At the moment, it would appear that the average IQ of citizens of Ascalon (and surrounding areas) is slightly below that of Neanderthal man. Take, for example, my Nord warrior…
Hmmm, a greatsword – swing it around, hack, slash, chop. Oooh look, a sword – swing it around, stab, slash and, oh yeah, riposte. So what’s this then? Looks like a very small sword – gotta handle anna blade, pointy-end and sharp sides an’ you can hold it in one hand. A dahg-hurr you say? Nope – can’t see how that could possibly work at all.
Rifle and longbow – them are real cool. But this shortbow thingy and… what did you call it again? Oh yeah, a piztool – nope – how they could possibly work completely elludes me.
Give my warrior a hammer and he’ll lay about his enemies like Thor on a caffine-rush but give him a staff – which is basically a hammer without a hammer-head – and he stands there sucking his thumb.
I don’t expect my warrior to start pulling fancy lightning shooting from my hands-tricks just because he’s got a staff – but I would expect him to be bright enough to figure how to bash people over the head with it and make them go away. After all, after the basic club, the staff is probably the oldest weapon in the world and yet – as in all MMO’s – no non-magic user has ever figured out how to hurt someone with one.
I realise creating a whole new set of skills for each weapon – along with the requisite animations – would be a real pain in the butt however, the skill-set needn’t be anything fancy and could be universal to all classes that don’t currently use a specific weapon.
For example, any class that currently can’t figure out how to stick them with the pointy end a sword could have stab, slash, block with offhand skills like parry and stun (i.e. hit them with the hilt). See, nothing fancy and something pretty much any fool could figure out for themselves.
I’m pretty sure that someone, somewhere in ANet can come up with better names – although I do have a fondness for “stick ’em with the pointy-end” for swords and “shoot ’em inna face” for pistols
and probably better “default” skills.