Ability bloat is getting cray cray

Reducing ability bloat is something that's been talked about fairly recently in interviews and tweeters, it's also something we've attempted to address as recently as this expansion. It's a balance, of course, between having depth of complexity through abilities without making the complexity just a ton of different buttons to push. There's also perception issues of taking away abilities, even if they're never used, as undermining the viability or versatility of a class. Classes are largely defined by their abilities, so taking things away can be a touchy subject. It's something that we will need to give another go at addressing, because classes getting new abilities as level caps raise is essentially a given. In any case we tend to save these kinds of big sweeping changes for expansions.

08/27/2013 11:47 AMPosted by Kryptonicz

STOP DUMBING DOWN THE GAME.

Having tons of different buttons to push doesn't make you smart or good at the game. Having fewer buttons doesn't make you dumb or worse at the game. A literal comparison of # of abilities to # of abilities is not a valid comparison for depth of play or complexity that a skillful player can use.

If you have 30 buttons and your rotation is to push each button in order from 1->30, is that a smart game? Can you as a skillful and smart player press those buttons from 1->30 better than a worse player? Now what about if you have 5 buttons that require situational awareness, combo off each other, and a skilled player can achieve let's say a ~10% DPS gain over someone else using those same 5 buttons just by making smart decisions of when to press them.

What's your opinion now on what number of abilities means to making combat complex, smart, or skillful? Do fewer skills actually mean a "dumber" game? Does more of something just seem better? Is context of mechanics/gameplay/skill trumped by counting how many of something there is?