Pruning Abilities via Combination

[MaximusRex]

I've been playing MMOs a long time, and pruning abilities is always controversial. One thing BioWare can do that might help is trying to combine multiple abilities that behave similarly, and adjust their cost and cool down duration to reduce abilities while retaining function and utility.

 

Examples for an Immortal Sith Jugg:

 

Saber Throw and Vicious Throw. These are similar in that you throw your lightsaber at an enemy. Vicious Throw is a low HP execute, and Saber Throw is a rage builder. Vicious Throw can proc under certain circumstances to be used at higher HP. These could potentially be combined into one ability that changes based on target HP, which Vicious Throw already does, and when it procs.

 

Force Charge and Intercede. These are both abilities where you leap to a target, one being a hostile, and the other a friendly. Operative's Holo Traverse already functions similarly to how a combined version of Force Charge and Intercede might work.

 

Smash and Sweeping Slash. This might be pushing the concept a bit. Both are AOE damage abilities that hit 8 nearby targets. Sweeping Slash is spammable to the extent you have rage, smash has a decent cooldown. They could be combined into smash with a shorter cooldown and a dot. This would be the biggest gameplay style change I have suggested so far, but such a change if balanced correctly could still maintain some tanking AOE Aggro.

 

DCDs could also be combined with some of the shared utility with greatly reduced CDs to maintain availability.

[epicyoo]

I agree that they should combine vs take away abilities. Nobody likes their class losing abilities, especially if it is a lot at one time, but it really is too bloated currently. Something needs to happen.

[SOULCASTER]

I agree that they should combine vs take away abilities. Nobody likes their class losing abilities, especially if it is a lot at one time, but it really is too bloated currently. Something needs to happen.

 

Well the problem is SOME classes are too bloated. Play Tank Powertech and you'll find you really only have like 5 abilities and could probably use more. Play DPS/Merc Healer, and you'll need to plug in your 88key Yamaha Piano for room for additional keybinds.

 

But yes combining some pruned abilities together with others, rather than straight deleting them is more ideal.

Edited July 10, 2021 by SOULCASTER

[EHKodiak]

Agreed Maximus. Just looking at my operative, there's so many skills that do basically the same thing. Just trim them down by combining them

 

I do view the trimming of abilities as necessary though, we've got quickbars full of them, it's ludicrous. ESO makes do with 5.

Edited July 10, 2021 by EHKodiak

[MordredSJT]

Agreed Maximus. Just looking at my operative, there's so many skills that do basically the same thing. Just trim them down by combining them

 

I do view the trimming of abilities as necessary though, we've got quickbars full of them, it's ludicrous. ESO makes do with 5.

 

ESO seems to make due with 5, but then you eventually get weapon swap and realize to really do your job in anything other than the overland content you need to use the back bar and all 10 slots. ESO is also an action combat game, and you get an interrupt, a stun break, a block, a dodge roll, light weapon attack, and heavy weapon attack that don't take up quickbar slots. They are all used through movement keys or mouse button presses and holds. A sprint as well. There's also stealth (sneak) that is available to all players. So that's 17 "abilities" so far with those 5 button bars. I forgot about the Ultimate abilities on each bar though. That's 19 now. Plus, they just added companions to the game...and those companions have their own Ultimate abilities that you have to trigger to use...that's up to 20. You also need to learn how to weave light attacks in between all your abilities to animation cancel in order to get optimal dps output.

 

Of course, you can get through a lot of content by just standing there and pressing 1-5 over and over again. However, to actually master your character and get through the advanced content with mechanics, or to solo difficult content...you need to be ready to use all 20+ of those abilities at the appropriate times, while managing cooldowns and timers for dots and buffs/debuffs.

 

And that's a game with "simple" combat. It isn't, it just isn't quickbar focused combat. This game is.

[Alssaran]

They are actually doing that. For example, Freezing Force - which was a niche ability to begin with - is becoming a passive called Blade Burst that you can take instead of Saber Throw. Now, honestly, I never had much use for Freezing Force in PvE. The movement speed increase from Persistent Chill is nice, but the AoE component is minimal. It was better in PvP, but here on the other hand Saber Throw wasn't as useful as more charge abilities or slows.

 

Hence why Blade Burst seems to be a thing now. I would go with Saber Throw 90% of the time when I do PvE, but I could imagine creating a full AoE built or a PvP built that utilizes Blade Burst instead of it provided I can switch easily.

 

DCDs could also be combined with some of the shared utility with greatly reduced CDs to maintain availability.

 

I don't think it's a good idea to combine DCD. For example, take energy shield with utilities. Given you choose the right utilities it reduces damage taken by 25%, decreases ability pushback by 30%, increases healing received by 20%, makes you immune to interrupts and build Trauma Regulators that heal you for up to 40% when it ends. That's five effects on a single DCD. What they need to do isn't merge anything on there, it's make those mutually exclusive utilities. Then Responsive Safeguards absorbs single target damage coming in for six seconds, returns 50% of that damage to the attacker and heals you for a certain amount each time you take damage. Again, that's three layers and four if you spend an utility point. And that's leaving out the other things like damage reduction you can spec into.

 

Some classes don't need more layers on their DCD, but far less.

 

I know that this is an unpopular opinion, but I think that sometimes taking away an ability or two isn't a bad thing. Nobody likes feeling like they are "losing" something, I get that, but if an ability is literally so niche that you might press it once a year on christmas eve, then maybe just taking it out is the best option. Failing that, making it into a passive might be alright in cases such as Freezing Force. It's a good ability in a very specific form of comment where the other choice might not even be that useful if Blade Storm still has an extended range. If Blade Storm has extended range, the AoE damage and the slow from Freezing Force, then I'd personally say that is more useful to me than Saber Throw in PvP.

 

ESO is also an action combat game, and you get an interrupt, a stun break, a block, a dodge roll, light weapon attack, and heavy weapon attack that don't take up quickbar slots.

 

Counting things such as movement rolls, basic attacks of different kinds and blocking as "abilities" just to bloat your numbers is a very dishonest argument either way. When we talk about the complexity of abilities, let's stick with abilities. Not extensions of the movement system. I agree ESO needs ten abilities instead of five to effectively play, but bloating the number to 20 with pedantic counting doesn't help your point.

Edited July 10, 2021 by Alssaran

[mike_carton]

I agree that they should combine vs take away abilities. Nobody likes their class losing abilities, especially if it is a lot at one time, but it really is too bloated currently. Something needs to happen.

 

I have complained about ability bloat in the past. Streamlining abilities is a good idea in my opinion. But it cannot be done in isolation. The developers need to consider the impact on PvE encounters while combining or eliminating abilities. Most importantly, they need to redesign the abilities and fight mechanics of mobs and bosses to ensure that the balance between mobs and player characters does not change.

 

Example: If you're going to take away the Interrupts, make sure interrupts are not needed on any fights in the game.

 

Then there is the question of cooldowns. If you eliminate some offensive abilities, you need to reduce the cooldowns on remaining offensive abilities; otherwise, there will be time windows in a fight where the player character will have to stand around doing nothing.

 

The changes need to be such that the health and damage output of the bosses match up with the healing output of the healers and the DTPS ability of the tanks while ensuring that the DPS checks can be met.

 

I checked on Onderon and in Sov FP; they don't seem to have made any such changes. What's worse is that the Companions have less than 30K health (and so die in 10 seconds) which makes "testing" even more pointless. Then there is the question of why they left Taunt and guard on a Vigilance Guardian.

Edited July 10, 2021 by mike_carton

[MordredSJT]

Counting things such as movement rolls, basic attacks of different kinds and blocking as "abilities" just to bloat your numbers is a very dishonest argument either way. When we talk about the complexity of abilities, let's stick with abilities. Not extensions of the movement system. I agree ESO needs ten abilities instead of five to effectively play, but bloating the number to 20 with pedantic counting doesn't help your point.

 

I don't think it is dishonest at all in this context. If you compare ESO to SWTOR, then what would be the equivalent of the dodge roll say? It's an ability on your bar that you hit. Block is essentially an on demand defensive cooldown that consume resources. I don't think there is a direct comparison skill in SWTOR, but if they create one, it would be an ability on your bar. The basic weapon attacks are...abilities that are on your bar (though most people take them off at some point because we stop using them). Interrupting is holding the right mouse button and tapping the left mouse button in ESO, but in SWTOR it is...an ability that is on your bar. In ESO, those ten spots on your bar are in essence your rotation or essential core skills, and all the stuff that isn't on your bar is the basic utility package that every single character gets regardless of class.

 

I actually like both combat systems for different reasons, but saying that ESO gets away with just 5 abilities on your bar as a justification for pruning abilities is actually a little disingenuous in my eyes, which is why I made that comment. They took a lot of the functionality that exists in a SWTOR type system and put it off the quickbar and onto standardized keyboard and mouse buttons. Edit - they do still have less "abilities" total than SWTOR does, which leads into my next paragraph.

 

I actually have 1-12, shift + 1-12, and alt + 1-12 all bound on every one of my characters in SWTOR, and I use all those keybinds. I'd actually be fine with knocking that number down quite a bit, but not by taking away functionality that has existed for some time now, and is part of the way the class is played.

 

I realize that I'm probably an edge case in a some ways. I play PVE and PVP. I have an MMO mouse. I keep up a fairly high apm. I just move fast. The thing I liked the least about the play experience on test right now was that I actually ended up waiting for a button to press instead of always having something off cooldown. It just felt slower and less engaging for me mentally. If they tweaked the global, reduced some cooldowns, or put more abilities off the global that problem would go away.

 

Besides, how am I supposed to play Huttball on my tank without blade blitz / mad dash? :-P

Edited July 10, 2021 by MordredSJT

[MordredSJT]

The developers need to consider the impact on PvE encounters while combining or eliminating abilities. Most importantly, they need to redesign the abilities and fight mechanics of mobs and bosses to ensure that the balance between mobs and player characters does not change.

 

Example: If you're going to take away the Interrupts, make sure interrupts are not needed on any fights in the game.

 

Then there is the question of cooldowns. If you eliminate some offensive abilities, you need to reduce the cooldowns on remaining offensive abilities; otherwise, there will be time windows in a fight where the player character will have to stand around doing nothing.

 

So much this. I'm assuming they aren't taking away the interrupts, but if they actually did...then they seriously need to look at a bunch of encounters in the game to take that into account. If we can't do X anymore, then X can't be required to successfully complete any encounter in the game.

 

I also, as mentioned in my post above, hate standing around doing nothing...and I started to feel that a little in the combat on test. It was just trash mobs, not tanking a FP or Operation though.

[Alssaran]

I don't think it is dishonest at all in this context. If you compare ESO to SWTOR, then what would be the equivalent of the dodge roll say? It's an ability on your bar that you hit. Block is essentially an on demand defensive cooldown that consume resources. I don't think there is a direct comparison skill in SWTOR, but if they create one, it would be an ability on your bar.

 

The problem is that you're comparing a mostly "action" based combat system with one that is tab-targeting based. It would be a similarly bad comparison to compare TERA with WoW or BDO with FFXIV. You don't have on-demand blocks in SWTOR as much as you have defensive cooldowns that increase your chance to automatically block. Systems like ESO are built on the principle that if you're good enough, you can evade and block a lot more. SWTOR (much like WoW and FFXIV) are based on the old "roll the dice" principle - whether you get a block or not is decided by RNG.

 

There is a roll mechanic, but it's a movement ability for a specific class. There's also saber reflect as a technical "block", but once again, a very specific ability for a very specific class. The two combat systems have fundamentally different principles, hence why I think that someone shouldn't conflate movement in a combat system with specific abilities.

 

I actually have 1-12, shift + 1-12, and alt + 1-12 all bound on every one of my characters in SWTOR, and I use all those keybinds. I'd actually be fine with knocking that number down quite a bit, but not by taking away functionality that has existed for some time now, and is part of the way the class is played.

 

But that's not happening. A couple of things are going away. At the moment, there are three abilities that are completely unaccounted for: Guardian Leap, Challenging Call and Force Clarity.

 

Everything else is accounted for somewhere. Some are already in. Others will be choices you can opt-in for instead of passives. Some others are simply missing ATM but are referenced in passive choices. That means they aren't removing them, but they simply aren't in this stage of PTR. Two are merged into passives. For example, Freezing Force is becoming Blade Burst and will be added onto Blade Storm if you'd rather have that for PvP rather than Saber Throw, which has limited usability in PvP, anyhow. A long-range Blade Storm with a slow effect and AoE damage would even be more functional than Saber Throw is ATM when we're talking about pure "is this useful?"

 

I've been a ten year Guardian main, and I don't feel like basic functionality is being taken away. I said in my feedback post that it feels different, but neither good or bad. I didn't suddenly feel like my Guardian wasn't a Guardian anymore. It's just that a couple of things are missing that (based on passive texts) will be added soon.

[MaximusRex]

They are actually doing that. For example, Freezing Force - which was a niche ability to begin with - is becoming a passive called Blade Burst that you can take instead of Saber Throw. Now, honestly, I never had much use for Freezing Force in PvE.

 

I really don't consider freezing force and saber throw similar though. One is a ranged attack and rage builder that is good for pulling, and the other is a melee ranged AOE that I actually use with the utility for a little more AOE aggro and not using a DCD for a little bit of speed is also useful for me. And while I am open to some pruning, this is where it becomes dicey as someone like me who utilizes it a lot is going to potentially be faced a a bit of a gameplay change.

 

I don't think it's a good idea to combine DCD. For example, take energy shield with utilities. Given you choose the right utilities it reduces damage taken by 25%, decreases ability pushback by 30%, increases healing received by 20%, makes you immune to interrupts and build Trauma Regulators that heal you for up to 40% when it ends. That's five effects on a single DCD. What they need to do isn't merge anything on there, it's make those mutually exclusive utilities. Then Responsive Safeguards absorbs single target damage coming in for six seconds, returns 50% of that damage to the attacker and heals you for a certain amount each time you take damage. Again, that's three layers and four if you spend an utility point. And that's leaving out the other things like damage reduction you can spec into.

 

Some classes don't need more layers on their DCD, but far less.

 

That's a fair point, DCDs just came to mind as something that mostly serves a similar purpose, so there might have been some room for consolidation there.

 

I know that this is an unpopular opinion, but I think that sometimes taking away an ability or two isn't a bad thing. Nobody likes feeling like they are "losing" something, I get that, but if an ability is literally so niche that you might press it once a year on christmas eve, then maybe just taking it out is the best option. Failing that, making it into a passive might be alright in cases such as Freezing Force. It's a good ability in a very specific form of comment where the other choice might not even be that useful if Blade Storm still has an extended range. If Blade Storm has extended range, the AoE damage and the slow from Freezing Force, then I'd personally say that is more useful to me than Saber Throw in PvP.

 

I would say I probably mostly agree with you here, I just don't want to see my characters start to play majorly differently or lose utility, and some people use some abilities differently. Like mentioned above I use Freezing Force and Saber Throw fairly regularly, but I am interested in the how Freezing Forces works with the utility point, if I could keep those things added to other abilities, I would be fine with it going away, I think making sure utility doesn't go away as well as iconic abilities like saber throw, that would do a lot to foster acceptance.

 

Some disciplines, especially healers, could use some trimming down for sure. I have 40ish keybinds, and none of my healers can get all of their abilities I use regularly within that. To be fair those also encompass Class Recharge, Class Buffs, Rocket Boots and Speeder, but still, that seems a bit excessive. I think Advance Classes that could heal would be well served to reduce some base DPS abilities, and then give less, and different abilities wot healers, maybe with some kinds of synergy to them that if the player maintain some smaller DPS rotation it buffs itself so that soloing doesn't suck, but the way it buffs itself is too difficult to maintain if they are doing a lot of healing, so they can't be a DPS and Healing powerhouse all in one, but soloing doesn't suck too bad.

[ZionHalcyon]

I have complained about ability bloat in the past. Streamlining abilities is a good idea in my opinion. But it cannot be done in isolation. The developers need to consider the impact on PvE encounters while combining or eliminating abilities. Most importantly, they need to redesign the abilities and fight mechanics of mobs and bosses to ensure that the balance between mobs and player characters does not change.

 

Example: If you're going to take away the Interrupts, make sure interrupts are not needed on any fights in the game.

 

Then there is the question of cooldowns. If you eliminate some offensive abilities, you need to reduce the cooldowns on remaining offensive abilities; otherwise, there will be time windows in a fight where the player character will have to stand around doing nothing.

 

The changes need to be such that the health and damage output of the bosses match up with the healing output of the healers and the DTPS ability of the tanks while ensuring that the DPS checks can be met.

 

I checked on Onderon and in Sov FP; they don't seem to have made any such changes. What's worse is that the Companions have less than 30K health (and so die in 10 seconds) which makes "testing" even more pointless. Then there is the question of why they left Taunt and guard on a Vigilance Guardian.

 

I agree with the concept of balance here.

 

I happen to think, however, the key is to make each loadout feel unique - if you take out interrupts for one class, then allow stuns to also interrupt, and give that class some different stun abilities and take away boss stun immunity - make it so that a crowd control type playstyle is viable.

 

Thats the deal. It doesn't have to be every class gets an interrupt, but make sure there are loadouts that can do that job, and more to the point, have them achieve the goal (interrupting a boss attack) in different ways (interrupt, stun, maybe taunt resets an attack and redirects it to the tank, etc).