In PoE most builds are 1 click (and some buffs here and there)… lul
Grim Dawn as well…
aRPGs will not have that because Isometric in general is bad for many skills (unless its turn-based) like DOS2… BG3…
MMORPGs are third-person most of the time so it feels more natural to use more skills. (even tho they try to fix skill bloat nowadays with WoW)
WoW could fill up your hotbars sure, but that’s an obviously inflated picture.
6 mounts on the bar, alchemy is mixed in with abilities, etc.
I’m not making excuses but I could easily cut that bar down by around 1/3 to 1/2 of what is there by splitting off the non-combat stuff to a sidebar that you just click whenever you need it.
That person tried to put basically everything on their primary bar regardless of it making any sense of it being there or not.
Also I prefer Classic too, but let’s not pretend like those bars don’t fill up either. My level 33 Troll Hunter I’m leveling right now has around 17 keybinds that I actually use in combat(many situational, but still). 18 if you want to count my Berserking racial as well.
Though if you wanna talk about standard RPGs, I should show you what my Wild Mage on Baldur’s Gate looks like. Casting a spell is something like 4-5 rows of abilities.
aRPGs and RPGs have always allowed for more than 6 abilities at once. They usually just don’t make it mandatory.
As much as I like this in theory, and are currently replaying Pathfinder Kingmaker, I have to say, I wish these classes were a bit more focused 
Rather have max 20 skills I specialized into, than those row after row of like 60+ skills. In the end these games are bound to what their pen & paper RPG sources say of course.
Realtime A-RPGs are different in any case, and limiting how many skills we can have seems sensible. 6 skills is just really low.
Personally the biggest issue I have is just the sheer utility that casters get over martial classes because of their massive spellbooks.
Though Diablo 4 should already have a limiter because you wont be able to max everything out. A big reason why my Mage’s spellbook looks like that in BG is because I can learn every spell I find a scroll for.
They just need to make sure that only putting 1 point in everything has an actual trade-off. Diablo 2 let you offset that too much by having insane amounts of +X to all skills.
Even if thats the case, thats not a reason to limit the game for no reason.
If people want more try out build fantasies, diversity and utility, let them.
If you want to use a few spells being completely strong then the choice is yours to take.
No one is obliging you to pick more than 6 spells since you can focus on a few for being strong, but since the skilltree will only be able to use a total of 30-40% skillpoints of all your spells, there is no reason to not let people play as they would like if they prefer lesser damage but for that reason more diversity and utility, like supporting party, etc.
Like, let people like you be a one trick pony but let others be a jack of all trades for the trade-off of power.
Its just a win-win situation and no loss by your side.
Edit: im posting the skills i use (yes i use them all) of my character that beat last boss at forgotten gods DLC.
I use a second skill skillbar too, there are 2 images attached to the first image.
I also don’t think 6 skills is necessarily bad. There are many arguments in favor and against it that are well presented. I quote this one because it presents some arguments that are valid, but might not apply to D4. First is the argument of buffing items, wouldn’t even call it gear. Who uses CTA as a legit weapon other than for the WCs? Treachery, +3 WC or +3 shapeshifting amulets, Demon limb? They’re items that maybe don’t have their place in games anymore… they’re basically a gameplay nuisance, forcing you to swap gear. Don’t misunderstand me, I think they’re great options, but I believe that these abilities could be provided in a different way, without taking a skill slot. Shouldn’t what you wear be what’s best for you? D3 fixed the problem by adding the Kanai cube but I find the formula a little unexciting.
About the summons, true in D2 i couldn’t hotkey all my summons while being a rabies druid and that’s lame. How about having the possibility or merging all summons in 1 skill? Whatever is missing is going to be summoned back to life, costing you the exact cost of what was summoned (not a fix or the total amount)?
About SWarrior’s comment, I hear you about the paladin’s auras but I don’t think it’s a negative thing to have to select only the few most important ones and not give you access to everything… And to be quite fair, if your character had decent gear in D2, you really didn’t need to bother using that many auras.
My initial post was mostly regarding Diablo 2, so it wasn’t meant to have any validity pertaining to Diablo 4. Following that post, I even mentioned that I wouldn’t have an issue with Diablo 4 having only 6 skill slots primarily because there doesn’t appear to be that many active skills for players to choose from.
Never said anything about using cta as a damage dealing weapon. However, I still have the warcries hotkeyed, it’d be a nuisance otherwise especially when it comes to pvp with my other characters.
My Summon Necro uses 14 skills. I’m not sure wtf you are talking about.
Didn’t mean to criticize for going off-topic. I go off-topic a lot! 
Just a general comment on the two things not being related.
Enough with this strawman garbage. The standard controller can support over 100 different inputs. MMOs with more than 6 inputs were on console before D3, regular games on console routinely have used more than 6 inputs before D3.
It is and was a design choice which had more to do with the hand naturally resting on qwer plus lmb/rmbs.
Also PoE is on console and not limited to 6. But this is really a troll PoE thread isn’t it?
I’ll take a wild guess and say you aren’t the average player. You know the ones who pretty much used 2 skills because they were unaware of keybinds and thought constantly changing out active skills was a pain.
I doubt the average player didn’t realize you could keybind skills.
Though changing out active skills, even with keybinds, was still pretty bad.
But, yeah, having 6-14 skills on characters felt very common.
In any case… it does not matter how many skills people used in D2.
D4 should not use very few skills merely because D2 or D3 did so.
Just because the average player couldn’t be bothered to learn how to play the game, how is that my problem?
The devs chose to go in a different direction. If you can’t or won’t adjust to it, then that is how it’s your problem.
Its not my problem. If I don’t like the game I won’t play it.
That totally depends if you are playing end game and how many people are in the game and if you are purely doing PVP or PVE, even more if you are doing PVP in teams (up to 8 players and 4vs4 pvp).
There are however many monster modifiers possibilities that actually require you to swap to different auras (and even more in Hell).
I posted a video of this last week showcasing a paladin player facing off conviction plus mana burn, amplify damage with fanactism packs where the need to swap spells/auras is quite necessary in such an occasion.
Just like when you are fighting baals minions and after second wave everyone is poisoned, it becomes quite handy to use cleansing to remove slow/poison debuffs for your whole party.
The big question is, why are you all so keen in to limit the player?
Why must you not allow player freedom for trade of power?
That makes no sense at all and is just a selfish wish.
I consider myself the average player, I didn’t know about it until years later when it was brought up on the beta forums for D3.
You got to understand the average player doesn’t invest the kind of time nor effort that most players here do to knowing and understanding anything about the game other than the basics. Think of it what you will, but I’ll guarantee, most didn’t know.
But they skill swapping was a pain. Luckily I used few skills aimed auras so I didn’t need to do a lot of swapping.
Then there is no problem. Not sure why you assumed there was one on your end.
Maybe you should recap the conversation.
I did. Not once was you having a problem insinuated before you asked me why it was your problem. As if you have a problem with 6 skills, but then you said if you don’t like it you won’t play it. So like I said, then there is no problem, not sure why you brought it up.
