Only 8 skills?

Tried the trial pack before christmas, finally got the complete collection full version and I love it. Some great graphics, great ideas, smooth gameplay and no subs fees. The list goes on, but really why only 8 skills. Even 12 skill slots would be a massive improvement. You get not one, but two different proffessions and you can spec your attribute points wherever you want, but surely there needs to be more than just 8 slots. Im getting some great skills and Im thinking "Yeah that sounds cool, ill take that, oh where am I going to put it. I use that skill, and I need that skill. thats pretty handy, oh crud no room!! " Obviously theres a certain amount of skill involved choosing the right skills before you venture out, but we're not talking about lack of skill here, merely lack of choice. Compared to the other MMO's where you can fill your entire screen with every concievable power going, 8 skills for such a great game seems pretty stingy? Truly the only thing that lets this great game down IMHO.

thoughts?

feedback?

The 8 skill at a time system of guild wars is one of the main features that defines its skill > time philosophy.

Creating a balanced build is more difficult than having access to every skill at once.

IMO 8 skills at a time is one of the best features of guild wars. If you truly enjoy the game you will come to realise this when you start making your own builds.

The 8 skill system also makes professions like mesmer possible. Even gw monks would not function the way they do now fi every monk or monk secondary had access to every monk spell in the game at once.

yeah there are a lot of already powerful builds that could use that one extra skill to complete that spike to finish off the enemy in one combo. they have to basically choose between the full damage or self preservation &/or a res.

i think only 8-skill bars was a good choice on designers part to create a balanced competetive environment. besides, they have already been balancing skills to fit on an 8-skill bar this whole time, and if it were to change they would just have to lessen damage and healing, or grant more health to survive the madness that would ensue.

maybe they could test it in a weekend event if they wanted

Its always great to see a new player!

The 8 skill limit is one of the three most important balancing factors in GW along with the low level cap, and the extremely balanced design of items that have very little variation.

Because of you only have access to 8 skills, it is much more effective to specialize in one thing rather than being a balanced character. With more skills, characters could pack more energy conserving skills on their bar, making energy nearly a moot point for some professions, while others would have almost none. Any class could be an effective caster.

In addition the number of skill combos on a players bar would increase massively. Spike teams would be able to spike continuously.

Probably the most important reason is how recharge times are currently balanced. If more skills were allowed, you could take a bunch of longer recharge skills, and still be effective. Suddenly a 30 second recharge wouldn't matter because you could cast 30 second recharge spells continuously. As it is now, every skill on your bar is important. If you pick a skill that isn't working for you, it is working against you because there is something better for that slot. If we had more skills, it wouldn't matter what we took, One skill combo could make up for the rest of the bar.

It sounds like your a pve player, for anyone who plays pvp, changing how skills work would be the worst possible change in the game.

Good luck with foiling Abadon!

only 8 skills make guild wars what it is, a great and unique game

8 slots is more than enough in Guild Wars. Any more skill slots would cause huge imbalance to the game.

As you can see, we like the current setup. Guild Wars began as a PvP game with PvE added to allow an alternate way to unlock skills, weapons, armor, etc. Since then many things have changed, but not the importance of the PvP balance. It is very easy to destroy it.

ArenaNet has finally gone to splitting skills into PvE-only versions to allow PvP to not be unbalanced. They are constantly tweaking the skills to keep any one build from dominating the arenas.

And, in PvE, we are used to it. It adds a feeling of strategy to the game. Failed that mission or got wiped by that boss? Back to town to rethink your skill setup.

Glad to welcome someone to guru and Guild Wars - even when we moan, we love the game.

All fair and valid points. Obviously I have been spoiled with the likes of CoX, WoW and suchlike. Perhaps I have yet to truly experience the finer point of only 8 skills as I have yet to team up with a real group and experience any higher end content. thanks for your replies.

One more thing, I know it must be quite a different setting compared to wow, but eventually you will appreciate just having only 8 skills in your bar. As everyone before me have stated that's one of the main features of GW.

I know it seems kinda complicated what skills should you take with you, but dont worry. Some of your teamates can give you some of their builds during the game for you to use or you can copy some from http://www.pvxwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

And welcome to Guild Wars.

I would like to point out that GW is not designed for 1-on-1 fights. It's a team oriented game and the standard team sizes of 4 or 8 players provide 32 or 64 skill slots which is enough to create a well rounded build. A single player has a fairly specific task in a team and the 8 skill slots should suffice for that task and even leave some room for extra utility. You'll realize the benefits of the system once you get from single player to team level dynamics

8 skills is one of the great GW features that hasn't been ruined yet. It makes builds a vital part of the game.

And, as an alternative to pvxwiki (whose builds can be questionable at times), you can visit guru's Campfire section. There is a subforum for each primary profession and each has a stickied thread on the basics.

That will help you with the pros and cons of the various secondary professions for each character you have created.

Guild Wars isn't an MMO, its a PVP game, that's why...

You cannot expect to survive and annihilate under all circumstances. That said, you have other heroes, henchmen, or other players in your party to excel in areas you don't. This is where build synergy comes in; each party member being given a particular task, can work together to achieve success.

"Never fight alone."
This is one quote from the game which bewildered me in the beginning, but now I understand why. Hopefully you will too. (;

Playing Guild Wars for only more than a mere month now, I can not really gather the knowledge and logic to understand the outcome of a 12 skill build.

Yea its obviously something that needs work, I mean its only been that way for three and a half years.

I'm kinda surprised nobody's said "go back to WoW, noob!" yet... That must be some kinda record.

Anyways, the 8 skills are all about making choices. You have to decide which skills are more valuable to you and your team.

I'd love to see a game where someone was allowed all there skills at the same time, they probably wouldn't get to cast the first one before they were on the floor begging for a res lol (scrolls up, scrolls down, where is that skill?, ah there it is, your in for some hurt now....oh, i'm dead), "RES MAH PL0X, WHERE I GET HAT?"

Well it tries to differentiate from skilless games like WoW that require you to grind to be "good". By limiting the skill set to 8 and capping the level at 20, there is no chance for you to max everything out and be everywhere. So in order to be the best, you need to specifically make a build that synchs well together and find 2 skills that work together that can do better than 3 or 4 skills that separately would produce the same desired effect.

Chances are, if they allowed you to have 10 skills at the start of gw, then everyone would be saying that 10 is the perfect number etc etc. Anyway, that's how they set it up - it works well, makes you really focus on making every skill count instead of just taking any old crap and making it work. Everyone says skill>time, and without nerfing ALL the skills so you NEED to take more, that's the best way.

Every other MMO basically has a very limit number of builds with a profession, because there are only a few optimized builds. Because people can use every skill at once, most people will only use one or two varients of that build per profession. Ie every goblin shaman in Warhammer Online runs the same exact build. Imagine if every ele used the same thing in the ENTIRE game.

The 8 skills actually FORCES variablity. Each character can and does spec into a variety of different attributes and create various builds.

It's been said, but the 8-skill bar is what makes Guild Wars what it is. I played EQ2 and LotR and frankly disliked having so many skills available at the same time. I guess it's a love/hate thing. Give it a shot, and welcome

You can also think of it as a computerized version of Magic: The Gathering. That game had a set deck size, so every card need to be important. Same with your skill bar. You need to make every rune, every weapon, every mod, and every skill on your bar work together to acheive your goal, and work with your team (other players in PvP, and other players, or heroes/hench in PvE) to win.

You will find yourself re-specing a lot in PvE as you go along in the game. You can find a lot of genearl builds that will get you through a lot of places, but there are always those few places where you seem to get wiped a lot (your spikers are useless, no corpses for your minion-master, too many hexes, etc.) That is where you will really learn how to spec a team properly. And learn how useful it is to save your profiles.