments are a great way to specialize. I think the player should have some agnecy before lvl 25 to go for a fantasy.
It is partially adressed by Augments, yes.
Comments
Unacceptable xD
All good points, thanks for the feedback!
However, as i said ctrl is for sprinting. Look at the hotbar screenshot you posted. That means you only double it rather than tripple.
Additionally you have block, dodge and the weapon attack.
Thats why I wanted to talk about this in the first place. So many actions already have keybinds that are usually used for spells. I noticed that this limits the opinions for the amount of spells that are reasonable to be used in a rotation.
As for PvP, you having less options to react to any given scenario also means they have less actions to respond. Also, with talents certain spells can become multi tools. I find it way more intresting to decide if i have to use an ability if i knew it could save my ass later because its also a fear cleanse or something. Example: your warrior shout that usually is a dmg boost, can be talented to also clear fears. It creates a dynamic decision.
Boom. Instantly more intresting than having that in 2 seperate abilities and way more convinient than just having a fear cleanse on alt+f4...
I REALLY dont see how that becomes boring faster than having the same effects on more buttons.
I think there was a misunderstanding. I do not beleve that you can carry over old MMO ability designs and just trim them down. I do however beleve that with thoughtful design, less is more and stays more even over countless hours.
Here are ideas to cut down on spell bloat that i find intresting:
In thermes of 1h self buffs on your hotbar... make them a toggle passive and if hit by a buff-dispell it turns them off and/or sets them on a 10 sec cd.
(Never again you will have to rebuff every hour or forget)
Make certain abilities have talented dual purposes.
Gives flavour, engagement and forces decisions mid combat rather than having to only remember what key your cc/ccbreak was on.
(Ranger Scatter shot comes to mind with its hold for more single target dmg)
Look, what im trying to say is, that I believe the reason you get bored if you have only a few abilities is, because if you single out those abilities, they ARE boring. I dont want you to have less abilities to choose from. I want you to have MORE meaningful abilities. Abilities with flavour, charm, flexibility and a crisp feeling to them.
I think AoC is doing a decent job with those but i havent seen all to much of the itty bitty customisation of spells yet (I know that comes later, but i want to ensure it will come by talking to you guys)
I could be wrong, its just what i think could be the reason!
I'll share one more though with you guys of something i dont want to see happening in AoC.
In WoW if you play a melee hunter, you are essentially forced to use a thing called Wildfire Bomb (basically a granade) its baked into the class and you have to put talent points into it to even progress the tree.
The thing is... I don't wana f*** throw granades!?! I wana stab things with my spear and sick em with my pet. Granades arent my hunter fantasy, jet i am forced to use it or my talent points are waisted.
I don't want to see AoC force me to talent into an ability i dont want.
If they want the player to unlock every spell, that is fine... do it with seperate points that unlock a new ability of your choice.
But dont force people to invest into something they know they dont want to use. It feels so bad.
Anyway... rant over. XD
In my superior opinion as someone who grew up playing MMOs on a laptop (the closeness of trackpads to the keyboard and the way trackpads accept inputs from anywhere regardless of where you left it after the last movement make trackpads absolute god-tier for locked-target games):
The objectively superior way to bind your keys is to use 1-6 for fast-trigger abilities, 7-0 (or beyond) for buffs and abilities that are okay to not have your hand on your mouse for, and then reuse those keys not with Shift or Alt, but by swapping out your primary active skill bar with F1-F4.
The resulting gameplay is elegantly fluid, you have up to 24 fast-trigger skill buttons readily available, 16-24 slow skill buttons, and crucially, the entire rest of your keyboard is left for menuing and character movement reactions like dodge rolls, block, autoattack, etc.
The second-best way of playing MMOs if using F1-F4 is too much brainwork for you is to use an MMO mouse with 12 clearly labeled buttons to bind, and then using some of those buttons for swapping the active skill bar.
Unfortunately, not enough MMOs either have been designed to allow changing the active skill bar, or they don't allow more than 2-3 bars on a character. Massive design oversight.
If more people experienced MMOs in either of these two playstyles, I guarantee there would be MUCH more appreciation for games with a high number of abilities.
More on the benefits of high abilities for the appeal of the combat itself in my thread on the subject.
That's probably the only subject we're ever going to agree on.
As such, if you want to run around with 6 abilities, feel free to do so.
As this thread is evidence of, many others prefer more abilities. I myself am used to a game where I have 80 or so hotbuttons in total, of which around 45 are set to hotkeys for easy access (the rest are things I don't need in combat, but still want reasonably easy access to).
As such, I am perfectly fine with the notion of 40 or more active abilities - and if anything consider that to be a little light. However, this game also allows for you to build a character using as few as 6 active abilities, should you want to do so.
And that's already more abilities than you'll actively use in a game like ESO.
More abilities = More thinking about what to do against your particular opponent. You actually interact. A different half of your skill bars might never see use in each different scenario, and every time you run into a new scenario, you have to make a new decision about which abilities those should be.
Fewer abilities = Repeating the same rotation against everyone with minor adjustments of the order and which abilities you hold back for counters a little longer than others.
Games with fewer abilities are largely about creating the "optimal" build. EVERYTHING becomes about best-in-slot. Best-in-slot gear to support your best-in-slot abilities to repeat over and over again. You barely think about what each individual opponent is doing when it comes to your skill usage; if there's any player interaction in combat, it's mechanical dodging/parrying and saving 1-2 cooldowns for the same ability counters every time.
If you spam the right buttons in the right order, and you play the mechanics minigames, you're the best player.
In games with more abilities, "optimal" is a barely relevant tendency. All that really matters is adjusting to each situation appropriately.
That's fine by me!
6 abilities is to less for me too
You are very right by saying the preferences differ a lot.
Its nice to see so many of you responding in a well thought out manner!
@Laetitian
"In my superior opinion..." is pure gold.
Love it
Buffs can be baked into abilities in my opinion.
If you have a deliberate buff ability it should be an impcatfull one.
Casing a thorny shield in WoW fells boring, it barely makes a scratch in dps, but if you wana be optimal you should have it up, right? Its free dmg after all and every bit counts. I hate to bring up LoL again (and i dont like rammus) but casting his selfbuff that hurts the enemy for autoatacking him does define a playstyle and in return you do meaningfull dmg.
A character that has one of his fewer abilities allocated to be very good against one thing, but lacks in another, has to think about his approach to situations. Or think about how to eliminate his weakness in other ways. Gear, consumables, ect.
If he had a anti magic shield there would be no such thought process.
That's one of the reason i advocate for less abilities.
If you have many abilities you start to ether see every class become the same due to having an answer to everything, or you see more and more conviluted mechanics come up so some classes have a lack in some department wich then justifies having so many abilities.
Well, yes but actually no. With many abilities you have many counter strategies and have to think of what to use, yes.
With fewer abilities you might not even have an answer for a specific scenario and have to get creative. Enemy casts a fear... do i break LoS? ...can i get out of range? ...do i use that item i got earlyer to interrupt him?.......... do i bring a guildy next time that knows a fear ward?
You start to think outside the box that are your abilities.
How many trinkets with intresting effects have i thrown away in my lifetime, because i had an ability that did the same job on a shorter cooldown? How many crafted items are disregarded because you cant fit them in your rotation without loosing dps?
I would LOVE to use those strategies/items, but oh hey i have a fear ward and a cleanse on a 20 sec cd in my kit. That covers his 10 sec cooldown for fear, im good.
Well, there is BiS gear in every game, and its not like you cant play off-meta builds and be sucsesfull in games that only have a few abilities.
So i dont know what you are on about here. You always are on the lookout for gear that supports your best abilities. Thats what grinding for gear is. You choosing which abilities to specialise in will change what you look for, regardless of how many other abilities you have.
Yes, i agree that you spend less time thinking about your abilities when having less of them. As i mentioned i dont think thats necessary a bad thing. I think there needs to be a ballance on how much you have to think about your abilities to be able to engage with the othe aspects of combat. What good would having a dodge roll be if you don't have time or reason to use it? Same with items, consumables, LoS, racial abilities, or even the other partymembers kit.
I have to repeat myself by saying: Im not advocating to make the game less complex or boring by trimming down abilities. I wana see space for all the other complexeties of an mmo.
And thereby nudging the player to engage with ihe world and "adjust to situations" other than through his abilities.
I like more limited skill bars like that of Guild Wars, rather then that of GW2 or ESO. Where the former allows you to customize your skill set however you set fit, rather then the latter making half your choices for you, so you end up only choosing 3-4 of your skills, which sucks and tends to make combat become bland and samey after awhile.
While I do like the idea of having 'weapon skills', where you can swap between two sets of weapons for more total skills, I'm less fond of having them all be fixed and unchanging. I'd rather the weapons have their own skill bar, which you can customize using any of the skills from that weapons skill tree. So while two people using the same weapon might fight similarly, they need not fight the same. Throw in arguments, and then you have some serious customization.
As to actual numbers. I'd say about 3-5 weapon skills, for two sets of weapons. (ie main hand + offhand, or a two hander) Then about 5-8 class skills, any of which can be replaced by universal skills. Plus one ultimate.
In addition to dodge roll, sprint, block, basic weapon attack (thou this could just be a weapon skill).
In total we are looking at around 15-22 skills. Which should be ample for just about anybody to make an interesting build around, without everyone having a solution to every problem.
Of course with any limited skills system like this, you'd want to be able to save and load pre made builds.
Build crafting is really half the fun.
Well that's unfortunate. You seem to have missed my point entirely.
I don't "get bored" because I have less abilities. I get bored because I have no applicable abilities. If every Bard ability applies to every situation, you've made a mindless rotational buffbot, or you didn't make a Bard in the first place.
Everything is subject to change.
Thats unfortunate, because then we both seem to miss the point of each other, because im not saying i want every ability to apply to every situation. I explicitely said i want the kit to have weaknesses that you have to suppliment with:
I dont know how you get "I want bards to be mindless buff bots" out of that statement.
I even stated earlyer, that id rather have a deliberate impactfull buff, than multiple small buffs.
In the case of AoCs bard i hope they manage to give him options to specialize into 1 or 2 of the songs.
The showcase showed the layering mechanic of 2 songs, but when they said they are thinking about bumping that up to all 5 songs i shivered, because that sounds like a buff bot.
Now dont take me wrong, i think if you wana be a melody weaving bard thats fine by me, but if i wana stick to one melody and focus on the dances, i think i should be able to do so too. If i dont wana use abilities that i didnt spec into, i should be able to disreguard them. Ether because its suboptimal for my particular build or because its just not the version of bard fantasy im going for.
Immagine wanting to focus on building a fire mage, but the game forces frost magic into your rotation, because it doesnt give you the tools to build that fantasy in a viable way. This is in my experience the case with games that think only having many abilities = fun. BOTH can be fun in my opinion!
I said, that "i beleve the reason you get bored" because i meant it as a guess. I was guessing on what could be an underlying reason. You deny that guess and thats ok.
I realy wana stab people and have my pet sick em with my melee hunter build, but oh no the game forces me to use things i dont want to use, reguardless how usefull they could be. That is contributed ether by the look, the gameplay feel or the fact that at some point its just too many things to press.
You are forced to allocate points to abilities that you dont want and it feels bad to not use then, because you had to invest 2 or 3 points that you would have used otherwise. Yet if the game is designed for players to have many abilities, you cant let players who want to throw all their points into select abilities do so, because then they would have too much of the power budget in those abilities.
So there is a spectrum/fine line you have to walk to ballance both mindsets.
My idea for solutions would be:
1. to have seperate points for Abilities and their talented augmentations
2. to have the talents have "softcaps" the higher you go up in a ability specific branch
(small improvement => medium imp. => large imp. => med/small imp. => small imp.)
then ballance the ratio of "ammount of talent points to talent-tree-brance-nodes" in oder to enable a minimum and maximum of used abilities ranging from lets say 15 to 30 usable upgraded abilities per build.
This could ensure the possibility of varrying ability quantity while preventing powercreep in one ability.
Making both build styles viable.
Feel free to let me know how you feel about this approach or how you would improve/solve it.
I agree. I love impactful buffs. But that's another reason why you want your game to have lots of abilities; so it doesn't have to skimp out on playstyle-defining buffs because it has to leave room for active skills.
Yeah, but the eventual result of that "thinking"/"strategising" is just: "Am I strong enough to take this fight even though I don't have the skill that would counter this class.? If yes, fight, using your usual rotation, if no, run away."
By having broadly equipped classes (which still doesn't mean you can do everything your class can do, just that you have a significant amount of strong options) you get to think about the right way to approach each new fight depending on the context of the situation and your opponent's build.
What you're describing is one skill check of players, but it purely applies as a skill check in building the character, and it can be counteracted by just still having even more skills in the game than you can skill.
You're sacrificing engaging gameplay to increase the amount of skillchecks in the build optimisation / theorycrafting portion of the game, which is a terrible sacrifice, because build optimisation is already fun and challenging enough when you do have options, whereas engaging gameplay is very difficult to create.
[quote="DerToastinator;c-470551"If you have many abilities, you start to either see every class become the same due to having an answer to everything, [/quote]
That is not at all what happens. Like, it's so obvious that if anything the complete opposite is the case. I've played several games with broad skillsets, and in none of them have there been berserkers that played like knights or marksmen that played like hunters or like mages.
If anything that happens in small-skillbar games where action combat takes over the substantial part of the skillchecks, so all classes move the same, and all classes engage in the same minigame actions.
Nope, not necessary at all. You just give every class powerful abilities, so no class is imbalanced just because it has some powerful tools. None of the games I'm thinking of had convoluted mechanics to keep class power in check.
What I said. When I say "EVERYTHING becomes about best-in-slot" I'm not concerned with whether adhering religiously to BestInSlot is important to be successful at the game or if Anti-Meta is also viable. I don't care about that stuff; at least not much. I'm concerned with whether the gameplay has anything other to offer than optimising BestInSlot gear and skillings. And the fewer skills a game has, the less that is the case.
It just takes away ad-hoc interactive decisionmaking from the game that really shouldn't be taken away unless it is desperately needed for another mechanic.
One such mechanic would be action combat, which Ashes might have to some extent, but which isn't the primary design directive of the game. If this was TERA, I'd fully understand making compromises on the number of skills available to each player. But it's not an action game; it's a hybrid game that has tended to move further away from action, so it shouldn't give up the advantages of high skill numbers without replacing it with something else that's equally engaging. (Also, action combat in MMOs is uninteresting anyway, and anyone who wants more of it than the market already offers should just play an arena battler, but that's a separate story.)
Honestly, you got pretty close to getting the point I've explained in the rest of this response here, but the essence of my counterargument is: There's really nothing you need to make room for. The game has decently complex mechanics and will likely introduce a few more, but not so much that you can't focus on 30-40 abilities to choose between.
It all leads back to the first thing I said: Filling several skill bars is a misunderstood design mechanic.
Misunderstood because games like WoW is so uncreative and preoccupied with 1v1 balance that it waters down the effectiveness of all the skills so much that any reasonable game would achieve the same results with a third of the skill bars.
And misunderstood because players get overwhelmed trying to use Ctrl and Shift, or letter keys, or combining those keybinds with mouseclicks, when the obvious elegant solution is the F1-F4 active skillbar toggle that's unfortunately not supported in many games, and not the default setting in any. Again, the other working alternative would be an MMO mouse, but I understand that that's too much commitment for the average person, so the skillbar toggle really would be the way to make the system more straightforward for most people to stay in control of and wrap their head around. If only because you're not constantly looking at all 40 skills at once, and they're not cluttering your view.
I normally play healer and I like having my situational abilities. I often put the longest cooldowns or most niche abilities on the 8, 9, 0, -, = section, even if it's not super intuitive to reach. So rez, cure debuff, Ult-heal you may never charge up except for that one raid boss, pre-battle buff, and my give-me-mana hotkey. When you say only give a class 12 or any limited number of abilities; I'm always afraid it's just going to eat into what I can actually do, since in some of the most niche situations; healers are usually expected to be the solution for it. So, if you limit it to 12; I would normally still have the things listed above, leaving me with only about 7 feasible gameplay abilities ^^; Make two of those a stun and a stun break and I'm down to 5 abilities. I think my regular gameplay would be pretty boring in that case.
But if I could have 12 or so regular abilities + the stun + stun break + the situational abilities (19 total) I think that would feel pretty good.
The sort of clutter I don't like is when they split every damage and heal ability into separate things. Because then you become inundated with abilities and you really can't fit them on one hotbar. So, then you need a hotbar toggle, which is super frustrating in the middle of a fight in my personal opinion. Especially if it lags and it swaps to your heal bar, then back to your dmg bar when you needed it to just function to save lives. Swapping hotbars mid-battle is way too stressful, so I believe everything given should fit onto one hotbar. Which is why I really like that Intrepid is making smart abilities! If you select an enemy--this spell does damage-- if you select friendly-- the same spell does healing. It's a small, but super beneficial quality-of-life change for healers that I wish I saw in more games. I think it's really, really, going to help the clutter issue.
Overall, I think Ashes is right about where they need to be. Not too many, but also not too few.
As a healer main, I had my dispel on F2 to swap to my 2nd hotbar, followed by 7, and then another F-key press to get back to my primary heals. It's really not that big a deal, if you use F-keys on a laptop, or flat keyboard, or you use an MMO mouse.
And once you play it that way, it feels so much more fun than anything games like ESO can offer you.
I personally dislike them. They're lead to you having more heal abilities available than you would if they were split. This leads to each ability being watered down versions of what they would be if they were specialised, because otherwise cooldowns wouldn't work to balance your total healing output.
This is the fake version of filling a skillbar. The WoW version of adding more, but doing it by reducing the potency of each skill, so you don't actually end up doing more than you were doing before they added more skills.
The positive effects of game design where you get more skills in your hotbar comes in when *all* of them are powerful (relative to their mana cost, cast time, and cooldown.) Hybrid abilities tend to clash with that condition.
This relationship of number-of-heal-abilities-available to health-restoration-potency-per-ability can be mitigated slightly by making the cast times shorter hybrid skill version you're promoting.
But it's still a downside I disapprove of.
Lag shouldn't affect the toggle. The toggle should be instant, and handles client-side only, like a virtual in-client extension of your keyboard functionality. This isn't ESO where you have to switch weapons to switch hotbars.
It doesn't have to be Shift.
Also for block, they can literally just use right mouse button.
Anyways, I have nothing else to add to this, as I've said what I think about this topic.
Less than 15 abilities = not good, and I've listed the reasons why.
30 or more, probably pointless, and just adds bloat (unless the abilities are actually well designed).
I like that solution.
yes and block could be too in my opinion. sprint will be used by everyone, but blocking is more of a tank thing. dont know how that will play out though. maby its integral for dps too in pvp or so. we will see i guess.
yea, ive also landed on prefering 15 to 30 with adjustability based on prefrence. seems AoC devs have a decent number already with 20.
I do however realy hope item actives and stuff will be aplicable and impactfull. I loved the "Crucible of Storms" BfA (WoW) item design. https://www.wowhead.com/item=167868/idol-of-indiscriminate-consumption was so fun to use.
That's what the completed archetypes trees have had ~20 active and ~10 passive nodes in them.
The Alpha preview waves specifically advertises this as the number of abilities and passives per archetype.
Their is no way they would be significantly expanding on this while still working on 2 more archetypes and the entire augmentation system which are the stated goals of the Alpha. Thus any speculation on ~30 abilities is baseless.
But that won't be the final number of abilities and passives, as we're going to have almost double the abilities by the time we're finished with Alpha 2.
Remember, you will have a choice on which abilities you want to select, it's not just going to be here's 20 abilities, go play with them.
The goal is to have 35-40 abilities, and there will be a max number that you can select at a time.
Some of my favorite content is PvP and speedruns, so just a ton of kite + heal multitasking. I have a laptop, though maybe larger than your average laptop, that has a flat keyboard. But I still feel like trying to keep a finger on one of the wasd keys and reaching up to the Fkeys is a bit of a stretch. I can uncomfortably reach F1 and F2 with my ring and middle finger, with W&D (right, forward) and uncomfortably reach F3 an F4 with W&A (left, forward). But I'm not thrilled about the idea of locking my movement to which abilities I wanna swap between, or worse, locking out which abilities I can use depending on which direction I'm being chased. It might be too much "brainpower" for me as you put it
(Man, that feels like some hand gymnastics to me lol!)
Glad it works for you, though! I'm still a big proponent of keeping active abilities all available on one hotbar
No this is a misinterpretation of Intrepids prior statements, the SKILL TREE will have about that many nodes in it (and they DO have ~35 for the Fighter, Tank, Ranger skill trees), but their will most certainly not be that many active abilities to put in a hotbar or bind to a key. To imagine that they have only completed half the active skills by this late date is just unreasonable.
Under your assumption would mean a total of 280 - 320 active abilities across 8 arhcetypes of which only ~130 will be in the inital Alpha II wave I, rising by 20 active with each of the two remaining archetypes for a total of 170. Meaning that at the end of Alpha wave III your saying they will have only finished between 50-60% of active abilities. Are you expecting an entire additional alpha and 2 more years to finish that? Or will it just get squeezed in durring Beta?
Or is it more likely that your just conflating 'nodes in the skill tree' which are EXPLICITLY listed as 30 TOTAL nodes split 20 active/10 passive in the Alpha roadmap SLIDES. Be reasonable here please and stop spreading this false expectation of more active abilities.
This dose present a limitation for the player because your likely to only get skill points to put into the base tree up to 25 and the tree has on average 10 more nodes then that. That's enough to get all the actives but not all the passives, so the choices players make will likely be what passives to skip rather then what active abilities to skip, though I imagine some builds will occasionally skip a few. After lvl 25 your likely putting points into augmentation system instead of the base archetype skill tree as the main means to differentiate your character, plus weapon trees, plus gear.
For context, I can realistically-but-not-practically reach an octave plus two full steps comfortably on the bottom edge a piano's keys; plus 3 is also possible, but completely unusable for fast motion. No monster hands, but no stubs either.
I do have to admit that this limitation might be why it's not the advertised default in most MMOs. I'd still make it the default though, and just prominently suggest MMO mice and an alternative keybind set with Shift/Alt toggles to players with smaller hands or restricted mobility.
You do theoretically somewhat lock your movement (you can still stop or alternate between forward, reverse, and one direction) for a very short stretch of time, but it barely compares to things like cast time, and
If some people can reach competitive tiers in shooters like Fortnite spamming default F-key build keybinds, those keys are certainly not intrinsically too slow in a hybrid-combat MMO.
And there will probably be some amount of non-class skills that will feel like active skills and a part of the class kit.
Also, no, they don't have 35-40 skills in those classes yet, even if you count all passives, because like a decent third of what's in the skill-trees are upgrades, and upgrade levels for skills you already have are, while crucially important, not skills by any reasonable definition, so expecting at least that many additional options for several of the classes isn't too unrealistic.
I'm sorry but thouse nodes in the skill trees which are passives are purchased with a skill point, so they are most definitly skills, your 'reasonable definition' not withstanding. The terminology that Intrepid seems to use is 'abilities' or active skils Most of them significant alter an active ability, procing new effects, changing when they can be applied etc.
Look at the Road map video,
It says plain as day "1 archetype, 20 active abilites, 10 passives, 30 tree nodes"
That is simply false.
I'm not talking about the road map, I'm talking about the final product, when classes are done.
What's the point of having a skill tree, where you only have 20 abilities to select, when you have 20 skill slots on your bar? There's literally no need to choose anything there.
What's the point with specializing into certain areas, where you only have that many abilities in total to select from?
Yes?
Are you somehow not expecting that?
Now obviously, the plan regarding the overall number of abilities may change, and it's possible that the 35-40 skills wasn't a statement based on some design schema they already did, but instead just an idea of how they would like things to work ideally.
Which is why threads like this are important. Letting Intrepid know that we might not hold them to those numbers could be helpful.
now... thats an argument for fewer abilities i dont fully agree with. TTK is determined by effective health+healing to dmg recived ratio over time. with many abilities you still have cooldowns and abilities can still be impactfull. more abilities only means more options, not how strong those options realy are.
Granted it can be an indication, but its not necesaily a direct measurement.
well... we dont know how powerfull augments will be.
Invisible dash concept of Fighter + rouge sounds pretty impactfull to me so i dont see that as a softcap.
Plus you get them later in the game. i think you should be able to see what abilities you like and wana specialize in early. since you can change them in towns anyway you can experiment early. experimentation is fun and i dont think you should wait too long for the fun parts.
I see where you are going with this and agree that augments are a great way to specialize. I think the player should have some agnecy before lvl 25 to go for a fantasy.
It is partially adressed by Augments, yes.
i see it just the same. Talking about it cant hurt, because then they know what we think and can choose what they think is best for us/the game.
Hopefully noone sees these debates and counterpoints from diffrent views as an attack to their prefrences!
We all good?