There are too many skills.

[Gably]

As stated already, everything I need is a third action bar in the bottom. That would sort everything out.

 

As Imperial Agent Operative, I use almost every skill I have, even while levelling. All the healing and dps skills while pvping. CC skills are pretty useful even while levelling, so the whole point is: get to know your class.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Gably

[Vallowen]

the number of abilities isnt the problem. its the lack of bars. and the lack of a stealth bar

[Tomisu]

I like several of the ideas thrown out here. I was a bit surprised there wasn't a stealth bar since there is a cover bar. Making the abilities come from talents instead of class would be nice (and seems similar to the description of guild wars). And I wouldn't say no to a third bottom bar.

[WikiWeasel]

Il be dusting off my razer naga tommorow i dont like the mouse but i have to use it pretty much for the amount of buttons it has. Operativ has so many skills.

 

and we cant even bind the ` (tilde) key next to 1 as well which annoys me.

 

When i play hutball i have to swap out one of my fast press ablities for 'throw hutball" i usualy replace it with stealth or acid blade as they can be activated before combat.

Edited January 4, 2012 by WikiWeasel

[goulet]

it would be find if ui bars shown=total number of ui bars ie if you have 2 showing its bar 1 and 2, if there are 4 its bars 1-4. so its not like i can have 4 bars up and still have one bar changeable for different things. Ultimately i want the ability to put everything at the bottom, but at the very least if your top bottom ui bar (these terms suck) could be changed out you could have consolidate pvp and pve talents.

[Navuu]

I agree that there is a total overkill on skills and by doing so BW is hampering the teamplay in pvp. If people would not need to constantly struggle with 20 keybinds or the overallocation of abilities that do the same thing but need 3 different situations, they could actually focus more on teamplay and performance instead of doing weird or non-efficient things.

 

Look at all the great teambased games, they have limited keybinds/skill options so that you can focus entirely on the gameplay, or more essentialy, on the teamplay. You become a more efficient player, hence a better teamplayer because now you actually have the time to figure out how teaming works in this game.

 

Endresult for everyone : a more enjoyable pvp experience where teamplay becomes more important over solo performance, but where there is still room for solo performance (like in other teambased games ..)

 

 

I'm sure all you hardcore players will not like it, but making it casually more acceptable also means a larger playerbase, hence more people to destroy to earn your precious pvp rewards and other fluff. But okay, I guess ranting on a forum on how all other people on your team suck is more fun.

[Valtyr]

I play a few characters, all very different and to track all these abilities is a chore. I've a Logitech G13 and Naga mouse (which is pretty lame as it isn't a great mouse and the buttons are not optimal in feel, for me) and I find I'm filling up as well. The G13 is great but I might go back to a keyboard (razer widow to use the macro buttons off to the side for more keys).

 

Having to press Shft+1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or shifting to another bank of buttons on the fly is cumbersome for most of the player-base.

 

A chain combo system would have netted some space as well as having it clearly explained which tools work best with which spec, yes figuring it out and damagcrafting is cool but not everyone likes to play that game.

 

Rifts macro systems was fantastic, it also removed 90% of all player skill.

 

NO ~ REBINDING = GRRRRR

 

I cringe when clicking the trainer as well, saying please just be ranks, please please please. I don't want to faceroll with 5 buttons but I don't want to be hindered by 25 either. Not everyone is a Korean Starcraft player.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Valtyr

[formulaic]

Rifts macro systems was fantastic, it also removed 90% of all player skill.

 

I don't think that was Rift's problem exactly:

- deciding to use ability A rather than ability B because of energy drain/approaching enemies/etc => player skill.

- pressing '9' whenever it lights up => not player skill.

 

In terms of SWTOR

- deciding when to use the 'in-combat energy regen' is skill.

- deciding which heal to use is skill.

- managing your energy drain (or whatever your class calls it) is skill.

- maintaining aggro is skill.

- pressing 'big hit' whenever it lights up is called keyboard mashing.

 

The problem with Rift is that for some classes, all their abilities fell into the 'press big hit' category, no thinking involved, no player skill, just press the first light along the bar every time... easy to macro or get a keyboard to do it for you .

 

A SWTOR example?

For an operative there's a button for damage >10m, a button for damage <10m, and another cooldown button for damage <1m, another cooldown positional button for damage <1m. That's 4 "keyboard mashing" buttons, and by default you only start with 10 mapped buttons!!!

[Zeppelin]

The reason why it seems like you have so many abilities is because there are no macros.

[oddmyth]

and we cant even bind the ` (tilde) key next to 1 as well which annoys me.

 

Sure you can, it just doesn't really appear as a watermark over the key (at least not a defineable one.

 

I have Force Pull on the tilde key, works everytime.

[oddmyth]

I agree that there is a total overkill on skills and by doing so BW is hampering the teamplay in pvp. If people would not need to constantly struggle with 20 keybinds or the overallocation of abilities that do the same thing but need 3 different situations, they could actually focus more on teamplay and performance instead of doing weird or non-efficient things.

 

Once you've keybound all the necessary skills and played with them and created muscle memory then you aren't hampered by them. Thus teamplay in pvp is not affected, in fact for those who actually keybind and have muscle memory teamplay is greater because you are more effective.

 

Look at all the great teambased games, they have limited keybinds/skill options so that you can focus entirely on the gameplay, or more essentialy, on the teamplay. You become a more efficient player, hence a better teamplayer because now you actually have the time to figure out how teaming works in this game.

 

Examples? Please don't list any FPS based games, if you are talking about an MMO, talk about great team based MMO's. Efficiency has nothing to do with the number of keybinds, it has everything to do with the player. Again keybinding has nothing to do with teamplay, I do not need less keybinds to better understand team strategies. Keybinds are reflexes, strategy is a mental game, being able to react quickly is what makes teamplay great, more options via more keybinds makes that possible. Otherwise there are a very limited number of ways a game can be played.

 

Endresult for everyone : a more enjoyable pvp experience where teamplay becomes more important over solo performance, but where there is still room for solo performance (like in other teambased games ..)

 

I fail to see the correlation between the number of keybinds needed and solo / team performance.

 

I'm sure all you hardcore players will not like it, but making it casually more acceptable also means a larger playerbase, hence more people to destroy to earn your precious pvp rewards and other fluff. But okay, I guess ranting on a forum on how all other people on your team suck is more fun.

 

That other MMO is casually more acceptable in PVP, there aren't any less keybinds. In fact I would say that games like RIFT with giant macros have the worst pvp. Learning to play an MMO means learning to keybind effectively. If you are using 1-0+shift, then you need to do things more efficiently. There are many tutorials on keybinding on the internet, most of them are decent. If you keybind to begin with, then you learn as you progress, by the time you hit 50 there is only one skill that you haven't keybound or have reflexivity for. Even that will be easy to figure out.

[Zeppelin]

Rifts macro systems was fantastic, it also removed 90% of all player skill.

 

This is an RPG... not an action or FPS game. Most of the "skill" in an RPG comes from time played, number crunching, and being efficient. Macros and add-ons help you to be more efficient. That's a very large part of RPG "skill".

Edited January 4, 2012 by Zeppelin

[LilTikiBoy]

The reason why it seems like you have so many abilities is because there are no macros.

 

this!

 

as a sith assassin i have several abilities with the same cooldown that work well together and could easily be macro'd into one button, instead they take up several ability slots.

[RyanSeacrest]

I play a healer so I don't need ready access to the majority of my dps skills. That's how I get by.

[jtzako]

I REALLY dont like how many skills we have in this game. I do not want to have to stare at the hotbar during fights, but with so many hotkeys that is basically what I have to do.

 

There's no good reason to have more than one row of abilities for in-combat activities and yet we have a full 2 rows easily and more if you count things like cure, de-agro, stims etc.

[Sephram]

I could not agree more. Way too many abilities in this game. They need to seriously trim the fat.

 

You can hate on Rift macro system all you want but it was perfect.

[Jenysis]

I know, sheesh.. how bout a stance/technique bar at least?

Vanguard had a nice 'separate' bar for situational abilities with additional abilites stacked 'behind' so you had to press one to get to the the deeper, better ability.

[oddmyth]

This is an RPG... not an action or FPS game. Most of the "skill" in an RPG comes from time played, number crunching, and being efficient. Macros and add-ons help you to be more efficient. That's a very large part of RPG "skill".

 

This isn't an RPG. This is an action based game. Macro's may help you be efficient but they certainly don't add any character or level of adeptness to the game.

 

Most of the "skill" in ANY game, comes from time played, number crunching and being efficient.

 

The only thing efficient about RIFT-style macros is the amount of brainpower you save in not having to think while playing a video game.

 

Might as well be watching TV.

[seven_deadlies]

This isn't an RPG. This is an action based game. Macro's may help you be efficient but they certainly don't add any character or level of adeptness to the game.

You sir, are retarded.

 

RPG = Role Playing Game

 

I'm pretty sure, with the amount of voice over dialogue, and emphasis on storyline... this game most certainly fits the RPG definition.

 

Halo is an action based game. Sure, you're a futuristic jarhead. And there's some underlying excuse for religious aliens to hate you. But none of that matters, because you have a gun in either hand, and plenty of ammo to spare!

 

I agree wholeheartedly, there are too many abilities.

 

I would love to be able to macro the similar abilities into a single button, such as all the Leaps.

 

Or using the Aion system of chaining them automatically would work great too.

 

Either way... I shouldn't have to play Minesweeper, hunting hither and yon for the right little square to click, while killing the bad guy. And I shouldn't need to invest in a 109 button mouse, to go with my 800 button keyboard, so I can map everything "properly".

[Daedalrogue]

Any one else still play pen and paper RPGs? You know the roots, back to the beginning of a tracked numerical system.

 

I think games that use skill trees actually fall into the category of Action RPGs, this would actually be like Diablo, Dungeon Siege, Torchlight, and the idea was carried over into the MMORPG (probably better described as MMOARPG) by Blizzard. Prior to this we had a flat skill system (Everquest) where you learned a skill and use improved its ability, We've had a point distribution system (Dark Age of Camelot) where points earned through leveling were applied to flat skills determined by class - these points unlocked new skills or chained skills based on how many points invested as well as improving base damage on existing skills. We've seen a tiered purchase system (Everquest 2) where a skill can be improved by learning from a manual item as well as the base skill purchased from a vendor/trainer.

 

Then we've had the macro fury of Rift, Aion taking the chained system used in DAOC but making some functional UI improvements expected from generations of games being released.

 

I simply want to ask the question of why do we need so many abilities? Whatever happened to having a few common abilities that are then improved through talent selection?

 

D&D 3.5, a fighter would have like 6-7 total abilities, but improvements like cleave, combat expertise, dodge, improved criticals (weapon) made the improvements. otherwise you were using, well Whirlwind attack or something a long those lines. Rogues backstab was a positional thing, you'd do that automatically if you were behind or roughly behind the target. Why can't these ideas be applied in the virtual environment?

 

Even now playing FFG's Deathwatch game. Most of a Space Marines capabilities are passive for the actual RPG sense.

 

This gives some less player interaction with the skills, but you spend more time building your character to be as you like. Personally I think the idea of a skill tree is stupid, I'd rather have all these "abilities" applied to tiered tables, then I purchase them with varied point values dependent on their apparent value to the player/character design. Then you'd have more unique characters, you'd have less cookie-cutters, you'd feel more individualized.

 

In that regard I am ignoring the magic system for D&D 3.5 which for Sorcerers they had limited castes of all magic abilities learned per tier, or the wizard which had limited casts based on the spells they chose to memorize per tier. Then variations on that like improved versions which would improve a spell but make it 1 tier higher.

[Dabrixmgp]

Heres a small hint. If you still think its the 90s and are using a 2 or 3 button mouse YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG! Go buy a Naga. Lot of people use it and has like 18 buttons but I hated it because they were too small. Another great mouse is the steel series WoW cataclysm mouse. It has 14 buttons and unlike the Naga they are actually easy to use by people like myself who dont have 8 year old girl hands. Thats what I use and because you never keyboard turn your hand is always on the mouse anyways so it makes sense to bind as many keys there as possible.

[Geosiis]

Man I really really hope Bioware isn't dumb enough to implement the easymode macro system from Rift. I'm sorry, but I'd rather play the game as intended instead play it with 2 buttons Attack 1 and Finisher on 2. I'm not a bot.

 

That said, this game could use a bigger bottom bar or something. The amount of skills seem fine to me tho.

[Leimus]

At level 34 I have just about all the abilities that I will have in the end, and it feels around the same as most other MMOs I've played in the past. I've rammed all to 2 bars, when it comes to abilities that need to be activated in combat, and one side bar with buffs/sprints/modes/usables.

 

Usings keys from 1 to 8, q,e,r,t,f,g,x,c,v,b, c+e, c+r, c+f, c+g and couple of mouse buttons, and got no real trouble utilizing them. But then again, I'm not exactly new to such keyboard-fu.

[drwebs]

I'm level 34 and the skills are to much. I hate getting a new skill. First time i have ever felt that in a game.

[Ashleighm]

I completely agree...

 

 

I find it frustrating that I have to ditch some abilities because I simply can't use them because they are either obsolete or are very situation and cant' seem to find room in the action bars,

 

 

That is not just the problem though-it's having to personalise the key bindings and to be honest i hate having to do that to a great extent...the chain system the OP suggested is great, I really hope they implement that.

 

Ash