5 Skills + Ultimate is not enough

jazzinspace · April 2014

I would just like to put a post in the forums here to express my opinion that even with 2 weapon sets 5 skills + ultimate is not enough for certain classes, healers for example need the diversity of healing and damage/crowd control.

The main issue - It can dumb down the game to a low skill level requirement and I hope in the future they will patch this to allow even just 8 skills per weapon set; I feel that most people these days are not stupid gamers and could easily handle that so why not just balance it properly to allow for that?

I understand that there is no cooldowns on abilities and so it is more about resource management, but that actually just feels limiting; you don't have easy access to your skills and can effectively make you feel like it is a low skilled game and that the developers could not work out how to balance it properly so they just limited the skill set. That is fine to a degree and I do enjoy the tactics in deciding what skills I pick but even if I am speccing for a role I feel that I could use just a few more skills to improve game play decisions.

In Addition
it is laborious to swap out a skill just for a particular scenario if you come across a large group and have only 1on1 skills selected.

Perhaps you could also make quick swap templates for certain weapons - ie. 1 for group 1 for solo pve content?

Beryl · April 2014

Such discussions were quite common in Beta. Some people want more skills to choose from, others tell it is not necessary and you have to plan in advance. I personally would like to have more skills on my bar in every long battle because I am used to be a healer in other games where I always had a broad variety of healing, crowd controlling (CC), agro management and dps skills. Now not only there is no choice for agro skills and a very limited choice for CC skills, but I also can't have diverse healing/buffing/protecting/damaging skills at the same time.

As one of examples, I would love to see an option to have 2-3 Ultimates for the same weapon choice and a player would be able to activate only one at a time. Same with the skills: give us more skills on the UI panel if we like, but either make some of them mutual exclusive or increase their cost dramatically (when slotted in those extra slots) so that no spamming is possible. Those would be some really emergency abilities.

Until now (including some beta experience) I found myself being bored in combat quite fast and this is not good.

Aureli · April 2014

I really like the idea of having a few different ultimate's on a bar at the same time instead of just one. Since they all go off the ultimate gauge anyways it's not like you spam them, and that gives you options when in combat.

Loxy37 · April 2014

I would have been happy with 3 and the 2 basic attacks but 5 is just about all I can be bothered with after playing games like STO with 30 odd icons on screen. In My opinion and its just mine, less is better.

Laura · April 2014

12 skills isn't really dumbed down. It takes some tactical thinking to decide what you are going with. I enjoy it, didn't at first but now I do.

romeozor · April 2014

Well it has to work on consoles as well, so that's probably a reason behind the limitations.

Riny01 · April 2014

romeozor wrote: »

Well it has to work on consoles as well, so that's probably a reason behind the limitations.

While I would love more hotkey options I agree that this was probably a big deciding factor.

Zargorius · April 2014

romeozor wrote: »

Well it has to work on consoles as well, so that's probably a reason behind the limitations.

The implementation has nothing to do with the consoles, it is a conscious design choice forcing players to make decisions and add variety to the builds.

This has been in long before the decision to port the game to the consoles, also other titles on console use much more skills and have no issues with it.

syros · April 2014

In my opinion we need just one more ultimate...
This way we can have 10 skills and 4 ultimates to combine, 10 skills and 2 ultimates are bad

spideyfk · April 2014

Having played Neverwinter Online, which uses barely around 6-7 skills on the hotkey bar, i loved having no more than 5+1. For people who cannot get used to this, i strongly suggest to go to another multi-bar-for-skills MMO.
It's an MMO, it's understandable that it may please some but not others. Those who are not pleased should just look for another MMO really. Else, what is the point of playing a game that doesn't please you?

Vikova · April 2014

This is the new trend of MMOs. The era of dozens of abilities cluttering up your screen as you feel like you are playing Mozart on your keyboard in combat are over. ESO, GW, NWO, the list goes on - the notion is that you have to tactically decide what you want to enter into a combat situation with alongside your comrades. Instead of having a huge amount of options that your skill tree slightly tweaks the effectiveness of, you have to build a character much more carefully to decide what you want in your limited toolset. I much prefer this trend.

Pang · April 2014

Adding more skills available is what would actually have the effect of dumbing down the game. If all or most of your skills are on the screen then there is no strategy or planning needed. Just face roll a bunch of them and move on. This way it requires thinking and pre-thought into what you are doing.

jazzinspace · April 2014

I do not want a screen full of spells. I am asking for 8 per weapon not 50....

Yeah you have to think about what skills you go into battle with but then that just becomes rock paper scissors with pvp and you are left with little room for flexibility.

I have just made a bunch of builds on http://esobuild.com.

1 for pve.
1 for pvp.
1 for dungeons.

would be nice to quickly select between them in a 'sets' or 'templates' style interface rather than have to go into the skills tab and assign each of them every time.

Zargorius · April 2014

jazzinspace wrote: »

I do not want a screen full of spells. I am asking for 8 per weapon not 50....

Yeah you have to think about what skills you go into battle with but then that just becomes rock paper scissors with pvp and you are left with little room for flexibility.

I have just made a bunch of builds on http://esobuild.com.

1 for pve.
1 for pvp.
1 for dungeons.

would be nice to quickly select between them in a 'sets' or 'templates' style interface rather than have to go into the skills tab and assign each of them every time.

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info52-WykkydsOutfitter.html

Enjoy!

jazzinspace · April 2014

oh my days thank you! will definately have to be checking out these addons more.

tnliverpool · April 2014

Yep, I use Wykyyd outfitter as well. Saved one set for healing dungeons, one for leveling. As for more skills, the 5 + 1 on each bar is perfect. With rescource management more important than extra skills, it makes you be tactical in your skill set up and depends on you altering your style based on specific fight mechanics and group composition. Takes some getting used to, but overall it's a nice system as is.

Mulk · April 2014

You can do everything you need to do in game with 10 skills and 2 ults. I say that as someone who got to Veteran ranks, completed the guild and main storylines and done a fair amount of pvp. Now, I periodically swap a skill for another or go to another weapon set up when I hit a brick wall, but I've never come away from a fight thinking "what I really need is 10 more skills available right now."

Others have said this is their design philosophy and it is true. Your skills choices are meaningful in this game. They want you to think about what you are going to use, and they want you to adapt to different situations as necessary. It also greatly increases the variety of gameplay styles available, because the number of variations possible within each class is quite large.

PVP has always been rock paper scissors. Limiting the skills available means first, you don't know what your opponent has available at this very moment unless you know them well, and second means that the "right" style of play is an indefinable thing that cannot be defined for everyone at all times, which means the battles are a lot more interesting at least in my opinion. I've been in this game over a year now and I know the class skills well enough to know what may be thrown my way but inevitably someone throws a curveball at me, and I love it. There may be one or more "broken" builds that succeed against a lot of stuff, but in this game even those have counters.

/shrug and two cents

Hadria · April 2014

The amount of skill slots works fine for me. I see no need for extra *** to pay attention to.

Beryl · April 2014

spideyfk wrote: »

Having played Neverwinter Online, which uses barely around 6-7 skills on the hotkey bar, i loved having no more than 5+1. For people who cannot get used to this, i strongly suggest to go to another multi-bar-for-skills MMO.
It's an MMO, it's understandable that it may please some but not others. Those who are not pleased should just look for another MMO really. Else, what is the point of playing a game that doesn't please you?

Interesting advice.
There are so many features in every MMO that it is impossible to find the ONE which is absolutely perfect. Players can wish to have more skills available at once and still enjoy other aspects of the game. Sending all the players away only because they voiced one concern is quite silly.

Lamprey · April 2014

You also need to consider that if you had a ton of skills slots on you hot bar the build diversity would be pretty slim since we all have access to ALL the skills/spells minus the class specific ones.

It's not about consoles, and I like to blame them too.:) It's about a design choice to make you think about you hot bar load out. I find it a kind of limiting also, but I'm also interested to see how it plays out as designed.

gimmethecreepsb14_ESO · April 2014

Honestly, Even if you play a game that has the ability for like, a million Hotbars (Like WoW) They've brought it down to pretty much 5-6 keys used per class. Even on my mistweaver monk in WOW I'm only generally using 5-6 keys for 90% of combat situations and raiding, lol.

Shimond · April 2014

I really like how limited it is. Really makes me wrack my brain what should be put on there. Instead of just dumping everything on a cluttered UI and trying to remember my hotkey to use x ability in y situation.

SirAndy · April 2014

Laura wrote: »

12 skills isn't really dumbed down. It takes some tactical thinking to decide what you are going with. I enjoy it, didn't at first but now I do.

^^^ That sums it up nicely ...

Shaun98ca2 · April 2014

jazzinspace wrote: »

I do not want a screen full of spells. I am asking for 8 per weapon not 50....

Yeah you have to think about what skills you go into battle with but then that just becomes rock paper scissors with pvp and you are left with little room for flexibility.

I have just made a bunch of builds on http://esobuild.com.

1 for pve.
1 for pvp.
1 for dungeons.

would be nice to quickly select between them in a 'sets' or 'templates' style interface rather than have to go into the skills tab and assign each of them every time.

Well YOU are just asking for 8 then somebody else can ask for just 10 then somebody else can ask for just 12.

5 abilities plus Ultimate is More than enough. You also have to add in Light/Heavy attack, Block, Interrupt, Dodge Roll with those 6 abilities.
Plus for a healer 3 heals on the hot bar is WAY more than enough to heal an expert leaving room for 1 damage ability and 1 CC ability.
Remember EVERY ability is spamable unlike WOW/Clones where 50 abilities need cds for every ability.

You REALLY don't even need the 2nd ability bar to me that's just a different role all together. Me I only use the 2nd hot bar for a different play style I have solo/group dps and then group healer.

Calorn_Antari · April 2014

If you read my previous comment, ignore it. I have played some more and how they have it is perfect.

VVeldon · April 2014

I'd rather have limited skills, than facerolling my keyboard, or using gamepads, footboards, or any of the other $100 pieces of junk cluttering my desk. I can finally ditch the peripheral clutter, and spend my money on the good stuff. like tube amps and headphones, cause, ya know, tubes are better.

cjtignub17_ESO · April 2014

I agree we should have more skills, 5+1 is ridiculous. Especially with weapon swapping being so buggy and slow...

Aureli · April 2014

Zargorius wrote: »

romeozor wrote: »

Well it has to work on consoles as well, so that's probably a reason behind the limitations.

The implementation has nothing to do with the consoles, it is a conscious design choice forcing players to make decisions and add variety to the builds.

This has been in long before the decision to port the game to the consoles, also other titles on console use much more skills and have no issues with it.

The "it's a console thing" excuse or statement is meaningless usually, and this case is no exception. FF14 is also on consoles and still has a full selection of hotbars to utilize. In many ways the controller is more efficient than the m&k.

satanama76yzpreub18_ESO · April 2014

2 heavy attacks for 2 weapons
2 light attacks for 2 weapons
5 abilities + ultimate per weapon.
Dodge
Block
CC Breaker
Interrupt
=
20 abilities.

Seems plenty and the possibilities are so voluminous that you really do have the potential for a deeply designed and personal character.

Extremeties · April 2014

After playing Everquest 2 where you have literally 4+ bars of skills, at LEAST 4 bars of skills to spam, or WoW with multiple bars, or any other mmo for that matter, I was a bit skeptical at first but the more I play this, the more I enjoy less skills because you actually have to be aware of what your using, when your using said skill and be aware of your surrounding so you know what skills to use where those other games you just spam the living hell out of your bars and you win. Zero skill what so ever.

Im really digging that you actually have to think a little bit about what your doing in combat in this. You cant just stand there and spam hotkeys over and over. You cant stand there and expect to be fine going toe to toe with a mob, I like the challenge the game brings.

Psychic_Kitty · April 2014

I hate the skill limitation

Characters are mostly functional idiots right now....

What's going to happen is people are going to get tired of only having 5 skills and leave the game.....yep they can get more...but can only use 5....which begs the question why have other skills then?

If you don't want players to use them why have them?

You cant answer that with saying we want players to use them...because you don't...or else you would let players use them all the time.

In essence this is the first elder scrolls game where your character is kind of moronic....as they can get skills but cant use them all the time.

Hopefully this will change....
And personally I hope their stealth will eventually last longer then 2 seconds....because my assassin is basically a pathetic warrior right now...which is kind of frustrating....in no way shape or form am I assassinating anything or feeling like a rogue...what I feel like is a sub par warrior....with attacks that do less damage.