Quickbar, Spell-Consolidation

[DeathCultLegion]

As a PPU i find it very difficult to keep on track with 10 Quick-bar-slots.
The amount of needed PPU Spells are huge - and i am only talking about PvE since i am not the PvP-Guy at all.

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1. First Idea:
if i would try to squeeze my PvP Spells in there too - it would be an overkill of spell-management and switching items.
Would it be possible to give us 20 more Quick-slots - these could be switched to if we use an alternate-button (like of you push 1 you get quickslot A1, if i push ALT+1 i get B1, if i push CRTL+1 i get quickslot C1)

This would provide everyone with a much more use-able interface and would take the focus (especially of monks) from switching stuff around to just do thinks more quickly, easier and more effective.

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2. Hmm... Idea #1. seems complicated -> so make it simple. Go with this
In Short - we build in 2 more Quick-bar-slots that can only contain consumable Items (like drugs, Medkits, Booster, Drinkable Items (Beer, Whiskey) (bind them to Q and E) - this would free up 2 Main-Quickbarslots for usable Items - seems an improvement to me

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3. Ok...you don't like the two ideas above...FINE...how about this one:
If its not possible to expand the quick-bar or build another 2 quick-slots -> Consolidate the spells to more logical ones.
Especially the secondary Buff-Spells and the Combat-Spells - we could consolidate these to 3 or 4 Simple-Spells instead of 9 totally different Spells

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Tradeskill-Buff: Boosts CST,RES,IMP,REC,REP (Amount 38.61 Points)
Depends on your Base-Skill what Boost you get - If you have CST you get CST, if you have REP you get REP - if you got both, the amount of points (lets say 5,15,30) will be shared equally of the spell. The Amount can only spread to 3 subskills - which 3 will be decided by the most points in the subskill)

Combat-Buff: RC/PC/APU/HC/MC/RLC (Amount 42.92)
The Boosted subskillpoints depends on your main-Weapon-sub-skill

Utility-Buff: FCS/PSU/WPW/TC/WEP/ (Amount 38.61)
The boosted subskillpoints depends on your main-weapon-subskill
If you have RC you will get TC and WEP
If you have APU/PPU you will get FCS/PSU and so on
you can only get 2 of the sub-skills boosted

Support-Buff: TRA/BRT/AGL/HCK (Amount 38.61)
This Buff will you give you equally shared bonus to these subskills everything else would be difficult to satisfy everyone (Spy wants TRA instead of BRT and HCK) So it would be nice to design this spell to boost these sub-skills in a percentage way. Like give 20% TRA,BRT,AGL,HCK of the actual subskillpoint amount. Would mean i have a Barter with 100 BRT and 100 TRA - with the Buff he would have 125BRT and 125TRA.
A Spy with 100 Agility would get 125 Agility. To avoid abuse of this (every Subskill needs a softcap - means the more points you invest the more points you would need. in the end of it, it would mean that between 50 and 100 Agility is a huge difference - where 100 and 150 aren't so much different anymore. the bonus-effect would decrease the more you skill it.

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So my idea makes 4 different Spells out of 9. Pretty good solution in my Opinion.

The Resistance Buffs stay in their 3-Way-Constellation. Its good as it is.

So based on your class and your chosen Weapon you would be buffed with the correct stats. no more: "Whoops i gave you a PSI-Combat-Boost" instead of a HC-Boost 3

It would make it simpler with the whole Buff-Thing and carrying around a 1000-Spells (no fun - it sucks imo ) In Fact combine Idea 2 and 3 and it would be awesome.
10 Spells and a PPU is good to go - and he would have the chance to take a PSI-Boost and a Stamina Boost and still be able to carry 10 Spells.

Anyone have any thoughts on this or ideas to improve it even further?
Greetings

[onero S]

I have always thought that a lack of bar space made playing on a PPU less fun, you can't really enjoy the wierd spells, and PVEing is annoying. It's less of a PvP issue however. I would absolutely love the following:

Give everyone 20 slots, 1-10 and shift+1-10. The interface could stay the same, holding shift (or whatever modifier key a player chooses to bind) would display the items in the alternate bar.

Let consumables stack: I know this has been debated as a PvP balance issue, but honestly, the annoyance in PvE isn't worth the tradeoff. Ammo stacks, let psi boosters stack, perhaps enforce a short delay like a reload time whenever a new item in the stack appears.

[braydagner]

You have ten slots and three times as many spells. If you need more than ten in PVE, either you're doing something wrong or someone you are with is. In PVP, yea, I would love to have twenty slots to keep every spell I could possibly need, but I don't have that, never have, yet I make due solo-PPUing five fighters in a OP fight. It's not impossible, not even unreasonable, to have to be picky and work around what you've got to work with. Find a way.

[onero S]

You have ten slots and three times as many spells. If you need more than ten in PVE, either you're doing something wrong or someone you are with is. In PVP, yea, I would love to have twenty slots to keep every spell I could possibly need, but I don't have that, never have, yet I make due solo-PPUing five fighters in a OP fight. It's not impossible, not even unreasonable, to have to be picky and work around what you've got to work with. Find a way.

Now don't undersell it, I'm sure you've solo PPUed at least 20 people in an op fight, while leveling an alt, and running ress missions.

Seriously, I don't really understand the point of your post nor the logic behind it. Things are ok because you are awesome, everyone else just needs to learn to play? I never argued that a lack of PPU slots was gamebreaking (especially in PvP). It's not about people not being able to make due with 10 slots; it's the fact that limiting people to 10 slots can be just plain annoying at times.

Class specific buffs for instance, no PPU at the moment is going to level with a group of 6 other people, and give them all their own class buff, plus either heat or hazz depending on their setup. Just not going to happen. With more slots this would:

a) Be possible, but still not easy, and would possibly take even more PPU skill keeping track of who gets what.
b) Allow class buffs to be changed to be cooler, allow for more choice, and be more meaningful. Having enough slots to play with less mainstream psi modals would give us a lot more freedom in introducing new things.
c) Remove the general annoyance that comes from having to constantly swap out buffs, rezz, ect. God forbid hybrids get fixed and you want to ppu for a team while leveling and still have a couple of dmg spells in your bar.


Even if you think the above are trivial reasons to make a change (and it sounds like you do), a good question to ask would be "why not"?

As best as I can tell, you seem to think that it would be a problem in pvp somehow. While I don't think it would be an issue, I will say that if it was, isn't that indicative of an imbalance elsewhere? If some modules become overpowered simply because there is the space to use them.... that doesn't mean things were ok before, it just means that those modules need fixing.

[RogerRamjet]

Part of being a good PPU is how you arrange your belt in my opinion. It's almost like a finger print, unique to anyone who's ever played one. Just another aspect of your set up in my opinion, as much as what imps or armour you use.

[onero S]

Part of being a good PPU is how you arrange your belt in my opinion. It's almost like a finger print, unique to anyone who's ever played one. Just another aspect of your set up in my opinion, as much as what imps or armour you use.

I understand that, but honestly, in pvp what are you really missing out on? So perhaps you have to choose between anti poison and true sight sanctum.. that's about the end of it. It's really not a big deal. A the moment, it's mostly pve stuff that is hurt, specifically class buffs and things of that nature. It would add a lot more than it would remove, ppu skill wise, if those sorts of buffs were expanded, but at the moment there just aren't slots to support it. No PPU is going to carry 5 or 6 different class type buffs for their team for instance, it would be just nightmarish.

[[F6]Knight]

Nice idea.
Especially the merging of various tradeskill / combat boost spells would indeed save a lot of quickbar space. I often play with friends in a very mixed team and asking the PPU to combat buff us all usually means he either has to sacrifice 3-4 quickbar slots to all the different combat buffs or swap them out after each cast to buff another class. It's quite ridiculous.

But in your suggest, don't make it split the buff between certain skills based on what the char already has. This will probably require too much coding and I'm sure the devs are already busy enough.
Just stack all the bonusses on the 4 spells you suggest.

I also think that BRT and IMP should be swapped in your spell suggestion. BRT feels more like a tradeskill and IMP like a support skill.

Lastly, the "combat buff" seems fine but I fear it might end up being underused because of the "utility buff" giving T-C and WEP. That's a lot of damage and rate of fire versus the damage bonus from the "combat buff". Even if they get evened out that the "combat buff" gives the same DPS increase as the "utility buff", people are still gonna use the latter just for the WEP making their aim faster.
Not sure how to fix this little dilemma.

[Setlec]

the coming of NC 2.2 was a disaster for PPUs, specially with the overdosed amount of new spell (debuff spells, adition of new shields) and weight to carry (colar, armor + PA). Back in 2.1 PPUs had about 6 spells max in their quick slot for PvP or Pve (at least me the rest stayed in my gogu) also we could recycle our stamina/psi booster and the first aid kit.

Having 3 shields is a pain the extra weight obliges you to carry less stamina booster and others stuff, honestly for monks i would like a partial rollback to NC 2.1.

[William Antrim]

Make primes last 30 minutes instead of 5 like they do now. Less switching around, easy fix.


give us Shift-1 to 10 for a second bar - or give us a second bar on the interface when you get your Woc level.

Keep the solutions simple and easy to implement and you have more chance of having them make it into the game imo.

Your redesign of the combat system is all well and good but do not forget someone has to code all of this stuff and then thoroughly test it. The theory is sound and I can see a lot of work went into it but I do not think that that part of nc needs to be tweaked.

[RogerRamjet]

I understand that, but honestly, in pvp what are you really missing out on? So perhaps you have to choose between anti poison and true sight sanctum.. that's about the end of it. It's really not a big deal. A the moment, it's mostly pve stuff that is hurt, specifically class buffs and things of that nature. It would add a lot more than it would remove, ppu skill wise, if those sorts of buffs were expanded, but at the moment there just aren't slots to support it. No PPU is going to carry 5 or 6 different class type buffs for their team for instance, it would be just nightmarish.

Err I carry all the spells I'll ever need. Swapping spells out isn't a huge deal especially since the FRE seems pretty non existent these days. Used to be a pain once over but not so much now.

That being said I'd like to see a reversion to the ppu system of 2.1.

[braydagner]

Err I carry all the spells I'll ever need. Swapping spells out isn't a huge deal especially since the FRE seems pretty non existent these days. Used to be a pain once over but not so much now.

this.

Seriously, it isn't hard to swap spells even in an OP fight. If you can't do it, then you can't do it, but there's no reason to make it all easier. It just takes practice.

[onero S]

this.

Seriously, it isn't hard to swap spells even in an OP fight. If you can't do it, then you can't do it, but there's no reason to make it all easier. It just takes practice.

Of course it's not a big deal in an op fight. If you read my post you'd see that I specifically say it's not a big deal for pvp at all. The point behind having more space would be:

a) For PvE to let PPUs play with more of the less used spells such as the wide variety of class buffs (this is currently not feasible when ppuing for more than a couple of different classes, for anyone).

b) To enable said class buffs to be tweaked and changed. IMO they have always been such boring PPU spells, fire and forget with little to no thought. It would be great if there were multiple viable options competing for the same buff slot for every class. Choosing what to buff with would not cut and dry (and would add more skill to PPUing, not less).


It's a bit sad, there is a trend on these forums where, whenever anyone suggests a change, people come out of the wood work to try and make the double point that: since they have been able to do just fine up until now, anyone who isn't happy must be both a wimp and a noob.

This is really silly logic, just because something isn't gamebreaking, just because you can't work around something, even just because something has never been an issue for you, does not mean that changing it wouldn't be beneficial. I really fail to see how this change would make playing a PPU less skill based. By literally everyone in this thread's own admission, slots are not a factor in pvp...... good, then lets change things to make PVE a little less annoying for those who want to play around with some weird and niche ppu spells.

Edit:

On a side note, I don't see how this is bad for other classes either. I mean, if a tank wants to load up with a billion weapons, all modded for different dmg types, more power to them. Used to be everyone complained about the safe slot making things less interesting. Well encouraging people to carry more weapons around can only help.... I for one kind of love the rush you get when carrying multiple valuables in dangerous areas.

[Assimilator]

For me the argument against more hotbar slots is similar to comparing Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2 unit group count limitations and Actions per Minute (APMs). Limitations in SC1 resulted in a max of 12 units per hotkey, thus the players had to be really quick on the keyboard to effectively manage their groups. I recall playing SC2's beta and saw a few forum posts about how increasing the group count (aka making it easier for players) is lessening the skill.

For those that are already good at swapping things back and forth (especially drugs and boosters), kudos to your skills. But why not allow lesser skilled players to further enjoy the game by making things easier? If it's easier for us, it'll be easier for you. Your skills will still be potentially higher.

[onero S]

Agreed, to an extent, but the difference is even less as this would effect pve way more than pvp.