Too Much Ability Bloat

[Coldarion]

I love Star Wars and I keep trying this game every couple of years hoping to see changes to class design because there is one thing that prevents me from sticking around and that is ABILITY BLOAT. After checking out the PTS it seems nothing has been done about it. When you have too many abilities, nothing feels special. You're just going down a checklist during combat. That's boring. And then you also have too many utilities which could be combined with other things to better streamline things.

 

I've always liked the Bounty Hunter class and the Mandalorian series really excels at presenting that fantasy. Using Mercenary as an example, here is what we need:

 

Note: Abilities with an activation time sucks. "Casting" abilities is not fun, especially when you are using guns. Everything should be instant with the few exceptions that make sense to channel. If you don't want to do that baseline due to legacy class design, then at least offer instant cast upgrade abilities in the Ability Tree.

 

SINGLE TARGET:

Rapid Shots - Filler ability

Power Shot / Tracer Shot - Main ability

Heatseeker Missiles / Incendiary Missile - Secondary ability

Unload / Blazing Bolts - Powerful ability

 

MULTIPLE TARGET:

Missile Blast - Main ability

Death from Above - Powerful ability

 

OFFENSIVE COOLDOWN:

Supercharged Gas

 

OFFENSIVE UTILITY COOLDOWN:

Electro Net

Jet Boost

 

 

 

 

ABILITIES MOVED TO ABILITY TREE:

Rail Shot / Mag Shot - Power and functionality upgrade / replacement for Power Shot / Tracer Shot (No cooldown)

Thermal Detonator

Explosive Dart - Power upgrade / replacement for Jet Boost

 

 

 

ABILITIES REMOVED:

Priming Shot / Serrated Shot - Boring. Bloat.

Power Surge - Not needed with an instant cast upgrade available in Ability Tree.

Sweeping Blasters - We have Missile Blast already and this infringes on the feel of Smuggler/Agent gameplay.

Fusion Missile - Bloat.

Kolto Shot OR Rapid Scan - Merged into one Instant ability

Edited November 3, 2021 by Coldarion

[Zunayson]

Firstly, hard disagree on instants. Ranged classes have to cast in order to balance them against melee, who never have to cast or channel (We dont talk about old ravage or flamethrower). The only classes who get to out-kite melee are 10 meter range classes, which are kind of soft-melee. How would it be fair for you to unload a rotation at 30m range against a melee, *while moving at full movement speed?*

 

Kolto shot shouldn't be merged with anything, because it is good to have a filler heal without a cooldown or heat cost.

 

Really curious how you consider Jet Boost to be an offensive utility. Usually mobility for a ranged class is considered a defensive ability. Replacing it with explosive dart would never happen from a PvP perspective -- explosive dart is crap damage, and is a perfect example of ability bloat based on how your post is laid out.

 

Explosive Dart is mostly another checklist to hit while grinding mob groups of 3-4 standard enemies pre-level-30 in vanilla, before you achieved your core talents. Back in vanilla, your spammable placeable AoE (Sweeping Blasters) was extremely heat inefficient, and very weak. So, you would pop fusion missile, explosive dart, and flamethrower and most standard groups couldn't survive that. If you needed to clean them up, you'd use sweeping gunfire once. Any more and you'd kill your heat. Sweeping Blasters was sort of like Rapid shots but AoE: filler. Fast forward now, and Sweeping Blasters is so powerful it's better than an auto-attack, which is silly to me. So yeah, explosive dart and fusion missile seem like bloat now, because they're no better than Sweeping Gunfire but have a cooldown for some reason.

 

Missile Blast has a similar story: pre 3.0, missile blast was what you call the "Main Ability" of Bounty Hunters. At level 10 you'd become a powertech and replace it with Flame Burst which is more heat efficient; or for mercenary it was replaced by Power shot or even Tracer missile. Missile blast was never to be used except in absolute rare circumstances. Now years later, the devs attempt to make these useless skills relevant by adding silly talents, which is why merc IO merc has some some stuff involving Missile Blast and explosive dart. Instead of adding talents to give these useless abilities a home, they should have just evicted them.

 

You're 100% correct that Priming Shot and Serrated Shot are bloat. The reason they are in the game is because when 2014 rolled around, EA stakeholders wanted an expansion pack added, and when you add an expansion pack you have to add abilities: it's just What You Do. The game was absolutely fine before these extra abilities, but the business called for adding Fresh New Things, so that's what happened. Nevermind that IO is based around burns and not bleeds.

Edited November 3, 2021 by Zunayson

[Cedia]

I agree with the OP, and this is one reason why I'm going to have my Merc become a Gunslinger in 7.0.

 

You mention several abilities that are necessary at low levels, and I agree with this. However, why can they not simply be morphed into something else? It becomes confusing for a new player when all of a sudden they don't know which abilities are important anymore.

[Coldarion]

Firstly, hard disagree on instants. Ranged classes have to cast in order to balance them against melee, who never have to cast or channel (We dont talk about old ravage or flamethrower). The only classes who get to out-kite melee are 10 meter range classes, which are kind of soft-melee. How would it be fair for you to unload a rotation at 30m range against a melee, *while moving at full movement speed?*

 

Ranged can already unload at a 30m range on melee. But why would they be moving at full speed? You have to think outside of the box. Melee should have the mobility and snares to even the playing field. They are re-balancing things with all of these changes, so solutions to minor problems like this shouldn't be an issue. The most important thing is to have fun gameplay and work down from there. Instant cast abilities are more fun and now is the perfect time to open up some customization for the players.

 

Also, imagine upgrading Tracer Shot with a reworked Mag Shot in the Ability Tree. And in the same row of talents that choice is put against say Thermal Detonator, Fusion Missile or another ability with a utility function. There are many ways to make things work.

 

Kolto shot shouldn't be merged with anything, because it is good to have a filler heal without a cooldown or heat cost

 

My point here is that we do not need 3 different healing abilities. Having Emergency Scan and Rapid Scan makes the most sense thematically. What and how Rapid Scan works is up for debate. If Rapid Scan works exactly like Kolto Shot, but with extra healing, then go with that.

 

Really curious how you consider Jet Boost to be an offensive utility. Usually mobility for a ranged class is considered a defensive ability. Replacing it with explosive dart would never happen from a PvP perspective -- explosive dart is crap damage, and is a perfect example of ability bloat based on how your post is laid out.

 

Jet Boost deals some damage and knocks back enemies. Not sure what else you would call it? Explosive Dart does the same thing except from range. There is no reason to have both. So it makes sense to me that we would have Jet Boost baseline and then Explosive Shot as a ranged upgrade in the Ability Tree that deals increased damage with a similar function.

Edited November 3, 2021 by Coldarion

[Zunayson]

Jet Boost deals some damage and knocks back enemies. Not sure what else you would call it? Explosive Dart does the same thing except from range. There is no reason to have both. So it makes sense to me that we would have Jet Boost baseline and then Explosive Shot as a ranged upgrade in the Ability Tree that deals increased damage with a similar function.

 

Ah, I was confused. You're talking about the knockback and for a moment there I was thinking of Rocket Out. either way, when i read "Jet Boost" and "Offensive" I immediately knew you were wrong anyway.

 

So this game is weird, and has attached a pitiful amount of damage to some knockback abilities. Absolutely nobody uses jet boost to damage a group of players. Jet boost is a knockback, because all ranged classes have a knockback. So, it is a defensive ability, because it is a kiting tool for melee. If you double down and claim that Jet boost is offensive because it deals more than 0 damage, I will assume you are trolling. Unless you are suggesting the team redesign Jet Boost to be a move that does significant damage, in addition to also having a knockback? (Like how Snipers use Penetrating blasts/series of shots to deal damage, and can talent a knockback which is nice to have)

 

Your take on missile blast also confuses me. Last I checked (and maybe this has changed) the AoE for missile blast is a pitiful joke. Missile blast is "Aoe" for thematic reasons only. Absolutely nobody uses missile blast because there are 3 enemies they want to damage simultaneously. Fusion missile, explosive dart, DFA, and Sweeping gunfire are all normal aoe that deal x damage to multiple targets. Missile Blast deals x damage to a single target, then tickles everyone else with y damage. Are you suggesting the team redesign missile blast to be an aoe that does the same amount of damage to everyone? (Like Frag grenade from smuggler/agent)

[xordevoreaux]

No two people would agree what all to pare down to what, and trust any such request to go completely overboard:

 

SWTOR 8.0:

 

1) Kill things button

2) Heal things button

Edited November 3, 2021 by xordevoreaux

[Coldarion]

Ah, I was confused. You're talking about the knockback and for a moment there I was thinking of Rocket Out. either way, when i read "Jet Boost" and "Offensive" I immediately knew you were wrong anyway.

 

So this game is weird, and has attached a pitiful amount of damage to some knockback abilities. Absolutely nobody uses jet boost to damage a group of players. Jet boost is a knockback, because all ranged classes have a knockback. So, it is a defensive ability, because it is a kiting tool for melee. If you double down and claim that Jet boost is offensive because it deals more than 0 damage, I will assume you are trolling. Unless you are suggesting the team redesign Jet Boost to be a move that does significant damage, in addition to also having a knockback? (Like how Snipers use Penetrating blasts/series of shots to deal damage, and can talent a knockback which is nice to have)

 

Your take on missile blast also confuses me. Last I checked (and maybe this has changed) the AoE for missile blast is a pitiful joke. Missile blast is "Aoe" for thematic reasons only. Absolutely nobody uses missile blast because there are 3 enemies they want to damage simultaneously. Fusion missile, explosive dart, DFA, and Sweeping gunfire are all normal aoe that deal x damage to multiple targets. Missile Blast deals x damage to a single target, then tickles everyone else with y damage. Are you suggesting the team redesign missile blast to be an aoe that does the same amount of damage to everyone? (Like Frag grenade from smuggler/agent)

 

Assume that numbers would be adjusted to make things work better and be more fun.

[Twortas]

I agree with OP, still to many abilities that seemingly has no function other than erh we need something i guess or bars will look empty.

 

cast time i think are needed, though it moving at 15-20% while casting might be a usefull default.

 

And i got to admit i also would like mercenaries to use missile blast more, purely because i have fun lobbing missiles at mobs

[TheVoyant]

Never understood this tbh.

I play primarily Merc and Sorc, have 4 hotbars keybinded for combat purposes and I love it.

 

Why is having more tools and options a bad thing?

Can always just not use them. Its one of the strengths of the game in current version.

 

So many games have minimal choices which in turn make the games less strategic.

[robwettengel]

I make use of a Logitech G600 gaming mouse. I have had four of them over the lifetime of this game. On the left hand side of the mouse are a dozen buttons that are keyed to the 1 - =/+ keyboard keys. Makes using my offensive abilities and primary defenses a breeze.

 

Players need to customize their quickbars how they want them to suit their play-style and what is efficient for them. If they do not have enough common sense to realize this is something they need to do as they progress and get more abilities, unsubbing and quitting is likely their best option. Players are not forced to use ANY ability.

[LordCamTheGreat]

What the OP is suggesting is a completely different game more akin to ESO (though even that has casting times).

 

I still think the best way forward would be to add a load of new player friendly tutorials and preset quickbar loadouts for "normal" and "advanced" users. Tutorials would range from basic rotations to when interrupts should be used and how to set up your quickbar keybinds.

 

Normal mode would have the bare minimum amount of abilities required to progress through story mode content.

 

Advanced mode would have everything available. Both modes would of course still be customisable in case the user wants to add more or less things and shift their positions.

 

This way, new players would be eased into the game with handy official tutorials (potentially with help from community members who know what they're talking about i.e. guide writers) and advanced/veteran players would be free to keep as many or as few abilities as they want.

 

 

Ultimately I do not believe that blanket nerfing every class and seemingly randomly moving abilities just for the sake of reducing the number of abilities by x amount will attract new players. Removing half the DCDs from a sentinel does not change the fact that they have 10+ ability long rotations for e.g.

Merging or pruning more or less useless abilities for 90% of content such as stealth scan is great for the casual player, but removing the choice from all players is terrible.

 

Carefully pruning excess survivability and mobility and merging certain damaging abilities with the intent for more rapid balancing is good. (for e.g. merging missile blast into incendiary missile for IO so instead of using it once when volatile warhead procs, it instead causes incendiary to do extra on hit damage)

 

New players need more information and we need well reasoned ability pruning - neither of which we are getting in 7.0 from what I have seen having tested every combat style on PTS.

[Zunayson]

Tutorials would range from basic rotations to when interrupts should be used and how to set up your quickbar keybinds.

 

we used to have an extensive tutorial on when to use CC, interrupts and how to do rotations. It was called leveling but by making the game so easy and the process so short it causes new players to not learn how to play the game

Edited November 7, 2021 by Zunayson

[LordCamTheGreat]

we used to have an extensive tutorial on when to use CC, interrupts and how to do rotations. It was called leveling but by making the game so easy and the process so short it causes new players to not learn how to play the game

 

That's not a tutorial, that's blindly stumbling through content until you figure out mechanics on your own. You can be absolutely certain that many new players will not figure things out on their own and it's not always necessarily their fault.

 

A proper tutorial for an interrupt (for e.g.) would offer a pop-up showing a short video of how the interrupt is used in a fight and how certain bosses are immune to them when they have a specific buff. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why the devs shouldn't be making an abundance of tutorials targeted towards new players when their whole philosophy for 7.0 seems to be - remove choice from veteran players and prune abilities to incentivise new players.