People don't like it because most of us saw games evolve from EQ to EQ2/Rift/WoW where you spam a rotation with one click for every GCD and its not that fun. Why would making something as complex as possible make it more fun? You can always add more meaningful choice, you could go into wow right now and add two new abilities to every class and people would find meaningful uses for them, but it wouldnt make the game better.
Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO
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shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
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The latter, make us make decisions in real time about what to use on what mob at what time and make that choice matter.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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Many people have already offered their opinion on why you would limit what you can do. Yes meaningful (i.e. specific utility like invis, levitate, acumen) spells should be a part of the game but if you have 40 spells in your spellbook and all of them are always available encounters will be designed around every class having 40 spells available. Not only that but then I need to be able to hit 40 different keys with precise timing (well probably not all 40 but even 20 is a lot). It's bloat and it's unnecessary. The feature bloat gets exponentially worse with each new expansion and level cap raise. It also makes having interesting items with interesting click effects add to that already daunting number of buttons you need to press. It's bad design.
There are really only two good options.
1) Have every skill available at all times but limit the actual number of skills. This limits the amount of utility abilities you can add to the game unless you have ridiculous numbers of classes (like EQN). It also runs the risk of future bloat after the game has been around for 10 years.
2) Have a lot of skills but only a certain number are available at any point in time. This has the extra benefit that you can strategize your group setup. It makes grouping more interesting because you can load a completely different set of skills for the same exact content depending on your group makeup. It may not seem like much but it can actually offer quite a different play experience. The downside of this is people will expect certain classes to load certain skills just because the utility might benefit them solely rather than the entirety of a group which can cause bickering, trolling, afking and griefing.
shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
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I agree about the games you mentioned.. but its not because "there are too many" its because there are too many skills that are basically the same.. There was a day that damage types mattered, you know you can't just spam fireball FTW, although it seems many want just that.
shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
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if you want less freakin choice DON'T PUT THE SKILLS ON YOUR BAR... if i do LET ME.... and what game has 40 spells that you use in every encounter ?
what matters to me is making tactical choices at time of combat, not spamming 5 keys and running around like a tard jumping up and down.
I agree with the limited load but one thing about the gear and such, my deal is try to keep gear to only armor till the mid/low lvls and be stingy with stats. This is one of the many things EQ did correct in my eyes, I did not get armor with stats still my late teens or mid twenties and up to then I was a sk wearing cloth and some leather I was able to craft or bum off peeps running around. no stats only armor on them and a bit of it at that, it really made my first piece of real stat armor special.
While on the subject I know its been mentioned on this post before but just to throw my 2 cents in, plz no armor drop every few mobs even Vanguard is horrible with this I have to do a stat check every few mobs to see if what I got on is better than the blues and yellows that just drop off snakes...
Cuts my immersion away too. Especially when I start to think about the origin of a INT bow in WoW... who the fuck spent time making that item? for what purpose? Granted my D&D background where making a magical item was a lot more work than WoW suggest...
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Something I haven't seen directly mentioned: We keep talking about limited spells / abilities and bash EQ2 more than any other system. As someone who played EQ / EQ2 extensively from Beta, I hope consideration is made for the forward direction of the game. EQ2 on release wasn't anywhere near as spammy nor bloated. It actually had a mcuh quicker pace than EQ1, for sure, but it was bearable. What KILLED the game was every xpac and AA. More additional skills were introduced and very little of it was passive. Then you add in +spell haste / +reuse speed that compounded exponentially over the years and you are left with the state its in today.
EQ1, on the other hand, had some quite long spell casting times. 4 - 5 second wizard casts, etc. Even with powerful spell haste 3+ expansions later, it still allowed plenty of manageable time to pay attention to what was going on.
Short version: If you start with abilities taking 1-2 seconds to cast (end game), then quickly introduce methods of speeding that up via later xpacs, it snowballs quickly into spam combat. Keep this in mind from the start!!
EQ1, on the other hand, had some quite long spell casting times. 4 - 5 second wizard casts, etc. Even with powerful spell haste 3+ expansions later, it still allowed plenty of manageable time to pay attention to what was going on.
Short version: If you start with abilities taking 1-2 seconds to cast (end game), then quickly introduce methods of speeding that up via later xpacs, it snowballs quickly into spam combat. Keep this in mind from the start!!
Probably limited load. If you do go the other direction, be wary of skill bloat because no one likes that.
Terial
Trakanon Raider
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shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
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Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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Why not just attach skills to gear, the longer you use it or whatever the stronger it gets or unlocks better skills/spells. FF IX did this, made gear very meaningful. Put magic spells on robes, tank stuff on shields etc but don't limit who can use what so if you have a wizard hat and a cleric mace maybe you can haste and heal. Keep the best skills on the core pieces or make that fireball do more damage if you are in all cloth.
tad10
Elisha Dushku
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Some procs? Hell yeah. The above? Nooo. Can you imagine the loot rolls? Everyone rolls on everything.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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Agreed... Not to agree with myself but I agreeing that mixing players is a good thing. I think that is a major part of improving the health and the longevity of MMO's. Why do we have "noobie" areas or such segregated tiered areas to where you never see other players. Understood we are not going to have a level 3 and a level 40 fighting side by side but think of once the server gets a little age and the majority of the people in the max level range, new players see no one. I would like to see a player start up 1 or 2 years after a server has started, pick a starting city, and see a healthy community of players moving in and out of their respective towns. How many times have you bummed buffs, teleports, or bought (or had summoned) food and water? Those little things go much further than we give them credit for in MMO's.
Also, I liked the way EQII did food & drink, that is the one thing if you're going to implement food and water, they did the best in my opinion.
Hateyou
Not Great, Not Terrible
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Not that my opinion matters but I'd like to see what Vanguard tried to do and failed. Hidden abilities that happen at certain times. Mob swings and misses, a few abilities pop up that do different things, you decide within a few seconds or the opportunity goes away. Mob starts casting a spell, some abilities pop up...mob raises his shield, some abilities pop up, etc.
Have stuff like that, done well, in addition to your regular 8-12 normal slots. Then you've got limited choices/small bar of abilities, plus some hidden "opportunity" abilities.
If not that, a small amount is fine with me. VG went overboard with ability #'s. What was weird was you could macro them all in to 1 key depending on your cooldowns, so it ended up feeling as though you only had one ability with different animations...kinda went both extremes. (I was a bard in VG for macro reference)
Have stuff like that, done well, in addition to your regular 8-12 normal slots. Then you've got limited choices/small bar of abilities, plus some hidden "opportunity" abilities.
If not that, a small amount is fine with me. VG went overboard with ability #'s. What was weird was you could macro them all in to 1 key depending on your cooldowns, so it ended up feeling as though you only had one ability with different animations...kinda went both extremes. (I was a bard in VG for macro reference)