About Abilities Learned at the same time

[Zwiebelchen]

So, as there is now a way to hide the basic hero commands on heroes, I'm thinking about getting rid of the spellbook mechanic.

This comes with a big number of advantages, especially in encounters that require attacking friendlies to break CC, but also in terms of general playing.


So, there's two possible implementations of this and I want the community oppinion here. Do you like version 1 or 2? Or would you prefer keeping everything as it is now?


Version 1:


[Attack / Pet Attack] [Rest / Retreat] [Roll] [Talents]
[Spell 1] [Spell 2] [Spell 3] [Spell 4]
[Spell 5] [Spell 6] [Spell 7] [Spell 8]

• Reviving and dismissing mercs, aswell as the options menu will be moved to the backpack.
• Rest and retreat will be toggled depending on if you are in combat or not. Rest will only appear outside of combat; retreat will only appear in combat.
• Using the manual attack command (A) will also order your pets to attack the selected enemy. Simple Right-clicking on an enemy will not. A-clicking a friend will perform friendly fire as usual (but pets will not attack).
• Only 8 spells can be learned at the same time

Version 2:


[Attack / Pet Attack] [Rest / Retreat] [Options] [Talents]
[Spell 1] [Spell 2] [Spell 3] [Spell 4]
[Spell 5] [Spell 6] [Spell 7] [Spell 8]

• Reviving and dismissing mercs, aswell as rolling on items functionality now inside the Options menu
• Rest and retreat will be toggled depending on if you are in combat or not. Rest will only appear outside of combat; retreat will only appear in combat.
• Using the manual attack command (A) will also order your pets to attack the selected enemy. Simple Right-clicking on an enemy will not. A-clicking a friend will perform friendly fire as usual (but pets will not attack).
• Only 8 spells can be learned at the same time

 

[kevs926]

Neither. I prefer the old spellbook system and having 9 abilities

unless

version 3
[Attack] [Pet Attack] [Rest / Retreat] [Spell 9]
[Spell 1] [Spell 2] [Spell 3] [Spell 4]
[Spell 5] [Spell 6] [Spell 7] [Spell 8]

 

[ALEXz407]

Another option, can you add it to the poll?

Version 4:

[(Z) Attack / Pet Attack] [(X) Rest / Retreat] [Spell 1] [Spell 2]
[Spell 3] [Spell 4] [Spell 5] [Spell 6]
[Spell 7] [Spell 8] [Spell 9] [Spell 10]

• Talents selection, Talents view and Item rolling will be moved to the backpack.
• Reviving and dismissing mercs, aswell as the options menu will be moved to the backpack.
• Rest and retreat will be toggled depending on if you are in combat or not. Rest will only appear outside of combat; retreat will only appear in combat.
• Using the manual attack command (A) will also order your pets to attack the selected enemy. Simple Right-clicking on an enemy will not. A-clicking a friend will perform friendly fire as usual (but pets will not attack).
• 10 spells can be learned at the same time!

 

[GasQueen]

I thought the suggestions brainstorm were out of the table (or whatever the saying goes), and we were going to focus on new content only.

I'm not complaining, but unless these suggestions don't affect the new content, I suppose they could wait a little bit, and you can implement them while the new version with new content is released.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

I thought the suggestions brainstorm were out of the table (or whatever the saying goes), and we were going to focus on new content only.

I'm not complaining, but unless these suggestions don't affect the new content, I suppose they could wait a little bit, and you can implement them while the new version with new content is released.

It's not like this takes long to do. A couple of minutes.



So, let's just assume we move roll, merc revive/dismiss and options to the backpack, in that case I could definitely fit all 9 spells into the command card:

Version 5

[Attack / Pet Attack] [Rest / Retreat] [Talents] [Spell 9]
[Spell 1] [Spell 2] [Spell 3] [Spell 4]
[Spell 5] [Spell 6] [Spell 7] [Spell 8]


To reduce the visual clutter, I could probably import very basic icons for attack, rest/retreat and talents, so that the ability icons clearly "stick out" visually. I was thinking about using different icon borders there or using only greyscale icons.

 

[ALEXz407]

10 abilities or 9?

Zwiebelchen did a [thread=261644]poll[/thread] about reducing available abilities to 8.

I want to ask opposite thing: what do you think about increasing available abilities to 10?

Information about Attack, Sleep and other buttons

• Reviving and dismissing mercs, aswell as the options menu with Item Rolling will be moved to the backpack.
• Rest and retreat will be toggled depending on if you are in combat or not. Rest will only appear outside of combat; retreat will only appear in combat.
• Using the manual attack command (A) will also order your pets to attack the selected enemy. Simple Right-clicking on an enemy will not. A-clicking a friend will perform friendly fire as usual (but pets will not attack).

Option A - 10 abilities

• You can use all 12 buttons in the battle!
• You must open backpack to learn new talent every 5 levels. (3 clicks * 9 talents = 27 clicks at 50 level)

Option B - 9 abilities

• You can use 11 buttons in the battle.
• You can learn new talent directly from hero card every 5 levels. (2 clicks * 9 talents = 18 clicks at 50 level)

Summarizing

• What do you think about it?
• Will inactive until level 10 button be more intuitive design decision than fully active spells panel?
• How much it will affect the game balance?
• Would you like 10 abilities or 9?

 

[Ihazdialup]

I would have to say I enjoy the old system more, simply because I like the idea of my abilities being separate from the basic commands, and being able to retreat even when I'm not in combat (so the merc or summons don't go running into a nearby group while your party is trying to heal up.)

It isnt really a big deal to hit esc when your in your spellbook to get back to the main command card.

And it seems like your trying to fix something that isn't broken.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

It isnt really a big deal to hit esc when your in your spellbook to get back to the main command card.

And it seems like your trying to fix something that isn't broken.

I know that there's definitely bigger fish to fry. But it isn't really a lot of work to do this, so nothing wrong with discussing it. I definitely want to collect more oppinions on this before doing any changes.

EDIT: Merged a similar thread. Let's not create too much topics about this.

 

[ALEXz407]

EDIT: Merged a similar thread. Let's not create too much topics about this.

But the main purpose of the second thread was to ask "new 10 or new 9?", when current poll asks "new 8 or old 9?".

So far, it seems that people don't like any changes in interfaces

 

[Xonok]

I've seen only one post that specifically objects to changes in general. The rest have been about a specific change.
From my point of view, having a spellbook for those things should be avoided if possible and now it seems like it is possible.

 

[Jumbo]

In my opinion the game would be a lot better with 10 spells. Simply because some classes (Monk I'm looking at you) have a lot of passives which leads to extremely simplistic gameplay with no options other than auto attack (slight exaggeration), but yeah. Also, I don't think balance would suffer an awful lot from this, especially with the new stat and talent system.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

10 abilities is not on the table, simply because I want to ensure that we can always "go back" to the old system at any time in case unsolvable bugs are created by this. 9 abilities. That's what is and should be discussed.

 

[Jumbo]

Alright then. I vote for 9 abilities

 

[ALEXz407]

9 abilities.

Good.

I suggest this layout, because it looks cool and neatly with 9 abilities:

Only limitation for this layout - [Rest/Retreat] must be one ability at 0,1 fixed in "Abilities - Normal". If you swap two abilities dynamically when battle starts/ends, layout could break.

It would be cool to have icons with double meaning for [Attack/Pet Attack] and [Rest/Retreat]. Maybe one icon divided diagonally? Or normal icon with smaller (1/4 of normal) icon inside it at the bottom right corner.

Examples: &

 

[TooMuch]

I say keep the original system. however, if you can still keep 9 abilities on the command card without having to press q that'll be fine too.

 

[galactcus]

i think to move talents to backpack and have 10 skills should be better because there is lot of skills right now!

 

[Jumbo]

Yeah, but like Zwieb said, it will endanger our saves and may cause bugs. Personally, I don't mind those, but from a developer standpoint I can understand that opinion (that is, unless we are many people who want this change ).

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Yeah, but like Zwieb said, it will endanger our saves and may cause bugs. Personally, I don't mind those, but from a developer standpoint I can understand that opinion (that is, unless we are many people who want this change ).

This has nothing to do with the saves. The saves would actually support having all abilities available at the same time.
I just don't want players to have more than 9 abilities because I feel it destroys an important element of character building if you have everything always available.

 

[Jumbo]

10 abilities is not on the table, simply because I want to ensure that we can always "go back" to the old system at any time in case unsolvable bugs are created by this. 9 abilities. That's what is and should be discussed.

Well this is what you said, it was due to "unsolvable bugs".

By the way, with all the new spells in further versions 10 spells will not be "everything always available"

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Well this is what you said, it was due to "unsolvable bugs".

I meant bugs associated with the command button stacking.

 

[Jumbo]

So is this really a technical issue or is it mainly because you think 9 spells is better for gameplay reasons?

 

[Zwiebelchen]

So is this really a technical issue or is it mainly because you think 9 spells is better for gameplay reasons?

Both. The button stacking is a relatively new discovery and there has been not enough testing yet to go sure that it doesn't screw up other mechanics.

 

[Jumbo]

I see. And I can understand why you wont risk the map exploding cause of experiments.

 

[kevs926]

i just realized how this would help me alot.

when im playing druid, i need to check mana of my pets, so i have to reclick the Q again and again. also when checking boss hp and other stuff.

pls implement this, even as an option

 

[0.mY.g0d]

Where is Version 5 to vote for?