I kinda like the idea of having a limit on the amount of spells/skills you could actively use in combat or out of combat without removing/changing them. I think this it be interesting if there were 2 of the same class in a group but having different spells so they could possibly serve different roles. It also annoys me looking at 50 spells loaded on hot bars that take up a large chunk of the screen..
In The elder scrolls online there is a limit. You have only 6 spells/abilities on your hot bar and you can switch them in combat when you switch your weapon. But more than 12 abilities are not usable in combat. And many people do not like that system. Because such limits are typical for console games.
Greetings
It's kinda funny you mention this because I literally was JUST thinking about this last night when looking over the codex and details. I don't know how I feel about the limited spells. I had no qualms with VG's million abilities to use lol I thought it was fun. I loved dinging every other level and getting 4-6 new spells especially around level 30 when you got like 10 new spells every other level. It was like christmas lol.
I played a puller in both EQ and VG and I utilized a hell of a lot of skills when pulling. It was doable in EQ with the limited spell slots but was so much more fun in VG. If using the skills I used from VG to pull I could easily fill up 12 slots JUST for pulling. That's not including combat and buffing and what-not. That's also not to say it can't be done with a limited skill set, I just had a lot of fun with it.
i just don't want to feel limited and old EQ feels limited today when compared with other newer more modern MMOs. I'd like for at least 15 skill slots but I know that is probably a little higher than what they have in mind so being realistic I'd hope for at least 12.
As mentioned ESO has a limit of 12 skills and it feels restricting. But I think a major problem with ESO is that there aren't a whole lot of unique spells to choose from especially after you have your selected 12 and also there are a lot of uninspiring spells. I think if VG had its entire catalogue of spells and abilities but you could only limit yourself to say 12 at a time then it wouldn't feel as bad as ESO does. You could swap in many different spells for many different occasions. I know Pantheon is planning on having lots of spells to choose from and selecting the right combination for the right job is part of the game. In ESO you pretty much pick the 12 skills you want to use and really don't need to swap them out ever which is why it feels so short-sighted.
NoobieDoo said:It's kinda funny you mention this because I literally was JUST thinking about this last night when looking over the codex and details. I don't know how I feel about the limited spells. I had no qualms with VG's million abilities to use lol I thought it was fun. I loved dinging every other level and getting 4-6 new spells especially around level 30 when you got like 10 new spells every other level. It was like christmas lol.
That sounds awful.
Krixus said:NoobieDoo said:It's kinda funny you mention this because I literally was JUST thinking about this last night when looking over the codex and details. I don't know how I feel about the limited spells. I had no qualms with VG's million abilities to use lol I thought it was fun. I loved dinging every other level and getting 4-6 new spells especially around level 30 when you got like 10 new spells every other level. It was like christmas lol.
That sounds awful.
Probably because they are grossly exaggerating.
At most you got 2-6 abilities per level, and more often than not, they were a rank upgrade to an already existing ability.
"Razor Parts Silk V" -> "Razor Parts Silk VI"
Personally speaking, i'd start by excluding both extremes:
- Something EQs-resembling, enough skills to necessitate five and seven and ten hotbars out*, is not my cup of tea. For various reasons.
I look 'down' (on my UI) more than i look 'up' (the world). That's one, and a 'one' i never even managed to relate with; i know there are people that enjoy this type of thing, but it is so superfluous, so artificially "engaging", that i fail to relate. Nevermind that in most games, it is also a sign of a wrong design direction. We added more content, we don't know what else to add, so let's add "moar" skills. We added new content and nerfed/buffed class skills, so now we got things amiss, let's add "moar" skills, band-aid it/balance it out. And so on. On top of the fact that (hence my saying artificially) the majority of these skills could just as easily be condensed into a much smaller number. Either way, in terms of the actual experience, the looking 'down' more than i am looking around me is a negative. Lastly, i always had a 'thing' with cluttered UIs. I want to look AT the world. I do not want to look at half of the world, because the other half of my screen is cluttered with bars, offensives, defensives, maintained buffs, short buffs, etc etc UI elements.
- The exact opposite, four or five skills total, is also wrong of course. It almost by nature entails an """action""" combat. Pew-pew, the (younger players) fastest finger reflexes win. Again not my cup of tea.
Something of a 'middle approach' would be best for me. Even then however, there are factors to be concerned with:
- How "twitchy" will our combat be? Examples being, what window of opportunity prior to a proc becoming unavailable? What a time period before chaining abilities (with those of other players or our own) become inactive? And most important, will we have "combos"? Combos entail a couple of fingers 'stuck' in their respective two keyboard buttons. I am not going to go into whether that's good or not (something tells me my opinion will not be appreciated as i hate combos), but it is a factor to be considered, especially if the 'twitch' element is present, no matter to what extent.
- How "fair/uniform" is the skills design? Will healers have twice the abilities a rogue has? I don't mean a "general" total, i mean in practice. You are doing group content; after combat has been initiated, how many skills total that a rogue will use and how many a cleric for example? Mind.. we're talking about "use".. not 'could but doesn't'.
So it's not just the number..:)
*Now as to the OP's suggestion, about locked spells, therefore in part eliminating the ten bars scenario above.. why? This game is not freeform in terms of class distinction, there are no fears of everyone doing everything, so there's no need to lock some spells out in this scenario, give some balance, re-enable them on that other one.. If things happen as they should, skills will entail a certain solid philosophy, a combat design, mechanics.. work.. manhours that cost money.. why spend it on designing skills that may or not get locked? And why further limit yourself by having yet one more factor to balance? Between classes, and even within classes? When to lock and when not? Factor all the above in as well, and you're talking overly complicated for no reason at all. You do the classes, you do their skills. You do your job well, none of them is superfluous, none unnecessary. You want to avoid clutter, you simply design good skills. You don't avoid clutter by designing 2847562 skills and then locking half out here and the other half out there :)
I've played games where you have anywhere from 1 hotbar to 5 hotbars and 30+ keybindings. I can say for myself personally, I found the combat much more enjoyable and strategic in those where you had to choose a set of abilities rather than having everything available at any time. As you said, it also allows for 2 people of the same class to fulfill a different function. I also find that combat systems with 5 hotbars is synonymous with button spamming.
10-15 is a good number, 6-8 is way too limiting and becomes tedious. If you cant let us have 10-15 for any spells we want then at LEAST gives us one bar for buffs and one for heals or damage spells. If you played EQ Shaman you can feel my pain. It sucked balls when you had to rebuff to load ALL those buffs up then put all your dmg/heal back up.
Having just 6-8 is outdated and limiting and is not fun. I understand some peoples views when you can have 40 spells up, like eq2, but 6-8 is stupid. 10-15 I think is a resonable request.
I like limiting the available number of skills, but what would be nice is to be able to have a seperate set of long term buffs not count toward that limit. Like maybe a set of 4 slots for long term buffs, then 8 spell slots.
The ability to make spell sets would be nice too, so you can preset certain memmed spell sets that you can swap, out-of-combat, quickly without having to re-mem everything 1 at a time from your spellbook. I think EQ eventually had memorized spells sets at some point that you could save and recall.
Another thing that always kind of bugged me in EQ, was spell names. While unique names are neat and cool, it can get confusing rememebring which one if the more powerful version, versus just a Combustion I, II, III, IV, etc.
I'd rather that a unqiue name means it has unique properties of effects. Say like Combustion is a straight DD, where Burst Of Fire is a DD with a DoT, Fire Bolt is a DD with a knockback, etc
Id be fine with around 10 or 12 abilities. Not that id hate 8 rows either just please stay away from the ridiculously limited numbers of GW2 and the rest of them. Could be an interesting way of specializing your character too, say an all fire Wizard vs a more versatile one with other elements. Just make sure there is plenty variety. Probably a balancing nightmare for class designers but ... /shrug
Vaildez said:I wouldn't want to see a limit as extreme as EQ or even Spell sets dependant on weapons like GW2 and ESO.... I am also hoping there are cast times on a lot of skills/spells because modern MMO's have basically become DDR and who can mash button combos the fastest.
Maybe not like ESO but personally im a fan of FFXIV's armoury system. Probably not practical in a more traditional game such as this with so many races (and likely class restrictions) but I liked having it all in one character. Better sense of accomplishment to have one character with multiple high leveled classes and it didnt really imbalance anything IMO. Except maybe crafting but you really had to invest and level grind to get them all. So long as VR doesnt make crafting a walk in the park it should work, and isnt very different from just leveling alt crafters.
I'd be more or less fine with the exact system that EQ used, so long as it was updated.
From the colored mana system we know that every class will have magical (or at least quasi-magical) abilities, so even warriors would feel the limit on spells.
The changes that I would make to the system would be in organization, and time needed to slot spells. The reason why slotting new spells in EQ was such a chore wasn't because you had only 8 slots, but was because you could only scribe 1 spell at a time, scribing spells took a significant amount of time, there was no queue to set up to scribe spells immediately after one finished, and there was no way to set up preset spell lists. By allowing players to change their entire spell bar with a preset list (which would take as long as scribing each spell in the preset individually) and perhaps reducing or standardizing the amount of time it takes to scribe a spell, you remove most of the problems with the small limit that EQ had.
For further proof that 8 skills is not too small you need look no further than GW1. That game has only ever allowed 8 skills total (with no time required to change skills) and while it certainly has many faults, no one has ever complained about being too limited by the system.
Liav said:Krixus said:NoobieDoo said:It's kinda funny you mention this because I literally was JUST thinking about this last night when looking over the codex and details. I don't know how I feel about the limited spells. I had no qualms with VG's million abilities to use lol I thought it was fun. I loved dinging every other level and getting 4-6 new spells especially around level 30 when you got like 10 new spells every other level. It was like christmas lol.
That sounds awful.
Probably because they are grossly exaggerating.
At most you got 2-6 abilities per level, and more often than not, they were a rank upgrade to an already existing ability.
"Razor Parts Silk V" -> "Razor Parts Silk VI"
Krixus said:NoobieDoo said:It's kinda funny you mention this because I literally was JUST thinking about this last night when looking over the codex and details. I don't know how I feel about the limited spells. I had no qualms with VG's million abilities to use lol I thought it was fun. I loved dinging every other level and getting 4-6 new spells especially around level 30 when you got like 10 new spells every other level. It was like christmas lol.
That sounds awful.
Gurt said:I'd be more or less fine with the exact system that EQ used, so long as it was updated.
- Unlimited slots for completely mundane abilities/skills (your kicks, bashes, backstabs and whatnot)
- 8 slots for magical abilities
From the colored mana system we know that every class will have magical (or at least quasi-magical) abilities, so even warriors would feel the limit on spells.
The changes that I would make to the system would be in organization, and time needed to slot spells. The reason why slotting new spells in EQ was such a chore wasn't because you had only 8 slots, but was because you could only scribe 1 spell at a time, scribing spells took a significant amount of time, there was no queue to set up to scribe spells immediately after one finished, and there was no way to set up preset spell lists. By allowing players to change their entire spell bar with a preset list (which would take as long as scribing each spell in the preset individually) and perhaps reducing or standardizing the amount of time it takes to scribe a spell, you remove most of the problems with the small limit that EQ had.
For further proof that 8 skills is not too small you need look no further than GW1. That game has only ever allowed 8 skills total (with no time required to change skills) and while it certainly has many faults, no one has ever complained about being too limited by the system.
NoobieDoo said:It's kinda funny you mention this because I literally was JUST thinking about this last night when looking over the codex and details. I don't know how I feel about the limited spells. I had no qualms with VG's million abilities to use lol I thought it was fun. I loved dinging every other level and getting 4-6 new spells especially around level 30 when you got like 10 new spells every other level. It was like christmas lol.
I played a puller in both EQ and VG and I utilized a hell of a lot of skills when pulling. It was doable in EQ with the limited spell slots but was so much more fun in VG. If using the skills I used from VG to pull I could easily fill up 12 slots JUST for pulling. That's not including combat and buffing and what-not. That's also not to say it can't be done with a limited skill set, I just had a lot of fun with it.
i just don't want to feel limited and old EQ feels limited today when compared with other newer more modern MMOs. I'd like for at least 15 skill slots but I know that is probably a little higher than what they have in mind so being realistic I'd hope for at least 12.
As mentioned ESO has a limit of 12 skills and it feels restricting. But I think a major problem with ESO is that there aren't a whole lot of unique spells to choose from especially after you have your selected 12 and also there are a lot of uninspiring spells. I think if VG had its entire catalogue of spells and abilities but you could only limit yourself to say 12 at a time then it wouldn't feel as bad as ESO does. You could swap in many different spells for many different occasions. I know Pantheon is planning on having lots of spells to choose from and selecting the right combination for the right job is part of the game. In ESO you pretty much pick the 12 skills you want to use and really don't need to swap them out ever which is why it feels so short-sighted.
I absolutely love the unlimited use of spells and abilities we had in VG (other than GDC etc. which worked well for VG), I much prefer it over the EQ style of locking me to 8-12, which I still dislike so much after all these years, VG gave us the freedom and in my opinion, took much greater skill to micromanage so many abilities and spells for any given situation, but it is personal choice, so for those who don't like it, that is their prerogative and we can agree that what we like the VG way better and there is nothing wrong with that, no need to explain yourself to anyone ;)
I have played with both extremes of number of spells on the hotbar and a lot in between, I never minded any way. I just adopt to that playstyle.
One way it is "Oh darn, I wish I would have put that spell on my hotbar."
The other way is "Oh darn, where did I put that spell on my hotbar?"
:)
The main issue I find with games that allow for 3-5+ hotbars, is they tend to also allow macro binding to extreme levels, much like Everquest 2 or even worst Rift. Where you can bind 20 odd skills to one button if you so wish, and in doing so you may as well end up having 1-6 buttons only as you end up only pressing 1 or 2 buttons macro to inane levels.
I'm ok with having many buttons but dont turn it into a macro fest, it becomes really bland fast when you are just pressing 11111 as quick as you can to fire off all the skills bound to a single key. I was under the impression that they where going to do the skill system much like Everquest one though, and I enjoyed that system enough at 8 skills. You could expand on that making long duration buffs just a passive effect for having X class in group i.e Cleric passively buff all party members within X radius armour by X, if its a long duration buff that lasts 60 minutes it may as well be a passive that does not need to be cast, Although that does mean you wouldn't be able to buff random people passing by as a downside.
NoobieDoo said:
I have never played GW so I'm no expert and correct me if I'm wrong but GW doesn't support the 'holy trinity' or even the 'holy quaternity' right? There aren't healers and as far as I know they don't really use CC classes either right? Is there even tanks? Anyways what I'm trying to get at is that the class system and the game's class interdependency is rather simplistic it would seem and imo you could get away with having less slots because classes mainly focused on DPS.
EQ had 8 to begin with but even EQ now has up to 12 I think with AAs and the newer expansions. I think with modern MMOs and especially how complex the classes have been in both EQ and VG that 8 would be sort of restricting. But you don't need to have 20 hotbars either.
You're thinking of GW2 that doesn't support the holy trinity and doesn't have true healer classes (although they do have tanks).
GW1 used the standard trinity system with Monks and Ritualists as Healers, Mesmers and Necromancers as CC, Warriors and Paragons as Tanks, and Rangers, Elementalists, Assassins, and Dervishes as DPS. GW1 tried to be both an MMO and a MOBA before MOBAs were really a thing. CC abilities were focused on punishing players and enemies for taking certain actions like auto attacking or spell casting. The 8 skill limit saw that each class had to focus on what their role was; most groups took two tanks with one being focused solely on tanking and the other being focused on being a more mobile off-tank. The limit was needed so that one Mesmers couldn't shut down litterally everyone on the feild and so that Warriors had to choose between great DPS (second highest single target melee when build correctly) and great survivability (highest in the game when built correctly).
Then there were the secondary classes, and henchemen, and heroes....
The 8 skill limit saw that each class had to focus on what their role was;
I think this is the part I can get behind. A greater number of abilities simply starts the homogenization of classes. Fewer, more distinct abilities, imho, will more effectively separate the abilities and functions of the various classes.
xtnpd said:Gurt asid:The 8 skill limit saw that each class had to focus on what their role was;
I think this is the part I can get behind. A greater number of abilities simply starts the homogenization of classes. Fewer, more distinct abilities, imho, will more effectively separate the abilities and functions of the various classes.
Exactly. GW1 had hundreds of abilities for each player to choose from to build their bar (which in my opinion is overkill). The choices on which few from several abilities to use is an important tactical decision.
As an example, in GW1 Mesmers could be kitted out to be either anti-caster or anti-melee. The anti-caster builds used spell interruption spells. Spell casting worked like such: you spent the mana, started to cast the spell, if anything broke the casting (moving, other spells, certain conditions, etc.) then the spell stoped casting and you lost the mana you spent. Mesmers had something like a dozen different interrupt spells that all did different things, had different costs, and had different recast timers. So when building an anti-caster mesmer you got to choose between an interrupt that did nothing else with something like a 15 second recast timer, an interrupt that refunded the casters spent mana but only had a 3 second recast timer, an interrupt with a 20 second recast timer that dealt heavy damage if the interruption was successful, an interrupt with a 20 second recast timer that gave you the mana the caster spent on the spell if the inerruption was successful, or an interrupt that had a 60 second recast but put the Dazed condition (any damage taken automatically interrupts all skill activation and auto-attacks) on the target for 5 seconds if the interrupt was successful. Taking more than 3 or 4 was really not smart because of the other tools that you'd want to take: self healing, self mana restoration, teleports, movement speed increases (or decreases for targets), resurrection signent (1 per dungeon run resurrect an ally), or the bane of all casters: Backlash (target takes massive damage if spellcast is successful). All of these are Mesmer skills and in GW1 you had 2 classes (primary and secondary), so to get maximum effect you should be using skills from both classes. Meaning there was even more competition for skills on the bar.
Kellie said:The main issue I find with games that allow for 3-5+ hotbars, is they tend to also allow macro binding to extreme levels, much like Everquest 2 or even worst Rift. Where you can bind 20 odd skills to one button if you so wish, and in doing so you may as well end up having 1-6 buttons only as you end up only pressing 1 or 2 buttons macro to inane levels.
I'm ok with having many buttons but dont turn it into a macro fest, it becomes really bland fast when you are just pressing 11111 as quick as you can to fire off all the skills bound to a single key.
Cough*vanguard*cough.
I am on the fence about this.
Honestly, EQ got away with stuff like that because 1. eventually they had AA to click also. 2. I have only played games that allow me to put all my skills in the bars. Rift, WoW, VG, LoTro... and many more.
That being said I think that putting a cap on castable spells should be limited a bit. I think there should be a gem system for in combat... and then hotbars for out of combat.
1. In combat spells - like attacks, shields, heals or just anything that you deem necessary when fighting.
2. Out of combat - Buffs basically, Heals. Stuff that should and do take a bit to cast. I think Ports should also be in this category.