Ability Pruning

[Barbossa_HUN]

7.0 Dropped a year ago.

What do you all think about the ability pruning that came with it?

Do you prefer the game as it is now or was it better with more abilities (Dcds, CCs, Stuns) overall?

[TonyTricicolo]

There was bloat in some classes and some abilities needed combining but on the other hand utilities should never have been removed because it provided people with options for various scenarios. 

Combining 3 grenades into 1 grenade=YES!

Having to choose between a reflect/shield, a hinderance escape, or a heal=NO!

[TrixxieTriss]

Prefer it the way it was with more abilities. Honestly, the ability pruning only made sense if BioWare were ready to launch the game on a console or on the steam handheld. But seeing as that wasn’t the reason, the ability pruning made no sense & has actually made the game less fun. 

[Barbossa_HUN]

21 minutes ago, TonyTricicolo said:

There was bloat in some classes and some abilities needed combining but on the other hand utilities should never have been removed because it provided people with options for various scenarios. 

Combining 3 grenades into 1 grenade=YES!

Having to choose between a reflect/shield, a hinderance escape, or a heal=NO!

 

20 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Prefer it the way it was with more abilities. Honestly, the ability pruning only made sense if BioWare were ready to launch the game on a console or on the steam handheld. But seeing as that wasn’t the reason, the ability pruning made no sense & has actually made the game less fun. 

I definitely preferred having more abilities to choose from. It made the game less tiresome when grinding the same dailies and weeklies for years.

Even for leveling a new character, not having to suffer the third knockback from a low level mob was probably better for the gaming experience, or getting a damned sweeping slash early on Korriban for example.

Now we have less abilites spread out thinly with a higher level cap.

[SteveTheCynic]

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Prefer it the way it was with more abilities. Honestly, the ability pruning only made sense if BioWare were ready to launch the game on a console or on the steam handheld. But seeing as that wasn’t the reason, the ability pruning made no sense & has actually made the game less fun. 

If they had really been planning such a thing, they'd have trimmed the abilities a *lot* further.

[DeannaVoyager]

Preferred it with more abilities and with more balance regarding abilities between classes. Some classes lost some pretty crucial stuff, some lost nothing important.

Before 7.0 we could bring pretty much any class to any fight, now only some are really viable. For example jugg tank is the only tank without any kind of speed buff now. Sins can spec for it + force speed, PT has hydraulics, juggs: none. PT and sin tanks have aoe root, juggs need to spec for it and lose mad dash and reflect in return. It's absurd that we have a tank class without speed buff and without proper group CC. Being a main jugg/guardian tank for years, I don't enjoy the game that much anymore, because I can't bring my main class into many of the fights. Being forced to play classes I don't want to play makes the game less enjoyable. Some dev must have had their ass kicked hard in pvp by a juggernaut, because nothing else explains why they butchered the class. 

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

If they had really been planning such a thing, they'd have trimmed the abilities a *lot* further.

I still don’t know what their rationale was for the changes. 

[Ahwassa]

4 hours ago, TonyTricicolo said:

Having to choose between a reflect/shield, a hinderance escape, or a heal=NO!

Poor little mercs - they surely don´t have enough dcds /s

They still have more baseline than most classes but they´ll still complain.

[Ardrossan]

It seems like they wanted to increase the difficulty from the character end but I don't think that succeeded. It's not more difficult, it's just more boring. To increase the difficulty there's lots of more effective things they could have done, including reducing xp, reducing HP / Armor rating for both companions and PCs, increasing DPS of mobs, increasing frequency of silver/gold mobs etc.

 

[ThanderSnB]

I didn't like losing abilities, but I do like the different passive bonuses to choose from. I like experimenting with different combinations and switching depending on the type of content. For example, with solo stuff I like builds with AoE, for endgame PvE I like single target builds, and for PvP I like to use some of survivability or crowd control bonuses.

I think Bioware changed them because the old system had utilities that players rarely switched between. The choices in the new system have more impact. I don't think it was to reduce how many abilities are on players' bars because they didn't prune enough to do that. I don't think it was for balance reasons because most classes weren't changed all that much (really just Commando/Mercenary).

Edited April 13, 2023 by ThanderSnB

[HypSpec]

It seems like one of the main justifications from the devs in regards to ability pruning/choices in 7.0 was tied to "seldom used", "overcomplexity for new players", or similar. I think there is more intentionality in it, and as a result, not something we will see revert back to a large degree. I can see them maybe switching up some choices based on player feedback, but do not see the net # of abilities going back to where it was.

I liken it to Magic: the Gathering in that each color that can be used to build decks come with inherent strengths and weaknesses. When cards are introduced that greatly reduce a weakness (or its impact on the meta), that color tends to dominate and skews the meta limiting the number of viable decks/color combinations. When this has happened, the game has suffered. I think BW is intentional about not allowing each class to do everything well, and it shows in melee vs ranged, not just between classes/specs/roles.

This is likely apparent to most and makes some sense, but 'how' they drive differences and maintain an effective balance remains a debate. I am fine with a merc being really good at this and not so good at that, but I think we all agree that there are 'base' capabilities all classes should have that make them universally viable to some extent regardless of content.

I would like to see BW (after having a year of data and feedback) revisit their choices holistically and deliver on changes that drive viability across all classes/specs/roles. It may mean an extra ability hear and there, but probably better balancing the choices. Part of the intended differentiation may need to be driven by hard choices, but not all choices should result in a big compromise and rather a default choice is present but the other two are optimal situationally.

I was not supportive of the change at the onset, 'ok' with it now, but like many others still see a lot of opportunity to diminish viability gaps further.

[LD_Little_Dragon]

10 hours ago, ThanderSnB said:

 

I think Bioware changed them because the old system had utilities that players rarely switched between.

 

I don't change the ability choices anymore than I used to change the old utilties.  Most still have a pretty clear 'best' slot. Same as the old utilities it's mostly changing between 'best for pvp' and 'best for pve'.

It's also messing with new/casual players since some of bioware's defaults are ... really bad choices. 

 

[ThanderSnB]

5 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

 

I don't change the ability choices anymore than I used to change the old utilties.  Most still have a pretty clear 'best' slot. Same as the old utilities it's mostly changing between 'best for pvp' and 'best for pve'.

It's also messing with new/casual players since some of bioware's defaults are ... really bad choices. 

 

The defaults are usually good for solo stuff, which is the main thing players do while leveling up. At max level, players can read a guide for better ones or figure it out themselves by experimenting.

[StrikePrice]

On 4/12/2023 at 1:00 AM, Barbossa_HUN said:

7.0 Dropped a year ago.

What do you all think about the ability pruning that came with it?

Do you prefer the game as it is now or was it better with more abilities (Dcds, CCs, Stuns) overall?

I miss having all the abilities, but I like that there are hard choices for some classes and not everyone can have everything. I think it's more balanced this way.

[StrikePrice]

13 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

 

I don't change the ability choices anymore than I used to change the old utilties.  Most still have a pretty clear 'best' slot. Same as the old utilities it's mostly changing between 'best for pvp' and 'best for pve'.

It's also messing with new/casual players since some of bioware's defaults are ... really bad choices. 

 

There are no "best" all up choices. I grant you that there are some choices that are far, far better in most situations that the other two. And, I will give you that there are best choices for "sustained dps" or "burst dps" or "pvp" or "mobility". But, you cannot come up with, for any spec, the best one size fits all best build. 

Edited April 14, 2023 by StrikePrice

[LD_Little_Dragon]

11 hours ago, StrikePrice said:

There are no "best" all up choices. I grant you that there are some choices that are far, far better in most situations that the other two. And, I will give you that there are best choices for "sustained dps" or "burst dps" or "pvp" or "mobility". But, you cannot come up with, for any spec, the best one size fits all best build. 

Which was exactly the same with the old utility system.  Which was my point.

[StrikePrice]

2 hours ago, LD_Little_Dragon said:

Which was exactly the same with the old utility system.  Which was my point.

But more importantly, the choices that need to be made now take DCDs, CC and OCDs out of the system where that didn't happen before. 

[LD_Little_Dragon]

2 hours ago, StrikePrice said:

But more importantly, the choices that need to be made now take DCDs, CC and OCDs out of the system where that didn't happen before. 

Except it did, there were many dcds/ccs that you had to spec into with utilities.  What they did was take baseline abilities, that classes had way back when 50 was max level, and remove them (making you choose between 1 of 3 when you used to have all 3 counts as removing ablities).

Example: pre 7.0 the 'bind' on shadow/sin overload used to have to be chosen from utilties.  They made that permanent, you have it whether you want it or not now.  So they actually ADDED some cc's into the game.

[raikme]

On 4/12/2023 at 5:00 AM, Barbossa_HUN said:

7.0 Dropped a year ago.

What do you all think about the ability pruning that came with it?

Do you prefer the game as it is now or was it better with more abilities (Dcds, CCs, Stuns) overall?

It's really bad, they've done it the wrong way. I made 3 topics in the PTS suggestion forum, all ignored.

Simply removing dcd's and skills is not ability pruning, well it is but not in a good way. 

Ability pruning is when let's say two or three skills are combined to be one, so one skill does multiple things.

Gonna give you an example: Sniper Marksman spec has an ability called Followthrough that is only usable when procced. Snipe could be replaced by Followtrough when it procs. So in one button I have Snipe and Followthrough when procced. 

Another example: Mercenary has Rapid shots and med-shot. It could be merged into one single ability -> When targeting yourself or friendly players it would be med-shot, when targeting an enemy the button would turn to Rapid shots.

All dot specs could eliminate at least two abilities, i'll give you examples: 

Sorc Lightning - Thundering Blast applies Affliction, Deathfield applies Creeping Terror to the target it hits. 

Pyrotech Powertech - Flame burst applies Incendiary Round. 

These are just examples. If it would be overpowered, boring or exciting it's a completely different subject.

[Sappharan]

On 4/12/2023 at 4:00 AM, Barbossa_HUN said:

7.0 Dropped a year ago.

What do you all think about the ability pruning that came with it?

Do you prefer the game as it is now or was it better with more abilities (Dcds, CCs, Stuns) overall?

Very little was actually pruned.  Instead, we were required to make rather odd choices, some frustratingly counterintuitive. 

I miss pacify.

[Ramalina]

Kind of annoying for some classes to not have a stun and stun break baseline.   Spent a lot of time hunting through tooltip texts looking for those on some of my less played classes.

 

Feel like Knight/Warrior tanks are a bit sparse on things to do.   Sometimes I end up just standing there waiting for things to come off of CD because there's not really anything useful to do, though this may be partly a matter of me not really seriously tanking on them and overlooking something I should be using to fill that gap.   I primarily tank as Shadow, so Knight and Trooper tanking styles both feel a bit slow to me coming from juggling to keep all of the Shadow buffs active.   After 7.0 though, those two classes feel even slower to me.

 

The spread of abilities over the number of levels is a bit of an issue for leveling.  It's uncomfortably sparse now, and though all leveling content has been very heavily nerfed in terms of difficulty, there are in various spots now where encounters were designed on the assumption that players had key abilities like stun breaks, stuns, interrupts, where those abilities may now be unlocked after you get to the level for those encounters.   It's not a show stopper, but it is bad design.

 

Meaningful choices were good, somewhat thinning crowd controls in PvP was good, but in terms of gaining abilities as part of the leveling/reward experience they didn't really solve the problem of having a mismatch between the number of character levels and the number of abilities granted over the course of leveling to max level.   If they add another 5 levels with the next expansion, it's going to become even more problematic.

The original spacing of abilities over levels was quite a bit better in 1.0 than it is now.  I'd like them to return to that.  Of course, with a 60% increase in levels to the level cap, that gets you to genuine ability bloat.   I think the obvious solution would basically to have a core set of abilities spread over levels 1-50, and then over levels 51- level cap what you do is have upgrades to those abilities making them more powerful, or unlock options where either you choose between a more powerful version of the base ability  or a different or modified ability of equivalent power.    This way you get:

• A fixed number of abilities per class to map to quickbars so that bloat is no longer an issue
• Good spacing between ability grants as you level a character
• Continued sense of power progression as you level past the original level cap
• A way to implement meaningful choices between abilities and tailor builds for specific playstyles or content
• An ability grant progression system that doesn't have to be completely refactored with every expansion because the design can handle growth in the level cap

 

It's not a super secret approach to ability grants, and given that I'm pretty sure that Bioware is 100% wedded to the idea of increasing the level cap with every expansion I have no idea why they went with the current implementation, which is already slightly problematic in it's abilities/level spacing ratio and will only (very foreseeably) grow worse with future expansions.

[DawnAskham]

The root problem is and has been Bioware adding a few story missions that take an hour or less and calling it an expansion, along with pushing out a level cap increase and a rework of skills and associated combat systems.

The current iteration has issues - some classes / disciplines got hit harder than others and feel more simplistic while all suffer from the redistribution of skills from 1-80 (low-level play is god awful).

Don't worry though, soon enough they will have enough story missions developed to add another hour of playtime, call it an expansion, raise the level cap, and change all the systems again.

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by DawnAskham

[Alkeria]

I certainly feel much less useful playing as a sage now, losing combat res is especially annoying. And having to choose between utilities feels like a huge step backwards. 

[YaddleTwo]

On 4/12/2023 at 4:00 AM, Barbossa_HUN said:

7.0 Dropped a year ago.

What do you all think about the ability pruning that came with it?

Do you prefer the game as it is now or was it better with more abilities (Dcds, CCs, Stuns) overall?

I liked 6.0's setup for the most part. There have been some improvements to a few classes but over all i liked more options over all.