Too many abilities. Time to overhaul.

[Ricul]

My first MMO had a copious amount of abilities to choose from during combat. Modern MMOs have approximately five to choose from. If we continue this trend, the next generation of MMOs will have one ability to choose from.

 

Anyone ever seen the movie, "Idiocracy?"

 

Seriously, you can press hotkey #1 from beginning to end in this game and still win, assuming you don't do OPs or PvP.

 

Sorry but i cannot take posts like this serious. You must be a Sith because "Only Sith deal in absolutes". There are things between 50 skills and 1 skill and this is called "balance".

 

I am also 100% certain that you are female because what most people refer to "fanboy" is actually all "fangirl" from my expierience.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Ricul

[DarthZaul]

What do other mmos do about aggro drops then? (genuinely curious)

 

The tank taunts lol. I think WoW had aggro drops in Wrath then got rid of them but I'm not sure, it may have never had them at all. These days DPS aggro is a total non issue, tanks just generate plenty enough threat.

Edited April 7, 2017 by DarthZaul

[omaan]

I find myself only watching my hotbar in combat. I actually NEVER see what is going on on screen. Even IF i had internalized all of the keybinds i would have to keep track of triggered abilities that have no visual clue on the actual screen but a little glowy icon on my hotbar. It is really bad.

 

In WoW they went overboard with the pruning but had it right a few expantions ago. There are two other diffirences tho. WoW had visual clues on the actual screen and secondly they had MACROS with the ability to combine a ton of skills into one button or castsequence.

 

I do NOT need 5 different attacks to apply dots with just the numbers and cooldowns being different. I do NOT need 5 different types of single/aoe stunns that do only work on trashmobs. There are rotations consisting of 20+ skills for gods sake !

 

I will also not spend a ton of cash on a mouse just to compensate bad game design. You should not have to buy specific equipment just to stay competitive.

 

This game definitely could do with some major pruning. I really would love to see what is going on on the screen once in a while.

 

I disagree. If they lower the number of abilities it will therefore, make this game easier. I am not willing to play tetris lol

[Kaldron_Fell]

Too complicated? But it's so easy! Select your desired target and press the InstaWin* button! You can ignore all other abilities if they're confusing you!

 

On a slightly more serious note, if you'd take away fusion missile, I'd have to kill you. I need it to set stuff on fire. What other way is there for a merc to make stuff burn? And you need stuff to burn! Especially Makrin!

 

 

 

*) CTRL-1

[bdatt]

The tank taunts lol. I think WoW had aggro drops in Wrath then got rid of them but I'm not sure, it may have never had them at all. These days DPS aggro is a total non issue, tanks just generate plenty enough threat.

 

We still occassionally habe issues on sword squadron walker 2 though. Other than this boss i use it in my opener and then forget. So yeah kind of a waste of a keybind.

Edited April 7, 2017 by bdatt

[Icykill_]

Some classes have more ability bloat than others.

An example is Mercs. Even though they are the easiest they've ever been to play and you don't need to use half the abilities, they still have a lot available to use. Snipers also have a lot more abilities than other classes.

They could trim a few abilities off classes, but not too many.

[mmmbuddah]

So, don't use them. Who's forcing you? And if someone's forcing you, flip him and go away.

 

Macros would give people a considerable edge over people that dont use them, hence them being a cancer on mmos. A clicker and a mmo mouse user can be on the same level with practice.

[DarthYun]

ITT people who don't seem to have the mental capacity to deal with more than 6 buttons and feel too self entitled to acknowledge that. They already removed stuff because people were too dumb to use them even though they were not part of their rotation but were really cool abilities that had some kind of 'niche' use.

 

There is no need to dumb this game down even more. Every class can be played to a reasonable level with just one quickbar.

 

I will also not spend a ton of cash on a mouse just to compensate bad game design. You should not have to buy specific equipment just to stay competitive.

 

I don't have an MMO mouse, my mouse doesn't even have buttons on the side and yet I am able to perform well on every class with everything keybound. Maybe the problem is you and not 'bad' game design?

[Edyn]

Sorry but i cannot take posts like this serious. You must be a Sith because "Only Sith deal in absolutes". There are things between 50 skills and 1 skill and this is called "balance".

 

I am also 100% certain that you are female because what most people refer to "fanboy" is actually all "fangirl" from my expierience.

 

It wasn't meant to be taken seriously, but to kind of get at a point: I don't think there's anything wrong with having a huge amount of abilities in a game because it gives people more options to play how they want with the abilities they want rather than be railroaded into five available abilities locked into one rotation dictated by cooldowns.

 

There's always going to be the most efficient way of using a huge amount of abilities, but if a casual player wants to use only a few of those because he's more concerned about cool light saber moves rather than a DPS parse, then he's free to do so, especially in a game like this where leveling is relatively easy.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Edyn

[mmmbuddah]

Some classes have more ability bloat than others.

An example is Mercs. Even though they are the easiest they've ever been to play and you don't need to use half the abilities, they still have a lot available to use. Snipers also have a lot more abilities than other classes.

They could trim a few abilities off classes, but not too many.

 

I use every ability I have as a gunslinger in one way or another. I dunno what you are talking about.....

[heythereqt]

I have to respectfully disagree. On my mando/merc, there's not one skill I have that isn't useful in the right situation. I use EVERY skill I have in PvP, and most of them in PvE. I would hate to see the system dumbed down in any way.

 

I understand your desire for a simpler rotation, and I can appreciate that - when I switch to some of my characters, I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell I'm supposed to be pushing...but that's where experience counts for something in this game.

 

I don't disagree that nearly every ability in the game is useful in the right situation. I use every single ability that my shadow and merc have in pvp.

 

The point that myself, and I think OP as well, were trying to make was that excluding situational abilities like roots and stun breakers, there are just way too many abilities in general. Does an engineering Sniper need 5 dots, 3 aoes, 4 defensive CDs, 6ish various utility abilities, and all the other primary attack abilities that the other specs have as well? There's plenty of room for pruning there without making it too simple or reducing situational effectiveness.

 

I hate to use WoW as an example, but it's perfect for this situation. They used to have terrible ability bloat, but they made it so that each class's specialization only receives the abilities that are most important to it. The rest are removed and given to the other specializations that require them. All or most of the situational abilities remain untouched. A good example of this in SWTOR would be: Arsenal Mercs keep blazing bolts, and unload is removed from the class all together. So Arsenal gets to keep an ability that is essential to its rotation, and it's removed from IO and Bodyguard in favor of those disciplines focusing more on their respective roles: dot management for IO and healing for Bodyguard. A quick and easy fix like this for every class would reduce the ability bloat significantly, but still leave us with enough abilities to react to any given situation.

[Cuiwe]

I don't disagree that nearly every ability in the game is useful in the right situation. I use every single ability that my shadow and merc have in pvp.

 

The point that myself, and I think OP as well, were trying to make was that excluding situational abilities like roots and stun breakers, there are just way too many abilities in general. Does an engineering Sniper need 5 dots, 3 aoes, 4 defensive CDs, 6ish various utility abilities, and all the other primary attack abilities that the other specs have as well? There's plenty of room for pruning there without making it too simple or reducing situational effectiveness.

 

I hate to use WoW as an example, but it's perfect for this situation. They used to have terrible ability bloat, but they made it so that each class's specialization only receives the abilities that are most important to it. The rest are removed and given to the other specializations that require them. All or most of the situational abilities remain untouched. A good example of this in SWTOR would be: Arsenal Mercs keep blazing bolts, and unload is removed from the class all together. So Arsenal gets to keep an ability that is essential to its rotation, and it's removed from IO and Bodyguard in favor of those disciplines focusing more on their respective roles: dot management for IO and healing for Bodyguard. A quick and easy fix like this for every class would reduce the ability bloat significantly, but still leave us with enough abilities to react to any given situation.

 

Don't bother. Some people still think that EQ style ability overload is somehow good for the game. I call it elitism(almost kinda like intellectual elitism tbh). Instead of having effective and fun things, they prefer to have a thing...just because it was always so( :confused: ). Kinda Darth Thanaton mentality tbh.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Cuiwe

[Icykill_]

I use every ability I have as a gunslinger in one way or another. I dunno what you are talking about.....

 

I do too, but some could possibly be combined for some classes or made passive in certain ways. They already started to go down the passive path, but it seems to only be when they add more abilities.

[Terrimando]

Plenty of games just have 8 main abilities + weapon swapping to add more. It is more than enough.

 

I don't see why you need more than just 8 at a time.

 

MMOs have changed over the years, SWTOR hasn't kept up.

[Icykill_]

Macros would give people a considerable edge over people that dont use them, hence them being a cancer on mmos. A clicker and a mmo mouse user can be on the same level with practice.

 

The stupid thing is lots of people use third party ones anyway even though they break the TOS. Marcos can be incredibly hard to see from another players point of view and even if you could isolate someone using them, Bioware won't do anything if you report them because they can't detect it.

At least if they make it a supported part of the game, everyone who doesn't want to break the TOS has the option to use them.

There are a lot more people using some form of Macros in pvp than people realise. I was in a guild 18 months ago and they said everyone should be using xyz Macros in pvp or they wouldn't group with you. I ended up leaving after I obtained what should have been enough proof for Bio to ban them. But they did nothing and still 18 months later they are using them and laughing at people.