Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Is it me or does ToR have way too many abilities?
DOGMA1138
Member UncommonPosts: 476
After playing 3 Beta weekends leveling 3 classes to 20+(Shadow, Agent, Trooper) and letting the whole exprience sink in im starting to find more and more faults with the game.
One of the main ones is that there is just way too many abilities in this game, by the late teen levels the average class gets around 2.5 bars of diffrent skills(including non-class specific/combat abilities like travel, rest, and spank!).
Combined with a horrible keybinding system and oversized UI it seems just way way too many abilities for a "non-macro/add-on" centric game. I will get "l2p noob" comments very soon but honestly there is no normal human being on the face of this earth that can use 20+ keybindings effectivly on a normal keyboard. Plus it seems that ToR has way too many situational abilities and allot of redundant abilities also, i mean does the jedi shadow really needs like 14 diffrent stuns(some of them conditional)? they will end up sharing the same deminishing return eventually any how...
IMO A good game design should focus around 10 abilities per class at the most, and even then at the end of the day it will come down to much less than that any how, look at how many abilities WoW gathered during its expansions before the cataclysm clean up, no one really used them, each class had a rotation of about 3-5 abilities + 1-2 situational/utli's(except maybe locks...)
The sheer amount of abilities is another indicator to me that that game i just not ready for release, they are hoping that that playerbase will help them to refine the amount of abilities(because some of them were just sick, like the Shadow's backstab, or the Agent's snipe in PVP..) which is fine and all, but it needs to be done before launch not after it, i know that major class changes are a part of every MMO's heck WoW did 180 on most of it's classes during the first 3-4 years, but it did it very gradually, and even then allot of people were annoyed at allot of the class changes, especially when it came to role creeping.
Comments
I can use 40 keybinds effectivly with 1-0, alt, ctrl, and shift. Thats not counting other easily accessable keys such as q, e, r, t, g, h ect.
That said the fact that I can use thoes keys doesnt justify having to if so many of the skills basically repeat themselves. If I was going to play swtor I would simply see which ones are basically the same skill and decide which I like the animations best on and use thoes lol.
that can be solved with more UI customization bars etc... since u dont need all the skills for a task, pvp raiding or just questing, but we should be able to save the skills in diferent bars that we could easily bring out for certain situation, and maybe we can i didnt had time to explore that part of the game since i was to busy devouring the story
Glory to the empire
You can use upto 40 keybindings, not as effectively as you can use 5, not on a normal keyboard, not unless you are a cyborg korean octopus hybrid. I Use my mouse to move, got 3-2 abilities bound to my mouse, use qawsedrftg and `1234567890 for abilties, and still there is no way i can hit alt+0 for example as quickly as i could hit q or e, yes ofc you put the situational/idont care abilities at alt+0 while you put your main abilities on buttons like m5+4 Q E R T Y 2 3 4 5 which are the easily reached buttons on a normal keyboard/mouse setup.
It's not about the UI it's about the design, having a UI that you could fit 400 abilities on it will not solve the basic issue that you dont need to have 400 abilities in the first place.
Having an abilitie i use once every 4 levels is stupid, a good game design fine tunes the classes and leaves you with a small number of abilities which you could use at allmost any stituation and a handfull of situational abilities. ToR seems to have a billion abilties which you can spam allmost as much as you want, since most classes dont seem to be running out of resources any how, unless they spam some poorly ballanced ulti and even then it takes allot to get "OOM" in this game...
Seriously? You find the game too complicated because there are too many options? The game is not even out yet, is simple by most mmorpg standards and there are already people crying to have it dumbed down more. Why didn't you just say, can we please have no options like WOW does now.
I saw some skills which repeated had two varieties. A light damaqge spell that took few resources and harder hitting ability that used more resources. Personally I keybound them so the more aggressive ability I would press shift and the key for. The decision of which to use was based on how many resources I had left and how much health the mnob had left. I did not have to use the lesser ability if I didn't want to.. I chose to use both this is my choice. I like this choice and makes combat more interesting for me.
I think this game really favours binders rather than clickers due to the number of skills but nothing is stopping you from using a smaller subset of skills.. especially if in your opinion there are duplicates.
I use a standard keyboard and mouse.
Just because you have an ability doesn't mean it'll be effective to use it. I only use 2 toolbars of my trooper of abilities during combat, a side toolbar for simple buffs and various out of combat stuff. I'm not having issues with too many abilities.
However it is a real hassle that the companion is using up an entire toolbar though. Later on that might become a real pain.
I always use:
Q,E,R,F,C,X,Z
1,2,3,4,5
alt + 1,2,3,4,5
shift + 1,2,3,4,5
ctrl + 1,2,3,4,5
+ 2 programable mouse buttons.
I don't go from 6-10. But that's already 29 hotkeys which are easy to acces. Some non-combat related skills like emotes, mount, etc. I bind to the most easy to reach hot bar and access with mouse clicking.
That's a hell of a lot of skills. Plenty, I think, especially when you have different setups for pve-pvp.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Is it me or does ToR have way too many abilities? - it's you mate.
Option is 50% of RPG
Choice is the other 50%
in MMORPG, you don't need to make a choice, you need to use all the options, thus why we have like 40 skills to use when 40% are simply just slight variation of each other.
Effective design is about making the simplest mechanic to acheive the most complex of results. MMORPG only got half of it, over complication.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
I don't really like games with a million abilities either.. I'd rather have 10 really great abilities than 50 meh abilities.
EQ2 is the worst I've played as far as that goes, but I felt like SWTOR was going that way as I leveled up.
There is a a huge diffrence between a complicated game and a poorly designed one, take GW for example it had allot of abilities but you had to pick a hanfull of them for each engagement, and pikcing the right abiltiies was key component of the game mechanics, especially in group fights.
ToR not only has allmost no "unique" abilities for diffrent factions, the classes for the most part are allmost identical carbon copies of each other where the only diffrence between abilities of the carbon copy classes are the graphical effects and the name of the ability. But also has a very large amount of redudant and situational abilities which are rarely used, I've PVPed allot and did some of the lower level instances, and i didnt game close to using all of my abilities, there was just no need for it, and for the solo part you could just spam 2-3 abilities all the time and be just as effective, heck even more effective than using all those "neat" abilities that might look cool but dont make the cut in terms of damage and effective ness.
As for the "game is not out yet" excuse, im sick of it, the game is out sorry it's being released in 15 days, it is defacto out, major things like UI, the whole instancng issue which was a huge pain on high population servers when you played with 4-5 firends, and the fact that you have ueless abilities is somthing that should've been fixed way before launch.
No game could be perfect no matter how much you refine it over the years, but there was a big jump in base quality of an MMO since WoW, and WoW helped allot to raise the bar and any one that thinks other wise is either blinded by foolishness or simply blind. ToR looks to me like a game that could've used atleast another 6 months of additional work.
A Game with few abilities is a no brain game, as long as all the abilities can be used in a certain situation some more some less ofc, it is fine by me, being able to start and pvping as max lvl an mmo is retarded and having 8 abilities to use and being defeated by someone just because he had better abilities on the bar is retarded (GW) .
when u start playing an mmo u should have that filling of being nothing but a grain of sand, that is what i felt in SWTOR loving the progression loving everything and i want new and more skills as i lvl, u should have a counter to everything someone else does at all times, not 8 abilities and luck
You have space for 20 abilities on the UI. Which means if you want to use around 10 abilities for your AC then make key bindings for that, and have your other skills on other bars. The keybindings are probably for 1-0 on the first bar, so have your skills on bar 2, and bar 3 as your clickables.
If you have played UO, you would have seen a game that required a lot of key bindings. I remember binding them as ctr- z, or shift-z, or just z. Its not that hard if you practise or if you register your abilties to letters that fit with the abiltiy you are using or make it fit by attributing the letter to the abiltiy to make it easier to remember.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
not enough abilities just not enough bar's i'm always a paranoid skill bar player I hate and i really mean this hate having full bars, idk what it is I just have a big paranoia about it so i'm hoping for another bar atleast hopefully 2. I'll give the competetion credit I like the UI set up of the bars the most thus far.
Surely this is all subjective.
Mirrored classes are for balancing. SWTOR achieves this by using mirrored classes.. WoW achieves this by using exactly the same classes for both factions. IMO SWTOR at least tried to give the mirrored classes some faction flavour.
Personally interesting design and efficient design are two different things. I prefer the former for this game. I like the choices I am making in combat.
If you don't use all your abilities then there is nothing wrong with this at all. Why try to reduce the number of abilities I use though because you personally do not use them. I left WoW because they started dumbing down the classes.. err making them more efficient however you want to spin it.. They ruined warrior tanking for me by simplifying what I have to do. They then ruined warlock afflicition for me by reducing the amount I have to keep track of and dots I had to maintain.
You can play with a subset of abilities then great.. I personally like to have the choice for all my abilities.. I think this is good design that you and I can both play how we want.
Sorry but thats a very childish and narrow minded view of game design, having been beaten by a guy who picked "better" abiltiies than you is more fair than being beaten by a random crit, especially if they picked a abilities that work better with their team mate picks than you, bringing the right weapons to a fight is just as important as to know how to use them.
A game with "few" abilities is much more demanding than a game with an specific ability for every situation, when you need to think which ability to use, and what combination of your core abilities works best for each situation you well... will actually have to think for a change. ToR seems to be like WoW especially pre-cata where you have a fixed ability for every specific situation, thats as brain dead as it gets.
do not confuse "options" or "variety" with redundant filler abilities. Yes TOR has too many redundant abilities.
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
I know exactly what the poster is talking about, reaching around 20 in the beta, and sticking there for a good amoung of time but I hardly think its worthy of its own thread.
Personally I really like the way they made the buttons cater for imperial agent to the cover system. It made for some minor frustration but in the end was good fun, one of the things I enjoy most in gaming is setting up the keybinds to fit my needs with my mmo mouse and laptops.
I dont think there were to many abilities either, it did overwelm me a bit when I seen all the new ones coming in like you said but I overcame it and it worked out well not to say I didnt have a few hissy fits with dieing cause i didnt learn all the new abilities and find good spots on my keyboard for them.
There is nothing wrong with having 40 abbilities and finding enough buttons to assign to them.. (even if it requires G15 keyboards Razor Naga mouses with 12 extra buttons and such to make it really comfortable)
Its much more important to make all those 40 buttons and skills usefull, and thats where most games lack, every skill should have its uses even if they are situational...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I have to agree that TOR has too many abilities. The combat is cluttered by redundant abilities that have little to no variety and made the combat not so enjoyable for me. The ideal combat system for me is one that has few but distinct abilities, I even wrote them these things in the survey. My friends seem to have no problem though so I will probably be playing with them but it's one of the things that really annoy me.
Many of the abilities in this game are very situational. It's very easy to tell what abiities are used for tanking/healing/pvp/pve etc.
For example: If you roll a SI Sorc you get healing abilities no matter what. If you're playing a dps sorc you are rarely going to need to use those abilities. You rely on your dps.
A DPS shadow/assassin isn't going to be using their taunts. A tank Juggernaut/Guardian will put away things like DPS stances and abilities that don't help them tank.
A lot of abilities for some classes are different stances or different ammo, these don't need to be keybound to be easily accessible and will rarely be activated.
It's simple really. You aren't going to need 40 abilities keybound to play the game. If you do for some reason try to use all 40 abilities all the time, well then you're doing it wrong.
There are some abilities that you will only use in PvP, and some that will be terrible for PvP.
It's up to you to determine which abilities you need for which situation you are going into. If you have any kind of mmo experience this should be easy.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Just wondering can you add skill bars like you can in Rift? There you can go from 1 to 5 on the bottom and 1 to 3 on the side.
Spankthetoad
Yes you can. Two rows at the bottom of the screen, 1 down the left and 1 down the right (that I found anyway
)
You can also bring up your companions action bar, but I couldn't work out how to move it as it sits on top of the bottom player quickslot bar.
Unfortunately I can not go back and check now, but my Sith Inquisitor was level 18 before I decided to move on to checking out a different class. I don't know exactly how many powers I got, but I had not even filled two bars yet. On top of that, a couple powers (companion revive and Teammate Revive) I didn't need to put on a skillbar since just mousing over the carcasses allowed me to click on them to use the powers. I have to wonder if the OP didn't accidentally slot some of his "leveled up" powers on his skillbars as well as leaving the lesser versions of the powers there. I know I almost did the first time I came upon a "leveled up" power.
Other than that though, I really can not figure out why someone is worried about having a larger variety of abilities. Last I knew things like that were better for making more interesting gameplay, not less. Having played games with a lesser number of abilities at higher levels such as the "10 abilities per class at the most " I have to say I always found them extremely dull unless the developers decide to create randomizing alternate animations for abilities, which almost never happens.
Personally, I am happy that the developers at BioWare disagrees with the OP, as do I.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
It really depends on what AC you play. The SI sorc doesn't need to use many abilities outside a small rotation. Those heals make like so much easier. The SI assasin can use a wider range of abilties. And they are a mix of ranged and melee which gives a very chaotic combat feeling. And the Assasin needs a wider range of abilties to be as effective as the SI sorc because of the lack of healing. For my assasin, I removed abilties from my bar to make a 6 button rotation. Went with a madness/tank spec and was good. I'll stay away from Shadow and Assasin in the future. Just not my thing.