Suggestion for Skill System change

I understand why the current system is like it is, you have a zillion skills and get to choose 8 to use at a time. I'm not going to argue about the fundamentals or even the magic number of 8 (less one for a SoC half the time <sigh>).

What I suggest is that players should have more opertunity to make and test skill choices.

They should be able to make skill bar changes outside of town but at a price which means you are not just giving them 100 skills instead of 8. When you realise you have made the wrong skill choice or would like to try something different for a quest or mission and perhaps even PvP contest the player should be allowed to change rather than forcing them to abort and go back to town.

I suggest that when a skill is placed on the skill bar it has to be re-learnt and that should take time. In town the time would be zero, out of town 30 seconds or a minute + the skill recharge time before the new skill would become available for use.

The skill system is all about making choices and this scheme would just allow players to make those choices more often.

It defeats one of the purposes of gameplays, skill tactics. I dont like this idea.

Bad idea.

This is something that should never come to be. The entire game is balanced around the fact that skills cannot be changed in the wilderness.

If it was the way you suggested...

Everyone would load up on offensive spells. If a party member died, they would sit down, memorize Ressurection Signet, cast it, and replace it. Rangers would only memorize their pet ressurection right after it dies, and remove it right after, to name a few things. The whole point of the skill system is to force you to make difficult decisions and to be prepared for what you expect to happen. Letting you swap skills in the wilderness would completely defeat this purpose, and make everyone much more powerful.

So for situational skills where it doesn't matter if you stand around for a couple of minutes before you use them and stand around for a couple of minutes after to swap them out (of which you can think of two) you effectively have an extra slot on your skill bar - and this would somehow totally destroy the game's balance and gameplay? Being able to load an SoC when you want to is another example, however, with all the moaning about the SoC system I would have thought something that eases the pain a little would be welcome.

As I said in my original post a big part of the game is making wise choices about loaded skills. When you are 30 minutes into a quest or mission or explorable area (which you may never have seen before so how were you supposed to know) and decide your skill set could be better what do you do? Struggle on without ever finding out, or map back to town wasting the 30 minutes you already played? The scheme I proposed at best (or worst) gives you an extra half skill slot and lets players make and test those so important to gameplay skill choices without the large penalty they currently often have to pay.

My first PvE character has 102 skills available and half of them have never been on my skill bar. Is that because they suck? How would I know I never tried them.

I don't know much about the PvP side of the game, it seems to me part of it is like playing scissor, rock, paper. The other team brings paper skills you bring rocks - you loose. Maybe the suggestion would not work (and could be disabled) for PvP, however, I can't see how a team could afford to stand around changing their skill set from rock to scissors or that it imbalances anything as the option is available to both sides.

I really think we just need a few more icons on the skill bar. Just 2, for 9 and 0 on the key board. It seems just about everytime I go out I'm missing that one skill which I feel I could really use, but I can't give up the space. Would having 2 more spaces for skills really be that game breaking? Heck why not make it some quest for pve people and perhaps a certain reward for pvp people? I do agree thou that giving mulitple skill bars or letting people select skills in mission would probably break the game somewhat.

I would defeat the purpose of limiting skills at all.

...that's kind of the point of limiting skill selection. If I had ten skills to choose from, I could take two resurrects without sacrificing any energy management or healing abilities. I could take my counterspells without having to give up that protective enchantment that might save my team. Heck, I could take what I now consider a "full deck" and not have to sacrifice anything for taking a signet of capture.

I'm against upping the number of concurrently usable skills in any way, timer or no.

[ ]