Thats just what I think of when I think of chaining abilities anyway. Your solution works perfectly fine too. Its just more of re-adjusting the command card rather than actually chaining abilities together, if that makes sense?
Yes, exactly.
The idea is to group the abilities within a chain in a way that:
- makes sense from a gameplay perspective (you probably don't want a DoT very far into a chain, since a DoT is more effective when you apply it early)
- the purpose of each spell in a chain is similar (it makes no sense to have some random AoE abilities in a chain that contains mostly single target spells)
- reactive effects (like stuns and interrupts) should mostly be on the first skill or second skill of a line, to make them available on demand (unless it is intentional that these effects must be "planned for".
Why second book is bad idea?
If You could manage to move 3-5 spells into passives book it would be just fine, dont You think?
Because passives are boring an lame.
Simpler to understand if you say it in terms of spell availability, its not a chain at all.
- cooldown off = available
- Max 1 available
- Priority:
A -> B -> C
Correct, yes.
In theory, it's more a displayal priority than an actual ability chain.
But in practice, it will play out very similar to a "classic" ability chain system as we have in action orientated games.
There's a gameplay problem here that im not sure if you all overlooked.
This "chain" system is confining you to a certain sequence and thus having you restricted and forcibly mana drained. (for certain classes).
Mind you all, I know there are different ways of fighting this boss but just think team with guardian angel for this one.
So let me explain here. If Im a crusader tanking, against gazrow. If I have hateful strike, gaping wounds, revenge and shield slam. with the reset cd talent lets say.
[...]
I understand that this isn't always the case and zwieb may adjust it so it isn't so. Though not sure what type of adjustments can be made there and what type of problems might arise if the reset talent procs off. Like you're about to use revenge.. then it procs and you got to waste a stun again...
CD reset talents will be removed if I go for this system. They wouldn't work very well with it. Luckily, there are only a handful of these talents and I don't like them anyway.
scenarios you know. Same concepts with druid or bishop. normally, natures blessing is used as an emergency heal, so using it as your first heal is kinda sloppy. imagine WoW, "healer why the hell did you just pop your cds??? , Sorry, but I needed to in order to heal the waves that bound to come." catch my drift? bishop even more so. spamming heals just for the combo and not managing abilities is just a mana depleter.
If you consider Blessing as just an instant version of remedy (and thus better in all regards), it is no problem to keep it on cooldown and force the CD.
It's not like druids really need Blessing as an emergency heal with Remedy working the way it does and the Nymph being super strong anyway.
It will certainly change the gameplay a bit, but nothing you can not get used to. Obviously, spells that are actually
meant as situational life-safers will always be standalone spells. Blessing, imho, is not that. It has a pretty low cooldown anyway.
last thing I want to add.. how bout you make all passives an active ability but with a stronger effect. So they become a definite tradeoff for others.
Like the hunter passive. Can give like 20% crit with 20 evasion or something for a short time. enough so that you can use your abilities with it and have a massive burst capability. But the viable tradeoff would be like instead of burst you have awesome sustain dps for the long fights. cant think of one right now but you get what Im saying hopefully.
Not all, but some passives will be redesigned then, yes.
I was thinking the same thing, lets say I use hateful strike, then gaping wounds and I have revenge there but I don't use it yet, if hateful strike's cooldown is over, what would happen? And the same goes for reset cd talents. Also, I don't agree on having to use nature's blessing before remedy.
As soon as the hateful strike cooldown is finished, it will be displayed over revenge. So you only have a limited time window to use revenge after activating hateful and gaping.
Having said that I don't think it's that bad of an idea. You don't even have to have per-say a passive book it could be a secondary/passive book. All passives and spells that are typically not used in combat or don't even have a hotkey assigned to them (Resurrection, you could place the summoning spells in there excluding skeletons, all the passives, many of the bard songs, etc.)
It would be annoying, because if you wanted to access the spells of the second spellbook, you'd have to:
- press esc to exit the open spellbook
- press whatever hotkey is assigned to the second spellbook
- activate the ability
- press esc again
- open the primary spellbook again
... that's 5 consecutive hotkeys for accessing just a single spell in the secondary spellbook. And yes, I know that I can nest spellbooks into each other, but that imho feels even less practical, especially in the heat of a battle, since you never know on the spot 'where' you currently are, especially if you don't concentrate on the command card.
Two spellbooks is just not a good idea.
Besides, it doesn't fix the actual problem, it just defers it.
This would mean you are basically just spamming Q the entire game. yes the spells change but to what point. At least with different hotkeys you have to remember what buttons to push and use them accordingly to the fight. Having "chained spells" main lines the game so much and just messes with fights designed around using abilities or interupts at certain times during a fight. It would be too hard to manage said things like TooMuch stated.
How is pushing Q, W, E in order any different to pushing Q, Q, Q?
It's just a different kind of automatism.
And besides I never said that I want to put all primary spells in one chain. In fact, I seperated them much more than I originally intended, simply because I didn't want to mess the current playstyle ups.
I'd say take a look at my ability list again; I don't think it will heavily alter the way these classes play. I invested a lot of thought into the layouts.
but I'm sure there's a better solution to this issue out there than this one. Personally I don't even think the 9 spell limitation is this big of an issue. It works. Sure more spells get used than others but that's with any game there's no need to force it on players with chained abilities. The great thing about having so many spells to choose from is the fact that many are situational. You can swap out a spell or two for different dungeons or bosses depending what you are doing. You can build your hero differently if you want. Perhaps a good route would be simply making swapping out abilities much easier and quicker. Yes I know, the common player will build the hero pretty identical, but that's the point no? You have the option at least. It's fun trying out new builds and testing new combos together. Maybe players can discover a new set of abilities someone else didn't think of that just completely changes the way the class is played and I think that's a great thing to have in the game.
The problem is not the current gameplay. It is future gameplay. With every new spell I design, I have to ask myself the question of "is it stronger than an existing ability? Is it weaker? Will people actually want to sacrifice a slot for that?".
And even with the status quo of
only 11 abilities existing in total (of which you can select 9), people already disregard certain situational spells completely, even if they could come in handy. And this will only get worse as I implement new abilities.
Stuff like Spell Mirror or Venomous Blades, Fire Shield, etc. ... all these spells that add some cool elements to the game but simply are (by design) not quite as useful as having another direct damage spell... all these spells will practically be dead weight in future meta, as more and more spells get available.
The idea of having to choose between different spells is great... but only if the choices presented are actually comparable to each other.
That is why
Solution 2 (as mentioned in the thread opener) is
still a valid option (and easier to implement). But it would heavily effect the current meta and game balancing (and also requires me to put in a shitload of new skills as soon as possible), whereas
Solution 1 just synergizes better with talents and wouldn't change the (current) gameplay too much.
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