Curse

The Scorpion Knight · Aug 09, 2009, 02:09 PM // 14:09

With 8 skills you actually got to think what skills your combining for them to be most effective.

caeleth · Aug 10, 2009, 12:50 PM // 12:50

Having only 8 skills at a time really is the thing that makes GW unique. It stimulates players into learning the skills (instead of randomly pressing whichever one is closer/recharged), creating and using different builds for different situations / areas / teams, and actually working as a team. If you can bring everything by yourself, then why bother with a team build?

I think 8 is a good limit to realistically be able to hotbar on keyboard/mouse in order to make use of all of them reasonably quick (think pvp). Adding more would just make them harder to slot in and use. Being used to having 8, anything less than that would feel weak

I played AoC for a while, and one the main reasons I left was that I felt there really didn't feel like there was any strategy involved in the skills. Yes, you could change the builds, but it was costly and took forever. So the free skill changing system (and free attribute changes now

) is also really vital.

In PvE it might be worthwhile to have say 1-2 skill changes in an instance to prevent the awesome "omg we forgot xxx - resign and restart" groups. But I'd like it to be strictly limited for each instance to force people to still think about where they're going and what to bring.

Imo, limitation stimulates creativity.

caeleth · Aug 10, 2009, 01:12 PM // 13:12

Just read the rest of the thread, and this really just sums it all up

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrael_Eveningsong

The 8-skill Bar has caused me much grief, countless hours of lost sleep because I was Build Wars-ing, and no end of irritation.

I love it.

I have played other games, and I keep coming back to GW. Whenever I tried playing [insert random game name here] and it didn't have a skill limit, I always tried to set up an 8-skill bar.

Long live the 8-skill bar.

It frustrates me, it flaunts its limitations, and like a complete slave, I come back for more punishment.

Why?

Because it's that damned good.

draxynnic · Aug 11, 2009, 05:22 AM // 05:22

I think it works. It's large enough that you can set up decent builds and synergies together, but it's small enough that it's easy to keep a handle on the skills you use in an instance and to allow for customisation.

Frankly, the ability to experiment is one of the things I really enjoy about Guild Wars - while I pay attention to what the flavours are, I tend to prefer to make my own builds and sometimes to go outside the flavour to give something a go - which has allowed my to pre-empt some of them, but is, on the whole, fun. In a conventional MMO, what you've got is what you've got, but the limited but easily changed skillbar is tight enough to feel like you're almost playing a different character with a sufficiently rejigged bar. Since my practise in previous games like Diablo 2 has been to only get up to the point at which the build has all its tools before growing bored and looking for a different build, this ability to rebuild a character to feel completely different is one of the pluses of the game.

Regarding persistence - I expect there will still be safe zones equivalent to outposts, where builds can be changed regardless (although you may find that what you face isn't what you prepared for). I expect there will be some zones that remain instanced as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aapo

- I wish RPGs would develop to direction of FPS's. One click to prime the grenade or meteor, choose location with mouse, hold button down for power and launch by releasing. Judgment is required on every step and the game can develop coordination. Instead we have one skill for flare, one for meteor, one for bit bigger flare, but everything is mutually exclusive and works by clicking that 1 button on your keyboard... and it always hits. Yawn.

I have a suspicion this is pretty much exactly the sort of thing they're looking into - having fewer skills in total, but making those skills that are available more customisable on the fly. Maybe not to the point of being as 'twitchy' as you're typical FPS, but with the same skill having different effects depending on how its used.

(Although, to nitpick, it doesn't always hit - in fact, I get regularly frustrated when some projectile spell goes wide due to the prediction algorithm going horribly wrong...)

BenjZee · Aug 11, 2009, 12:42 PM // 12:42

i'm probably wrong but looking at screenshots of games like WOW etc they have so man icons etc on the screen which i assume are spells ands skills. It looks like it could get pretty confusing. the cool thing about the skill bar is that everything is been thought about well in terms of balance. With a max level cap of 20 we have a certain amount of attributes to play with aswell, this prevents things being overpowered (well at a limit, i don't want flaming for this).