Throw out this random deck system now before it's too late.

on a locked bar, I just keep clicking what is clear to click on, rapidly.. lol

 

Well reading all you posts all you do is not like it, it is not going anywhere.

If you get your way you seem to want to be able to GM all the skills you want and use them all at will, sorry not the way the game was even remotely designed to be played.

From the looks of the Decks you say you played you are very limited and focused but not what you want, that is all by choice. And each one is / was very affective in their own rights, but yes you cannot have them all, and never should. Nothing is stopping you from training all the skills and decking out for specific adventures, all working very well.

The system is not the dumest, it actually forces player to be intelligent and plan out how they trains and use their trained skills, so what it actually is doing os making it so the player who wants to open the box run out and kill a demon, is basically going to just stop after a few days, all I can say is yeah, DLTDHYOTBOTWO.

 

Yup, I love this feature, and do it all the time. Makes the deck easy to modify during battle!

 

Here is my old scene:

 

Its interesting to see how people using the random deck xpends most of their time trying to figure out how to make it the less random as possible .

 

I liked that there used to be a trade-off that there was a benefit to using the random deck (reduced focus costs) for the more difficult and unpredictable system.

Now you can do a fully locked deck with no penalties, providing an unfair advantage in PvP/combat for players who used a fully locked deck. So if you want to "get rid of" the system, just lock everything down.

I like the random deck. I think it is innovative and fun. I'm unhappy that the devs have gone with a system they know is unfair and imbalanced because people kept complaining and wanted the locked deck with no penalties.

 

Why are people talking as though you can only do one, or the other? I mix frequently based on my needs, and the abilities of spells, some spells for example are terrible to lock down due to the cooldown timer. Many reasons why a person may want a skill locked or not. Also, if one wants to limit the frequency of a desired spell, or a utility spell, then that can be done with varying the amounts of the cards vs other cards in the deck. It is basic deck management skills found in other games...

Once you learn the nuances of the system, you will see it's not so black and white.

 

I wouldn't like that, to be honest. One of my biggest pet-peeves is when software developers pretend to know what I want. Take "Hamstring" for example, it takes a knockdown ability and turns it into a snare with a DoT. If I bring "Trip", it's because I want to knock my opponent down. MAYBE, I'd want to hamstring once in a while, but I wouldn't want to be penalized because I drew a glyph that it just so happens to combo with.

GuildWars had only 8 skills and you couldn't change them during a mission/dungeon. GuildWars 2 has 10 and the first 5 are locked based on your weapon.

So yeah, the OP's opinion is far from prophetic.

That's kind of the point of the system. It's pretty common trait in any [T]rading [C]ard [G]ame: You have powerful cards but you have a quota of 60 cards to be considered to have a "legal" deck. So you control your odds of getting the cards you want by strategically balancing the quantity of every card in relation to each other. While technically legal, anyone who just shoves 100+ cards together into a deck will get destroyed in a competition.

In SotA, the more skilled you are with a skill, the more often you can put it in your deck.

Like a TCG, SotA's "random" system can backfire on you if you don't plan accordingly as you may prevent yourself from drawing any new cards if you end up with all 10 slots with glyphs you don't currently need... Most TCGs have a 8 card limit in your hand.

Thankfully, like a TCG, SotA has ways to allow you to discard glyphs (mind wipe). It also has the added bonus of allowing you to play without the system entirely.

 

I keep my deck at very low amount (18-20), the misc/buff skills have only one glyph each, while healing touch and some attack skills have four.

 

I understand combos. But glyphs stacking on each other I'd like to do away with some of the frenzied clicking of the mini-game in my hotbar.

I don't want them to determine which combo I would take based on options, but I do want the stacking to be automatic. That said, I understand why you might want to use double-thrust 5 times instead of a level 5 double-thrust, so perhaps being able to set default behaviour, for example, use one glyph vs shift+5 to use all glyphs of the same type (or some other key combination).

I don't know, I just feel that when I'm in combat I'm playing two games. One on the main-screen, where I am engaged in combat with an enemy and using my abilities and engaged with the game, and another where I am engaged with my hotbar dragging and dropping glyphs around as they pop up.

 

Thanks for the clarification; I forgot about the distinction between stacking glyphs and combos.

Personally I stack and do combos with the keyboard using the R key. However, how about if you press-n-hold a particular skill it checks if it can combo with another skill on your hotbar. If it doesn't, it triggers normally but, if there are... holding the button down would cycle between possible combos so that, when you let go, it does the combo. The same could be done with stacking too. Press-n-hold and it'll progressively stack itself.

The issue here is that you couldn't "save" combos and stacks for later use but I don't think that was the intended purpose. Although I could be wrong.

 

Or just double-tap (-click) the glyph key (icon) to pull all the stackable glyphs in the bar at that moment, stacked to that key (slot).

Edit - just to be clear, the same as a concrete example:
As an archer, I have pre-assigned Aimed Shot to the 1st slot of my unlocked combat bar (on the keyboard, 1st slot is accessed with the hotkey Z). I have five glyphs of aimed shot, so more often than not I have at least one aimed shot ready and waiting.

Suppose I would get three Aimed Shots at combat bar locations 1 (pre-assignment), 3 and 7, and would like to stack them. To do this with the mouse, I would need to drag slot 7 to slot 3, and slot 3 to slot 1. With the keyboard (my hotbar keys are ZXCVBGTRWQ) I would do: "R-TC-R-CZ".

With double tapping, I would simply double-tap Z, and I would have it triple-stacked. With the mouse I could simply double-click the 1st slot Aimed Shot icon.

 

Who puts light on their combat bar....

 

I remember having a need for it a few releases ago when I was deep inside some mines, even with the lanterns scattered around the area, I could barely see anything and bandits there would re-spawn fairly rapidly.

Now I completely ditch the light spell altogether and just make sure that my spec involves wielding a 1-hander, so that I can use torches if I fail at sneaking around. Not ideal but it beats putting a light spell on the combat bar.

 

I have to agree with the OP.
I want to look at my avatar fighting but I have to keep my eyes on that action bar constantly.
The card system might be a fun mini-game on it's own but I don't think it fits the project in the end.

 

You can do a fully locked deck and know what slot is what ability if you want. There is no penalty to doing so. So the players using a random deck are penalized.

 

Also as you get used to it you don't need to stare at it constantly. It could be better if the attention span it needs should is reduced somehow, but it improves as you get used to it.

Also, I remember friends of mine that even playing wow (equivalent of full locked deck) stared at the hotbar constantly...

 

If you play games with a hotbar constantly, you develop the ability to watch your character, your surroundings and the hotbar simultaneously. Raiders often refer to it as situational awareness.

 

~You on the End Down There, "Keep Clapping!", It's Good to Give Our People False Hopes Through Our Unwavering Support~

And don't forget that we're all just a bunch of random cards in a deck full of jokers when it comes to opposing our SOTA positions, very easily replaceable...

Does it really matter that reworking an entire game to retrofit some retro idea of our skill usages would just make us like every other game?
We are already a cookie cutter enough Unity game without giving up any pieces of what makes our game truly unique in the proses...
It's futile to resist, so join the clappers and enjoy the new challenges our game represents to the gaming industry...
After a while, like anything else, "it grows on you"... "or it doesn't!"...
After All, This is a Cult Following Game...
So just drink more of the Kool-Aid please...
~Time Lord~

 

Some has limits to how much they can progress. In my circle of friends and after years playing WoW, some of us were able to play just glancing at the combat bar looking at cooldowns, many others were able to alternate between the combat bar and the game screen most of the time, but there were a few players that spend most of the time looking at the hotbar. And all of them played daily... it's just that some people has his limits.

Regardless the point i'm trying to make is that even when random deck combat has a higher attention span than static deck, if you were able to acquire situational awareness (thanks for the term! hope i don't forget it) with a static deck you'll be able to do that with the random deck as well, just in the amount the random deck allows you to. On the other hand, if you cant get enough situational awareness with a hotbar, you won't be able to do that either with the random deck.

What's required is to polish the mechanics so the attention span required in the random mode is reduced and people with high situational awareness can look at the game more.