Lack of Abilities/Skills
I agree that there is a lack of ability customization, especially when compared to GW1. Tying in the first 5 abilities to your weapon is a cool idea, but overall very limiting. I feel like this system needs to be revised to allow more customization for those first 5 abilities.
GW1 had years to add and revise the huge amount of skills you could choose from, so I’m confident that something will change for the better.
I get why ArenaNet made it this way. I just miss obtaining skills at certain levels. The utility skills are like that to a point. You need 5 of the first tier and then 5 of the next tier and then 2 of the next tier. I just remember that feeling in other MMOs.
I remember being excited about the next 3 levels or so and having a really strong ambition to hammer through those levels to get that skill I wanted to play with. With GW2 it’s like my incentive to level is a little less on my alt because I have all her skills and I’ve explored all the map. Perhaps there are hidden things I missed but for the most part there isn’t much new.
I remember being excited about the next 3 levels or so and having a really strong ambition to hammer through those levels to get that skill I wanted to play with.
And with that one statement right there, you perhaps unknowingly hit upon the reason why you get all your skills up front. The journey is the game, not rushing through content to get to that next shiny. It took me awhile to get this concept because other games conditioned me to think that way. Some never will.
I remember being excited about the next 3 levels or so and having a really strong ambition to hammer through those levels to get that skill I wanted to play with.
And with that one statement right there, you perhaps unknowingly hit upon the reason why you get all your skills up front. The journey is the game, not rushing through content to get to that next shiny. It took me awhile to get this concept because other games conditioned me to think that way. Some never will.
I get tired of hearing about the ‘journey’. A person who plays 3 hours a day and a person who plays 13 hours a day both have the same ‘journey’, but simply do it faster. It takes the same amount of experience regardless.
I remember being excited about the next 3 levels or so and having a really strong ambition to hammer through those levels to get that skill I wanted to play with.
And with that one statement right there, you perhaps unknowingly hit upon the reason why you get all your skills up front. The journey is the game, not rushing through content to get to that next shiny. It took me awhile to get this concept because other games conditioned me to think that way. Some never will.
I think the complaint is that your first 5 main skills are tied to your weapon and can’t be customized in any way. It hampers the build variety.
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?382725-Warrior-Builds-and-Guides#.UI8J98XA_nA
When you look at those warrior builds from GW1, GW2’s warrior seems extremely shallow in comparison.
One word: TRAITS.
Your traits have the ability to greatly enhance your weapon/slot skills and greatly affect how effective your build is. I’ve spent countless hours developing and testing pve and pvp builds in the mists. There is a unique feeling of pride when you come up with a great build that really min/maxes everything (down to the armor and runes/sigils you use).
Tactical Fury [TF] – Late NA/early OCX driver (SoS)
Spirit of Faith [HOPE] – RIP
Spirit of Faith [HOPE] – RIP
That’s just something you’re going to have to live with in this game unfortunately.
It’s incredibly shallow
That’s just something you’re going to have to live with in this game unfortunately.
It’s incredibly shallow
I don’t get it. At a very minimum you have 15 abilities while in combat (at level 30) with multiple weapon sets, healing, utility, elite skills, special abilities (ie. Mesmers’ shatters; Warrior’s burst skill, etc), plus all them traits. If this feels shallow then I’m only a foot tall.
GW2’s character development is all about builds, aka. a particular combination of gear + traits + abilities.
You won’t get all that much engagement from unlocking abilities or using the 10 abilities you have access to. Overall the system has quite a bit of depth once it gets ironed out a little more.
It’s a shame that a lot of builds really don’t get much out of 2-3 of their weapons skills, making some builds about no more than 7 abilities.
I’m level 38 and at this point I’ve learned every skill I really want to and of course all my weapons (which isn’t hard at all). I see 42 levels ahead of me but not much to entice me character-wise to continue.
You have learned every single healing/utility/elite skill? I find that hard to believe since I didn’t finish learning all those until I was 80. They cost a lot of skillpoints which you can only get pre-80 by doing the blue skill challenges around the map. Several of those are 30 pointers, there are a number of 10 pointers as well. What in the hell did you do to earn all of those blue skill points by level 38?
There should be much more efficient ways to swap out all utility slots with 1 button press. 2-3 templates to quickly swap out of combat.
I don’t get it… from the looks of it everyone finds the skill synergy in this game really easy to get, especially the PVP players. I don’t really understand why they won’t expand that in the same direction, because there are truly limited amount of core builds in this game. Like for a Mesmer, you’re either going with a sword or great sword depends on being range or melee, and a scepter for PVP since you’ve got confusion to damage players when they use skills.
IMO, the learning process is now done for 80% of the players; so it’s time for more build choices to come out! * Plz…..
It’s the way it has to be if they want WvWvW to work properly. You can’t have 40 abilities out of which 5 are long are very powerful cooldowns in an environment where two armies are facing each other.
Anet missed the mark completely with their ability system. Boring ability system equals lack luster combat.
That’s just something you’re going to have to live with in this game unfortunately.
It’s incredibly shallow
I don’t get it. At a very minimum you have 15 abilities while in combat (at level 30) with multiple weapon sets, healing, utility, elite skills, special abilities (ie. Mesmers’ shatters; Warrior’s burst skill, etc), plus all them traits. If this feels shallow then I’m only a foot tall.
Turning a blind eye to the reality that not all classes have cohesive builds and many have filler: completely situtional skills and traits that can’t be used in normal combat. It’s not practical to have traits that only apply to certain situations because many players will seldom change their traits between fights.
Anet missed the mark completely with their ability system. Boring ability system equals lack luster combat.
Watch out, this is bait for the white knights!
(edited by dimgl.4786)
That’s just something you’re going to have to live with in this game unfortunately.
It’s incredibly shallow
I don’t get it. At a very minimum you have 15 abilities while in combat (at level 30) with multiple weapon sets, healing, utility, elite skills, special abilities (ie. Mesmers’ shatters; Warrior’s burst skill, etc), plus all them traits. If this feels shallow then I’m only a foot tall.
Turning a blind eye to the reality that not all classes have cohesive builds and many have filler: completely situtional skills and traits that can’t be used in normal combat. It’s not practical to have traits that only apply to certain situations because many players will seldom change their traits between fights.
Anet missed the mark completely with their ability system. Boring ability system equals lack luster combat.
Watch out, this is bait for the white knights!
Maybe, but it’s the reason why many of us put the game down. Nothing to look forward to after level 40 but a bunch of 1% gains and a couple passives.
I just wish that each of the weapon skills added 1-2 more skills per section (mh and oh) and allowed re-organization (within the section, ie mh skills can only be placed in slots 1-3, etc etc). Simply adding 1-2 more skills would have drastically increased the number of combinations that can be run (outside of 2h weapons. variations for 1h weapons is far greater).
We can only hope that in the future there will be a way to choose between a few skills for each weapon skill.
For example GreatSword Weapong, Skill 2:
Today: Rip and Tear (for non-real example)
Tomorrow: A choice of Rip and Tear, Dynamo or Lighting Stab for skill 2.
You can then do this with any 1-5 skill. They give you a multiple choice of what you can put there, but still limit you.
I hope so anyway, it would be a mix somewhere between what we have now and GW1.
Then add in more utilities and Elites.
To the person that said GW’s took years to get the skills in to make it dynamic. It shipped with enough to make it very dynamic from the start. They added more, that was great but didn’t change the core mechanic at all.
It’s really amusing to me how people talk about limited build options. As far as I’m concerned, this game is absolutely incredible in the number of build options available for each Profession, and all of them are effective, depending on your playstyle.
IOW, there are many possible things to build around. You can build around:- single weapon synergies, cross-weapon synergies, either of these combined with various utilities, certain utility combinations alone, utility combinations in combination with traits, traits only, traits in combination with single weapon synergies, traits in combination with cross-weapon synergies, traits in combination with utilities, in combination with single-weapon synergies, traits in combination with utilities in combination with cross-weapon synergies.
Now I’m not saying that all combinations are equally effective in min-max terms for any given playstyle, but there are easily enough possible combinations such that anybody can fine-tune a few builds to their playstyle that are effective enough to be fun to play.
The game isn’t exactly impoverished wrt build choices, there’s no LACK of abilities/skills. Perhaps in contrast with GW1, but as someone said above, it took GW1 a wee while to get there. In contrast with most other games out there’s an incredible number of possible effective (not just “flavour” but actually effective) builds in each Profession, right out the gate. (And part of the “incredibleness” of it is that it’s all pretty well balanced.)
And just to keep perspective on this, I say this as a convert to the game. I had little interest in the game and tried it sheerly out of curiosity. I’ve been won over by precisely the variety of builds possible.
As an elementalist, I have 5 skills per attunement which gives me 20 skills per weapon, plus the 5 utility/elite skills. So I always have 25 skills to use, plus I can switch weapons if I want… so technically I have 85 skills (counting underwater abilities). I have more skills than I need…
Maybe other classes just aren’t as good. shrug
You have learned every single healing/utility/elite skill? I find that hard to believe since I didn’t finish learning all those until I was 80. They cost a lot of skillpoints which you can only get pre-80 by doing the blue skill challenges around the map. Several of those are 30 pointers, there are a number of 10 pointers as well. What in the hell did you do to earn all of those blue skill points by level 38?
He said every skill that he wants, not necessarily every skill. I personally had every single skill purchased by level 60 though. Map completion ftw? I already had 70% map completion the day I hit 80.
I understand that traits expand on a character’s abilities once they’ve learned them all. But they’re not as dynamic as I’d like. Some are, adding new aspects to existing mechanics. But others like “5% increased LB damage” or “bigger marks” is kinda lackluster and doesn’t make my playing more interesting, just bigger damage numbers. A larger variety of skills however (or more dynamic traits), can constantly change the way a character can play throughout their journey from 1-80. And at 80, it gives us more variety too. That was the beauty of GW. You see a ranger in the distance and you have no idea what he’s going to bring. Conditions, spike, barrage, cripples, touch, elemental, splinter….tons of play styles that made PvP more varied and interesting imo.
Flixx Gatebuster, Orwynn Lightgrave, Seras Snapdragon
[TTBH] [HATE], Yak’s Bend(NA)
[TTBH] [HATE], Yak’s Bend(NA)
I’m sorry, but anyone saying the game has insane build variety or skill depth must not have played anything other than a MOBA.
This is the sort of thing I LOOK for in my MMO’s and RPG’s, it’s ONE of the most important things to me, having good/interesting classes, abilities, customization, depth, variety, etc.
This game is far from where it should be, but I can forgive that since it’s a fresh release.
The abilities in this game are limited and uninteresting. 75% of your Skill Point abilities are useless, and every weapon has 1-2 abilities that you only use because there’s nothing better to do.
I’m fine with there being only 10 active abilities, but the abilities we have to choose from really suck, and there needs to be some level of customization among the weapon skills. GW2 has one of the poorest skill/ability stables I’ve ever seen.
We need more weapon-based skills, and the ability to do a custom load-out based on increased variety. It wouldn’t even take much imo….maybe one or two more skills per weapon type.
— and/or simply having the ability to move the skills around on the hotbar would do wonders. For example, the ability to move a key survival skill to the 3 slot, instead of being limited to 7,8,9. Let me move that semi-useless weapon skill to the end of my bar (if I can’t load out a more interesting/useful weapon skill).
I think they have a good variety for an MMO. I never played GW1 but I think too many abilities can be daunting for a lot of players. Many players just end up using cookier cutter builds that other people have come up with instead of playing around with stuff themselves. This is true for any game. For most players they want a bit of variety but it can easily become too much for them. Look at The Secret World – that massive skill wheel deterred a lot of players and many that play the game just use the premade decks. And look at other games like WoW – everyone uses the cookie cutter builds.
I like variety and the ability to personlize like everyone but you need to keep in mind the balance. I think so far ANet has found a good balance. What they need to focus on is making the skills and traits we do have more effective because for many classes that is an issue.
Secondly I’d say that it’s easier to balance classes when you have less skills and possibilies to deal with. That is very important as well.
I agree with many points in this thread. They should include more skills that can be swapped in the primary skill bar and give us the option to create more versatile builds. I rather be able to select from a limited variety of skills for two weapons than have to swap weapons back and forth and deal with seemingly useless skills that are purely situational. Most of the time I find myself going into my inventory and switching back and forth. If this is the intended functionality, then give us the option to swap weapon sets so we can swap weapon sets when we are not in combat.
I rather have the former option over the latter though. I rather have more skills through a limited weapon set that are relevant to that weapon.
everyone complaining about a lack of skills either hasn’t gotten to level 80 or hasn’t put much thought into their build.
Tactical Fury [TF] – Late NA/early OCX driver (SoS)
Spirit of Faith [HOPE] – RIP
Spirit of Faith [HOPE] – RIP
I agree, I think we need the traditional MMO hotbar with 4 actual abilities, but 10 minor variations (9 of which are obsoleted by the 10th) and another 30 that are almost never used except in one ultra-specific situation, so you’re forced to have all 30 sitting there wasting space on your monitor on the off chance you happen to encounter one of the 30 ultra-specific situations that call for that ability.
I find that system to have amazing depth, what with the wide array of abilities based on the 4 you actually use, and the amazingly awesome 30 utility skills that almost no one ever uses except in some very specific situation you rarely encounter.
I remember being excited about the next 3 levels or so and having a really strong ambition to hammer through those levels to get that skill I wanted to play with.
And with that one statement right there, you perhaps unknowingly hit upon the reason why you get all your skills up front. The journey is the game, not rushing through content to get to that next shiny. It took me awhile to get this concept because other games conditioned me to think that way. Some never will.
I get tired of hearing about the ‘journey’. A person who plays 3 hours a day and a person who plays 13 hours a day both have the same ‘journey’, but simply do it faster. It takes the same amount of experience regardless.
I agree. These guys sound like complete fools when they argue “lolz wai to rusch throo 2 end gayme idyiot! Go plaiy WoW” I’m only 75, and definitely haven’t rushed through the game, but using this as an argument is dumb. 2 lvl 80s are going to have similar playtimes as soon as you hit 80 maybe differing by 5-10 hours (which isn’t much compared to the massive amount of time it took to hit 80) It’s a game they can play it however they want. If they want to rush to end game, let them rush.
I agree, I think we need the traditional MMO hotbar with 4 actual abilities, but 10 minor variations (9 of which are obsoleted by the 10th) and another 30 that are almost never used except in one ultra-specific situation, so you’re forced to have all 30 sitting there wasting space on your monitor on the off chance you happen to encounter one of the 30 ultra-specific situations that call for that ability.
I find that system to have amazing depth, what with the wide array of abilities based on the 4 you actually use, and the amazingly awesome 30 utility skills that almost no one ever uses except in some very specific situation you rarely encounter.
He’s talking about overall skills, not how many you can attach to your hotbar at one time.
I know what he was talking about, but you’re overlooking the fact that the huge amount of skills in other MMOs is false variety.
In most MMOs that have 50+ skills or whatever, you are using maybe 10 of them during any given fight.
Having 40+ obsolete skills that do not matter solely for the sake of tricking people into thinking there is variety is not a good design.
i dont want more skills..i just want existing skills changed to be useful and then give me a skill swap button to be able to change skills like weapon swapping..even put a cd on it, I dont care
i lost the good feels when i found out i could buy up all the other skills. i treated it like a one-time trait list, where if you bought the wrong skill, it would have locked in when you closed the UI. i did not know i could buy up EVERY SKILL until i was lv72.