The ability limit - Poll thread

[Zwiebelchen]

The ability limit: why it sucks & solutions

So, I have been thinking about new abilities for future updates and - as always - could not help but notice all the flaws the current system has:

• general-purpose abilities are naturally way more popular than situational abilities like spell mirror or stone skin
• low cooldown abilities are naturally more popular than high cooldown abilities
• less and less hotkeys available
• abilities inside spellbooks can not be re-arranged
• spellbooks have unfixable flaws like closing automaticly when mana is depleted
• vendor costs for relearning abilities are pretty arbitrary and not dependant on character level
• certain talents affecting abilities are useless if you haven't learned that ability

So, the more I think about this, the more I realize that there should be some major changes here, especially with the new abilities coming up and even more hotkeys taken (and semi-useless spells getting unlearned).


So, here are some solutions I came up with after some hours of brainstorming:


1) Combos and ability chains

This system will basicly get rid of the 9 ability limit and the spellbook requirement by chaining abilities into combos that make sense, compressing the hotkeys and ability buttons required into 6-7 useable slots.

For example, 'Revenge' and 'Heroic Strike' would share a slot, as soon as 'Heroic Strike' was used, 'Gaping Wounds' would take it's place for a number of seconds (lower than the 'Heroic Strike' cooldown).

A link to a possible layout for that: click

Pros:
- simplifies hotkeys
- easy to implement
- feels intuitive (no explanation required, no complicated menus to set it up)
- newly added abilities must not neccesarily be as strong as early abilities; allows for a certain amount of redundancy in abilities
- easily expandable with new abilities

Cons:
- highly situational spells like dispel magic or spell mirror would present a problem, as they don't neccesarily fit into combos or skill chains and require to be readily available
- requires some minor tooltip changes to show follow-up abilities


2) Abilities selected via talent choices

This idea works on the premise that you can learn new abilities as mutual exclusive choices just like the talent system. Abilities would be grouped into pools in which they always present viable choices in context.
For example, one pool could have 'Fireball' and 'Water Globes', of which you can select only one.
The second pool would have 'Meteor Strike' and 'Magic Missile'.
The third pool could have utility spells, like 'Dispel Magic', 'Fire Shield', etc.

A link to a possible layout for that can be found here.

Pros:
- simplifies hotkeys, as mutual exclusive choices can share a hotkey
- easy to implement
- maintains hero customization
- can be build directly into the talent system to provide more stuff to do on level ups (for example: a new choice at level 3, 7, 13, 17, etc...)

Cons:
- some spells are core abilities that are crucial for class functionality; these would require a choice that feels equivalent
- thus, it would require a lot of ability redesigning



3) Status Quo & Selectable hotkeys

This idea would basicly make use of LUA to auto-generate duplicates of existing abilities with different hotkeys, to allow customizing hotkeys.


Pros:
- elegantly fixes the hotkey clutter

Cons:
- fixes none of the other problems like popularity of low cd spells over high cd spells
- significant hit on performance, as every ability would require 9 identical copies
- rearranging the icons in the spellbook to match the QWER ASDF layout is extremely difficult to do
- requires a lot of retroactive changes to existing code
- saving hotkeys would be a pain in the ass

 

[Xonok]

How many abilities do you have? The performance hit of having many abilities is actually surprisingly low. It seems that identical string don't cost nearly as much as unique ones while strings are the main thing in object editor that increases loading time. The largest strings are ability descriptions, which would be identical.
Putting abilities into specific spellbook slots can be done by using dummy abilities in preceding slots. E.g, if you want to add an ability to slot 9 you fill the preceding 8 slots with a dummy ability. You don't need multiple dummies afaik.

About saving, you don't need to save the hotkey because it isn't a separate point of data. For the purposes of saving and loading, they are effectively separate abilities. You can save them as such by saving abilities as a list where each element in the list corresponds to a specific slot since you can't have multiple abilities with the same slot(I suppose, since this would defeat the point of it all).

Generic abilities being favoured over situational ones is the result of how your map is designed. It's more about mana and health management than counters. As such, the value of niche abilities is inherently small and you can't fix it without a major change in design.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

A combination of 1 and 2 would be really awesome actually.

It'd be really neat to need to cast heal before we can cast flash of light. Curiously, could you do a string like "Cast heal -> 100% chance of Flash of light coming after heal -> 15% chance Burst of Light comes after Flash". We'd remove the cooldown on burst of light and it'd be replaced by a low chance of popping up and the end of a string. Talents could be used to increase the chance of it popping up, rather than a reduced cooldown. Same can be done for magicians and Meteor. Fireball->Magic Missiles->Meteor chance, or Water Globes->Lightning->Meteor chance.

Though with this system, Monk and Druid may need some adjustments to how they work. I think every other class lends itself to have good synergy use between its skills and can easily have natural strings created. Or rather, they seem like they need additional abilities in the current game to have strings created, whereas all of the other classes just have natural selections already available.

I wouldn't worry too much about certain utility spells not fitting into strings. Dispell is going to be so mega useful that it will almost be required to be available all the time. Also depending on how you decide how these strings work, you can probably get every ability into some combination of 5-6 total strings currently, so we're left with plenty of space for standalone abilities and space for new strings in the future.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

How many abilities do you have? The performance hit of having many abilities is actually surprisingly low.

Currently (7+4+4)*6 abilities, which will be expanded to (7+7+7)*6 abilities in a later update.
Having 9 duplicates per ability (QWER ASDF V) would mean 810 and 1134 abilities, some of which have 2 or more levels.

I'm not even that worried about game performance, but it will definitely have an impact on the loading time, editor performance and filesize.

It seems that identical string don't cost nearly as much as unique ones while strings are the main thing in object editor that increases loading time. The largest strings are ability descriptions, which would be identical.
Putting abilities into specific spellbook slots can be done by using dummy abilities in preceding slots. E.g, if you want to add an ability to slot 9 you fill the preceding 8 slots with a dummy ability. You don't need multiple dummies afaik.

No, the order inside the spellbook is determined by the order in which these abilities get initialized by the game. For example, if you preplace a unit with the water globes ability somewhere on the map and then add a fireball to the spellbook followed by water globes, the latter will still take the first slot because the first instance of water globes was present in the game before fireball.
Once an ability is preloaded, you can no longer re-arrange or fix the order of abilities inside a spellbook.

About saving, you don't need to save the hotkey because it isn't a separate point of data. For the purposes of saving and loading, they are effectively separate abilities. You can save them as such by saving abilities as a list where each element in the list corresponds to a specific slot since you can't have multiple abilities with the same slot(I suppose, since this would defeat the point of it all).

That would take way more resources than if I just save 9 base-9 integers.
Actually, saving the hotkeys won't even make the code noticably longer when I think about it.

It still doesn't fix any of the other issues if have with the ability system.

Generic abilities being favoured over situational ones is the result of how your map is designed. It's more about mana and health management than counters. As such, the value of niche abilities is inherently small and you can't fix it without a major change in design.

The thing is: utility spells are cool and important to have. After all, utility is what truly sets these classes apart from others.

A combination of 1 and 2 would be really awesome actually.

It'd be really neat to need to cast heal before we can cast flash of light. Curiously, could you do a string like "Cast heal -> 100% chance of Flash of light coming after heal -> 15% chance Burst of Light comes after Flash". We'd remove the cooldown on burst of light and it'd be replaced by a low chance of popping up and the end of a string. Talents could be used to increase the chance of it popping up, rather than a reduced cooldown. Same can be done for magicians and Meteor. Fireball->Magic Missiles->Meteor chance, or Water Globes->Lightning->Meteor chance.

That could be cool, yes, and yeah I see possible synergies with the talent system here, especially with skills that serve different playstyles (like Int Crusader vs. Str Crusader). The only downside to this idea is that there are currently not enough skills to really justify having many "pick one of the two" choices. Currently, I'd rather have all classes have access to all available abilities.

Though with this system, Monk and Druid may need some adjustments to how they work. I think every other class lends itself to have good synergy use between its skills and can easily have natural strings created. Or rather, they seem like they need additional abilities in the current game to have strings created, whereas all of the other classes just have natural selections already available.

I wouldn't worry too much about certain utility spells not fitting into strings. Dispell is going to be so mega useful that it will almost be required to be available all the time. Also depending on how you decide how these strings work, you can probably get every ability into some combination of 5-6 total strings currently, so we're left with plenty of space for standalone abilities and space for new strings in the future.

If space is a problem, there is nothing really forcing me to move the "combos" out of the spellbook. It worked in the past, after all, and nobody really complained. So worst-case-scenario we would still use 9 slots.

... but I already made some notes and possible sketches for such a "skill chain tree".and so far it looks like no class will currently end up with more than 6-7 buttons. Even the bard and including the planned new skills.
Actually, most classes would be reduced to 4 buttons for frequently used skills and 3 for some utility that does not qualify for chains.

 

[Manipulation]

I dont like the chain ability idea at all. I rather have to choose 9 abilities among 30. Thats for me is build options.

If high cd abilities arent popular you could give a boost to high cd abilities to make them compareable to low cd abilities. This MIGHT reduce the difficulty of the game but still u could also increase monsters/bosses stats. Ofc... again this means that u need to work harder.. But generally if the high cd abilities were *strong* enough they would be compareable to the low cd abilities.

 

[Xonok]

That would take way more resources than if I just save 9 base-9 integers.
Actually, saving the hotkeys won't even make the code noticably longer when I think about it.

I assume I failed to communicate in this. It definitely takes less save space than separately saving the slot, because the slot can be made inherent. I meant that you save the actual ability, not the slot-specific version of it. This means that you pay the same cost, but due to data spacing you actually spend less than if you had saved the hotkey.

If spells are added to spellbooks in the order they were initialized, then it's actually much easier. You just need to preload them in the order of slots.

In any case, I entirely dislike the idea of forced ability choices and combos. It feels way more artificial.

If utility spells are cool and important, then why are they less favored? Or are we talking about separate things? I don't think players would consistently pick inferior spells.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I dont like the chain ability idea at all. I rather have to choose 9 abilities among 30. Thats for me is build options.

It's basicly that illusion-of-choice problem again. The amount of popular custom builds is much more limited than what you think it is.
Guild Wars I actually had a "pick X out of Y" system. In case of this game, X were a dozen, Y were hundreds. And yet everyone picked the same abilities on the long run.

If high cd abilities arent popular you could give a boost to high cd abilities to make them compareable to low cd abilities. This MIGHT reduce the difficulty of the game but still u could also increase monsters/bosses stats. Ofc... again this means that u need to work harder.. But generally if the high cd abilities were *strong* enough they would be compareable to the low cd abilities.

Utility spells will never be chosen over "normal" abilities, unfortunately, no matter how much power they have. It's just not worth it to use a skill slot for an ability that might be useful only 20% of the time, even if it is super powerful in these events.

It's a pain to balance and I rather have everyone have access to every skill. Because in the end, as soon as an ability feels mandatory to win an encounter, people would just respec every time they see this boss.

If spells are added to spellbooks in the order they were initialized, then it's actually much easier. You just need to preload them in the order of slots.

No, that's a problem if we want to allow players to customize hotkeys, because then I need to adjust the slots dynamically.

If utility spells are cool and important, then why are they less favored? Or are we talking about separate things? I don't think players would consistently pick inferior spells.

Yes, we are talking seperate things. They are cool and important for the game, not the player.
For example, skills like dispel magic, spell mirror or petrify are incredibly useful in some cases and add a lot of tactical depth to the game and set these classes apart from others - yet they are rarely used in the status quo, simply because they don't have as much "raw power" as the alternatives.

For encounters in which these spells shine, people would just respecc before the encounter instead of taking disadvantage of having them all the time. That's why I think the current system of spell selections is broken.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Also, adding in a chaining system really allows for a feeling of progression without needing to create some truly unique ability. Essentially, you could make some rather simple spells (AP x2 or something very generic) and slot it in at the chain2 spot, pushing back gaping wounds to Chain3 and revenge at chain4. Essentially the skills true usefulness comes from extending the chain, rather than itself being awesome. It could be rather expensive to purchase because it'd be unique in extending the chain, and could be used towards the end of the game.

Whereas with our current situation, a skill like this is useless, so you're almost forced to create completely unique spells that are more fun to use. Perhaps you have more ideas than I do when it comes to creating unique effects, but it seems like it could be more trouble than its worth .

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Exactly. The idea stems from the fact that every class has at least 2-3 abilities that are very suited for such an idea.

Squire:
Hateful --> Gaping --> Revenge
Shield Slam --> ?Pummel (Crusader)? --> Parry (as active ability low duration buff) --> ?Backhand (Berserker)?
?Shield Throw? --> Crucify
Heaven's Edge --> Lightning Blade
Demoralizing Shout --> Berserker Rage --> ?Bloodlust?

Cleric:
Crippling --> ?Upcoming instant Nuke? --> Soul Strike
Flash Heal (with cd) --> Heal

Mage:
Water Globes --> Lightning Strike
Incinerate --> ?Gravity Pull? --> Meteor
Curse of the Vampire --> ?Dark Funnel?

Thief:
Backstab --> Coup De Grace --> Bladefury

Ranger:
Flaming Arrow --> ?Frost Arrow? --> Barbed Arrow
Magic Arrow --> Multishot
Nature's Blessing --> Remedy
Beast Fury --> Claw Strike

Mystic:
Jolting --> Twisting Metal --> ?Instant Nuke?
Imbue Armor --> Liquified Arms

 

[Xonok]

No, that's a problem if we want to allow players to customize hotkeys, because then I need to adjust the slots dynamically

How is that really a problem? If the order of spells is based solely on which order they were seen in the game, then you can lock every spell to its correct position. No, changing hotkeys is not a problem, because technically they are separate abilities and as such, get locked to different positions.
All the adjusting is just adding and removing abilities and if the slots of specific abilities are preloaded, then they should snap to the proper slots no matter which order they are added in, or is it not so?

For encounters in which these spells shine, people would just respecc before the encounter instead of taking disadvantage of having them all the time. That's why I think the current system of spell selections is broken.

If so, then those spells are in fact inferior. It sucks to have an ability that doesn't do anything in 80% of the cases. It feels like a waste because it is.

 

[Manipulation]

Ok suddenly many things are coming to my mind and i have to write them down. Hope its not too confusing.

First
I hope u dont add skills on classes with the idea that they will be able to deal with specific bosses. What i mean is for example, give Crus a skill that makes him immortal for 5 sec and without this ability a specific boss cannot be done. Because if you add skills with this mentality what is going to happen is exactly what we (i guess we...) dont want-> people being forced to choose specific abilities.

Secondly
So right now reseting talents and abilities is almost free. That means that ppl can reset them to deal with a specific encounter that requires certain abilities/talents. I think this is bad. I never understood, why you reduced the prices of reseting so much? I would suggest increase the price of reseting talents(not abilities) to about 30-50k gold and 10MC. That way people will be forced to play a certain build.
Now i understand the fact that when ppl start the game have no idea what skills they have and they might go random talent choices. So when high lvl they willl for sure need to reset talents and 30-50k gold might seem too much. So what i suggest is to give 3 free resets for talents until lvl 50.

Questions
Is it possible have more than 3 options (like 5) every time we are about to choose talents?
Ever thought of having only stats as talents and not skill upgrades? or vice versa. Or the current mixed one is better? What u Zwieb and the rest think?

Another totally different thing.
What about removing cds from skills and instead make the game mana depended for ALL classes. This way in order to be successful in boss encounters, players will have to be careful on when and how they use their skills so that they dont end up without mana. This will make the game way more strategic and in depth. But well, requires shitton of work by zwieb ^_^

 

[Xonok]

Another totally different thing.
What about removing cds from skills and instead make the game mana depended for ALL classes. This way in order to be successful in boss encounters, players will have to be careful on when and how they use their skills so that they dont end up without mana. This will make the game way more strategic and in depth.

Except for damage and healing spells, which would become no-brainers.

 

[Risk.frishers]

These are some good solutions, really glad this is going to get worked on, really been curious how you'd deal with this problem when it surfaces, glad to see you're solving it prematurely.

I feel like the 1st solution is quite arbitrary and could turn out pretty meh or incredibly well. It'd be a major change in the dynamics of the game, and I'd feel pretty darn constricted to be honest. This is fine for pure damage spells (magic missile, water globes), but wouldn't this perhaps cause problems where you'd wanna use gaping wounds, but you need to save the stun incorporated in hateful strike?

I think the second option seems the best and the one that would be the easiest to control, and the only one without a quite restrictive con (APART from the work-load it'll put on you) But I imagine solution one would cause a lot more work in the long run, and ruin the immersion and freedom of the player substantially.

Solution 3 feels kind of iffy, it's a 'good enough' solution, but I don't feel like it actually solves anything important.

I managed to fragment this message quite a bit, but tl;dr, I think 2 would be the most prominent as well as safest solution with the least risks.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

Curious again, could you end up having claw strike -> Beast fury override servant of nature if there is a SoV present? Then once the pet dies it'll revert to SoV to be recast?

Some of the others though, doesn't it make more sense for the current low CD spells to come first? As in Soul strike -> crippling rather than the other way around (For bishop anyway, maybe the other way around makes more sense for a monk?). For others, you could perhaps change how Berserker rage and Steel body work, and turn them into temporary buffs rather than permanents.

Oh maybe for Bishop you could do... Heal -> Mend -> BoL OR Flash -> some small instant heal -> Divine protection. Rather than Flash -> heal -> etc. Healing on a bishop is too easy with rotating mends and divine protections, so getting to those spells would be more fun if it was a bit more of a challenge .

Remedy should also come first.

Ok suddenly many things are coming to my mind and i have to write them down. Hope its not too confusing.

Secondly
So right now reseting talents and abilities is almost free. That means that ppl can reset them to deal with a specific encounter that requires certain abilities/talents. I think this is bad. I never understood, why you reduced the prices of reseting so much? I would suggest increase the price of reseting talents(not abilities) to about 30-50k gold and 10MC. That way people will be forced to play a certain build.
Now i understand the fact that when ppl start the game have no idea what skills they have and they might go random talent choices. So when high lvl they willl for sure need to reset talents and 30-50k gold might seem too much. So what i suggest is to give 3 free resets for talents until lvl 50.

Questions
Is it possible have more than 3 options (like 5) every time we are about to choose talents?
Ever thought of having only stats as talents and not skill upgrades? or vice versa. Or the current mixed one is better? What u Zwieb and the rest think?

Another totally different thing.
What about removing cds from skills and instead make the game mana depended for ALL classes. This way in order to be successful in boss encounters, players will have to be careful on when and how they use their skills so that they dont end up without mana. This will make the game way more strategic and in depth. But well, requires shitton of work by zwieb ^_^

1. This won't ever work. You can just repick to gain all of the gold back you may have lost from respecing. Alternatively, players can just save alternative codes with different builds according to what an encounter will involve. All increasing costs does is just encourage this kind of scummy play, rather than actually fixing anything.

2. I dunno if adding stats to talent options would be a good thing. Ultimately people will do the math on it and figure out if increased stats is better than what talents already add, so whats the point?

3. Strategic? Standing around auto attacking more often rather than firing off abilities because you're best off waiting for your most damage per mana spells rather than using your full arsenal? I don't think you thought out any of your suggestions very well at all.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I feel like the 1st solution is quite arbitrary and could turn out pretty meh or incredibly well. It'd be a major change in the dynamics of the game, and I'd feel pretty darn constricted to be honest. This is fine for pure damage spells (magic missile, water globes), but wouldn't this perhaps cause problems where you'd wanna use gaping wounds, but you need to save the stun incorporated in hateful strike?

It would definitely take some time to get used to it; but I don't see much of a problem with a little bit of restrictions. Actually, I think this could be fun as it combats some cheesy play (like the mentioned mend/divine protection spam) and adds an "action" component to the game.
It requires some skill redesigns in the way that obviously passives should become ... more active.

I think the second option seems the best and the one that would be the easiest to control, and the only one without a quite restrictive con (APART from the work-load it'll put on you) But I imagine solution one would cause a lot more work in the long run, and ruin the immersion and freedom of the player substantially.

Solution 2 is definitely a good option to solve the underdog and hotkey issues. However, it would require way more abilities than we currently have to make it a worthwhile experience.
I'll definitely keep it in mind as a long-term solution, though. The beauty about this is that I only need to balance directly competing abilities, not abilities in total.

Solution 3 feels kind of iffy, it's a 'good enough' solution, but I don't feel like it actually solves anything important.

Exactly my thoughts. This would be a band-aid, not a solution, imho.

 

[Risk.frishers]

It would definitely take some time to get used to it; but I don't see much of a problem with a little bit of restrictions. Actually, I think this could be fun as it combats some cheesy play (like the mentioned mend/divine protection spam) and adds an "action" component to the game.
It requires some skill redesigns in the way that obviously passives should become ... more active.

I think with enough thought and effort it could very well be add a extremely fun and more challenging depth to gameplay, so I think if you WANT to do it, have some people help you testing and tossing ideas back and forth, with the right amount of changes this could become something breathtaking. But its not a SAFE bet, and it'll need a lot of revamping and redesigning to be great imo.

Solution 2 is definitely a good option to solve the underdog and hotkey issues. However, it would require way more abilities than we currently have to make it a worthwhile experience.
I'll definitely keep it in mind as a long-term solution, though. The beauty about this is that I only need to balance directly competing abilities, not abilities in total.

Very true! If you don't want to go with solution 1, one way that could work would be (Seeing as we have 11 abilities as of now, expecting ?3? in the patch which leaves us with 14) how about we scrap the spell-book until we've more spells to choose from, give every class, either depending on sub-class or advanced class that you'll always have, and 12/2=6 6 times where you get to choose between 2 spells.

It will require modifications to the spells to make them more interesting, lower cooldowns maybe, higher manacosts (Mana should really be more of an issue in this game) it will however require quite a bit of re-designing on certain spells, but imho I dont think we really NEED to have 9 spells, 6 spells outside the spell-book should in my opinion be enough, the spells just have to be more relevant.

As I see it both of these solutions WILL require a lot of work, if they are to be executed well, but I think this whole thing could be an extreme improvement to the entire game, not just because of these arising problems with the current system.

These things are also something that some of the community members could help you with when it comes to ideas, so hopefully the designing and thought wont take as much time as it looks like it will

 

[Jumbo]

While I appreciate this discussion as something which will hopefully be long lasting, I believe this is just another instance of a feature which we have little reasonable to say about at this point due to having no endgame yet and having too few abilities.

Secondly, the claim that right now there is only one proper build for classes is not entirely true. For most classes you are right, but for Psion, druid, monk, & sorc, there are a few viable choices regarding a few abilities. For crusader and berserker this would come with their new abilities.

In my opinion just let players have all spells they have bought stored and being able to choose between them freely in towns (Guild Wars style). Out in the wilderness/Dungeons you cannot change anything.
-This leaves only talent respec and wiping as a money sink which, frankly, is fine.
-this also means that utility spells vital for certain encounters can easily be switched on and off. This even provides some immediate strategic choice. First timers in new areas will have to learn which spells to use by trial and error.

Another idea is to move the mercenary commands to the worker idle button as a dummy unit.
Pros -
-2 extra slots in spellbook which can be used for having 2 utility spells which stay on the hero forever after buying and don't interfere with other spell respeccing/changing. For instance spells such as ressurection, revenge, dispel, meteor, stone skin, body and soul (monk), BoL, dazing trap, blurred motions, etc. could be stock spells.
-hero no longer interrupted by mercenary commanding. Very useful for casters especially.
-no interference with gravestone as the merc naturally dies when the gravestone appears.

Cons:
-some difficulty in picking the two right utility spells to be stock.


Hehe introducing by saying that we cannot say anything reasonable yet, and ending up saying a lot myself... Hypocritical powah!

 

[S0ulseeker]

What if spells were redesigned into a similar fashion comparable to the vault? You'd have the ability to teleport to a room surrounded by 9 circles, each circle assigned to a hotkey (Q, W, E, R, T, F, G, S, D) or what other hotkeys you so desired to have them set to, and you would have the ability to assign your spells to said circle/hotkey. Let's say you walk into circle Q and want to bind Burst of Light to it and once a spell is learned you'll always have it and you can always unhotkey it from circle Q and replace it with a different spell. Some spells will be left idol unassigned and unused (the ones over the limit) I realize that this is more or less the same system currently implemented but it would remove these issues:

• less and less hotkeys available
• abilities inside spellbooks can not be re-arranged
• certain talents affecting abilities are useless if you haven't learned that ability

The last one is a stretch, but having the ability to teleport on command to the room and re change your abilities as needed would allow for switching out spells on situational fights much easier and allowing you to make use of talents much easier as well.

CONS:

• Would likely require a code wipe (which I personally don't care but I know other might)
• Time consuming (and probably more delays for new content T_T)
• Takes up terrain which could be used for extra content (Although I don't think terrain space is too much of an issue at the moment, but I could be wrong)
• Probably many others

I personally like the option of being able to build and customize your abilities however you see fit and I don't think that should be changed. I don't want to see all customization stripped and removed from Gaias . I get why the old stat system was removed and I understand your intentions on changing spells but as more and more spells are designed and released it's inevitable that you'll discover different builds with abilities. No two players will choose the same build and if you have multiple players of the same class it would be nice to have one of the others respec their abilities a little less traditional.

I'm not saying my suggestion is perfect, but it's a way to help improve the current system which imho I don't think needs to be changed drastically.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I want to clarify that this is more of a long-term discussion. Since the new abilities will not come with 1.2C, this won't be part of 1.2C either but will instead probably be part of the following update.

I just wanted plenty of time to discuss this first (and also catch the general drift in the forums) before diving into solutions.

 

[Jumbo]

Glad to hear it!

Another possibility is spell categories. So you divide spells into categories of which only a set amount of the 9 spell slots can be used. So for example berserker has 3 categories: aoe, single target, utility. Either in a 3-3-3 or 4-3-2 system.

On another note: Zwieb please consider what I wrote about mercenary commands being moved to worker idle dummy unit. It is a great improvement over current mercenary control and will be easily understandable if the dummy uses the corresponding mercenaries' icons.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

On another note: Zwieb please consider what I wrote about mercenary commands being moved to worker idle dummy unit. It is a great improvement over current mercenary control and will be easily understandable if the dummy uses the corresponding mercenaries' icons.

Would require selection events = bad.

 

[Jumbo]

Erhm.. No? Why would it require that? Just let the dummy unit use the abilities like the hero currently does and make it stick on hero like backpack (for retreat to easily work). Has nothing to do with selections

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Erhm.. No? Why would it require that? Just let the dummy unit use the abilities like the hero currently does and make it stick on hero like backpack (for retreat to easily work). Has nothing to do with selections

That would require tabbing around, though.

 

[Jumbo]

Well there is a hotkey for easily doing that both idle hotkey & settings to command group - very easy for everyone. Also, it is a lot better than having to interrupt your hero's movement and casting due to retreating with the mercenary through hero's spellbook.

Furthermore, we already do have tabbing with the bag and material bag.

 

[BoxOfFaith]

I personally like the option of being able to build and customize your abilities however you see fit and I don't think that should be changed. I don't want to see all customization stripped and removed from Gaias . I get why the old stat system was removed and I understand your intentions on changing spells but as more and more spells are designed and released it's inevitable that you'll discover different builds with abilities. No two players will choose the same build and if you have multiple players of the same class it would be nice to have one of the others respec their abilities a little less traditional.

I'm not saying my suggestion is perfect, but it's a way to help improve the current system which imho I don't think needs to be changed drastically.

I understand what you're trying to say, but realistically I don't think this will ever happen. If theres a druid in a group, then it doesn't make much sense for a second druid to be in the group in the same role. So assuming the second druid becomes DPS, the reality is the second druid would be much better off just being an actual DPS class. I think your ideals sound a lot better in theory than they end up being in practice.

I think ability chains actually open up a huge space for much better and actual decision making. Especially if its combined with limited pools of spells. Look at Sorcerer. Right now he has no purpose in specing towards his fire spells because lightning is so superior, and he still gets functionality from fireball if he needs to AOE. If you're forced to decide between Fire/Magic spec or Water/Lightning, you're essentially deciding if you want to be AOE or Single target. In our current system he gets the best of both worlds, and adding more abilities isn't going to solve these problems, players will continue to do what is best for the majority of situations.

Additionally, for the more hybrid type classes, such as druid, perhaps we could have the options being a healing chain vs a DPS chain. I think ultimately druid would need more spells for this to work properly either way, but still. Adding ability chains and forcing spell trade offs should truly open up true customization, rather than the opposite.

 

[Manipulation]

So, I have been thinking about new abilities for future updates and - as always - could not help but notice all the flaws the current system has:

• general-purpose abilities are naturally way more popular than situational abilities like spell mirror or stone skin
• low cooldown abilities are naturally more popular than high cooldown abilities
• less and less hotkeys available
• abilities inside spellbooks can not be re-arranged
• spellbooks have unfixable flaws like closing automaticly when mana is depleted
• vendor costs for relearning abilities are pretty arbitrary and not dependant on character level
• certain talents affecting abilities are useless if you haven't learned that ability

I dont get it. You want more than 9 useable skills per class and thats why u want more hotkeys?

 

[Ihazdialup]

Solution 1 would be amazing if you implemented several kind of basically junk skills for each class, so like Sorcerer would go from fireball to have a chance for incinerate or a fire spell that just does single target damage and is instant cast.

Also having certain stand alone spells would be good as well, like dispel or toggle effects such as Zeal/Berserker Rage/Steel Body/Stealth

Having, like you said 6-7 slots for chains would be great while having the 3 or 2 remaining spots meant for standalone skills would be a good system imho

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Solution 1 would be amazing if you implemented several kind of basically junk skills for each class, so like Sorcerer would go from fireball to have a chance for incinerate or a fire spell that just does single target damage and is instant cast.

Also having certain stand alone spells would be good as well, like dispel or toggle effects such as Zeal/Berserker Rage/Steel Body/Stealth

Having, like you said 6-7 slots for chains would be great while having the 3 or 2 remaining spots meant for standalone skills would be a good system imho

That's basicly what I thought about aswell.

I like the idea of adding "filler abilities" that are not neccesarily good in itself, but make sense when combined with other spells to either make it harder to pull of your desired spell in the way that it adds a certain time frame until you can actually use that ultimate spell you want. Plus it makes the gameplay more action-orientated with less idle auto-attacking inbetween attacks.

Imho, while it certainly removes some customizability (at first; I come back to that later), it adds something completely different: timing and immediate decisionmaking while under pressure in a combat situation. For example when a boss forces you to move around much, it might be hard to pull a certain chain off, which suddenly sheds a new light on some previously overlooked abilities.

Let's just take the example of interrupting a spell. Obviously, you will have a skill chain that allows you to pull of your interrupt right when you need it (with the interrupt as the first skill in the line). Otherwise certain bosses would be undefeatable. However, you also have a different way of interrupting more towards the end of a chain, that possibly adds another additional benefit to it. Like more damage, or a nice debuff.
However, since it's so far down a chain, you can't rely on it unless you really internalized that boss rotation. It adds an interesting amount of player skill into the mix.

Another situation I really like:
Nobody forces you to actually continue your chain right away. You could - within a certain timeframe - use a different spell before activating the next skill in the chain; basicly progressing two or more chains at the same time.
So it won't be just mindless one-button mashing. One could figure out interesting ways to throw in spells from other chains within the build-up of an existing chain.

Also, it allows me to remove some cooldowns from the game and make the gameplay more diverse in that you won't just spam the "one size fits all" abilities like 'Mend' or 'Lightning Charge'.
And then think of the possibilities for unique chain designs, like having a healing chain finish with a devastating damage spell. Obviously, if you just want to heal, you won't waste mana on that ability and just let the combo run out or use something else. But it can also add an element of reward to the player who was so desperately trying to keep his group alive by actually contributing towards the defeat of a boss aswell.


And yeah, 4-6 chains + 2-3 utility spells available sounds like a lot of fun to me. Considering that we would still have 9 buttons available, the options for the player would actually increase and not decrease.
Plus it adds new exciting possibilities for customization: being able to select one of two possible finishers for a chain via the talent menu.


So, the general idea for this approach could be:

--> Take the current popular builds for a class as a baseline
--> Slim them down by 1-2 abilities and put them into chains (possibly changing some spells in the progress and changing passives)
--> Add the underdog abilities and utilities at the newly created places
--> Add new abilities to the chains over the following updates

 

[BoxOfFaith]

>Customization would come from play style rather than pre-determined decision making, that sounds like a lot of fun to me really.
>Potentially great money/mana crystal sink in offering heavily expensive skills that don't do much other than fitting into a chain.
>Potentially further defines the DPS roles.
>If done right, should bring Monk up to the level of tanking a crusader is.
>Bishop becomes an actual healer, rather than a passive damage mitigator that spams soul strike
>Opens up huge windows for you to create spells to simply add options to classes rather than trying to create complicated spells to replace our current basic ones in the current system.


I guess my only concern comes from perhaps making it too ability based and lots of button mashing. I know one thing Ihaz really enjoys about Gaias is that theres quite a bit of auto attacking involved which keeps the feel of the game relaxed. Hopefully it doesn't become TOO input intensive, but its possible we'd learn to love it anyway . I mean technically magician and healing classes are already extremely input intensive, so really adding chains just brings physical classes to the input level of the casters, but makes it more interesting than spamming one spell over and over. I think I just convinced myself this isn't even a con :l.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

There will still be a good amount of auto-attacking. Most abilities in the game have a cooldown of 10-15 seconds. Even if you line three of those up, you'd still have half the attacks being auto-attacks.

 

[Jumbo]

I love button mashing . As long as it is based on tactical choices and not just brainless repetitive uses.

 

[Manipulation]

So, I have been thinking about new abilities for future updates and - as always - could not help but notice all the flaws the current system has:

• general-purpose abilities are naturally way more popular than situational abilities like spell mirror or stone skin
• low cooldown abilities are naturally more popular than high cooldown abilities
• less and less hotkeys available
• abilities inside spellbooks can not be re-arranged
• spellbooks have unfixable flaws like closing automaticly when mana is depleted
• vendor costs for relearning abilities are pretty arbitrary and not dependant on character level
• certain talents affecting abilities are useless if you haven't learned that ability

What i am going to suggest below is on the existing system.

First of all i want to say that in every game there are skills that are more used than others, u can rarely find a game that perfectly balances everything so i dont really see the problem. Besides, non-common builds are for the minds that go for them, maybe someone can think of something different. Im writing this by having in my mind the first two problems you refer to Zwieb.

Ability slots.
I remember long time ago there was a topic on whether or not summons should be controlled manually. What if you do that now? So that every kind of summon will have to be controlled manually, like in original Warcraft (RTS style). This will allow you to add more passive/active skills on summons and make them truly valueable/unique.
Ofc this will demand more focus , better reactions by those that have the summons but isnt challenge what we want?
This way we can have 2 more free slots in Abilities (aka spellbook).
Also add a separate Spellbook for passives and if needed put a limit on how many passives we can learn considering the content we are in.

Talents
In the second solution you mention about learning more often talents if needed (thats good) but THAT ALONE i dont think will solve the last problem in the list because choices are still only 3. What do i mean? I know i mentioned this before, but what if u increase the amount of talents every time we are about to choose a talent. My suggestion is 6 talents. 3 will be skill upgrades and 3 stat upgrades (such as Attack speed, HP, Mana, Critical dmg, etc etc). This way even if someone doesnt find the 3 skill upgrades useful he can always go for a stat boost.

 

[Hawajska]

How about creating extra spell book for passives (even spell mirror with some cd.)

 

[Zwiebelchen]

How about creating extra spell book for passives (even spell mirror with some cd.)

Looks ugly. Plays ugly. And some classes have less or more passives than others.

 

[kidZADROTstu]

How about creating extra spell book/books for any abilities? Command card for second spellbook should look something like this:

[A1][A2][A3][A4]
[A5][A6][A7][A8]
[S1][S3][S4][X],

where A1-8 - abilities in this spellbook,
S1,S3,S4 - switch spellbooks buttons,
X - close spellbook button.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

How about creating extra spell book/books for any abilities? Command card for second spellbook should look something like this:

[A1][A2][A3][A4]
[A5][A6][A7][A8]
[S1][S3][S4][X],

where A1-8 - abilities in this spellbook,
S1,S3,S4 - switch spellbooks buttons,
X - close spellbook button.

Oh hell no! I hated all RPGs that did that including Defi4nc3 Orpg, which was always my favorite back in the oldschool days.

 

[SaikoDeMoN]

In theory that's a neat, ordered way of doing things. However, when you're actually playing, the last thing you want to do is have to switch through spellbooks to use a skill you need - especially in a scenario where you're reacting to a random boss skill. This is why MMORPGs can have half your screen taken up with just UI shortcuts.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

This is why MMORPGs can have half your screen taken up with just UI shortcuts.

The bad ones have.
The ones with the interesting combat (like TERA or Wildstar) don't.


EDIT: As a side note; you know I love WoW. But the thousands of abilities messing up the UI wasn't one of it's strengths.

 

[SaikoDeMoN]

Oh, that's nice. I haven't actually played any in years, no time for them anymore .

 

[ALEXz407]

So many interesting ideas. What will happen if you combine them all?

Split abilities into two groups:
Q, W, E, R - main abilities (<20 sec cd).
A, S, D, F - cooldowns (>20 sec cd).
Every ability belongs to the fixed group (but can move to another with cd modificate talents), so you need to create with LUA only 4 shortcuts per ability.

Get rid of spellbook. With 8 abilities you can place everything on the command card and use Z, X, C, V for Attack, Stop, Pet Attack, Pet Retreat, Rest (yeah, need to combine Rest with something).

Save learned abilities, so player can rearrange layout. For example make every empty button a spellbook: you open it and select a skill (even in a dungeon, right after ability scroll was used). So max skill count will be 11 for main abilities and 11 for cooldowns. But player can clear layout only in a city, where trainer will remove all shortcuts and all buffs/summons, to prevent exploiting.

Make passives, toggleables and summons more interesting instead of "push once and forget" behaviour. It can be achieved with combos:
- Passives transformed into active/reactive skills with passive effects (so in fact it is two skills: hidden passive ability and active button with long description).
Example: parry with damage and higher threat after actual parrying (active for 2 seconds), temporary confidence aoe buff for resistances with long cooldown.
- Toggleables take some mana to maintain efffect, or add different bonuses when enabled/disabled, or transform them to passives with active use.
Example: enabled Heroic presence adds 20% threat / disabled adds 20% run speed, Levitate adds evasion passively and used for melee (+aspd?)/ranged (magic) switch, Steel Body consumes 1 mana per 5 seconds but restores 1 mp when Monk damaged.
- Summon button replaced with some kind of ability for summoned unit, while unit is alive.
Example: Servant of Nature button replaced with Claw Strike while Servant is alive, Water Elemental replaced with Ice Nova that slows and damages enemies near to the elemental.

Can not say anything about utility abilities, they are very specific (dispell, magic arrow, spell mirror ...) and just occupy slot for 90% time when they useless, but will shine when they needed. This could lead to ability swapping before different encounters and this could be annoying. I guess it's only about game balance, if at least 30% of mobs will cast something - dispell and spell mirror will be more useful. Different manaregen abilities will help if some mobs will drain/burn mana. And Magic Arrow will make sense if you can deplete mana pool for enemy caster, and thus - prevent further casting.

Also can not see any solution for "illusion of choice" and cookie cutter builds. If some abilities are overall good - fixed builds will pop up. More gear choices and skills based on different stats can add variety, but this will work only if player will feel that character have same power as other builds, but a bit in another direction (burst vs dps, damage vs survivability, etc).

Just my two cents, didn't play for a while, but i guess this thread is about overall game design and any opinion is accepted.

 

[Jumbo]

Yep. Alex' suggestion is basically a more advanced version of my suggestion. I like it

 

[Zwiebelchen]

So many interesting ideas. What will happen if you combine them all?

Split abilities into two groups:
Q, W, E, R - main abilities (<20 sec cd).
A, S, D, F - cooldowns (>20 sec cd).
Every ability belongs to the fixed group (but can move to another with cd modificate talents), so you need to create with LUA only 4 shortcuts per ability.

Get rid of spellbook. With 8 abilities you can place everything on the command card and use Z, X, C, V for Attack, Stop, Pet Attack, Pet Retreat, Rest (yeah, need to combine Rest with something).

Save learned abilities, so player can rearrange layout. For example make every empty button a spellbook: you open it and select a skill (even in a dungeon, right after ability scroll was used). So max skill count will be 11 for main abilities and 11 for cooldowns. But player can clear layout only in a city, where trainer will remove all shortcuts and all buffs/summons, to prevent exploiting.

Make passives, toggleables and summons more interesting instead of "push once and forget" behaviour. It can be achieved with combos:
- Passives transformed into active/reactive skills with passive effects (so in fact it is two skills: hidden passive ability and active button with long description).
Example: parry with damage and higher threat after actual parrying (active for 2 seconds), temporary confidence aoe buff for resistances with long cooldown.
- Toggleables take some mana to maintain efffect, or add different bonuses when enabled/disabled, or transform them to passives with active use.
Example: enabled Heroic presence adds 20% threat / disabled adds 20% run speed, Levitate adds evasion passively and used for melee (+aspd?)/ranged (magic) switch, Steel Body consumes 1 mana per 5 seconds but restores 1 mp when Monk damaged.
- Summon button replaced with some kind of ability for summoned unit, while unit is alive.
Example: Servant of Nature button replaced with Claw Strike while Servant is alive, Water Elemental replaced with Ice Nova that slows and damages enemies near to the elemental.

Can not say anything about utility abilities, they are very specific (dispell, magic arrow, spell mirror ...) and just occupy slot for 90% time when they useless, but will shine when they needed. This could lead to ability swapping before different encounters and this could be annoying. I guess it's only about game balance, if at least 30% of mobs will cast something - dispell and spell mirror will be more useful. Different manaregen abilities will help if some mobs will drain/burn mana. And Magic Arrow will make sense if you can deplete mana pool for enemy caster, and thus - prevent further casting.

Also can not see any solution for "illusion of choice" and cookie cutter builds. If some abilities are overall good - fixed builds will pop up. More gear choices and skills based on different stats can add variety, but this will work only if player will feel that character have same power as other builds, but a bit in another direction (burst vs dps, damage vs survivability, etc).

Just my two cents, didn't play for a while, but i guess this thread is about overall game design and any opinion is accepted.

No offense, but this sounds way too complicated from the description alone. How in the world would I even explain that concept to the random bnet guy who barely finds the rest button?

Any solution in Gaias must be simple and intuitive. This is just over-engineering at it's finest.

 

[SaikoDeMoN]

What rest button?

 

[Enigmatrix]

I think making bought/found earlier spells easily swappable without farming new scroll/paying hefty sum of money could efficiently solve a prolem of utility spells. People won't sacrifice dps/tanking for utility that's only useful at 20% of encounters. But they if they could swap this situation may change.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Any protests on these ability chains?

SQUIRE (7->4):
- Hateful Strike -> Gaping Wounds -> Revenge (Cooldown reduced, damage reduced)
- Shield Slam -> Parry (active short duration buff with stronger effect; renamed to "Phalanx" and requires shield to cast)

BERSERKER (4->3):
- Heaven's Edge -> Lightning Blade

CRUSADER (4->4):
- No other changes

-------------------------------

CLERIC (7->5):
- Crippling Curse -> Soul Strike
- Confidence (changed to 5 minute single target buff) -> Symbol of Fury

BISHOP (4->2):
- Mend -> Divine Protection
- Flash of Light (7 second cd, but now heals the same as "Heal") -> Heal

MONK (4->3):
- Steel Body (active 5 minute buff instead of toggle) -> Stone Skin
- Divine Fist (changed to active ability, with 10 second duration and 5 second cd, deals elemental damage on top of physical attack and stacks only 3 times before the finisher applies)

-------------------------------

MAGICIAN (7->5):
- Magic Missile -> Meteor
- Fire Shield (5 minute buff) -> Dispel

SORCERER (4->2):
- Incinerate (new side effect: increases fireball damage by 15% on incinerated targets) -> Fireball
- Water Ball (now always 15 sec cd, Talent still makes it instant) -> Lightning Charge

NECROMANCER (4->3):
- Summon Skeleton Mage (only displayed when dead, changed to out-of-combat only) -> Summon Skeleton

-------------------------------

RANGER (7->5):
- Flaming Arrow -> Barbed Arrow (lower CD, lower damage)
- Servant of Nature (only displayed when dead, changed to out-of-combat only) -> Claw Strike

HUNTER (4->1):
- Servant of Nature (only displayed when dead, changed to out-of-combat only) -> Beast Fury -> Claw Strike
- Magic Arrow -> Multishot
- Pack Leader (stronger 5 minute single target buff) -> Feline Reflexes

DRUID (4->2):
- Nature's Blessing (Mana cost reduced) -> Remedy
- Summon Nymph & Summon Efreet (only displayed when dead, changed to be out-of-combat summons)

-------------------------------

THIEF (7->5):
- Dazing Trap (now only displayed out-of-combat) -> Steal (only displayed in-combat)
- Backstab (behind-target requirement removed; stealth bonus damage is now behind-target bonus) -> Embrittling Acid

ASSASSIN (4->3):
- Stealth (now only displayed out-of-combat) -> Into the Shades (only displayed in-combat)

BARD (4->3):
- Song of Vigor & Song of Elements & Song of Peace (only displayed out-of-combat)
- Inspire (now only displayed in-combat)

-------------------------------

MYSTIC (7->5):
- Jolting Strikes -> Bursting Touch
- Draining Timber (now 5 minute buff) -> Distracting Weapon

HEXBLADE (4->3):
- Blades and Witchcraft (now 5 minute buff) -> Blade Storm

PSION (4->3):
- Mind Lash -> Twisting Metal

With these changes, all classes would be down to at most 8 buttons (some have 7, some only 6), leaving room for at least 1 more entirely new chain (or utility spell) in the future.
Some passives got altered to be active abilities or 5 minute buffs.
Some spells (where it made sense) were flagged to be OOC (out-of-combat) or IC (in-combat) only, to save additional ability space.
For example, Bard songs will now only be castable when not in combat, to make room for the implementation of hymns in the future, which will only be castable in-combat.
Also, pet summons (except melee skeletons) are now always OOC casts. I'm thinking about turning ressurection into an OOC spell aswell, to make room for another IC spell for clerics.

... I also took the opportunity to nerf several abilities that I felt gave these classes to much of an advantage over alternative class choices (like confidence).

 

[S0ulseeker]

Also, pet summons (except melee skeletons) are now always OOC casts.

I may be slightly biased as a druid player, but I'm also one of your best resources of people to ask regarding druid balancing, and i'm not sure if I like this. summons rely so heavily on mana and recovery/inspire only goes so far. There are instances where resummoning your minion mid combat to give it more mana is your best solution and I don't find it to be overpowered or anything having the option to do so because me as the caster is now down a ton of mana as a result not to mention he will be unable to heal while summoning.

Sometimes, though rarely, I decide maybe I don't need the nymph but we need more dps mid combat and I can switch as well.I guess I'm just confused why you would want to change it to an OOC cast only. Same with bards for that matter on their buffs. 99.9% of the time they won't be casting their songs anyways in combat but I don't see the reasoning in restricting them the option to do so they already have so little to do within fights it gives them more purpose (I get HYMM will make them a little more involved) Hell if it's a long fight and a player dies and then gets ressed in combat it could be nice for the bard to rebuff him in the fight. I don't see the harm in that.

Overall I'm not to keen on the entire concept of Out of combat/in combat spells. I just don't see a lot of advantages to it and it's trying to fix something that's not necessarily broken.

 

[SaikoDeMoN]

Wait so if the next spell in the chain is on cooldown, the chain does not progress? Or is it that the chain shows the first ability on the list that is not on cooldown? I suppose we'll have to keep track of cooldowns mentally, unless you have some plan to indicate when a chain will be ready.

 

[S0ulseeker]

Wait so if the next spell in the chain is on cooldown, the chain does not progress? Or is it that the chain shows the first ability on the list that is not on cooldown? I suppose we'll have to keep track of cooldowns mentally, unless you have some plan to indicate when a chain will be ready.

I think the chains as my understanding is just grouping of spells. You must take all the spells in a chain if you want one of the abilities. You wouldn't have to wait for any chain cooldowns

 

[SaikoDeMoN]

Any protests on these ability chains?

SQUIRE:
Always didn't make sense to me why Squire's dungeon skill was called Revenge, I assumed it was so that you can think of it as biding your time while tanking damage for 2minutes then throwing it all back but as a fixed damage not based on what you've taken. However if you make Revenge short CD and don't give it any effect othere than damage then the name doesnt make any sense at all.

CRUSADER:

• Crucify->Celestial Zeal (Similar changes to this as you've planned for parry)

-------------------------------

CLERIC:

• Heal -> Burst of Light

BISHOP:

• Heal -> Flash of Light (7 second cd, but now heals the same as "Heal" and in an AoE around the target) -> Burst of Light

Putting Burst of Light into a chain looks like a nerf, probably because I feel its currently too strong. Instant party heal to max with a talent available to make the CD for all intents and purposes, 30 seconds.

MONK:

• Divine Fist (changed to active ability, with 10 second duration and 5 second cd, deals elemental damage on top of physical attack and stacks only 3 times before the finisher applies) -> Stone Skin (AoE threat around the caster effect added - not a massive amount just something like demoralizing shout)

I really don't understand why you would want to make Steel Body an active, unless the effect is redesigned. Also I'd love it if you could make Divine Fist hit in an AoE by default, then have the talent just increase the AoE or make all hits AoE or make the AoE damage higher than the target damage.

-------------------------------

SORCERER :
Can you make the multi-meteor talent AoE tighter? It's a cool effect but the unpredictability and the way most meteors are nowhere near the target, sometimes even out of the field is just bad. OR change the talent so that it makes meteor drop instantly.

-------------------------------

HUNTER:

• Feline Reflexes -> Pack Leader (strong 10 second self-buff that also affects servant of nature

DRUID (4->2):
Summoning in battle is a pretty big part of druid play, I can't get on board with that OOC change there.

-------------------------------
THIEF:
Embrittling Acid should be a situational cast.

ASSASSIN (4->3):

• Bladefury -> Coup de Grace -> Backstab (or some sort of combo with bladefury and coupdegrace)

BARD (4->3):
again pls no OOC D:, for songs atleast. Is this just for making space in the spellcard? If bard dies in combat and has to be resurrected, all bard buffs dropped for rest of fight thats pretty bad (or if not him then just the hero that dies), or if a hero joins the fight a little late or if a DPS is clipping the aggro range and you need to switch him from vigore to peace.
Really, bard buffs need to become permanent until bard leaves the game or repicked or instrument dropped. This would even make it OK for songs to be OOC.

I think the chains as my understanding is just grouping of spells. You must take all the spells in a chain if you want one of the abilities. You wouldn't have to wait for any chain cooldowns

What? Then why is he calling it a chain?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Overall I'm not to keen on the entire concept of Out of combat/in combat spells. I just don't see a lot of advantages to it and it's trying to fix something that's not necessarily broken.

It's a neccesity to keep the amount of ability slots required in check.
Remember that the three summoning spells basicly occupy 3 slots in the layout. Making them OOC spells only will basicly free up 3 slots for IC use where it makes sense.
If mana on pets is an issue, I can always apply other means to improve on that; like adding another spell to the hero that recharges or transfers some of the owner/pet mana, etc. ...
Same goes for the song spells: Most of the time people will not want to recast them mid-combat anyway. Having these abilities there all the time prevents me from using these slots for something else in combat for little to no gain.

Some tradeoffs had to be done in order to apply this new concept to the game. And these were imho the least intrusive options for druids and bards, two classes of which are heavy on utility spells and desperately need those slots for future abilities.

Wait so if the next spell in the chain is on cooldown, the chain does not progress? Or is it that the chain shows the first ability on the list that is not on cooldown? I suppose we'll have to keep track of cooldowns mentally, unless you have some plan to indicate when a chain will be ready.

It basicly works like this:
If the first ability is not on cooldown and IC/OOC requirements are met, it will show this ability. As soon as it goes on cooldown, it will show the second in the line. When that is on cooldown aswell, it will show the third, etc. ...
As soon as any of the "previous" abilities recharges it's cooldown, it will be displayed again and the later one will be disabled until this is used.

So, in practice this means that you can not use "revenge" if Hateful Strike or Gaping Wounds are not on cooldown.
If all spells in a chain are on cooldown, it will show the cooldown of the last ability.

SQUIRE:
Always didn't make sense to me why Squire's dungeon skill was called Revenge, I assumed it was so that you can think of it as biding your time while tanking damage for 2minutes then throwing it all back but as a fixed damage not based on what you've taken. However if you make Revenge short CD and don't give it any effect othere than damage then the name doesnt make any sense at all.

It's just a name... I can change it any time. It's an homage to Defi4nc3 ORPG, which had a defender ability that worked similar.

CRUSADER:

• Crucify->Celestial Zeal (Similar changes to this as you've planned for parry)

I had a different chain for crucify in mind, so I'd rather not do that.
However, changing Zeal to a 5 minute buff as most other passives and toggles is not a good idea in this particular case, as Zeal will have a counterpart added later and people would have to decide which one to use (STR or INT build) and couldn't reach the chained ability that way.
A short duration version like Parry could work, though. But it destroys a huge part of the purpose of Zeal (making an INT build viable).

Putting Burst of Light into a chain looks like a nerf, probably because I feel its currently too strong. Instant party heal to max with a talent available to make the CD for all intents and purposes, 30 seconds.

I plan on changing that in the future and extend that with another AoE heal that is basicly "Burst of Light" in a weaker form with cast time. It would fit into such a chain perfectly.
For now, I rather have BoL as it is and keep it as an isolated utility slot.

I really don't understand why you would want to make Steel Body an active, unless the effect is redesigned. Also I'd love it if you could make Divine Fist hit in an AoE by default, then have the talent just increase the AoE or make all hits AoE or make the AoE damage higher than the target damage.

Basicly, this is a simple and non-intrusive way to put toggles into a chain to save ability slots. Hence why so many toggles and passives got changed into 5 minute buffs instead.

Can you make the multi-meteor talent AoE tighter? It's a cool effect but the unpredictability and the way most meteors are nowhere near the target, sometimes even out of the field is just bad. OR change the talent so that it makes meteor drop instantly.

I can do that, yes. A certain amount of randomness is intended, though.

Feline Reflexes -> Pack Leader (strong 10 second self-buff that also affects servant of nature

It's an alternative, yes. I just felt like not completely taking away the only buffing spell a Hunter has. I like the option of buffing others, especially with crit synergy talents.

Summoning in battle is a pretty big part of druid play, I can't get on board with that OOC change there.

As I said; certain tradeoffs have to be done and I rather have more slots for future utility than keeping a feature that is used by maybe 5% of the players.

Embrittling Acid should be a situational cast.

I had to pair it with something and combining it with backstab felt the least annoying to me. It's not a spell you absolutely need instantly available (unlike stuns or interrupts).

Bladefury -> Coup de Grace -> Backstab (or some sort of combo with bladefury and coupdegrace)

I planned that at first, but then took it out simply because stuns and interrupts are too important in the current meta to move both interrupts (Coup and Backstab) deeper inside a chain.

again pls no OOC D:, for songs atleast. Is this just for making space in the spellcard? If bard dies in combat and has to be resurrected, all bard buffs dropped for rest of fight thats pretty bad (or if not him then just the hero that dies), or if a hero joins the fight a little late or if a DPS is clipping the aggro range and you need to switch him from vigore to peace.
Really, bard buffs need to become permanent until bard leaves the game or repicked or instrument dropped. This would even make it OK for songs to be OOC.

I don't really see a problem with having a certain penalty for dying. Ressurection is already way more powerful than it was ever intended to be.