I know we have had this debate many times, so I want to come at it from a different perspective. The debate is about how many spells we can have on the hot bar at once. Let me set the stage by talking about 2 things first.
First: the spell debate
There seems to be 2 sides to this. More spells, with lots of options, giving total freedom. Or, less spells, forcing players to plan, making gameplay more strategic. Personally I am in the ‘more spells’ camp. But I see the value in being strategic. But, it seems quite limiting given my next few points.
Second: class imbalance acceptance
It seems most of us don’t’ care about class balance. We all accept that a wizard is always going to out DPS a Priest. Healers, are healers, Tanks are Tanks and DPS is DSP and we seem to like it that way. I am sure there are some people that don't love this. However, for the sake of my post I am going to assume that most of us agree with this statement. Afterall, this is what makes group depend on each other.
To that end, My question is this:
If you are a healer, and 70% of your spells are for healing, 20% for low or average damage and 10% for whatever (cc for example). Why then would I not be able to bring all my healing spells with me to a dungeon? My purpose is to heal. I won’t likely be doing much damage anyway. I should be given the chance to heal my best, all the time.
Or, if I am a Tank and 70% of my spells are used for tanking, like blocking abilities, or low damage agro (hate) building spells and 20% are used for low or average damage and 10% for whatever else. I will not be so overpowered that I can do rouge-like DPS while tanking. (assuming rogue DPS is very high)
I would understand the need to limit spells if each class had an even mixture of healing, tanking and damage spells. But I think it’s been fairly well established that class balance is not something we will have, or want. So, why not let us be our best all the time? What am I missing?
The UI/hotbar limits don't matter if some classes can bypass them. :)
I understand what you're saying, but so much more massive imbalance and class/role envy has been designed and demonstrated into the combat loop in the past 6 months that this level of tuning elegance or fidelity is likely not even being considered, Sweety.
Also, by the time all the spells and abilities are revealed, that will likely be the exact moment it will be too late to do anything about tuning, adjusting, or balancing them (in any large/meaningful way), if history is any indication. Meaningful public large-scale iterative combat tuning is nigh impossible when your testing phases are a few hours per year, without an entirely different testing environment and approach.
For this type of game that is already highly focused around proper planning, I like limited spell slots. If I'm already adjusting my job for the current location/fight, we're planning out how to pull, who needs to CC or OT, etc etc. It makes sense to me that I would just have the spells I need ready to go. If a group has 2 healers they can discuss who is the main healer, with one loading almost all healing spells and the other loading almost all DPS spells with maybe like 1 heal for emergency. If the rogue needs to be the groups main CC they'll know ahead of time and can make sure they have what they need ready to go.
For a game like FFXIV where no class deviates from its role and the entire game is just 'run in and deal with what happens when you get to it' those kinds of games feel more suited to unlimited abilities IMO. If I'm doing a raid fight on my dancer, I mostly need my dances and DPS abilities. I'll never be doing anything other than focusing on DPS. But then I might need my anti knockback ability for like one ability in the fight, or my support healing dance because of a particularily damaging mechanic that the healers need help with.
That game wouldn't feel right with limited because of just how its played and how the fight mechanics are, wheras I feel like its the opposite for Pantheon. But that's just my opinion.
As far as balance goes, my biggest concern is that every class should be valued in a reasonable number of scenarios. I don't need every class to be equal at everything, actually I kind of prefer some classes to excel at certain things (dire lords vs magic damage for example) however their strongest points need to not be SO niche that the class is undesirable. This is a group centric game so if you make, say, a class that does mediocre damage and mediocre healing and their only strengths are porting and charming animals (of which there are very few frequented zones that this can be utilizied in) then why would anyone play that class. I mean beyond maybe levelling it the bare minimum amount as a port bot. (Looking at you P99 druids)
stellarmind said: oh i definitely care about class balance. as long as i cant willy nilly change spells on the fly via some addon, or has some type of significant cooldown.
I like this idea. More spells and longer cooldowns. This forces you to be strategic about what spells are used and when. Seems like a reasonable compromise for allowing more spells.
I'm not sold on LAS either, but we've had this discussion before and I don't believe we know enough about how it will work, to really say it's good or bad.
For me, the thing is, it makes sense and is a reasonable mechanic to not be able to change gear mid-fight, but to not be able to access all the abilities you 'know' feels weird, so there's that.
The other is that I think there will just be abilities you end up never loading. There will be cool, fun, interesting abilities that *might* have *occasionally* seen use, but that will not be needed enough or wanted so regularly that you would load them more than the more commonly useful ones.
Also, there is the whole "is it fun?" question. Is the tactical planning aspect of pre-fight prep really more fun, challenging or interesting than having a full range of skills in each fight? Is it more fun to be regularly changing your hotbar to reflect the detail of each coming encounter? How dynamic, surprising or mysterious can encounters be designed to be if no dynamic changes to abilites can be made? Is it fun to fail because an ability your character 'knows' just wasn't loaded at that moment?
As Stellarmind suggests, there are ways an unrestricted action set can still be controlled. I would add there are ways that LAS can be relaxed so it is more 'fun' too and, clearly, VR are thinking that way too, since there are certain abilities that break you out of combat and you could then change hotbars. If changing abilities were to be possible but have a tactical cost, that would be fine perhaps, but, yeah, strict LAS I'm not sold on.
Sweety said:
Second: class imbalance acceptance
It seems most of us don’t’ care about class balance. We all accept that a wizard is always going to out DPS a Priest. Healers, are healers, Tanks are Tanks and DPS is DSP and we seem to like it that way. I am sure there are some people that don't love this. However, for the sake of my post I am going to assume that most of us agree with this statement. Afterall, this is what makes group depend on each other.
I would understand the need to limit spells if each class had an even mixture of healing, tanking and damage spells. But I think it’s been fairly well established that class balance is not something we will have, or want. So, why not let us be our best all the time? What am I missing?
I'm sorry, but there are so many players out there who doesn't have a clear understanding of class balance. I would like to just say that Class Balance isn't meaning everything is the same (number output/input, doesn't mean the same distribution or mass homogenization).
Class balance is quite the opposite. A class is an avatar of a role with a unique thematic tool kit that best represents that classes identity and role. The scale of balance should represent the strength and weaknesses. The tool kit for every class/role are different, no mass utility distribution of the same utility. Includes, ability type, ability power, frequency of ability used, resource cost of ability etc. Class abilities have specific strengths that are balanced with their specific weaknesses.
Roles of classes have clear strengths and weaknesses opposed to classes that share the same role and have different roles. DPS should have clear strengths and weaknesses, Tanks and Healers or any other core role in the game should share that philosophy. Class balance actually promotes robust class diversity and identity, not the oppose it.
With that said, I am in favor of limiting hot bar for abilities. Like you said, it allows better player agency of when to be stategic and when to plan for each encounter and consider their group composition to survive. It actually helps class balance to have a limiting structure in place. I personally find it fun when I have to choose what abilities I need and which I don't. If I choose right, then that is a small reward in it self. This sort of thought proces is what is missing in the current slew of mmorpgs today.
Eronakis said:
Sweety said:
Second: class imbalance acceptance
It seems most of us don’t’ care about class balance. We all accept that a wizard is always going to out DPS a Priest. Healers, are healers, Tanks are Tanks and DPS is DSP and we seem to like it that way. I am sure there are some people that don't love this. However, for the sake of my post I am going to assume that most of us agree with this statement. Afterall, this is what makes group depend on each other.
I would understand the need to limit spells if each class had an even mixture of healing, tanking and damage spells. But I think it’s been fairly well established that class balance is not something we will have, or want. So, why not let us be our best all the time? What am I missing?
I'm sorry, but there are so many players out there who doesn't have a clear understanding of class balance. I would like to just say that Class Balance isn't meaning everything is the same (number output/input, doesn't mean the same distribution or mass homogenization).
Class balance is quite the opposite. A class is an avatar of a role with a unique thematic tool kit that best represents that classes identity and role. The scale of balance should represent the strength and weaknesses. The tool kit for every class/role are different, no mass utility distribution of the same utility. Includes, ability type, ability power, frequency of ability used, resource cost of ability etc. Class abilities have specific strengths that are balanced with their specific weaknesses.
Roles of classes have clear strengths and weaknesses opposed to classes that share the same role and have different roles. DPS should have clear strengths and weaknesses, Tanks and Healers or any other core role in the game should share that philosophy. Class balance actually promotes robust class diversity and identity, not the oppose it.
With that said, I am in favor of limiting hot bar for abilities. Like you said, it allows better player agency of when to be stategic and when to plan for each encounter and consider their group composition to survive. It actually helps class balance to have a limiting structure in place. I personally find it fun when I have to choose what abilities I need and which I don't. If I choose right, then that is a small reward in it self. This sort of thought proces is what is missing in the current slew of mmorpgs today.
I was over simplifying my explanation of “class balance” as this was not the theses of my post. I agree with some of your points, but not all. Be that as it may, I don’t want to start a debate of definitions. So to quick restate my stance on this; by today’s new-age (albeit ridiculous) definition, most players consider class balance to mean that no one single class is more powerful than the next. I think this can be demonstrated when engaged in PvP, each class has an equal chance to kill the other. Sometimes, this means each class has at least some ability to heal, DPS, CC etc. While I don’t like these scenarios, I think WoW has driven the modern day definition of class balance to mean this. Blizzard is constantly adjusting the classes to ensure they have parity. As much as Pantheon followers hate modern WoW, you have to admit, they seems to control the market, and perhaps the minds of many players.
All that being said, my post was not intended to debate the definition of class balance, or the need (or lack thereof). My intent was to understand why some people are in favor of having a small limited amount of spells in use during battle, when considering the lack of class balance as I have defined it. I only see the ‘forcing strategy’ benefit. Which to my mind, isn’t enough.
Also, I know many games that limit spells. Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, Camelot Unchained, Shourd of the Avatar and many others. Seems to me the old school MMO's did not limit as much modern day games.
I think the biggest issue surrounding LAS is we really don't know exactly what will be the limits on when and how we can swap abilities. They tell us that we cannot swap in combat, but we don't know how 'hard' is the Combat status. In WoW, once you were flagged as 'in combat' you were locked in combat until either you or the enemy died, or until the mob gave up chasing you and 'reset' and ran home. Perhaps in Pantheon this 'in combat' status will be softer and more be tied to activity of combat.
For example, perhaps if a certain amount of time has passed where you are not actively engaged in the combat it will drop your 'in combat' status. So if you stop attacking (or healing) and the target is not actively attacking you for say 5 seconds you are then 'freed' from combat status and can safely switch abilities or maybe even 'gear'. This would mean that if you can disengage yourself for 5 seconds (and the group can survive without your assistance for that long) you can make changes to your LAS and items and then re-engage in the combat. You may also be required to move a certain distance away from the combat in order to be 'freed' from the 'in combat' status. So you can't just pause while standing in the middle of the fight, but rather will need to get to a safer spot and wait the 5 seconds and then your 'in combat' will drop.
Note: This would not mean that the target 'Forgets' you and you can safely walk away without it coming to look for you when it finishes off your fellow players. It just means that temporarily you are 'dis-engaged' from the 'in combat' status and can do things that require you to be out of combat. If something changes in the fight (like the Tank dies) and the enemy engages you again, you are put back 'in combat' and you can no longer be adjusting abilities and gear.
We already know that Rogues and Monks will have some abilities that can instantly drop them out of combat, so it isn't such a stretch that this 'in combat' status will be more 'soft' and adaptable than it was in WoW.
Imagine a senario where the enemy the group is fighting is different somehow than those the group was expecting, and the Warrior doesn't have the right Abilities to deal with this new threat (Maybe he needs a Stun/Inturrupt to deal with a spell caster, or needs his Breaker’s Roar to be immune to Crowd Control). As the Group struggles the Monk uses his Feign Death to drop 'in combat' and then swaps to his 'offtank' abilities and then taunts and holds the enemies attention while popping his new defensive abilities to survive long enough for the Warrior then to step away, drop the 'in combat' status, swap an ability or two and then re-engage to start tanking again. The Monk then disengages again and drops his 'in combat' again long enough to swap back to his damage abilities. It wasn't a clean easy kill, but if players acted quickly, they could find a way to make some changes to their LAS within the limitations, and adapt to the situation.
We also don't really know how quickly abilities can be changed even if you were freed from 'in combat' temporarily;
In EQ there was no 'in combat' status and as such you could at any time swap out your spells, but they did require time to do so. It wasn't origionally just a click and the spell was changed. Rather you were forced to sit down and open your spell book, which actually blocked off your entire view of what was going on around you. Then you needed to find the new spell in your spellbook and choose to 'memorize' the spell into your LAS. This then took a certain amount of time depending on the power of the spell and your meditation skill level. In the very early levels it could actually take you like 5 seconds to memorize your spells. Even when it was only 1 or 2 seconds to swap, if you had to swap more than 1 spell this could add up as you changed up your spell lineup. It wasn't until later that they started doing away with this Prep time and it became almost instant (or maybe just triggered the global cooldown).
In Pantheon, this may also be a tactic VR employs. Even if you are able to drop out of combat temporarily, there could be a Prep time in order to get a new ability ready. This could also be dependant on your class or the ability in question. A Warrior may be able to swap abilities quicker than a Wizard for instance. And the Wizard maybe is able to swap to an Arcane spell faster than to a Fire spell or maybe each spell will have it's own specific Prep time. And perhaps spells you have put Mastery points into will have reduced Prep time. And/or maybe your stats will effect it as well, where if you have a Higher intelligence stat you can Prep Int based spells faster than Con based spells because your Constitution stat is lower etc...
There are so many of these kinds of 'knobs' as it were that VR could employ that will balance how Limited the Limited Action Set actually is. They will want to make sure it leads us to make decisions, but won't be so punishing that players are not able to find a way to adapt when things happen they were not prepared for.
I'm sure as we get into Alpha and Beta, these kinds of things will be tested and we may see various different limitations tested and changed to see which ones work best and feel right for both the players and the Devs to maintain the LAS but without making it impossible to adapt.
This post has been promoted as part of my CM content to keep the discussion going, please abide by the guidelines and tell us your thoughts :)
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I would like to have the option to have as many hotbars as i want with 12 slots each. Similar to what Vanguard offered.
I understant that planning is important (as it is in all challenging games) but this is no argument to prevent players to have the spells button layout they feel matches their personal taste and playstyle.
I'm personally really looking forward to see how the limited action bar will come to fluition, I think it's valid to worry what the result of it will be, but personally I don't see how limiting the action bar will be so much more limiting that what other games do.. I personally hope that by limiting the action bar VR will have more room to manouver in regards to adding powerfull flavor abilities, that, since they'll "cost" a slot in you ability lineup, will be able to hold more power then it would with an unlimited actionbar.. So in my mind, limited action bar is appealing and something I'm looking forward to, because I belive that the VR team will be able to turn this "limitation" into a interactive and interesting design opportunity that will give us more meaningfull abilities, even though this ofcourse comes at a risk of dropping the ball by making the abilities as watered down as we are used to from other mmorpgs, but I'm very optimistic about it, especially since the last community stream where we saw that VR wasn't affraid of giving the rogue massive cc abilities, even though they are a main dps class, and yes, VR has already said they are going to have to adjust it, aslong as they start out by sidding with "more power in each ability" then I belive that the limited action bar has great potential... Ohh yeah, and aslong as you can make your own hotkeys for it, that would really be a shame if they get locked...
And the TL:DR I belive the limited actionbar is a great design opportunity and I'm really looking forward to figuring out how to best utilize it.
Keep up the good work
What am I missing?
what you are missing is the design process
they don't do the classes and their abilities / spells and then decide to limit them or not
They chose the system of only one spell bar and based on that they designed the class
With the limitation in mind, the class has more spells, more variety of options and more potential because it is limited to the spells that you put on the bar.
Therefore your premise of the spell debate is wrong and should be something like this
1. total freedom of bars with less variety of spells or
2. more spells and more diverse limited with a single bar
Elki said: With the limitation in mind, the class has more spells, more variety of options and more potential because it is limited to the spells that you put on the bar. ... Therefore your premise of the spell debate is wrong and should be something like this ...
IMO:
Oh? Is the current public design goal for Pantheon to have more spells/abilities per class from 1-50 than original EQ1? Are you officially confirming that's the case, Elki? :)
EQ1 had no 8+6 limit on hotbar layout/count and no Pantheon-style LAS, and was still fun, challenging, and successful.
Lots of games have been fun, challenging, and successful with a tremendous number of abilities, spells, or similar, both in combat and out of combat, without the 8+6 LAS/hotbar/UI limitation.
There's many other really fun, challenging, and successful ways to provide player choice/agency while still permitting a very flexible hotbar layout and UI, and no LAS.
Firmly on the side of limited action set but being able to swap out abilities in combat (EQ1) with risk. You have to sit and med, open your book, there is a time delay, and aggro is increased. Call it a soft limited action set. Strategy, risk, and choice is key. Having access to everything all at once willynilly negates most strategy and risk, and it makes the initial choice of ability loadout barely important. Some classes will be able to pull this off better than other solo, but all classes should be able to squeeze out some time to swap in new abilities in a group through strategy. A firm "No" on big layout macros. Each ability takes a while with a time penalty to learn.
Elki said:
Therefore your premise of the spell debate is wrong and should be ...
The moment you tell someone their opinion is wrong, they stop listening. We are all allowed to have different and opposing ideas. I'm not wrong, and neither are you. We just see things differently.
Mathir said:
Firmly on the side of limited action set but being able to swap out abilities in combat (EQ1) with risk. You have to sit and med, open your book, there is a time delay, and aggro is increased. Call it a soft limited action set. Strategy, risk, and choice is key. Having access to everything all at once willynilly negates most strategy and risk, and it makes the initial choice of ability loadout barely important. Some classes will be able to pull this off better than other solo, but all classes should be able to squeeze out some time to swap in new abilities in a group through strategy. A firm "No" on big layout macros. Each ability takes a while with a time penalty to learn.
I’m with you on some of this. When we talk about realism, I understand the limitation around swapping out spells and gear, but not weapons. If I am in melee combat and the enemy is in a long cast, it seems reasonable that I could drop or sheath my sword and take my bow off my back and switch to ranged combat. Think Legolas in Lord of the Rings. He did it all the time.
I suppose I just don’t think the good outweighs the bad with a LAS, unless you are greatly limiting it. Meaning, if the limit was 3-5 total spells, it would force real strategy and planning with other players in your group. Though, changing this from pull to pull – kill after kill – would become very boring at some point.
If the limit is 8 spells and 6 utility slots (which is what I see in the latest stream), it just seems annoying. If I know how to perform a spell and I can’t use it because of an arbitrary limit to the number of icons on my screen, I find it annoying. To me, that’s not really strategy. Regardless, I was trying to think about LAS as it pertains to classes not being in perfect balance. Which is one of the core fundamentals we all seem to agree on in Pantheon.
vjek said:Elki said: With the limitation in mind, the class has more spells, more variety of options and more potential because it is limited to the spells that you put on the bar. ... Therefore your premise of the spell debate is wrong and should be something like this ...IMO:
Oh? Is the current public design goal for Pantheon to have more spells/abilities per class from 1-50 than original EQ1? Are you officially confirming that's the case, Elki? :)
EQ1 had no 8+6 limit on hotbar layout/count and no Pantheon-style LAS, and was still fun, challenging, and successful.
Lots of games have been fun, challenging, and successful with a tremendous number of abilities, spells, or similar, both in combat and out of combat, without the 8+6 LAS/hotbar/UI limitation.
There's many other really fun, challenging, and successful ways to provide player choice/agency while still permitting a very flexible hotbar layout and UI, and no LAS.
Why compare it and put EQ1 in my words if I have not mentioned it?
speaking of EQ1 it did not have that limitation of hot bars but it had a limitation in the spell bar (I'm not sure but I think it was 9 maybe 8) that for the case we are talking about it would be the same since putting text macros is not discussed potions, items click only the spells of the book
but we are not talking about EQ or comparing it with it we are talking only about Pantheon
and I would say that if it is a public design that Pantheon uses LAS and that with LAS in mind the classes are designing them with more power options because that power is limited by LAS is a statement that Joppa has made therefore I would also consider it as a public design decision
If he will have more or less spells than EQ1 or any other MMORPG, it is nothing that I have already seen beyond his question and I do not know it completely and it also seems to me something totally irrelevant
I like the LAS personally, but I would like to see the load out function that was mentioned in the latest newsletter. Building various LAS configurations to swap into for specific types of encounters should be fun imo, and add to the strategy and tactics players use to overcome difficult challenges.
I hope that VR sticks with the LAS. I personally hate having near endless ability bars on the screen... Its just clutter. Having to tailor your skills to specific encounters is much more engrossing than having all ones skills/abilities available via endless bars covering your screen. Just my 2cp.
Grymmlocke said:I like the LAS personally, but I would like to see the load out function that was mentioned in the latest newsletter. Building various LAS configurations to swap into for specific types of encounters should be fun imo, and add to the strategy and tactics players use to overcome difficult challenges.
I hope that VR sticks with the LAS. I personally hate having near endless ability bars on the screen... Its just clutter. Having to tailor your skills to specific encounters is much more engrossing than having all ones skills/abilities available via endless bars covering your screen. Just my 2cp.
Is it really much less 'clutter' to have several hotbar loadouts saved with various combinations and to manipulate a UI every time you want to change your loadout? The combinations of 8 combat skills chosen from 16 are way more than the 2 hotbars it would take to just show all 16 at once. (I think the calcualtion is nCr = 16! / (8! × (16 - 8)!) = 12,870).
Obviously a lot of those combinations aren't relevant, but you get my point. Add to that you have a non-combat bar which may also vary. Add to that, there's probably going to be nearer 50 combat and non-combat skills by high level. Add to that you may well have to discuss your choices with your group mates. Add to that you may need to do it with regular frequency - maybe not for every encounter, but regularly.
I'm pretty sure, by the time you've identified all the possible encounter types you might have and all the optional ability hotbar combinations you might want to cover those encounter types, it will become much more complex than just having all your skills available.
Hiding skills behind LAS doesn't seem to make it less clutter, it potentially makes it greater, hidden and less accessible clutter.
I'm not saying LAS is wrong - I'm wanting to try it - but I think it's a surprisingly complex thing. Simplicity is not really one of it's pros, I would say.
Sweety said:To that end, My question is this:
If you are a healer, and 70% of your spells are for healing, 20% for low or average damage and 10% for whatever (cc for example). Why then would I not be able to bring all my healing spells with me to a dungeon? My purpose is to heal. I won’t likely be doing much damage anyway. I should be given the chance to heal my best, all the time.
Or, if I am a Tank and 70% of my spells are used for tanking, like blocking abilities, or low damage agro (hate) building spells and 20% are used for low or average damage and 10% for whatever else. I will not be so overpowered that I can do rouge-like DPS while tanking. (assuming rogue DPS is very high)
I would understand the need to limit spells if each class had an even mixture of healing, tanking and damage spells. But I think it’s been fairly well established that class balance is not something we will have, or want. So, why not let us be our best all the time? What am I missing?
To me, this comes down to class identity and knowing the strategy ahead of time. I don't necessarily mean individual encounters, but if you are a healer, you should know what kind of tank you have and what kind of healing spells are most effective. I believe they mentioned DL will have a much more volatile HP style which is different than a War who is more stable in the encounters.
Other factors like what kind of zone (environment), pull speed, and goals for the session would all be factors in my mind. These choices may increase with raids, but small groups should know these variables unless they encounter a named or some other event occurs.
A LAS doesn't mean that you can never load a DPS spell as a healer or a CC as a rogue, but you have to make that conscious decision and know that it will replace something else. Is this the kind of situation where you can load or need those ancillary skills? That's part of the thought process/skill in my mind. The same goes for DPS . If I'm a wizard, should I load a specific DPS line? Should I have an evac on my spell bar or a root? I could be missing something, but I don't see a player's perfomance being entirely limited by the number of spells they can load at once and not limited by other factors like aggro, mana, encounter time, hp, etc. I don't equate the LAS with not allowing players to be their best all the time, but it does require the player to make choices and potentially reinforce the identity that they chose when they made that character. It's just another feature of the game.
Edaemus said:Sweety said:To that end, My question is this:
If you are a healer, and 70% of your spells are for healing, 20% for low or average damage and 10% for whatever (cc for example). Why then would I not be able to bring all my healing spells with me to a dungeon? My purpose is to heal. I won’t likely be doing much damage anyway. I should be given the chance to heal my best, all the time.
Or, if I am a Tank and 70% of my spells are used for tanking, like blocking abilities, or low damage agro (hate) building spells and 20% are used for low or average damage and 10% for whatever else. I will not be so overpowered that I can do rouge-like DPS while tanking. (assuming rogue DPS is very high)
I would understand the need to limit spells if each class had an even mixture of healing, tanking and damage spells. But I think it’s been fairly well established that class balance is not something we will have, or want. So, why not let us be our best all the time? What am I missing?
If I'm a wizard, should I load a specific DPS line? Should I have an evac on my spell bar or a root? I could be missing something, but I don't see a player's performance being entirely limited by the number of spells they can load at once and not limited by other factors like aggro, mana, encounter time, hp, etc. I don't equate the LAS with not allowing players to be their best all the time
It seems you just explained the exact "player performance" limitation you are saying you don't see. In your scenario, the player is limited at being their best if they can't evac and root in the same encounter. I guess it all comes down to how you define "best". I’m not at my best if I have taken the time to learn and master the evac and root ability, but I am not allowed to use them.
disposalist said:Grymmlocke said:I like the LAS personally, but I would like to see the load out function that was mentioned in the latest newsletter. Building various LAS configurations to swap into for specific types of encounters should be fun imo, and add to the strategy and tactics players use to overcome difficult challenges.
I hope that VR sticks with the LAS. I personally hate having near endless ability bars on the screen... Its just clutter. Having to tailor your skills to specific encounters is much more engrossing than having all ones skills/abilities available via endless bars covering your screen. Just my 2cp.
Is it really much less 'clutter' to have several hotbar loadouts saved with various combinations and to manipulate a UI every time you want to change your loadout? The combinations of 8 combat skills chosen from 16 are way more than the 2 hotbars it would take to just show all 16 at once. (I think the calcualtion is nCr = 16! / (8! × (16 - 8)!) = 12,870).
Obviously a lot of those combinations aren't relevant, but you get my point. Add to that you have a non-combat bar which may also vary. Add to that, there's probably going to be nearer 50 combat and non-combat skills by high level. Add to that you may well have to discuss your choices with your group mates. Add to that you may need to do it with regular frequency - maybe not for every encounter, but regularly.
I'm pretty sure, by the time you've identified all the possible encounter types you might have and all the optional ability hotbar combinations you might want to cover those encounter types, it will become much more complex than just having all your skills available.
Hiding skills behind LAS doesn't seem to make it less clutter, it potentially makes it greater, hidden and less accessible clutter.
I'm not saying LAS is wrong - I'm wanting to try it - but I think it's a surprisingly complex thing. Simplicity is not really one of it's pros, I would say.
Thank you for explaining what I was thinking. After my OP, I started thinking about swapping spells, the amount of variations are nearly endless. As you said, it doesn’t mean it's a bad thing (personally I don't like it though). But let's at least recognize that LAS is not simplifying the use of abilities.
