Guild Wars 2

Not my ideas, just quoting a guy that makes online comics and comments on games, but I completely agree that it would be awesome:

“The fact that you unlock all of a new weapon type’s skills so quickly begs the question of “why even need to unlock them then?” I mean, certainly we as players are not so dumbkitten stupid as to be totally overwhelmed if we picked up a new weapon and had five skills at our fingertips.

Usually if I gripe about a feature in a game, I like to also muse about how I would have liked to see it done differently. In this case I think it might have been more engaging to make your choice of weapon not only a playstyle choice, but tie it into the overall progression/lifespan of the character more.

For instance, if you pick up a sword for the first time, there are, let’s say, eight abilities for the sword. You can only have five on your action bar at any time. So right there, there’s some choice to suit your preference/playstyle, and you feel like you still have some options for the future: different combinations. It’s not “these are the only 5 skills you will ever get for this sword.”

Next up, the more you use a particular sword ability, the more the ability itself levels up. It gets slightly, incrementally more powerful. Perhaps at certain thresholds, you have the options to customize the ability a little (ex: at ability rank 10 you can choose extra range, or extra bleed duration for an ability. Whatever you don’t choose is locked out. At rank 20, you’re presented with a different two options.)

I want choice in my MMOs. I want as much choice as the game can give me. In a world that I’ll be sharing with thousands of other people, I need as much opportunity to feel like I’m playing the unique hero the game is telling me I am.

GW2 did a better job with the other half of your skill bar, in giving you a bunch of class abilities to earn, which just makes the abilities related to your choice of weapon just that much more stifling."

What do you guys think?
Should Anet consider this in their future plans?

I support this whole-heartedly. The enhancement system in City of Heroes spoiled me rotten. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to find another game with THAT much customization potential, but at least this would be a small step closer.

I absolutely love this idea.
It is a real shame that the devs are denying us a deeeeeper level of customization that many of us need.

It is a shame.
DIVA

You would be surprised how many people would be overwhelmed by that system.

Also balancing issues. Since it is impossible to make all those skills good, some would never be used. Making use of limited tools is actually one of the finer points of play that’s enjoyable.

I just made my own suggestion for the same problematic and I think my solution is more balanced than the abilities leveling up you suggested.
You can read it here : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Weapon-skills-builds-customization-balance

Love some points and also a bit skeptical about the others.

Having 8 abilities on 5 skills is a bit hard to balance but still can be done.

Grinding for skill unlocks is not really something that I think would fit with GW2’s meta; the ‘skill progressions’ that they’ve allowed in this game involves a lot of “pick and choose” on their development ideal fundamentals, meaning whether that is something they want (I dunno what that is as many of us aren’t clearly, after the fact that many people got blind-sided by the ascended gear updates).

They could have also had mana in this game. Or have characters be able to advance in their respective classes in the game. But they chose not to.

I think, if more than anything, our suggestions are simply ideas for them to go upon revelating/helping them to expand on the ideas that they’ve already have. It’s highly rare for them to just take ideas, good or bad, and implement that as the core of their changes; because they see the layout of this game more so than we ever will (because we don’t have the architectural guidelines in front of us like they do).

At the end of the day, every idea would be possible, although it’s almost impossible to know if what suggestions we’re giving will actually help the developers with what pieces in the problem that they’re missing, or is it just a borderline irritation to their thought process.

At the end of the day, I think the worst thing they can do is listen to players that is telling them that this & that change won’t work, as oppose to listening to players giving out ideas for changes.

Changes is the step forward while the struggle to keep what’s belong to the keepers is the step down the spiral paths to ‘no-where’.

LT;DR – I think your suggestions are mostly more than valid And IMO it’s suggests possibilities that are out there in open, none-conservative & bold; as many of the suggestions in this forum are.