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

"Combat systems have no real bearing on roleplaying"

Hilarious stuff.

 

Im sorry your experience has been as such. Mine has been wonderful, though I had to experiment a lot to get a playstyle I like. Now I absolutely love it. Ive played mages / hybrids / melee'ers to the high level, and figured out niche strategy with respect to placement of cards, number of each card, etc, for each archype of "class". You might need to do a lot more of this before you realize how much power this system gives you.

Here is the overall thing I suggest you aim to accomplish: 100% uptime of your best skills, and a guaranteed chance of support skills being available within a few moments.

Thats an extremely powerful advantage. In fact, I have played nearly all the skill trees in the game, and I often find my self thinking "good lord this is overpowered..." about everything.

Maybe you wont reach exactly that, but its the ideal to aim for. With that goal in mind, plan your deck strategically. What kind of caster are you? Direct damage? You want your bolts ready all the time, preferably 2 at a time so you can stack. You probably want them very close to each other, so you can swiftly tap the number keys to stack them. Do you use things like damage shields, defensive buffs, or heals? You want those available 100% of the time too, and preferably stackable (well except for heals, to which Ive never observed a benefit of stacking). There are many ways to configure your deck to accomplish this, it requires a balance the ratio of the skills you want the most to the least.

If you want to make this very simple, start exploring the Mind Wipe skill from the Focus tree. It will change your life. With Mind Wipe, I can guarantee you a strategy with any playstyle that makes your best skills available so often you can just dump them like crazy on any target. Once Mind Wipe is at a high level, you want to stack the number of cards very much in its favor. Aim for 100% uptime of mind wipe + 100% uptime of heals, and you can even almost ignore the ratio of your other skills (I keep them low to favor Mind Wipe). Just flick Mind Wipe and *Bam* you got all your best skills ready to fire, repeat until target drops.

Its a very rare occurance for me now that a skill I need to survive is not available. This leads to the power of things such as my melee'er of R26-28, which could basically guarantee that a target was crowd controlled 100% of the time. My current avatar can nearly guarantee that within a few moments of combat, the surrounding targets will have at least 3 fire DoTs on them, with the main target having about 6 DoTs - my paper armor toon can tank! Yet, occasionally, the dice roll says "snake-eyes" and I get pwned. I find this chance exciting. You may or may not agree with that .

Couldnt agree more. When I first started using it, I thought it was like random card draws. Once I got the hang of it, I figured out how to tweak it to make the card draws extremely predictable.

 

I could not have said it better, and I know tons of people who feel the same.

I consider myself at least semi-qualified also... Started on my Apple IIe. Completed every Ultima. Played UO from launch. Made tons of friends from all over the world, some who are now family. My son is 2nd generation UO, I guess. I met his mom there. Hell, I still got my cloth map stuck on the wall right next to me. I'm a fan, ok.

The card system simply is not Ultima (avatar driven). It does not fit. It does not work. It is so frustrating--it's a deal breaker for myself & our entire crew. It would be more immersive if we had to equip and upgrade deck holders of some sort. It is truly sad how many people would flock here if they could just see daylight. We wanted something in the spirit of Ultima and Ultima Online. Your UI should be seamless and as simple as possible. It should be intuitive & un-intrusive. I still cant figure out where cards came from in the first place & how that idea wasn't scrapped on day 1.

Question to all those that enjoy the cards... What other games have/do you play?
Myself: WoW, EVE, Diablo, SWtOR, Guild Wars, EQ, DAoC, Starcraft, ect.

 

to be honest I haven't tried the deck system too much or very indepth but I don't mind it as it simplifies what we had in UO

 

i like it the way it is now far better than some boring ol hotbar and timer combat system.
im having a blast using the aimed power-swing and combo technique, dodging, backing up to perform armor buffs while my power-swing bar builds back up and then running back in for more violence. Dancing around like Errol Flynn, i finally feel like a dashing swashbuckler instead of just standing there exchanging blows with my enemies.
i just really cant see the problem here.

 

To name a few off the top of my head (in no particular order):

World of Warcraft,
Pillars of Eternity,
Divinity First Sin,
Dragonfin Stone Soup,
Diablo,
Guild Wars,
Starcraft,
Rainbow Six,
Street Fighter,
Marvel vs Capcom,
Warlords,
Pokemon,
Megaman,
XCOM,
SimCity,
Battlefield 1942,
Super Smash Bros,
Monster Hunter,
Pirates of the Burning Seas,
Dark Souls,
Brogue,
ToME,
Crypt of the Necrodancer,
Castle Wolfenstein,
Darkest Dungeon,
Bravely Default,
Dungeon Siege,
Halo / Marathon,
Black Desert Online,
Neverwinter Nights,
Dark Castle,
Out of this World,
Syndicate,
Mass Effect 2,
Hellgate London,
Master of Orion,
Rogue Squadron,
Kings Quest,
Space Ace,
Dragon's Lair,
Wing Commander,
The Elder Scrolls,
The Witcher,
Two Worlds II,
Sonic the Hedgehog,
Ghostbusters,
Trine,
Ultima 4 & 7,
Fallout,
Civilization,
Command & Conquer,
Warcraft,
Total War,
Heroes of Might and Magic,
Magic the Gathering,
Hearthstone,
Legend of Grimrock,
Portal,
Doom,
Myst,
Myth the Fallen Lords,
Elite: Dangerous,
Descent,
Pirates!,
Assassin's Creed,
Tomb Raider,
Call of Duty,
Baldur's Gate,
Grim Dawn,
Final Fantasy,
EvE Online,
Lemmings,

Didn't think I needed to be qualified to enjoy a game and have an opinion...