Idea - Editable "Skill Groups" for managing skill on/off mechanics

OK, I'm going to try and make this short and sweet.

PREAMBLE

(Short posts always start with a preamble!)

I don't completely understand the new "XP pool" concept. I understand it on paper, but the implementation, and how to properly utilize it as a player is elusive to me. I and a few friends on the IRC chat (hi @KuBaTRiZeS , @froji, @Solazur !) were talking about this and I had an idea. But first, what caused my frustration.

POSTAMBLE <-- I made this up.

The way it *seems* to work, for me currently, is that the Adventuring XP pool goes up when you kill a mob, and goes down when I use "skills" or "glyphs". If you don't do any skill micromanagement, your XP pool hovers at around 0. You kill a mob, get a sliver of XP, and then use up that XP in the pool within the first 10 seconds of your next fight, because naturally you're using your glyphs to defeat your foe.

(I'm simplifying here, but if I'm just doing this wrong, someone please tell me.)

So, the corollary action is to go into the Skill tree window ('K' key), and wander through the different trees, trying to disable skill gain in whatever skills that..., you don't want to affect your XP pool. If you use the same four attacks all the time, you could keep those from gaining skill, and logically your defense/magic/innate skills would rise more. I tried doing this, and it kinda works. But there's a problem.

The skills are organized into trees, as we know, by "type", but only very loosely. When I considered this skill micromanagement technique in order to funnel XP into what I wanted to raise, I thought doing it in categories of "Offense", "Defense", etc. (I am a melee character for all intents and purposes.) But for me to do this in the current skill trees is laborious. If I want to disable leveling all offensive "skills", I'm looking at at least 3 different trees. Obviously, my weapon tree. But then there are offensive Shield skills, so I had to turn stuff off there. I had to go into Heavy Armor" for a move I have that is offensive. I had to go into the Fire Magic tree to turn off my offensive Fire Fist and whatnot. This was unwieldy, time consuming, and confusing (I didn't remember everything I had turned off when it was time to turn them back on). Again, this is what I feel needs to be done with the XP pool concept...if I'm wrong, let me know.

MY SOLUTION

Customize-able "Skill Groups" (you can call them what you like). Add a side panel, or something, to the Skill Window ('K' key) that allows players to define and populate their own custom "groups" of skills. That way, I only have to think about this once. I create an "Offensive" skill group, go through the skill tree and drag over skills that I want in this group, then hit 'Save'. This group is now always accessible to me.

And each group can be mass-turned-off or mass-turned-on for skill advancement. I can create as many or as few groups as I want, and one skill could be in several groups (I think, though this might create unintended conflicts, haven't thought through it yet). It's kinda like Equipment in Decks; you get to choose a "set" of skills to either focus on leveling up, or have them not gain at all.

This would reduce the frustration and time dedicated to skill micromanagement, and also be more accurate for the players. And I'm sure you all could think of other types of "Groups" that would be useful to be able to manipulate as a, well, group.

I'm gonna cross-post this on a couple other boards, sorry if you get tired of seeing this.

All thoughts, input, and criticisms welcome!

Merc

 

Ive no objection to your idea, i was thinking of making a similar post, only mine was a bit cheeky
Because what i was going to ask for was a skill window (additional to our current one) that was basically the same as it was in UO

Because in the UO skill window, you could drag all the skills you used into one group (i used to use the top-most group, and remove the ones i didnt want from that group.
You could then rename that group, and it had within it, only the skills you were concerned with
Then each of the skills had the up/down/lock (guess we only need up/down, or up/lock here)
Then accessing and locking/unlocking skills would be much simpler

Taking what you said of being able to toggle up/lock on entire groups would just make things much simpler, and i am in favour of such things, especially if we were able to customize such groups (put whatever skills we want into whatever groups we want, make new groups, rename them etc

I was hunting yesterday, and decided i wished to change my up/lock parameters for many of my skills, and i did find it tiresome and lengthy, also i managed to miss some that i intended to lock, and not notice until i got a gain in one ofthem

I think between us the players, and the devs, we could come up with something more simple than what we currently have, whether that means changing the current one entirely, or adding something to what we have, is not really for me to say, but we do need something

The current skill window is ok, and in keeping with the trends of many other games, but honestly i wouldve been happeier with it if it were more like the UO Skill window... perhaps the current window could have a button (or something) that opened a Skill List whichwe could customize and arrange/rearrange exactly how we each want it, and then have the functionality of being able to lock/unlock those entire groups

I could list examples of how i would reorganize my own, for easy skill locking/unlocking, but i think the post is already long enough and we can all imagine it easily enough

 

Yeah, I like this idea because I'm always turning skills off and on when I change decks.

I use different decks for different situations.
(If I need to be more defensive, I have a defensive deck. For pvp, I use my pvp deck, etc...)

-I currently have 5 separate decks that I use and tweak and change a lot, but I usually switch between three of them (pvp, defensive, and dps [not that pvp and defensive dont use dps but yah it's my own way of knowing what's what with my decks]).​

I like the idea of setting up a glyph spec that corresponds with each deck.
-Right now, when I switch decks, I have to turn on and off various corresponding glyphs in the skill trees.
-What a rad idea to set up and customize which glyphs are on and off, and as I'm suggesting, this will correspond to each deck a player has, so when we switch to a diff deck, switching turns on and off the corresponding glyphs!

Thanks, Merc!