Game was made for both PC and console to play, which is why you see the skill set up that way. It become very gard for console players to keep up with PC player once there are more than 6 skills to use each tune. They would have to combo dufferent button to do 1 skill unlike PC wgich can use 1 button per skill. Had tge game only launched for only, game design would have been different for sure.

When I started to play ESO I was also thinking: "What a dumb strategic restriction".
I now see it very differently from my PvP perspective, which is my endgame.

-First of all, the combat speed that ESO has does not allow for much more anyway. Maybe you can hotkey 20 skills and use them to perfection, but I doubt that would work for most.
- It puts a limitation to a build. It allows for quite some build theorizing, especially in pvp. It ties very well into the very open set system without definitive BiS gear (at least in PvP).
- more, but I got bored. xD

Having limited hotbars and skills is the opposite of putting players in a position to theory craft. The reason for this is that not only do you not have much to choose from but you are locked into choosing certain things by default. So for your main bar if you have 5 slots, most people are naturally going to select a self buff, a heal and some type of AOE by nature of those things being fundamental. This leaves you with 2 spells to "theorycraft" with out out of a very limited pool. Having to swap to an identical weapon also makes zero sense from a lore standpoint and if it's not identical now you have a champion point spend problem where some of your points probably aren't applying.

This system needs an overhaul, it's bad. Bringing up GW2, you could spend *hours* theory crafting classes due to the diversity of skills and talent lines. Here, you spam spells and have half of a hotbar.

It needs an overhaul.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Definitely agree with the OP.

The situation is even worse when you consider "mandatory" passive buff "skills" such as Inner Light or Savage Hunter which effectively reduces bar space to 4. And then another slot eaten up for obtaining mandatory self-buffs such as Brutality/Sorcery which reduces your bar space to 3.

Then you factor in Ultimates that give you passives such as Dawnbreaker or Comet and suddenly you're looking at builds with half of their slots already filled in no matter what class you play, which is just horrific design.

Yes, you could use potions for some of these things, but even as a relatively affluent player I am always thinking "This is so backward" when I'm forced into using potions on cooldown in order to maintain staple DPS buffs. These potions are also completely out of reach for newer players without the gold to buy or brew them.

The game probably would not succeed with 10 skills on each bar but it is eminently reasonable to increase it to 6 skills on each bar and/or to reassign the obvious DPS buffs to be achieved through alternative gameplay means.

For example, give a passive to the Mages and Fighters guilds that gives you Major Savagery/Prophecy for 5 seconds every time you Crit and then another that gives Major Brutality/Sorcery for 30 seconds every time you Heavy Attack. Then you could re-work all of those self-buffing skills into actually useful abilities instead of being functionally dead space on your bar.

In the first 2 years of the games, there were active toggle skills like inner light. You only needed to slot the skill on 1 bar and activate it to be toggle on and the skill will be active for unlimited duration even if you swap bars, much like overload now. This obviously created many problems because you could have a skill with 12m denying nightblades ability to stealth, or mag sorcs with pets and buffs on 1 bar and miltiple offensive skills on 1 bar. Pet Mag sorcs currenlty very limited to number of skills they could use due to this change where you have to slot pets on both bars to be active all time.

idk wrote: »

Odd how after 6 years we have done very well with only 10 spells and 2 ults at our disposal at any given time. It means we have to be smart about what we choose to place in those slots. I do not miss having a screen full of skills where most of them I hardly used.

Further, ESO has a large selection of skills available from various skill lines. There are more skills available to a single class than most MMORPGs offer to any given class. So there is plenty of selection through a good build will have skills that are chosen wisely.

While what you said about the large number of skills in eso to be us correct, it is also partialy wrong. Some large number of skills are tied to specific weapons you can only use if you have that right weapon. Also, some skills require specific situations/conditions to be used like being a vamp or werewolf. Many support skills that are either expenaive like purge, or useless like revealing flare. Even with the morphing system, many morphs are left untouched to due to their lack of usefulness over their counter part like cleanse vs effecient purge, steady warhorn vs agressive warhorn, summon charge atronach vs greater storm atronach...etc.

I think the best way to balance the game currently and help wuth build diversity is to remove all classes and just put all skills as they are avialble to everyone. We can still call tgem class skill lines and limit the number of passive from them to 15 only much like now. But image a nightblade using subassault or necromancer using streak and leap or sorcerer using collousus or japs. Tgis is what going to gelp build diversity and push people away from depending weapon skills like dizzy or elemntal wall etc... mix and match and balance skills from their. Now people of wach class are complaining that other classes do more dmg or survive more than their classes while oppesite side is also doing the same, very hard to tel which is right and which is wrong. I'm hoping that one day they will do that.

Even the one bar swap we have on console is super impractical on a standard controller. You need a pro controller to map the bar swap and the potion differently otherwise you have to take your hand off the thumb stick to use either of them and because they are located on the D-pad it’s also easy I. The heat of battle to use a potion instead of bar swapping or even while swapping wasting a potion and another animation. Further complicating this is the perspective button on the same d-pad. Surrounded by enemies bar swap with accidental press of down on the d-pad and now you can’t see anything going on behind you. It’s another waste of a press which might also swap back your weapon if you aren’t careful.

Yeah controller layout is crap already without even more buttons to press for even more skills. We are already holding 2 at the same time to bash and pressing another 2 together for synergies. Consider weaving in you are almost always pressing 2 buttons at once.

As much as even another 1 or 2 skills would be nice in battle there simply aren’t enough buttons (or fingers) to get the job done.

People who want more variety in their builds need to experiment more.

Skills, gear, and consumables are all context sensitive.

For example, gear bonuses that affect a group are basically wasted on a solo/mostly solo player. These kinds of bonuses are often weaker than more 'selfish' gear bonuses. But these group bonuses become very useful the more players you are grouped up with.

It may also be that if you only do one thing, you only need one setup. I dabble in everything. I consider myself a dungeon tank mainly, but I enjoy pvp and pve (solo or group). So I always find myself trying new skills, old skills, and the same with new or old gear.

Not saying people don't feel constrained, but that is a feature not a problem. Make your choices and stick by them, or change them. Either way, you have a choice.

I don't want this game to become like wow where classes have lots of abilities, but you have to play the way they want you to. I am grateful that the developers of ESO have been able to let me have the choices that I do have.

JinMori wrote: »

Well, you can blame consoles for that.

Now they basically sealed the deal with how many abilities you can run, and adding a third bar is not really doable either.

Barswapping is fine, but, they are limited with how many abilities they can run.

I just think, mmos do not belong on console, period.

I also would like just 1 or 2 more abilities per bar, but it's not gonna happen.

Maybe if they allowed another load out for each bar accessible through the pause menu. Now obviously you couldn’t really change it on the fly but say you are running content where you need to switch from tank to dps or healer you can switch your load out on either your front, back or both to adjust when there is a break in the action. That’s a reasonable compromise could happen on all platforms. Though I bet PC would quickly have an add on to switch on the fly anyway!

JinMori wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

JinMori wrote: »

Well, you can blame consoles for that.

Now they basically sealed the deal with how many abilities you can run, and adding a third bar is not really doable either.

Barswapping is fine, but, they are limited with how many abilities they can run.

I just think, mmos do not belong on console, period.

I also would like just 1 or 2 more abilities per bar, but it's not gonna happen.

Maybe if they allowed another load out for each bar accessible through the pause menu. Now obviously you couldn’t really change it on the fly but say you are running content where you need to switch from tank to dps or healer you can switch your load out on either your front, back or both to adjust when there is a break in the action. That’s a reasonable compromise could happen on all platforms. Though I bet PC would quickly have an add on to switch on the fly anyway!

But that is not the same as having more skills on your bars.

I am all for allowing us to basically swap specs on the fly, that is something that has been suggested for a long time to zos, but what i am talking about is like a 6th or 7th ability on your bar.

That is probably not gonna happen because peripheral limitations, from consoles. It was a mistake to add consoles in the picture in my opinion, mmos just do not fit well in consoles.

With that in mind more skills per bar would likely need rebalancing or else you could see an even further reduction in viable builds in the game.

For instance I play a DW stam warden. If I could load up my front bar with extra shield and healing buffs I could virtually never die. It could make a jack of all trades build more viable With the risk that more people run a similar type of build.

So to balance some things would need to be nerfed and we know how people can get when you start nerfing things around here.

JinMori wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

JinMori wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

JinMori wrote: »

Well, you can blame consoles for that.

Now they basically sealed the deal with how many abilities you can run, and adding a third bar is not really doable either.

Barswapping is fine, but, they are limited with how many abilities they can run.

I just think, mmos do not belong on console, period.

I also would like just 1 or 2 more abilities per bar, but it's not gonna happen.

Maybe if they allowed another load out for each bar accessible through the pause menu. Now obviously you couldn’t really change it on the fly but say you are running content where you need to switch from tank to dps or healer you can switch your load out on either your front, back or both to adjust when there is a break in the action. That’s a reasonable compromise could happen on all platforms. Though I bet PC would quickly have an add on to switch on the fly anyway!

But that is not the same as having more skills on your bars.

I am all for allowing us to basically swap specs on the fly, that is something that has been suggested for a long time to zos, but what i am talking about is like a 6th or 7th ability on your bar.

That is probably not gonna happen because peripheral limitations, from consoles. It was a mistake to add consoles in the picture in my opinion, mmos just do not fit well in consoles.

With that in mind more skills per bar would likely need rebalancing or else you could see an even further reduction in viable builds in the game.

For instance I play a DW stam warden. If I could load up my front bar with extra shield and healing buffs I could virtually never die. It could make a jack of all trades build more viable With the risk that more people run a similar type of build.

So to balance some things would need to be nerfed and we know how people can get when you start nerfing things around here.

No, the amount of viable builds would not change for the worse, it would be either the same, or more.

You could stack more abilities to deal even more damage, you could stack more defensive abilities, or more heals, the amount of viable builds would probably increase, not decrease, or at worst remain the same. But decrease? No not really.

I can also see it your way as well. Extra skills could unleash the full potential of certain classes, again I use warden as an example because the class itself has so many skills that can fit together but you only get to choose 5+5. You could double up the same skills on both bars if you wanted to eliminate the swap. I’m already doing it with bird of prey on front and back bars so it’s like I am handicapping myself of an additional skill but I like the buffs for weaving HA when on the back bar. It’s super basic and probably not optimal DPS but it’s a less complicated sequence.

Agreed with OP. 5 +1 skills feels a bit like kindergarten level "let's not make things too complicated" MMO.

I doubt if it is ever gong to change though.

12 skills is fine. My issue with 12 slots is that often too many of these slots are taken up by abilities which only serve to provide a passive. Placing passive buffs or stat buffs on skills with the requirement being only that they're slotted to gain that buff was a mistake and I'd like to see basically all of those removed so that we're incentivized to put more usable skills on our bar instead of placeholders.

This is how the game always have been. You started new and comparin this to other MMOs but this one is a fast MMO. MMOs are fast and have little skills, Black desert is a faster MMO (slower than ESO imo) and it have a few skills to use too.

Fun combat is one of the big reason this game still hold. Other is Elder Scrools title.