Why only 6 abilities at a time?!!

nerevarine1138

PBpsy wrote: »

Brimsurfer wrote: »

having access to fewer skills at a time will lead to more similarities among the characters than differences. In five months time we'll all be playing the same character, with fewer options.

Exactly.Most people will always go for the most viable build and will tend to stay there. People do not like change and once they find something that works well in many situations will stick to it especially if experimentation is difficult or punishing. I have personally didn't change my build in 20 levels. Even though i would like to try some other stuff I don't since my build would simply not work as well. I also see the same builds all over the place.

The fact that once a couple of levels there is one boss for which i have to change one my damage abilities for a heal or DOT Is not much tactics in my opinion.

Then you aren't playing very effectively. I will change at least one ability on my bar as I enter a new region/dungeon, depending on what kind of enemies I'll be running into.

PBpsy

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Then you aren't playing very effectively. I will change at least one ability on my bar as I enter a new region/dungeon, depending on what kind of enemies I'll be running into.

I will change only in the rare case that find something that I can't do with my current loadout. I don't quite see how do you know what will best work on the enemies that are in the next region/dungeon. Unfortunately I am not clairvoyant. I will go to the next region with my current load out and if I manage to get trough it I consider that damn effective if not maybe I will try out something new. I didn't have to do that on many occasions though.

Moobs

I like the way it is, it's refreshing and makes you think ahead of battle. Reminds me of GW1 rather than the countless crappy MMOs that came after.

cubansyrusb16_ESO

Brimsurfer wrote: »

So why can we use only 6 abilities at a time? In pre-launch interviews Devs were talking about how they want to give freedom to players and stuff....... now they restrict us to only 6 abilities, this doesn't make sense. Its not freedom at all.

We should be able to use as many abilities as we like (just like some of the other major MMOs out there). If a player wants to use only a few abilities then its up to them but most of us would like to use all the abilities available to us, at least all the players that I know would like to be able to use all.

Please remove this restriction of using only 6 abilities at a time. Give us a big long customisable toolbar and anyone who wants to use just 6 abilities can only go for 6 but the most of us who want the whole repertoire to be available will be able to use all our abilities. Lets turn this game into FUN.

Thanks

We also have a search function in the forums

jdandrews108b14_ESO

I think it's kind of funny that people who are quoting WoW having more abilities also neglect to look at the class themselves. I played a Rogue and a Druid from 'nilla wow and can easily tell you that my button rotation for the Rogue was around 5 buttons and the druid rotation was around 10-12 (Healing druid was more but mainly CD pops). Obviously there were more buttons, but the given situation (raiding) I was only using this many.

As a Nightblade in ESO now I really see the valid point to both sides. I weapon swap a sword and board and dual wield set (tanking and damaging respectively) and find myself wanting just one more button to press to make things work out well. My tank set can stay alive and has a taunt, but honestly I die in the end because I have to sacrifice a damage skill for a stay alive skill.

But if I am even with just one more person, everything works out so smoothly it's ***, which is the tactical side of things. I NEED to tank this and my buddy NEEDS to kill this. But it's not very much strategy as it is just following the rules.

One more slotted ability is perfect. Giving us a slight variation on our current role is what allows players to tactically choose whether to fulfill a partial role that can either be fully covered by complementary group members (2 members taking a control variation to give more control) or synergized with other group members role variation (control and a buff/heal boost).

This way the fight is more tactically deciding upon whether the group (or solo) wants to burn down the boss or take it slow with sprinkling on some healing survival skills. I honestly don't think one more skill would hurt.

ElliottXO

Why don't you play some of the other major MMOs out there then?

You are the minority here with your demand for long customizable toolbars. The rest of us is past this crap.

Crumpy

It's only for console compatibility.

cabbageub17_ESO

The console compatibility is a weird argument considering they will be playing on a different server altogether. I wouldn't mind 1 or 2 more ... or the ability to slot another ability in the ultimate slot.

Mightylink

Probably cause this game is coming out on consoles and they can't hotkey many buttons. Something had to give to get this game to work on both platforms.

Melian

If there were more, we'd all be using the same abilities. There would really only be four classes, which *would* be restrictive. As it is, there are multiple ways to play, say, a sorcerer, and not all sorcerers are interchangeable.

Khazaad

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

It has nothing to do with consoles.

*facepalm* Dude. Edit this out. it's public documentation of your ignorance.

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

It's a design choice, and it's a dead horse. Kindly stop beating it.

Feel free to just walk on by the next post regarding it.

Rajani Isa

I do wish for an extra slot or two for the more utility skills (the soul trap, for example) but for the most part they have it pretty good.

Crumpy

cabbageub17_ESO wrote: »

The console compatibility is a weird argument considering they will be playing on a different server altogether. I wouldn't mind 1 or 2 more ... or the ability to slot another ability in the ultimate slot.

Yeah but they will be playing the same game/mechanics.

jmwhalenjrub17_ESO

Brimsurfer wrote: »

would like to use all the abilities available to us, at least all the players that I know would like to be able to use all.

Please remove this restriction of using only 6 abilities at a time. Give us a big long customisable toolbar and anyone who wants to use just 6 abilities can only go for 6 but the most of us who want the whole repertoire to be available will be able to use all our abilities. Lets turn this game into FUN.

Thanks

Between 3 class, 3 armor, 6 weapon, 3 guild, 2 world, and 2 alliance war skill lines each character has 68 Active and 9 Ultimate abilities available. It takes 247 of the 320 skill points in the game to unlock and upgrade all of the Active and Passive skills on all of those lines to level 4; leaving 73 skill points for Morphs.

To have all of those skills available for use at all times like you want would require 77 Hot Bar slots, six weapon slots , and any passives like Elder Dragon (Increases Health regeneration by 2% for each Dragon ability slotted ) would have to be completely reworked because they would always be maxed out under the system you are asking for.

The only difference between the characters would be the skill lines of each class and which morphs they choose. Every character would have a full complement of Tank, DPS, and Healing skill at their disposal at all times which essentially would make them all the same.

In other words what you are asking for is a complete redesign of the skill and combat system 1 week after the game has launched.

sk8ingeckoub17_ESO

This system wasn't actually designed with consoles in mind.... they have said they had planned this system long before they decided to port it to consoles and that it was just a bonus in some of their dev diaries / interviews. This 12 skills feel is actually very intentional.

And as long as each skill is valid and has a purpose there will be far more choice between builds then not. even if half of the skill choices are viable it will still be far bigger variety then we have seen in mmo's recently.

Hell i have been side by side with other dk's taking out enemies... we both killed roughly the same speed but we had different primary and secondary weapon choices and (hes in my guild so i can ask) had chosen different morphs. and relied more heavily on different things.

So yes i see variety here. you just need to adjust... this was an intentional design choice and no consoles didn't play a part in it.

Although if you want to get technical now that they have branched into consoles it will more then likely keep them from "redacting" the decision to have hot bars made this way....

Also just because they are starting on different servers does not mean they will stay this way... I would imagine if ps4 or xbox one or both were for any reason underpopulated they wouldn't think twice about merging the consoles with each other or pc's...

Mortuum

Plain and simple OP:

NO!

Good players adapt, others...well...cry on forums.
No need for longer comment, others explained all points well, and indeed, let this dead horse rot in peace.

Edit: and stop using we, all, all players. So far its 2 pages of opinions different then yours. Should tell you something.

Vorpedagel

NaciremaDiputs wrote: »

I really hate it when people say, "other MMOs have it".

This. Also then it means you have to make a decision which abilities to take for what situation for a little more strategy. I think that the amount of abilities available at the moment is perfect.

lecarcajou_ESO

Personally, I like having to pick a limited set out of my total abilities—GW2 did a fine job with that and I wonder if that influenced ESO's design. I still remember getting so swamped with skills in RIFT ("Another one!? Where's the room?") that I hardly knew which of my multiple action bars had what on it. Limiting the selection also seems to promote putting some thought into the synergy between specific abilities, which is nice, and given that we can have separate action bars for our swappable weapons adds quite bit of flexibility. I only wish that the soulstone filling one—forget the name atm—had its own reserved slot, as that seems to be quite important at higher levels but the actual damage is lukewarm compared to our class skills. Wow, this is a long post. Sorry.

Cogo

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

It has nothing to do with consoles.

It's to force you to use strategy in your loadouts and to help create unique builds. It prevents you from having a screen full of fancy looking abilities that you never use. It's a design choice, and it's a dead horse. Kindly stop beating it.

Can admin please post this reply on top of "player guides for ESO"?

Sums it up perfectly!

rawne1980b16_ESO

Yeah, let's turn this into another tab target hotbar spam fest ..... because that's not getting old.

Brimsurfer

Guys please don't be delusioned. This 6 ability thing is mostly for console compatibility and it has pretty much nothing to do with character uniqueness or stuff. We PC gamers are use to of more depth in games then just using a few buttons.

The less skills you have available at a given time, the more similar your characters will be. Its not the other way around.

Also for how long will you keep using the same 6 skills, you will get bored very fast.

jdandrews108b14_ESO wrote: »

I think it's kind of funny that .......................................I honestly don't think one more skill would hurt.

I did not specifically want to talk about WoW and for the record, I never brought WoW up in this discussion or any other but since you want to go that way, then lets do it.

Yes in WoW **if you are dps** then in most cases your rotation will comprise of 5 to 6 buttons but only if you are clearing content ages after its release and when its heavily nerfed and you are copy pasting strategies from MMO websites, but if you are part of an early progression strong profile guild then it might not be the case. Clearing content when its still new and when standard strategies are not coined down and all your gear is from the previous content.... then it takes a lot more work. You don't just dps then, you use everything in your repertoire and I tell you its a mind bending challenge.

Also lets talk about healers and tanks. I have been playing healer and tank roles for the better part of the decade in WoW and if I think about my skill rotation and I start to count the number of skills that are involved in effectively performing these roles, the healer rotation can go up to 10 to 15 skills at a given time and Tanking rotation may involve about 8 to 10 or may be more, depending on the nature of the pull or what happens during the pull, such as if someone messes up the pull then bringing the things back to normal. This involves lot more than the using just 5 or 6 skills.

I think ESO has great potential but mixing the PC and console community is a bad idea or may be it could be implemented in a better way, but limiting the number of skills available to players during combat? I am pretty sure its not the right way to go about it.

Skjlvald

Its balance for a classless game. I like it. Get over it. That is all.

Brimsurfer

I cannot get over it. I want this game to be successful and not end up like other MMOs. I am happy to pay monthly subscription fee but I want things to be on the right path......having only 6 abilities available during combat is not enough, it over simplifies the game and it gets boring......also its very restricting and goes against the freedom that we are meant to have in an MMO.

daan2006

not going to lie not a fan of 6 abilities and yes i do blame consoles for it

Drachenfier

I'm okay with the limited skillsets, but I feel that 5 is just one or maybe two too few. I also despise weapon swapping, because it's a *** mechanic.

jeremylthb14_ESO

Because strategy. Any argument saying that you would have more strategy with more keys is false. This forces you to actually pick a build and role, not use them all.

With the available number of skill points, a player can purchase pretty much every skill available to them. The only limiter at that point would be the weapon(s) in use, unless you want to get rid of that too. At which point we might as well get rid of the classes too.

I would also not relish the active combat system with 20+ (or more) hotkeys to use as well...

Changing this now would completely change the fundamental gameplay of ESO. It would no longer be ESO; a complete overhaul of the game would be required to rebalance everything. PvP and PvE would be utterly destroyed.

What you're asking for is not a change to this game; it is a completely new game.

Altheina

I think the current 6 skill slots(5 skills+1ultimate) is sufficient and effective considering that we can swap weapon at will once we reached lvl 15, so technically we have 12 slots at our disposal, which is good.

zaria

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Brimsurfer wrote: »

P.S. Btw every character would still be unique, even if they use same abilities, its inherent in every players' individual play style.

Just like every destro Warlock in WoW has a totally different rotation and ability loadout and... oh, hang on. Well, like every retribution Paladin has... well, now wait a moment. Ok, now every enhancement Shaman... dammit.

Now add that the rotation is mostly generated because of cooldowns, eso have few of them, however they have resource use.

Still you get most of that you need on the bar outside of special abilities.
I think group play is more an factor here, all in the group don't need to have the same special abilities slotted

p.hurst1b16_ESO

It is fine. You can change loadout on the fly so set up diligently before heading out.

If I am adveturing or PvP then my DK tank has Bow secondary and between that and a general tank build, it is enough.

If I am tanking a dungeon I have 2 tank skill sets, my usual one and another that I tweak as I go for this boss or that boss....

I thought 5 + 1 + QS was low at first but it is actually 10 + 2 + QS


Soul Trap ? Meh. Go and fill up gems as you explore or gather. Drop a point in for two at a time and it does not take much effort to keep up once you have a nice base of 20 or so for your level range. With such a wide level gap between dungeons, soul gems are a breeze to maintain.

Singular

jdandrews108b14_ESO wrote: »

As a Nightblade in ESO now I really see the valid point to both sides. I weapon swap a sword and board and dual wield set (tanking and damaging respectively) and find myself wanting just one more button to press to make things work out well. My tank set can stay alive and has a taunt, but honestly I die in the end because I have to sacrifice a damage skill for a stay alive skill.

That 'stay alive skill' isn't working for you if you're dying b/c of it

Uhm...I'd prefer a much larger skill bar, if only to test out which skills work together. Right now I need some skills to stay alive and then earn new ones, but don't know how to involve them in my current skill set. So it's frustrating.

I come from DDO, where I have 34 or so hotkeys on each of my mains.