This is a pretty popular topic. It's also being discussed in the Champion forum and I just read a post that really resonates with me. I'm going to quote it here:
Feyshtey said:No one is suggesting that in any given fight you would be required to use 50 skills. Or even that it would be anything less than counterproductive to try to use 50 different skils. Or 20. Or maybe even 8. What people are saying is that if you're locked in to only 8, you have very limited flexibility of thought in that fight.
And what I was specifically pointing out is that the encounter design would have to account for that across relatively large areas. It would need to be by only presenting a minor variation of things a player might need to react to from one fight to the next. It's that or in a region a player might need to be swapping out skills in order to be at their maximum effectiveness from one fight to the next. (Read as "tedium".)
I have absolutely no problem with the notion that planning a tactic, testing a tactic, failing abjectly using that tactic, dying and then needing to adjust (perhaps repeatedly) to overcome an encounter. I do have a problem with the arbitrary and constructed notion that because I've never fought A_Mob01 before, and I didn't consider the possible need to use a tripping mechanic before the fight means that when I recognize in that moment that I needed to have a trip mechanic to overcome the encounter, and that I don't, that my death is a foregone conclusion and I have to recover and redo my action bar in order to come back and use a tripping mechanic. That's gimmicky. It's artificial. And it punishes people purely based on ignorance, not skill. It ensures that no matter how intelligent you are, or how skilled you are, or how well equipped you are, there will be times where the game will kill you only because you have not experienced a portion of it yet.
Does that make exploration more dangerous? Yes. Does it make the first comers to areas much more brave for tackling it? Yes. Does it highly encourage the use of 3rd party spoiler sites? Yes.
Does it make things more fun? .... No.
To add to this...
It also hinders character progression reward design.
One of the things that is rewarding in games with more open access to skillsets, is this: As a character reaches new levels, new skills are available to them. Those skills may not come into play often. But the player feels still feels like they were rewarded by being provided a new tool for their toolbox.
When you couple that (very effective) carrot for advancement with the stick of limited access to tools during any single encounter, some of those less useful skills start to become entirely and eventually apparent as pointless additions to the game. Would they be handy occasionally? Perhaps. But not at the expense of the core functions that you must absolutely rely on regularly.
What then would begin to occur is that a limited set of skills become the core upon which iterative increases of power happen through progression. Effectively this manifests in a limited few things that the player experiences as new capabilities they earn, or at least that they care about earning. It becomes nothing more than an incremental increase in power of existing core skills. Which in turn dillutes the sense of "new" as the player progresses thru the game. The healer doesn't really experience the same sense of anticipation of getting that next level because mostly all they get from it is the "new" rank of heal with a little more bang for the buck. The warrior may get a new interupt, but they'll just cease the use of the old because they need the other hate gen and damage skills they already have in their limited rotation set.
In both cases the character may be more effective. But ultimately the gameplay remains static through greater portions of their progression. They are doing the same thing with the same basic functionality forever.
This is somewhat like the dillution of gameply that WoW has suffered from over time. Players actually use only a very small set of skills normally (3-5) because that's all that's really needed and/or useful. Blizzard has publicly acknowledged that it was a mistake and they have a roadmap to backtrack, although to what degree remains to be seen.
Thank you for articulating this viewpoint so well, Feyshtey.
Yeah I agree with the above from Feyshtey.
Having a limited set might increase the importance of the planning/strategy phase (the first time x is encountered) but dramatically reduces the options (and I would say room for fun/skillful play) in the action/tactical phase of gameplay.
In gameplay I'd rather be a tactician than a strategist.
It seems like at this point we should have all played games with a limited number of skills available but maybe not?
Those who say swapping spells around is tedium make me question that ^. We will all have preloaded hotbars and it will be a simple click or two to swap to your "buff bar" or your "pulling bar" or whatever.
The tedium comes when you have a ton of abilities available at once and you have to juggle 20 different things to gain that extra 1% advantage in what you are doing.
There seems to be a disconnect between some of the comments and how things play out in reality.
philo said:It seems like at this point we should have all played games with a limited number of skills available at this point but maybe not?
Those who say swapping spells around is tedium make me question that ^. We will all have preloaded hotbars and it will be a simple click or two to swap to your "buff bar" or your "pulling bar" or whatever.
The tedium comes when you have a ton of abilities available at once and you have to juggle 20 different things to gain that extra 1% advantage in what you are doing.
There seems to be a disconnect between some of the comments and how things play out in reality.
Ok, so you have an automated system that swaps out skills when you're out of combat.
You have to think about which prebuilt set you're going to have before a fight (which you presumably honed over a small handful of encounters of a particular type.
What "fun" was added to the game?
What "fun" was removed?
Edit: And it's far less about adding 1% effectiveness in a fight. It's far more about the variety and randomness that a player might need to counter (and be equipped to counter) in any one encounter.
philo said:It seems like at this point we should have all played games with a limited number of skills available but maybe not?
Those who say swapping spells around is tedium make me question that ^. We will all have preloaded hotbars and it will be a simple click or two to swap to your "buff bar" or your "pulling bar" or whatever.
The tedium comes when you have a ton of abilities available at once and you have to juggle 20 different things to gain that extra 1% advantage in what you are doing.
There seems to be a disconnect between some of the comments and how things play out in reality.
Agreed with this. I feel like people are worried about something they've never experienced. I am not worried one bit and I've played both styles of games plenty. You learn to work with what you get and both systems are great.
@feyshtey
Strategy is added (fun). Sometimes challenge/difficulty is added (fun). Tedium and juggling 100 abilities is lessened (unfun). (granted I still think we will end up juggling 100 abilities with clickies etc eventually...but the point remains, it's lessened).
philo said:It seems like at this point we should have all played games with a limited number of skills available but maybe not?
Those who say swapping spells around is tedium make me question that ^. We will all have preloaded hotbars and it will be a simple click or two to swap to your "buff bar" or your "pulling bar" or whatever.
The tedium comes when you have a ton of abilities available at once and you have to juggle 20 different things to gain that extra 1% advantage in what you are doing.
There seems to be a disconnect between some of the comments and how things play out in reality.
i'll go back to the football analogy here.
imagine american football in which i'm only allowed to use 8 plays(las8) from a 20 page playbook. now if i wanted to change play completely different from teh 8(play set) i prepped before the ball is set, i'd have to call a timeout to swap something in the playbook that would work better from what i'm seeing from the defense.
that's more tedious than it needs to be. i know the plays from the playbook, i should be able to change it on the fly, which great qbs do. why should i need to calll a timeout just to change my play set?
philo said:@feyshtey
Strategy is added (fun). Sometimes challenge/difficulty is added (fun). Tedium and juggling 100 abilities is lessened (unfun). (granted I still think we will end up juggling 100 abilities with clickies etc eventually...but the point remains, it's lessened).
Strategy is only added until you have your prebuilt matrices. After that it's just a task you have to perform. And in doing so the game design, by design, is restricted in the quantity of things any given encounter can throw at the players because the players can only have a given number of counters to them in that moment. Which increases the tedium of the actual combat.
There's nothing tedius (slow, tiresome, monotonous) about having a multitude of things you can do and instinctively using only those that provide you benefit. There's much tedius about a task that requires little thought (after initial configuration), no rush, and happens repeatedly.
Strategy added, tactics deflated. It lends itself toward many abilities being extremely (needlessly) niche as they aren't worth burning slots on. Why would a monk waste precious space with their off-tank skills save for perhaps a very specific mob type or encounter designed specifically for it (which doesn't feel as good on the player end).
Planning is generally far less fun or rewarding than doing, than acting/reacting to problems that arise to overcome something. A limited action set, especially a small one, severely limits the reward of knowing ones class and lowers the skill ceiling dramatically. It cuts out so many instances where classes/players could otherwise have a moment to shine and save the day by reading the current state of an encounter and fully expressing the breadth of their abilities in the right way, instead they read the state of an encounter and can only thing "guess we'll die. If only I had access to these other things for this niche case." You cut the wind out of the sails, the stories of coming through in the clutch.
Feyshtey said:philo said:@feyshtey
Strategy is added (fun). Sometimes challenge/difficulty is added (fun). Tedium and juggling 100 abilities is lessened (unfun). (granted I still think we will end up juggling 100 abilities with clickies etc eventually...but the point remains, it's lessened).
Strategy is only added until you have your prebuilt matrices. After that it's just a task you have to perform. And in doing so the game design, by design, is restricted in the quantity of things any given encounter can throw at the players because the players can only have a given number of counters to them in that moment. Which increases the tedium of the actual combat.
There's nothing tedius (slow, tiresome, monotonous) about having a multitude of things you can do and instinctively using only those that provide you benefit. There's much tedius about a task that requires little thought (after initial configuration), no rush, and happens repeatedly.
Your first couple sentences seem a bit contradictory. There is always more stategy involved when you are figuring out an encounter and figuring out what skills you need. "After that it's just a task you have to perform." ...whether you have 5 skills or 1000 skills.
You haven't heard lots of people complain over the years about how EQ2 lets you use so many abilities at once? That horse is beaten to a pulp at this point. It can definitely reach the point of tedium.
It doesn't really restrict what you can throw at the players (within reason of a game). It just requires players to work together more to get things done if their skills are limited. You probably will need to know what skills all your group members have loaded as well as your own so they don't overlap.
Sometimes it's ok for players to not have enough room on their bar to counter every little thing in the most optimal way. They should be forced to weigh their options.
It also opens up greater possibilities for the same class to conbtribute in the same group. Maybe 1 warrior has his taunt/aggro bar up while another warrior has his group stamina/ attack buff bar up so they can both contribute in a useful way. If the War can use all their skills at once you highly negate the value of the second warrior.
What games have you played heavily that used a limited action bar fey? I'm not understanding why you think how you do on some of your statements.
@Philo
My first paragraph in the post oneADseven quoted:
"No one is suggesting that in any given fight you would be required to use 50 skills. Or even that it would be anything less than counterproductive to try to use 50 different skils. Or 20. Or maybe even 8. What people are saying is that if you're locked in to only 8, you have very limited flexibility of thought in that fight. "
You're conflating the ability to use any tool in the player's arsenal at any one point in time, and the ability to simultaneously execute even 2 skills. I am fully in favor of the former. I am fully against the latter.
a thing that western mmos haven't done is toy with gcd at a way to manage ability bloat.
having more tradeoffs, such as gcd, outside of resource management, cooldowns and cast times could be a way for players to choose whether to use the ability.
a long gcd, but super mana efficient and instant cast high heal presents a great choice for players who lean more into decision making and planning.
there are other ways than to cut las down :D
@Philo
And yes, LAS does limit encounter design.
If you only allow the players X abilities, you cannot exceed X things the mobs might do that the players have to account for without ensuring failure of the players. Or at least ensuring the encounter is really going to hurt.
If you limit the things the NPCs can do to accomodate the limited things the players can react to (due to LAS), then fights have a finite dynamic range. If you don't require players to swap out skills from one encounter to the next in a major zone region, then that entire region has the same limited dynamic range.
Feyshtey said:You're conflating the ability to use any tool in the player's arsenal at any one point in time, and the ability to simultaneously execute even 2 skills. I am fully in favor of the former. I am fully against the latter.
Wait what? Can you clarify that please?
Also, you didn't answer my other question. What is your gaming experience with limited action bars? There is a disconnect between our views. I'm not sure where it is coming from. Maybe its me? I've played games that are both limited and unlimted bars and, as you can tell, I find the limited bar to be better. More fun, requires more thought, more communication, more strategy etc.
But I know sometimes games implement things differently so maybe you played a game that did it differently than what I have experienced?
Feyshtey said:@Philo
And yes, LAS does limit encounter design.
If you only allow the players X abilities, you cannot exceed X things the mobs might do that the players have to account for without ensuring failure of the players. Or at least ensuring the encounter is really going to hurt.
If you limit the things the NPCs can do to accomodate the limited things the players can react to (due to LAS), then fights have a finite dynamic range. If you don't require players to swap out skills from one encounter to the next in a major zone region, then that entire region has the same limited dynamic range.
what u mean is... multi phase/rng encounters become unmanagable to players because they are limited to what they brought. so allow for in combat las swapping, which then leads to tedium, which could have just had las 24 instead of having to swap midfight, which is very annoying.
but if they wanted to maintain the multiphase/rng encounters, the devs would have to create a 'break' for players to swap and plan for the next phase or rng part of teh fight.
lik boxing has rounds, but i can't swap from open to southpaw because midfight because the rules say so, however, i could swap to a lefty and change my footwork before and after rounds.
Sincerely hope this game isn't reduced into mindless rotations.
Wizard: 3 fire spell "bread and butter" DPS rotation (or 4th school depending), 2 cold spells if need to reduce aggro, 2 arcane for when low mana, ice block for emergency. My guess is this would be what wizards look like most of their gameplay.
It speaks volumes to me that the perception system is being designed in such a way that VR intends to dissuade the effectiveness of spoiler sites. From the most recent stream:
Joppa: "The goal there (perception implementation) is to try and make this not only a very deep system with a lot of replayability, but also to protect against things like spoilers ... because there will be such a richness of flagging and a variety of different things that a player has done that it will often be difficult to determine exactly what steps were taken to get to this point and that point. That is why we have decided to separate the perception system from the leveling mechanic ... or, we haven't put content behind the perception system as a kind of wall ... because we don't want players to be impatient or feel like they're being held back because maybe they can't quite determine the steps that it's going to take to do this next thing or that next thing. Even though ... our job will be to make sure that the clues that are presented are adequate enough, but maybe in an ideal situation, you're actually reaching out to other people around you and asking questions to help make sense of some of these things which is part of the social engagement that we're going for."
Why wouldn't the same philosophy be applied to combat? Pantheon is a group-centric and role-interdependent game. Success is supposed to be a shared/earned experience. Failure in combat results in a death penalty which naturally encourages players to do research on any given encounter prior to attempting it. While it's safe to say that some folks will purposely avoid spoiler sites, it's important to appreciate what group-centricity and role-interdependence mean. Other players will be counting on you to do your job and the more emphasis there is on preparing the proper hotbar, the more effective a spoiler site will be. This is not debatable. Regardless of whether or not any individual player purposely chooses to avoid a spoiler site, we must accept that since other players are reliant on your performance, they are naturally encouraged to do that research for you.
While it's certainly true that planning and strategy are extremely important when it comes to finding success, so is execution. Many games that feature an LAS attempt to shift the "difficulty" of an encounter to DDR-style garbage where you get one shot from telegraphed abilities. You only have so much room to work with when it comes to in-combat decision making and reaction (specifically because of the LAS) so you are compelled to offer difficulty through other means. Enrage timers, one-shot telegraphs and other gimmicky mechanics seem to fit the bill. From what I have experienced with this kind of content ... 90% of any given battle is focused on managing perfect uptime with your combat rotation, with very little variance or adaptation. Mostly boring and monotonous and with very little opportunity for personal influence to matter. The other 10% are the gimmicky mechanics that makeup 90% of the difficulty. 90% boring, 10% stressful, 100% anti-fun.
Let's consider the following:
#1) Players will be able to look up the ideal hotbar strategy for any given encounter which could end up being an extremely efficient way to progress their character. If an optimal strategy exists, players will be able to identify that before ever attempting new content. This is true regardless of whether or not the LAS exists and it is quite common in the MMO landscape for players to cooperate in their research and use their findings as a foundation for their gameplan. Going in blind is dangerous and risky. Since knowledge is half the battle, and any potential failure in battle results in a nasty penalty, sticking to spoiler sites is simply the responsible thing to do. If you aren't willing to do it yourself, there are bound to be plenty of super-responsible denizens sharing the world with you that will be eager to convey spoiler information. Copy/Pasting an ideal hotbar set-up (for every class in the group, even) takes very little effort and the payoff is huge when the "ideal hotbar set-up" provides a considerable edge to performance and built-in loss prevention.
#2) With strategy being emphasized over execution with the LAS model, this also dramatically reduces the difficulty of emulating another player from a video if someone decides to take their research to the next level. It's much easier to mimic the execution of 8 spells over the course of an extended fight than it is 12, or 16, or 20. The fewer abilities we are responsible for managing during combat the easier it is to create some sort of prefabricated "ability rotation." While it's true that some degree of variance can exist, fewer active abilities will ultimately equate to fewer tactical choices during combat. The fewer choices we have, the more weight that each choice carries. This further reinforces the value of adhering to a strategy or combat rotation while simultaneously reducing the learning curve of being able to do it. When execution is emphasized there are more choices over the course of an extended battle and thus more opportunities for things to go right or wrong. This is where skilled players will shine and the opportunity for dynamic challenge can be emphasized. Instead of following a strict and predictable script, surprises and curveballs can be introduced. Players can be tested to react to these occurrences during combat while the stakes are high.
#3) A limited action set is counterproductive to the type of combat that has been alluded to throughout the FAQ. This feels like a serious design conflict that is deserving of an analogy. It's like saying that you want group-centric activities to be the foundation of gameplay ... the world will be designed with so many group-based quests, group-based mobs, and group-based bosses ... that trying to advance without a group will be extremely difficult if not impossible. But wait ... there is also this "limited-grouping-system" tool that will be implemented that imposes an arbitrary cap on how many different groups any player can join, per week. Does this add strategy and tactic to grouping? Sure it does since players will have to be more considerate about who they are willing to group up with in order to stay under the cap. Does this make the game more fun or offer a healthy incentive toward the original pro-grouping design philosophy? No, it does the exact opposite.
Iksar said:Sincerely hope this game isn't reduced into mindless rotations.
Wizard: 3 fire spell "bread and butter" DPS rotation (or 4th school depending), 2 cold spells if need to reduce aggro, 2 arcane for when low mana, ice block for emergency. My guess is this would be what wizards look like most of their gameplay.
arcannee POWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH for utility :D
it won't be a mindless rotation with las8. hopefully you've made the correct choices for this rng or multiphase encounter ^_^
if ya didn't well get good kid and google what the optimal las is for this encounter.
as a matter of fact, just have this addon that automatically swaps your las to the right one.
while ur at it, this mod is also required to raid with us.
@Philos, I'm not going to type out a resume for you. Suffice to say that as a rule I dislike any game system that restricts player actions arbitrarily. I find that nearly without exception these mechanics are far less about providing an enjoyable gaming experience and much more about avoidance of more complex (and inherently less predictable) game designs. I dislike any occurance of a game saying, "Yeah, you know how to do that thing. You earned that tool. Here's an appropriate place for it. But ... No. Not today. " It really just kind of pisses me off, and yanks me out of the world exploration experience and punches me in the face with the annoying software experience.
@Stellarmind, No, what I'm saying is that if a thing creates more issues than it solves, eliminate the thing entirely. I don't really see any particular thing that LAS resolves. Eliminate it. If I know how to switch from open fighting and I know how to fight southpaw, then let me switch between them at will as I determine the circumstances warrant it. I didn't lose the ability to fight southpaw in the first because I didn't consider it beforehand. And I didn't somehow relearn it by talking to my trainer after the first. I KNOW how to fight southpaw. Let me use it or not, depending on what this other goon comes at me with.
Now, all that being said.... I can stomach some limitations when there's a logical or lore-based reason for it. "The mortal mind is only capable of maintaining the notion of a certain number of magical effects at one moment, lest he risk insanity!". Fine. Got it. But that shoulnd't mean that I also forgot how to bash someone upside the head with my staff.
@fey
If you limit the things the NPCs can do to accomodate the limited things the players can react to (due to LAS), then fights have a finite dynamic range.
This is only true in theory. With a global cooldown system, that we know pantheon will use, there is only so many actions a player can perform in a given amount of time. If you want to argue semantics like the quote above there is already a "finite dynamic range" regardless of the number of abilities...but now we are spliting hairs. The point is there can still be very dynamic encounters with limted action bars.
Again, it is a positive thing if players are limited so they can't use the most optimal counter at all times.
Another reason is that I enjoy a system that gives players either/or choices. There aren't many of those being implemented in Pantheon. What I really want is permanent either or choices but it doesn't seem like we are going to get that. Limited hotbars are one way to have temporary either/or choices that might differentiate you from the person playing the same class next to you.
Feyshtey said:Does that make exploration more dangerous? Yes. Does it make the first comers to areas much more brave for tackling it? Yes. Does it highly encourage the use of 3rd party spoiler sites? Yes.
Does it make things more fun? .... No.
To add to this...
It also hinders character progression reward design.
One of the things that is rewarding in games with more open access to skillsets, is this: As a character reaches new levels, new skills are available to them. Those skills may not come into play often. But the player feels still feels like they were rewarded by being provided a new tool for their toolbox.
@187
oh the perception system functions kind of like hiding mob information like health/mana/stamina special dispositions?
so i need to gain 50 knowledge on said mob(for example) before i know health, 100 for resources, 200 for dispositions, maybe like 300 for strengths and weaknessness?
@ Fey
I don't know what games you have played or your experience but one of the issues we see repeatedly on these forums is people who comment on game systems without having much, or any, experience with that type of system.
People will argue for what they are familiar without understanding the alternatives. Lack of experience and a closed mind is a dangerous thing.
I'm not saying this is you because I don't know your experience, but some of your statements make me wonder. The perspective seems odd. Not mentioning any games you ahve played heavily that used a limited action bar isn't helping your case.
Feyshtey said:@Stellarmind, No, what I'm saying is that if a thing creates more issues than it solves, eliminate the thing entirely. I don't really see any particular thing that LAS resolves. Eliminate it. If I know how to switch from open fighting and I know how to fight southpaw, then let me switch between them at will as I determine the circumstances warrant it. I didn't lose the ability to fight southpaw in the first because I didn't consider it beforehand. And I didn't somehow relearn it by talking to my trainer after the first. I KNOW how to fight southpaw. Let me use it or not, depending on what this other goon comes at me with.
Now, all that being said.... I can stomach some limitations when there's a logical or lore-based reason for it. "The mortal mind is only capable of maintaining the notion of a certain number of magical effects at one moment, lest he risk insanity!". Fine. Got it. But that shoulnd't mean that I also forgot how to bash someone upside the head with my staff.
hmm... i would say the tradeoff to las is it 'encourages' players to communicate with one another. like the warrior saying i'm going to take this spell in case i get low hp so the healer knows that i'll take these spells to make sure you don't get low.
the problem then becomes when the tank and the healer don't agree on setups then starts to wipe continously, but we really know who's at fault. it's the dps for not killing fast enough.
the devs are trying to create more 'coop' experience, but it's a bit too forced with a restrictive las8 uas6. eh won't know till we actually get alpha to test for myself. this is all theorycrafting of course OwO