Less Skill Spam?

Auztinito

I've been reading on the rework of the CP system and Armor stats. I like the ideas on paper. So, it gave me some hope to hop back into ESO but one of the things holding me back is the flow of combat in the game.

So, I thought I'd make a few suggestions.

I'd like to see less ability spam and hotbar flipping in the game. Frankly, I think it clashes too much with mechanics like sneak builds and classes. It feels like there is not much payer choice within the classes themselves, as well. On top of this, hotbar switching is clunky in the grand scheme of it all. So, I thought I'd pitch some ideas to solve this.


As of now, abilities are usually designated and and spammed to fight. Spamming does not make for great combat regardless of the game. Most action MMO have players use multiple moves or combos to keep gameplay from feeling "spammy". That's not the case here. So, instead of having instant damasge abilities and no cooldowns. We introduce cooldowns on abilities but abilities are less about dealing dps and more focused on utility. You'll keep the hotbars and still have to pick abilities and morphs but it's less about doing the highest dps. Let give out a few examples.

Examples:

(Current Game)
Puncture - Thrust your weapon with disciplined precision at an enemy, dealing 777 Physical Damage and taunting them to attack you for 15 seconds. Also inflicts Major Breach on the enemy, reducing their Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance by 5948 for 15 seconds.

(Reworked)
Puncture - Thrust your weapon with disciplined precision at an enemy to weaken the enemy and taunt them for 30 seconds. Weakening them will inflict reduce their resistances making them more susceptible to bashes and knockdowns by yourself or allies. This will have a cooldown of 50 seconds and cannot be stacked.

(Current Game)
Flying Blade - Fire a secret dagger from your sleeve at an enemy, dealing 963 Physical Damage and marking them for 5 seconds. If the enemy hit is casting an ability they are interrupted, set Off Balance, and stunned for 3 seconds. While an enemy is marked, reactivating this ability on them allows you to jump to them, dealing 963 Physical Damage and grants you Major Brutality, increasing your Weapon Damage by 20% for 40 seconds.

(Reworked)
Flying Blade - Fire a secret dagger from your sleeve at an enemy, applying an effect that temporarily immobilizes the enemy for 20 seconds. If the enemy hit is casting an ability they are interrupted and stunned for 10 seconds. If they were marked, you'll immediately jump towards them to apply a knockdown for 12 seconds. This ability has a cooldown of 45 seconds.

(Current Game)
Force Shock - Focus all the elemental energies with your staff and blast an enemy for 245 Flame Damage, 245 Frost Damage, and 245 Shock Damage.

(Reworked)
Force Shock - Focus all the elemental energies with your staff and blast an enemy with Flame Damage, Frost Damage, or Shock Damage effects (dependent on the type of staff used). This will have a cooldown of 50 seconds. (Side Note: This is more of an actual spell skill that does a massive amount of damage).

With this type of combat system, combat can be more strategic and allow just about every skill to be useful and helpful in group content. That's just a rework of abilities.

On to more suggested changes. We'll buff base weapons to be more damaging to compensate for the ability reworks. Alongside this, blocking, dodging, bashes, and knockdowns will be more crucial to taking down bosses and enemy groups. Due to encounters in Vet content, possibly getting getting easier and losing the challenge it holds. Content will balanced around pattern recognition, knowing mechanics, and timing ultimate / utility skills. Vet content will remove UI that lets the player know when an enemy is stunned and AoE circles. Removing these will provide the challenging content that some vets want without relying on dps checks barring entry to those that don't have meta builds.

JayKwellen

So combat will become "Put a status effect on someone and light attack them to death"?

Only being able to put an effect on one person and having a long cool down attached would 100%, completely, and in absolute totality, kill PvP.

No thank you. Slow cool down based combat is antithetical to the very core of what ESOs combat is, and has no business here. If I wanted long cooldowns and slow combat I'd go play a different MMO.

Auztinito

JayKwellen wrote: »

So combat will become "Put a status effect on someone and light attack them to death"?

Only being able to put an effect on one person and having a long cool down attached would 100%, completely, and in absolute totality, kill PvP.

No thank you. Slow cool down based combat is antithetical to the very core of what ESOs combat is, and has no business here. If I wanted long cooldowns and slow combat I'd go play a different MMO.

I don’t play the PvP so I can’t make an assessment on that but I’d like to see less skill spam and hotbar flipping in the game period because it feels twitchy and clunky currently. It doesn’t help that classes and weapon skill trees need more skills to choose from. Not to mention, vet content needs to have more diversity among players.

Vevvev

I agreed with Jay. This game's combat is designed on purpose to where it's all about skill spam and fast paced combat. There is a reason the only cool down is the global cool down and when a channel gets interrupted. Your limiter on skills being cast is their cost and your resource pool.

Auztinito

Vevvev wrote: »

I agreed with Jay. This game's combat is designed on purpose to where it's all about skill spam and fast paced combat. There is a reason the only cool down is the global cool down and when a channel gets interrupted. Your limiter on skills being cast is their cost and your resource pool.

I wouldn’t consider skill spamming as fast-paced. It just comes off as cheap, gimmicky, and floaty. I think the combat needs to have more builds that are less reliant on hotbar switching and skill spamming. So, what would you change about the current system to make it far less spammy?

AMeanOne

Sounds like you want to play a different game. It would be easier for you to play wow, then trying to turn eso into wow.

techyeshic

AMeanOne wrote: »

Sounds like you want to play a different game. It would be easier for you to play wow, then trying to turn eso into wow.

Yep. You're in the wrong game

Joelthas

Why you giving us suggestions when you dont even play all aspects of the game lol? Go play wow

Vevvev

Auztinito wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

I agreed with Jay. This game's combat is designed on purpose to where it's all about skill spam and fast paced combat. There is a reason the only cool down is the global cool down and when a channel gets interrupted. Your limiter on skills being cast is their cost and your resource pool.

I wouldn’t consider skill spamming as fast-paced. It just comes off as cheap, gimmicky, and floaty. I think the combat needs to have more builds that are less reliant on hotbar switching and skill spamming. So, what would you change about the current system to make it far less spammy?

Well first off there is another thing you're not considering. This game is meant to be played on a controller as well as a mouse and keyboard, which means you have no choice when it comes to bar swapping. That being said I actually like how spammy this game is after I took the time and energy to learn how to play the game, and it feels better to play than the previous Elder Scrolls games where you literally just had spells, light attack, heavy attack, and shield bashes. The games were all about spamming a single attack multiple times to kill something and maybe pausing it to drink potions, change out spells, etc.

Auztinito

Wow. That’s funny. It didn’t take long to be jumped by fanatics. I don’t want to turn this into a tab-target MMO. I’d like to see more purpose to skill usage and skill choice than just spam damage skills and animation canceling with light attacks. Do you seriously think it makes this WoW if they had longer cooldowns on skills. Black Desert has longer cooldowns and that’s a full blown action MMO.

Secondly, WoW and most tab-targets don’t even use auto-attacks as a main form of damage, they rely on abilities in a hotbar. It’s interesting, that you’d suggest WoW because of “evil” cooldowns.

Honestly, most action games frown upon spamming 2-3 skills. Even single player RPGs have games that don’t revolve around spamming skills. If anything, ESO is just action version of WoW without cooldowns, at this point.

Elo106

Please dont turn this into waiting on cooldowns combat, fast paced combat is one of the main reasons I prefer ESO over other MMOs

Auztinito

Vevvev wrote: »

Well first off there is another thing you're not considering. This game is meant to be played on a controller as well as a mouse and keyboard, which means you have no choice when it comes to bar swapping. That being said I actually like how spammy this game is after I took the time and energy to learn how to play the game, and it feels better to play than the previous Elder Scrolls games where you literally just had spells, light attack, heavy attack, and shield bashes. The games were all about spamming a single attack multiple times to kill something and maybe pausing it to drink potions, change out spells, etc.

What does controllers and KB/M have to do with it. If you’re referring to it being only way for controllers to have have more abilities to use. hot-bar flipping is not because of controllers, it’s because of the way they set-up controller schemes and not-allowing players to have control over it. On controller, you either use d-pad to switch or hold triangle/y input. Both options are incredibly clunky and not at all intuitive. Not to mention, even a hotbar heavy game like Neverwinter or FFXIV don’t feel clunky or give you more abilities to use. In FFXIV’s case, the games combat speeds up entirely to the point you’re using on average 4-12 range of abilities and that’s not including buffs/debuffs with extra situational abilities to use like tank-buster defense skills that make it easier on healers and must be timed correctly.

I think the skills should have more purpose and less spammy to make for something more interesting as an action MMO. It doesn’t help that game’s early game plays nothing like mid-game. Early game starts off well. You’re learning skills and leveling. There’s not one skill that feels it needs to spammed to play effectively. However, around mid game, you unlock 2 hot bars and it feels optional, at first. However, that flips on you the more you progress and some of the skills you choose feel useless and/or just “bait” skills. This kicks build diversity down as it limits what players use in an artificial way while making skill respec an expensive gold-sink that over time makes you feel like it’d be better start over than respec.

Auztinito

Elo106 wrote: »

Please dont turn this into waiting on cooldowns combat, fast paced combat is one of the main reasons I prefer ESO over other MMOs

That’s not the intention. It’s more that you’ll be using your skills with more purpose than just spamming them. Do you remember the tutorial? Where they teach you you to use block, dodge rolls, heavy attacks, light attacks, bashes, exploits, and when to use them. Skills didn’t even come into the picture. Skills at the time seemed supplementary especially when you read some of them. They all are about pulling off some type huge damage skill or some type utility like DoT, Stuns, Taunts, and ect. I want that style of gameplay back. Not spam x with light attacks until DoT/Debuffs/Buffs wear off just reapply them.

MashmalloMan

You're playing the wrong game, they're not fanatics, they purchased and have played this game for 5-7 years with the core concepts of the game remaining the same. You're the one asking to change the very core of how this games combat is handled. That by definition is an entirely different game and it won't ever happen, not this late into the games life cycle.

The problem with your idea of 40-50s cooldowns is it would become extremely stale with only 10-12 abilities we use currently.

So how do you fix that problem? You add more skills, you allow players to slot 20+ skills because seriously, who wants to cast 10 skills and then light attack, heavy attack and block for the remaining 30 seconds. That sounds incredibly boring. While it's not impossible like some are saying to add more skills to a controller, it definitely complicates things and what you're describing is starting to sound like 95% of every other mmo with 50 skills and items on your skill bar.

Now we have an entirely different problem in that you've complicated the core design of the game so far that we're all stuck watching ability cooldowns to make sure we can use the next skill available while constantly swapping ability bars to do so.

That in itself is a different game, many players like how simple the ability system in this game is handled, it forces you to choose instead of slotting everything, this is what creates build diversity and thought.

And your ideas for having different abilities do different things is entirely how pvp already works, everyone there is strapped for space because you need 1 cc, 1 sustain, 1 execute, 1 spammable, maybe 1 escape, 1 damage buff, 1 armor buff, etc. Pve dps is impossible to avoid 7+ skills used for damage because we don't want to CC pve mobs in this game because it either makes them immune preventing the tank from doing its job or it simply doesn't work because we can't CC bosses to begin with. We don't slot many heals because thats the healers job. We don't slot taunts because thats the tanks job, so what do you expect?

Auztinito

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Lots of Text

First off, long cooldowns. Why do you assume I want you to wait on cooldowns? Is it because I said “Cooldown”? You’re assuming you’ll pop your cooldowns and have to wait. What I meant by my suggestion is from the start is that skills will be more supplementary than just spam 10 skills.

Let me clear up a misunderstanding you seem to get to.

Cooldowns ≠ Waiting / Slow-Paced

Now, with my suggestion. You’ll see that player base damage goes up to make up for most damage loss. On top of this, AI will block, heavy attack, bash, and ect more often, as well. So, you as the player will be more occupied with bashing, blocking, dodging, and ect. Hence making it more action based and less spam based.

Also, you just mentioned that we can’t CC bosses. That’s where Tanks and Healers get skills that actually make them more useful than before. It’s the same with DPS.

Tanks will gain skills that make bosses susceptible to CC effects. Healers will boosts debuff effects applied bro enemies through specific skills. DPS can offer minor support to tanks or backup healers. It’s definitely a overhaul of the combat and AI to make it more like an action MMORPG instead of a buttonsmash MMO with mediocre AI it currently is.

Edit: Another thing, I’m all for build diversity. I want to see tanks and healers get skills that only they can use well. I want to see builds where players can use sneak. I want tanks that can use bows, evasion, and CC effects. I want to see healers that use healing skills while duel-wielding swords. I want that type of build diversity. As of now, there isn’t much in group content because there are so few skills to pick from and with some being “bait” skills to new players. Hell, just adding 10 skills into each skill line that didn’t suck and improving the one that do would help.

All in all. I’d like to see less button smashing rotations and more player freedom.

System_Data

@op

There's are games that i used to play that fit a lot with what you suggested.

Have you ever tried Final Fantasy 14? It has 3 to 4 times the amount of skills available for you to access in combat, however they have cooldowns. It requires you to find an optimal way of using each skill in a correct rotation. It is indeed less spam one skill and most of the skills are locked to your class. No PVP, but has great PVE. Grind can turn some people off and the story mode isn't as engaging as ESO imo.

Another game i enjoyed more was Blade & Soul. It also has around 3 times of skills you can access in combat compared to ESO, however with cooldowns. Again, figuring out your rotation and coordinating with your team when there are burst phases is key. PVE is great and requires your party to coordinate to CC the boss, but PVP is also great. Blade & Soul PVP system is more engaging and much more fast paced than ESO will ever be. It has a much more higher skill floor to reach compared to ESO. It lacks AvAvA and team PVP is less forgiving.

I left FF14 because of a subcription based model and grind. I left Blade & Soul because it slowly turned into a P2W game.

Auztinito

System_Data wrote: »

@op

There's are games that i used to play that fit a lot with what you suggested.

Have you ever tried Final Fantasy 14? It has 3 to 4 times the amount of skills available for you to access in combat, however they have cooldowns. It requires you to find an optimal way of using each skill in a correct rotation. It is indeed less spam one skill and most of the skills are locked to your class. No PVP, but has great PVE. Grind can turn some people off and the story mode isn't as engaging as ESO imo.

Another game i enjoyed more was Blade & Soul. It also has around 3 times of skills you can access in combat compared to ESO, however with cooldowns. Again, figuring out your rotation and coordinating with your team when there are burst phases is key. PVE is great and requires your party to coordinate to CC the boss, but PVP is also great. Blade & Soul PVP system is more engaging and much more fast paced than ESO will ever be. It has a much more higher skill floor to reach compared to ESO. It lacks AvAvA and team PVP is less forgiving.

I left FF14 because of a subcription based model and grind. I left Blade & Soul because it slowly turned into a P2W game.

I actually have played and like FFXIV. I stopped playing it because there were other games being updated and coming out (Fallout 76 Season Grind and other games). I’ve heard of Blade and Soul but it didn’t seem to interest me and I’d prefer to play on my PS4 not my laptop. There aren’t many action MMOs with questing like ESO. I love BDO, I just wish they’d implement more story and questing because their combat is amazing. I love ESO but not the way combat is setup. I’d prefer if they made this like Fallout 76 is just online Fallout. I wish this was just an online Elder Scrolls game that gets story updates over time and let’s me play against or with others in dungeons or PvP.

Uvi_AUT

I said that years ago when they reduces the timers on specific buffs.

What I want to see is:

No more 6-10 secondbuffs. Let buffs last 20 seconds. It would take a lot of the jitter out of the combat.
No more reliance on Ground Targeted AoE. Its a horrible mechanic. Whenever the mob moves you have to reset your rotation. How often does a Boss really stand in your Endless Hail for its full duration?
Let us do more direct-damage rather than DoTs.

Those two changes would make a world of difference.

Joy_Division

Auztinito wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

Lots of Text

First off, long cooldowns. Why do you assume I want you to wait on cooldowns? Is it because I said “Cooldown”? You’re assuming you’ll pop your cooldowns and have to wait. What I meant by my suggestion is from the start is that skills will be more supplementary than just spam 10 skills.

Let me clear up a misunderstanding you seem to get to.

Cooldowns ≠ Waiting / Slow-Paced

Now, with my suggestion. You’ll see that player base damage goes up to make up for most damage loss. On top of this, AI will block, heavy attack, bash, and ect more often, as well. So, you as the player will be more occupied with bashing, blocking, dodging, and ect. Hence making it more action based and less spam based.

Also, you just mentioned that we can’t CC bosses. That’s where Tanks and Healers get skills that actually make them more useful than before. It’s the same with DPS.

Tanks will gain skills that make bosses susceptible to CC effects. Healers will boosts debuff effects applied bro enemies through specific skills. DPS can offer minor support to tanks or backup healers. It’s definitely a overhaul of the combat and AI to make it more like an action MMORPG instead of a buttonsmash MMO with mediocre AI it currently is.

Edit: Another thing, I’m all for build diversity. I want to see tanks and healers get skills that only they can use well. I want to see builds where players can use sneak. I want tanks that can use bows, evasion, and CC effects. I want to see healers that use healing skills while duel-wielding swords. I want that type of build diversity. As of now, there isn’t much in group content because there are so few skills to pick from and with some being “bait” skills to new players. Hell, just adding 10 skills into each skill line that didn’t suck and improving the one that do would help.

All in all. I’d like to see less button smashing rotations and more player freedom.

"bashing, blocking, dodging, and ect" = waiting. As a light armor build, I'm not going to be bashing the enemy, I'm also not going to block the NPC since the damage they put out even on their most dangerous attacks barely scratch my health bar, and if I really had to dodge something, I can always be able to do that even while "spamming" abilities.

AI will always be mediocre because it is pre-programmed and ZOS has to balance them between new players and max CP grinders.

If you think that effective play in ESO is just "button smashing," then you are lost on the concept of PvE rotations or combos in PvP. The game is what it is and was designed to avoid the traditional cooldown system found in other games. If you prefer the cooldown system, then go log onto those games and allow those of us who don;t like cooldown systems to enjoy playing this one.

Auztinito

Joy_Division wrote: »

Lots of Text

If you actually believe that and don’t like my suggestion. That’s fine. So, what would do to change the game from being less about about button spam and hotbar flipping? What about making every ability useful and adding more skills to choose from in skill lines instead of 5 and 1 ult? What about 10-15 skills and 5 ults in each skill line to choose from?

Auztinito

Uvi_AUT wrote: »

I said that years ago when they reduces the timers on specific buffs.

What I want to see is:

No more 6-10 secondbuffs. Let buffs last 20 seconds. It would take a lot of the jitter out of the combat.
No more reliance on Ground Targeted AoE. Its a horrible mechanic. Whenever the mob moves you have to reset your rotation. How often does a Boss really stand in your Endless Hail for its full duration?
Let us do more direct-damage rather than DoTs.

Those two changes would make a world of difference.

I think buffing the duration on buffs/debuffs would help. What about buffing duration on effects like stun and off-balance, as well? Lastly, how about adding more skills to choose from in the current skill lines?

Scardan

I do not like the idea of individual cd for skills, simply because in this game the whole combat revolves around "apply a dot-spam with a skill - apply a dot and repeat". For skills with cooldowns, you need to buff auto attacks and, in general, make a combat like in slasher games, where buttons serve to cast spells and special abilities (each with cooldown), and button combinations are used to make various combos to keep the player busy during cooldown.

Only then it is not clear what to do for healers in such a system, so IMHO it is better not to redo what already works perfectly.

Joy_Division

Auztinito wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Lots of Text

If you actually believe that and don’t like my suggestion. That’s fine. So, what would do to change the game from being less about about button spam and hotbar flipping? What about making every ability useful and adding more skills to choose from in skill lines instead of 5 and 1 ult? What about 10-15 skills and 5 ults in each skill line to choose from?

Well, for one thing, what you think is button spam and hotbar flipping I think is a rotation that opens up numerous tactical possibilities. I've been playing Fantasy games ever since Dungeons and Dragons was the cool new game and I can tell you with a straight face that all of them had a common trait regarding how fun they are: when it's your turn or time to do something and your option consisted of "I'm not using any of my skills, instead I'm going to use a basic attack," it was very boring. Not to mention cooldowns, especially on martial type abilities, are silly on the face of it. Why does a knight or warrior or whatever you want to call the hero have to wait 30 seconds before executing an attack or maneuver but somehow can do this other fancy smacy attack or maneuver? It's barely more believable on wizards, whose tropes are about memorizing spells (lol do they forget them when casting) or have a mana reservoir (ok, so why cant I use that mana again to cast this same spell?), but at the core, it's just a lazy restriction developers use.

I can certainly get on board with making abilities more useful, but ZOS doesn;t seem to agree with me on that one since they' spent 6 years nerfing skills and removing many of the distinctive elements they brought to gameplay. Having only 5 abilities per bar is the only limitation players have now since resource management is trivial and is necessary in a game where no cooldowns exist, otherwise there is nothing from stopping players from doing everything.

Auztinito

Scardan wrote: »

I do not like the idea of individual cd for skills, simply because in this game the whole combat revolves around "apply a dot-spam with a skill - apply a dot and repeat". For skills with cooldowns, you need to buff auto attacks and, in general, make a combat like in slasher games, where buttons serve to cast spells and special abilities (each with cooldown), and button combinations are used to make various combos to keep the player busy during cooldown.

Only then it is not clear what to do for healers in such a system, so IMHO it is better not to redo what already works perfectly.

What your saying is kind of the point I’m trying to get to. Healers and Tanks in this new system can have more distinct skills and characteristics that make them useful in ways that are not just taunt skills and healing skills.

System_Data

I agree with @ Joy_Division that in ESO bar swapping and knowing when you can use spammable repeatedly is what we call a rotation.

I disagree with his views on skills with cooldowns being a lazy restriction. Cooldowns on skills add strategic value to combat. It's almost the same on ESO with remembering when a skill finishes its effect before reapplying it. I have no preference for combat whether it's with cooldowns or not. Ultimately, it's how the game developers choose to make combat engaging with said mechanic that matters.

Like @ Joy_Division mentioned, the limitations of five abilities per bar is why cooldowns would not work for a game like ESO. Other games where you have access to a plethora of abilities available, cooldowns adds weight in your decisions.

Auztinito

Joy_Division wrote: »

Auztinito wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Lots of Text

If you actually believe that and don’t like my suggestion. That’s fine. So, what would do to change the game from being less about about button spam and hotbar flipping? What about making every ability useful and adding more skills to choose from in skill lines instead of 5 and 1 ult? What about 10-15 skills and 5 ults in each skill line to choose from?

Well, for one thing, what you think is button spam and hotbar flipping I think is a rotation that opens up numerous tactical possibilities. I've been playing Fantasy games ever since Dungeons and Dragons was the cool new game and I can tell you with a straight face that all of them had a common trait regarding how fun they are: when it's your turn or time to do something and your option consisted of "I'm not using any of my skills, instead I'm going to use a basic attack," it was very boring. Not to mention cooldowns, especially on martial type abilities, are silly on the face of it. Why does a knight or warrior or whatever you want to call the hero have to wait 30 seconds before executing an attack or maneuver but somehow can do this other fancy smacy attack or maneuver? It's barely more believable on wizards, whose tropes are about memorizing spells (lol do they forget them when casting) or have a mana reservoir (ok, so why cant I use that mana again to cast this same spell?), but at the core, it's just a lazy restriction developers use.

I can certainly get on board with making abilities more useful, but ZOS doesn;t seem to agree with me on that one since they' spent 6 years nerfing skills and removing many of the distinctive elements they brought to gameplay. Having only 5 abilities per bar is the only limitation players have now since resource management is trivial and is necessary in a game where no cooldowns exist, otherwise there is nothing from stopping players from doing everything.

Have you tried or played any Action RPG in the past decade? Here are a few examples of fantasy games with cooldowns on abilities/skills.

Cooldowns ≠ Turn-Based / Slow

Black Desert Online
DC Universe Online
Neverwinter Online
Genshin Impact

Some others(If I recall correctly):

Dragon Age: Inquisition (Some Abilities)
Code Vein (Some abilities)
Diablo Series
FFVII Remake

Auztinito

System_Data wrote: »

I agree with @ Joy_Division that in ESO bar swapping and knowing when you can use spammable repeatedly is what we call a rotation.

I disagree with his views on skills with cooldowns being a lazy restriction. Cooldowns on skills add strategic value to combat. It's almost the same on ESO with remembering when a skill finishes its effect before reapplying it. I have no preference for combat whether it's with cooldowns or not. Ultimately, it's how the game developers choose to make combat engaging with said mechanic that matters.

Like @ Joy_Division mentioned, the limitations of five abilities per bar is why cooldowns would not work for a game like ESO. Other games where you have access to a plethora of abilities available, cooldowns adds weight in your decisions.

The problem with hotbar flipping and knowing when to spam is not that engaging for an action game. For example, you don’t actually have to hotbar flip to do harder content in FFXIV. I actually stuck to one hotbar through the in-game macro system that everyone will tell you to not use. If you test what the macros can and cannot do well. You’ll figure out what you can do to relieve yourself of having to muscle memory 3 hotbar and be able to use one.

I definitely want strategic value and weight added to abilities to relieve the game of just spam X till dots and buffs need to be reapplied. That’s the problem I have in general.

We’re spamming one move 70-90% of the time with the other percentage being dot/buffs/debuffs. It doesn’t help that we don’t have a larger selection of skills to choose from to use. I’m completely content with just using 5 skills. I just want more options to choose for those 5 skill slots we have. Classes further limit it by only allowing 3 skill lines and there is no way to get learn Templar skills as a Nightblade. So, it kind of falls on its face in build diversity.

As for rotations. It doesn’t feel like a rotation in comparison to other rotations heavy games. IMO, there is a difference between rotations and combos.

Rotations are pre-set abilities that play in a specific order and must be started over if something happens. They flow together in one direction. Rotations rely on players to press the right button at the right time.

Example: Jab -> Upper Cut -> Hook

Combos are more flexible. They can change or adapt to a situation or specific conditions. They can usually (if well designed) flow to different abilities regardless of direction. Combos rely on player choice and players get to have a more active choice.

Example: Jab -> Hook / Upper Cut -> Knee -> Jab / Roundhouse

Joy_Division

Auztinito wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Auztinito wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Lots of Text

If you actually believe that and don’t like my suggestion. That’s fine. So, what would do to change the game from being less about about button spam and hotbar flipping? What about making every ability useful and adding more skills to choose from in skill lines instead of 5 and 1 ult? What about 10-15 skills and 5 ults in each skill line to choose from?

Well, for one thing, what you think is button spam and hotbar flipping I think is a rotation that opens up numerous tactical possibilities. I've been playing Fantasy games ever since Dungeons and Dragons was the cool new game and I can tell you with a straight face that all of them had a common trait regarding how fun they are: when it's your turn or time to do something and your option consisted of "I'm not using any of my skills, instead I'm going to use a basic attack," it was very boring. Not to mention cooldowns, especially on martial type abilities, are silly on the face of it. Why does a knight or warrior or whatever you want to call the hero have to wait 30 seconds before executing an attack or maneuver but somehow can do this other fancy smacy attack or maneuver? It's barely more believable on wizards, whose tropes are about memorizing spells (lol do they forget them when casting) or have a mana reservoir (ok, so why cant I use that mana again to cast this same spell?), but at the core, it's just a lazy restriction developers use.

I can certainly get on board with making abilities more useful, but ZOS doesn;t seem to agree with me on that one since they' spent 6 years nerfing skills and removing many of the distinctive elements they brought to gameplay. Having only 5 abilities per bar is the only limitation players have now since resource management is trivial and is necessary in a game where no cooldowns exist, otherwise there is nothing from stopping players from doing everything.

Have you tried or played any Action RPG in the past decade? Here are a few examples of fantasy games with cooldowns on abilities/skills.

Cooldowns ≠ Turn-Based / Slow

Black Desert Online
DC Universe Online
Neverwinter Online
Genshin Impact

Some others(If I recall correctly):

Dragon Age: Inquisition (Some Abilities)
Code Vein (Some abilities)
Diablo Series
FFVII Remake

I uninstalled Inquisition after the first fight because I could tell Bioware thought it was a good idea to base the game off Dragon Age 2, which was very uninspiring compared to its predecessor. Origins was a great game in spite of its cooldowns because the story was awesome, the world interesting, and the quests /fights felt meaningful as opposed to "fetch this" or "go into the city back alley again and get swarmed by 4 waves of thugs using and try to ignore the reused assets. As it was, I highly preferred the Mage playthrough because even though there were cooldowns, I had a bar with 20 abilities that sort of got around them. About the only criticism I remember for the game was the the 2H playstyle felt "slow" because it's animations were indeed slow, but a player would spend much of the game in that slow animation because they only had 3 moves/attacks.

Some people may like cooldowns and that's fine. But I have yet to encounter any explanation that would explain why it is a warrior cannot execute her overhead smash or deep cut maneuver for 20 seconds after performing said move. Boxers, martial artists, duelists, wrestlers, fighter pilots, ship captains, i.e., "real" fighters have no such restriction and that's the way combat goes. I do have the ability to suspend disbelief, but the key to fantasy and science fiction settings is that suspension has to be consistent and somewhat believable. I'll buy the wizard has a mana reservoir and this gets quickly depleted the way a sprinter would quickly deplete her stamina, but it's quite another thing to say, "well, even though you have mana, you cant cast that spell again because ... umm ... well, you just can't." How does that add to strategy? That would be like if a sports team was just barred from running the same play twice. If I know my opponent simply cant run X play because they did so before, then I have a lot less to worry about. Options are taken away, choices and strategy are restricted. In fact, one of the cornerstones of strategy is to establish the threat that a play, an attack, or whatever was successful and can be done again at any time so you better be prepared for it and adjust accordingly.

The original post I responded was one where you suggested that blocking, bashing, and dodging would be the things I ought to do in between abilities. In ESO, I can do any of these while I am doing my abilities so to say that gameplay isn't being slowed down is not true at all. Plus I only want to do these three things in specific situations in reacting to things my opponent does (mitigate a high damaging attack, interrupt, etc.). I don;t want to do these three things because they do not pressure or threaten my opponent, I do them because they are appropriate defensiveresponses; they aren't offensive (or at least my light armor magic-using character can only do very few of these over the course of a fight), so I really wouldnt have anything to do offensively in a cooldown system except spam my left button, which I fail to see is an improvement, let alone more strategy than having a choice of 10 abilities I can cast at any moment.

If you want to make ESO a more tactical game with interesting gameplay and more strategy, putting in cooldowns is not the way to go because the game was not designed for them and I can promise you that I would never die to an opponent in PvP that was forced to spend appreciable time spamming basic attacks against me (as it is, I could hop on a high health warden/werewolf right now and basically never die to an opponent that could spam abilities for 5 minutes).

Auztinito

Joy_Division wrote: »

I uninstalled Inquisition after the first fight because I could tell Bioware thought it was a good idea to base the game off Dragon Age 2, which was very uninspiring compared to its predecessor. Origins was a great game in spite of its cooldowns because the story was awesome, the world interesting, and the quests /fights felt meaningful as opposed to "fetch this" or "go into the city back alley again and get swarmed by 4 waves of thugs using and try to ignore the reused assets. As it was, I highly preferred the Mage playthrough because even though there were cooldowns, I had a bar with 20 abilities that sort of got around them. About the only criticism I remember for the game was the the 2H playstyle felt "slow" because it's animations were indeed slow, but a player would spend much of the game in that slow animation because they only had 3 moves/attacks.

Some people may like cooldowns and that's fine. But I have yet to encounter any explanation that would explain why it is a warrior cannot execute her overhead smash or deep cut maneuver for 20 seconds after performing said move. Boxers, martial artists, duelists, wrestlers, fighter pilots, ship captains, i.e., "real" fighters have no such restriction and that's the way combat goes. I do have the ability to suspend disbelief, but the key to fantasy and science fiction settings is that suspension has to be consistent and somewhat believable. I'll buy the wizard has a mana reservoir and this gets quickly depleted the way a sprinter would quickly deplete her stamina, but it's quite another thing to say, "well, even though you have mana, you cant cast that spell again because ... umm ... well, you just can't." How does that add to strategy? That would be like if a sports team was just barred from running the same play twice. If I know my opponent simply cant run X play because they did so before, then I have a lot less to worry about. Options are taken away, choices and strategy are restricted. In fact, one of the cornerstones of strategy is to establish the threat that a play, an attack, or whatever was successful and can be done again at any time so you better be prepared for it and adjust accordingly.

The original post I responded was one where you suggested that blocking, bashing, and dodging would be the things I ought to do in between abilities. In ESO, I can do any of these while I am doing my abilities so to say that gameplay isn't being slowed down is not true at all. Plus I only want to do these three things in specific situations in reacting to things my opponent does (mitigate a high damaging attack, interrupt, etc.). I don;t want to do these three things because they do not pressure or threaten my opponent, I do them because they are appropriate defensiveresponses; they aren't offensive (or at least my light armor magic-using character can only do very few of these over the course of a fight), so I really wouldnt have anything to do offensively in a cooldown system except spam my left button, which I fail to see is an improvement, let alone more strategy than having a choice of 10 abilities I can cast at any moment.

If you want to make ESO a more tactical game with interesting gameplay and more strategy, putting in cooldowns is not the way to go because the game was not designed for them and I can promise you that I would never die to an opponent in PvP that was forced to spend appreciable time spamming basic attacks against me (as it is, I could hop on a high health warden/werewolf right now and basically never die to an opponent that could spam abilities for 5 minutes).

That’s actually almost complete opposite reaction to Dragon Age. I actually found Origins slow and not tactical unless I turned the difficulty up but then it felt too dependent on RNG/dice rolling to progress. Whereas, I found DA: I more engaging because I did the attacks, I could play it more like an action game where I can pause and give commands to party like Mass Effect (2 to Andromeda) to combo and synergy off specific spells or abilities.

I wasn’t implying you’d block, dodge, and bash until CDs came back. You’d block, dodge, and bash more often because enemies wouldn’t be so static and attack more often. You’re main source of damage would be using light attacks and heavy attacks and skills would help you land more light attacks, heavy attacks, and/or devastating stamina skills/destructive spell skills (implying these can miss because enemies are more mobile and attacking you more often).

If we were to keep the current system. We’d probably have to buff abilities/skills while increasing the stamina/magick they use to lessen spam (Combat is made less spam-like). On top of this, they could make healers have abilities gain new skills that can fill player resources like health (like Controller role from DCUO). Tanks can potentially gain resistance debuffs as part of their tool sets. Allowing DPS to focus damage and/or off minor support to other roles.

Scardan

Auztinito wrote: »

Scardan wrote: »

I do not like the idea of individual cd for skills, simply because in this game the whole combat revolves around "apply a dot-spam with a skill - apply a dot and repeat". For skills with cooldowns, you need to buff auto attacks and, in general, make a combat like in slasher games, where buttons serve to cast spells and special abilities (each with cooldown), and button combinations are used to make various combos to keep the player busy during cooldown.

Only then it is not clear what to do for healers in such a system, so IMHO it is better not to redo what already works perfectly.

What your saying is kind of the point I’m trying to get to. Healers and Tanks in this new system can have more distinct skills and characteristics that make them useful in ways that are not just taunt skills and healing skills.

With such combat, every class will be offensive class, a damage dealer, even "tanks", even "healers". Look at Vindictus, for example. ESO tries to imitate old roles architype, therefore I have no idea what should support role do if not crushing skulls like everybody else but just healing on cooldown in between, which does not work with role based gameplay, where only dds are allowed to crush skulls.

Auztinito

Scardan wrote: »

With such combat, every class will be offensive class, a damage dealer, even "tanks", even "healers". Look at Vindictus, for example. ESO tries to imitate old roles architype, therefore I have no idea what should support role do if not crushing skulls like everybody else but just healing on cooldown in between, which does not work with role based gameplay, where only dds are allowed to crush skulls.

I never made it far but I loved Vindictus’s controls and combat. They had some really natural controls for combat for KB/M (P.S: I hate KB/M controls and will just outright play with a controller). Something about their controls just clicked together naturally. As for combat, I liked the combos that could be used.

I think Tanks and Healers need something to make them feel useful except just Aggro Skills and Healing Spells. Those specific roles lack the same amount of build diversity, you’d see from DD. I think giving DD another goal instead of crush skills would be a much better way because it allows DD to be more supportive of the group.

If Tanks were in charge of cc’ing bosses and healers were designed to keep team health and boosting debuffs applied from allies. They would be more offensive but still fit the role they’re in. On top of this, DD could be ones that focus down adds and bosses while offering support to tanks and healers.