I dont think we should have 10 skills either.
But of course we could potentially handle 10 skills in a battle. Plenty of MMOs do that, among other games.
Plus, you might not want to use all skills in one battle.
In one battle you might focus on your AOE skills, in another your single target skills, or you use your stun ability on a challenging enemy. Maybe you skip your cold dmg attack because the enemy is cold resistant.
Likewise for buffs. In one fight you use mana shield, but another fight you skip it, because the boss mana drains, and you cant keep up your mana anymore.
All the above is good, and would represent positive gameplay where your decisions matters (and not just facerolling 2 buttons).
However, if you have unlimited skill slots, and can pick all abilities, then it kinda falls apart, since you dont have to choose which skills you want to bring into a fight. You just bring them all - which can be perfectly fine gameplay for some games, like plenty of JRPGs dont really have a concept of builds, but it is not befitting an A-RPG imo. Hard choices that defines builds is an important aspect of A-RPGs.
This is not an MMO, go play WoW if you want an MMO. Diablo is an aRPG hackânslash game.
Again you are down to the 6 skills palette. Since your character canât do more than one attack at a time anyways, when fighting large groups you donât need more than 2 abilites, one that does something over time, and another that you fight with. When it comes to single targets itâs the same deal, one skill that deals damage over time, and one you keep using meanwhile. And then you have some skills to control the battle field by dragging or pushing, stunning/freezing whatever.
Carrying around one skill for one specific monster is just really bad design, itâs not action, thatâs boring.
Huh. Still doesnt change that people can of course handle 10 skills in combat.
At the absolute minimum:
1 single target skill
1 aoe skill
1-2 alternative dmg type skill (single target or aoe) for resistent enemies
I hadnt even counted dmg over time skills, but if we add those, you could double the above skills for dot skills - I dont think that is necessary though. One could use only dots, or only direct dmg in a build)
CC skill. And you might easily be able to use multiple. Like one that drags an enemy to you, and another that keeps it in place.
Buffs/debuffs
An ability-based game where you only need 2 abilities, is probably a bad game.
Anything below 4-6 active skills would be pretty sad. And that is already cutting it really low. 7-8 would be much better tbh.
It is not one enemy. It might be every fifth or 20th enemy.
Also, it is tactics. If you just faceroll one attack against all enemies, what is the point. Might as well not have a game at all then.
Sure. I am not saying you should be prevented from trying to make a build with just 1-2 attacks. The whole goal here is to have a wide diversity in builds.
It would be reasonable if going for that few active skills were sub-optimal though, to ensure engaging tactical combat.
However, if you have unlimited skill slots, and can pick all abilities, then it kinda falls apart, since you dont have to choose which skills you want to bring into a fight. You just bring them all - which can be perfectly fine gameplay for some games, like plenty of JRPGs dont really have a concept of builds, but it is not befitting an A-RPG imo. Hard choices that defines builds is an important aspect of A-RPGs.
You could bring them all, but why would you bind a one hard point ice bolt and ever use it? You only bind the skills youâve put your resources into and the ones that are beneficial with limited points. i.e. D2 model of active skills. The reason D3 had to have a limited skill bar was because every skill was maxed because there were no skill points. This shouldnât be a problem in D4 since trees are back. Design can always adjust the power of a class and their skills to make this work and remove the restriction.
One-point-wonders was a problem in D2 imo. If you get a strong skill for 1 point, why wouldnât you pick it up. Making all builds more similar. Going for one skill in a build should be a choice that has a significant cost; such as not being able to get another skill.
But yeah, you certainly shouldnât be able to max all the skills you have.
I think that one point wonders allowed the devs to balance the game somewhat. You would pick up static if youre a sorc probably (but static isnât even a one point wonder as some builds pump it, but itâs powerful and effective with just one point), but on the downside your class only gets two points in health per vitality and you donât have great defensive skills.
Restriction in that area brings about meaningful choices. You will have to choose six skills that go well together. Deciding which utility skill to take will be better than being able to use them all.
You are not listening to the one that is above you. PoE is on console. GGG didnât change things to make it where only six skills can be used at any given time. So console doesnât have a thing to do with it. Look up PoE for PS4 or Xbox One and see that I along with others are telling the truth.
The way that I see it they are making improvements over what D3 has done. Paragon is something that they could do. But instead of letting get away from them they wouldnât make a linear paragon system. Which was hinted at when asked would they be doing a paragon system. A system of diminishing returns where you have a soft cap and a hard cap that no matter how many points spent you will never reach it.
There is so much more that we donât know about. The game is still in pre-Alpha as far as I can tell. We need to learn more before making an accurate conclusion of what D4 will turn out to be.
The one thing that, atm, D4âs abilities have that wonât likely make any of them one point wonders are perks. Perks are unlocked for spending x amount of hard points into a skill. Want the perk of skill x then you must spend y amount of points.
Combat will not be based on requiring every unlocked skill to be on any kind of action bar like other games that allow you more than six active skills.
I might choose to have a total of eight skills with only a few maxed due to the perks that I am after.
More meaningful choices means that you will not be able to have access to every skill that you have unlocked. Now you will have to choose which six of the skills that you have unlocked and leveled to use. Which defensive skill, attack skill, utility, etc⌠will you choose. Rather than having access to all four attacks, five defensive and five utility. Now you must choose which ones to take into the battle with you. You have to give something up in order to be able to use the six skills that you put on your action bar.
They tried 7 in D3 and it didnât work out. That extra skill meant that players didnât have to make any hard choices. They could pretty much choose all of the skills that they wanted.
While I agree with limiting the number of skill slots. I donât agree with limiting the amount of skill points. I want to finally be able to play a character instead of playing a spec.
Distorting what arguement exactly? That D2 has more skill slots than D3? Or that controller restricts their design decision? That wasnât my main arguement and I donât care much for it. Though if I had to guess then Iâd say Blizzard definitely want to restrict the amount of abilities to make it easier for noobs to learn the game. And the casual console gamer market is a big one for D3.
Haha, it might be passive but it counts as an ability on your skill slot. On my wizard I use force weapon and various armor, and depending on what I choose it impacts my gameplay differently, albeit not in a major way. Effectively you might argue D4 offers you 4 slots then. Either way itâs less than what my sorcs in D2 used. My D2 Necro used 8 abilities frequently,
Since the only thing you seem to consider abilities are rotational/spammable ones then I question whether youâre the one not actually understanding games at all.
Name two. Iâll be waiting. Either way theyâre in the minority.
Spoken like a complete noob. I handled 20+ abilities in varous mmos over the years. I even had over 50kbinds in wow until Blizzard went in and destroyed my class so that they could bridge the gap between the seasoned players and complete noobs that just started fresh.
And who says the spells must be chained together? This is not a dps rotation. You talk about swinging axes, do you know what utility spells are? Or situational abilities? They add flavour to classes.
Yes, it can definitely be. Watch WoW for reference and see how they destroyed their classes when they got rid of such spells.
Now ARPGS donât really need 20+ abilities, but they definitely need 10, especially if they are going to include passive slots amongst them.
It mostly lets them balance better because it primarily leads to more homogenization between builds within a class.
Teleport is actually the best example for a Sorceress. Pretty much every one had it because it was super useful for only 1 point, or 2 points if you count the point youâd need in Telekinesis to get to Teleport.
I had both a Lightning and a Cold Sorc back in the day and there wasnât really much of a difference in how they played. It was a matter of spamming Lightning/Chain Lightning as my main attack vs spamming Frozen Orb while everything else was just the same one point wonder skills like Teleport, or getting all the synergies(which were also bad for the game imo) to act as passive damage boosts.
Homogenized classes are easier to balance, but that also runs counter to a major point of Diablo since Diablo 2 which is diverse character building.
Again, if Blizzard were taking the console market seriously, they would have made a simultaneous release of the PC and console versions. Hell, D3 on console only started having support for seasons with the PS4 and XOne versions.
As far as consoles go: Path of Exile released on consoles just fine and that is often considered the âtrue successorâ to Diablo 2.
This isnât 1995 where console controllers only have 6 buttons on them. Diablo hasnât even ever been a very complicated game or one with a ton of keybinds.
What are you saying, that Diablo hasnât ever used more than 6 skills? Not true, D2 did that. The only other evidence we have is D3, which isnât like D2 and by many accounts a gameplay failure. I mean, right now how many people do you think still play this game? Likely less than play D2 currently, imo that makes D3 a giant failure. Nobody played D1 after D2 came out except for novelty.
D4 should be good like D2, thus we canât just limit players to 6 skills. Itâs true, having ~10 skills isnât complicated. Monster resistances and situational skills arenât complicated, one point skills that are useful arenât complicated to implement.
Homogenized classes are easier to balance, but that also runs counter to a major point of Diablo since Diablo 2 which is diverse character building.
Homogenization of heros? Ok, sure. But how did limiting the skills to 6 help in this regard in Diablo 3? Isnât everyone running the same builds with the same gear in this game? As I understand everyoneâs hero is pretty similar in this game too, even more homogenized than heros in D2 (even two hammerdins are likely to be a bit different between stats, gear, and skills). People just respec to the most powerful builds generally because of the infinite scaling in this game you HAVE to swap to the powerful builds to be viable at higher rift levels as I understand.
It is quite unlikely that I run into another player with the same skills, stats and gear in D2, I think itâs more likely in this game with no stats or skill points and only 6 skills. I donât think your argument makes sense.
I might choose to have a total of eight skills with only a few maxed due to the perks that I am after.
What? How would you have eight skills if the max is 6 skills in D4?
Maybe. But then D3 does not have monster resistances either. Which D4 really should have. Nor remotely good balance between single target and AoE. So the need for different skills werenât there.
If you have a need for at minimum 3-4 attacks, then 7-8 skills still wont allow you to get everything you might want.