There's a trend in MMO design to have only 1 action bar with a limited number of slots for abilities. I simply do not like this- to me, an MMO is about one's character growing in power and amount of abilities over time, and having lots of options to deal with various situations. Please VR, do not strip down the action bars- or at least give us the option of adding more!
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4701/limited-abilities-with-multiple-hotbar
Already being talked about
Hmm.
I see the opposite trend to be honest, but there are games that do this, including EverQuest.
I'm not against it, here's why:
I'm sure EverQuest has roots from Dungeons & Dragons, which has a spell cap on how many times a day you can use a spell and how many spells can be memorized at one time. To reset your spells, you must take a short/long rest and the same is true for the ability to 'forget' old spells and slot new/different ones. Now, EQ wasn't so extreme as to follow the number of use limit, like Neverwinter Nights did, but it was a mechanic that has been around for a long time.
I'm also not a huge fan of needing to worry about which of my 25 bound keys i need to hit to do an ability. That's not fun for me. It is definitely fun for a lot of people; people who tend to favor PvP especially tend to like this. I'm much more on board with preparing my spell list up front before an encounter and just worrying about those 8-10 abilities being available to me.
Just wanted to offer some insight on why some may prefer it.
There is two types of bars. There's the "action bar" (the bar on the right with the abilities), and then there are hotbars. There will be a limited number of active abilities, but multiple bars to accomodate different configurations, items and other things.
The idea is to focus on knowing what abilities to take into combat, rather than memorizing 30 keybinds. This doesn't limit the number of options for dealing with various situations. They still intend to have a lot of abilities, but only so many options at one time.
You can have many abilities as you grow, but you need to limit what ones you use when.
I definitely do not want 10+ hot bars in front of me to hold every clicky, macro, and ability that I need to spam cast, like in EQ2.
I would rather have an open screen that I can immerse myself in the environment and not the UI.
Morr said:There's a trend in MMO design to have only 1 action bar with a limited number of slots for abilities. I simply do not like this- to me, an MMO is about one's character growing in power and amount of abilities over time, and having lots of options to deal with various situations. Please VR, do not strip down the action bars- or at least give us the option of adding more!
This game will have a limited action set. It's a key tenant of the game to have to strategize ahead of time what abilities you will need for encounters.
