An argument and plea for more actions in PVP

From transitioning from Heavensward to Stormblood, PVP experienced a massive revamp, the biggest changes being the drastic cuts to the number of actions available to players in PVP and the changes between the relationship between Diminishing returns and Crowd Control abilities. In contrast 3.x easily provided 30+ actions available while 4.x only provided 9 actions plus 2, ELEVEN. Where crowd control could be used up to three times in a row but had a 1 minute diminishing return to being only able to stun once every 10-15 seconds. It is easy to see the rationale behind this massive change and that was to make the game easier to encourage your normal player to give PVP a shot. However SE unfortunately did not have the foresight to see the negative effects that such a change would bring with such a reduction of skill needed to be successful in a PVP game. This post is made to both tell you the negative effects of these changes and BEG SE to make the game take skill again, otherwise PVP as a whole will continue to suffer.


If everyone can do it, then skill doesn't matter

What was lost

Now the most accurate metaphors I can use with comparing 3.x to 4.x in terms of skill is that 3.x is like Chess while 4.x is like checkers. One is has infinitely more variations in moves and plays that you can use to muscle out a win compared to the other and 4.x style pvp severely limits players choices in comparison to 3.x pvp and I will provide a few examples from a healer point of view in how 4.x LOST a lot of depth in gameplay with the changes.

• Purify
  
  While purify wasn't explicitly removed from the game but might as well have in favor of something completely different, it experienced a massive change in its scope and overall effect that removed a lot of the choice and skill involved in using it. Prior to 4.x purify removed ALL debuffs from a target, could be used on yourself AND other teammates while also having a much longer cooldown. 4.x purify in comparison is only on a 30 second cooldown and only removes crowd control effects from YOURSELF and cannot be used on others.
  
  3.x purify was stronger, but had a longer cooldown. That made the ability take more skill in that you had MANY choices in how to use it but using it made you or your teammates vulnerable to the MANY OTHER events that could potentially swing the game away from your favor. In addition to obvious crowd control effects, you had very dangerous debuffs such as Full swing that increased damage taken by up to 20%, and you also had the choice to remove all debuffs such as DoTs to stop a burst from hitting you to hard. There is no such choice with 4.x pvp. Along with a very short cooldown, the choice to use purify are much more obvious and clear than purify of the past. It is certain that purify in the past had much more depth to it and interesting uses compared to the current purify.
  
  
• Surecast
  
  In the past it was possible to be interrupted by just straight damage if a single damage ability hit you hard enough. Surecast prevented your cast from being interrupted in such a way for one cast and was a bread and butter ability that when used correctly could save your life when you happened to be focused and if used at the wrong time could spell out your death. Healers no longer have this option in 4.x and as it stands you don't even get interrupted by damage anymore. This removed a level of skill that only a higher tier of healer could achieve compared to their peers and it is sad that SE removed an ability that, while very simple, added a lot to show a difference between the average healers from the amazing ones.
  
• Repose
  
  I know a lot for people from back in the day have strong feelings regarding this ability but it still showed a very clear difference of use and effectiveness from weaker players to the strongest. Those players who were weaker and not as in tune with using repose would either let a teammate/themselves die or they would be put in a bad position that would put them very far behind in some way. These weaker players would also either manage the diminishing return badly resulting in weaker reposes over a longer period of time or use it on targets that were potentially going to be hit more often. Stronger players would have varying levels of success with repose, and that success would be clearly shown in the leaderboards in comparison of their peer white mages. Being able to manage repose and keeping your team/yourself alive took a lot of awareness and skill. Now there is no such thing anymore.
  

While those abilities were not the only abilities otherwise removed or gutted many other jobs such as a majority of melee jobs would lose the ability to stun people, DPS in general lost a lot in terms requirements to burst. Back then Monks had to manage their twin snake buff in addition to making sure they had buffs like internal release/blood for blood available with five chakras, tornado kick and a multitude of ogcd abilities. Now the burst is strictly limited to having chakra and greased lightning with the additional ogcds restricted to somersault.

Everyone can do everything

Now how exactly does this make everyone the same and how exactly is that a detriment to the game? When you remove the amount of depth/choice in a game what you are doing is restricting people in a smaller and smaller space to the point where everyone can realistically pull off the same burst/actions other people can do no matter what the skill level is. To make an extreme example if all jobs were just 1-2 buttons how exactly would people differentiate themselves from others in terms of skill? I guess coordinating with your teammates for a kill? Well that is exactly what Stormblood PVP is. The only real "skill" displayed is shown through your teamwork, and not your mechanics or personal skill.

In the case of solo que in particular you get a situation where it becomes just luck of whether or not you are capable of communicating effectively in your team, which is impossible due to restrictions to chat and a lack of voice chat. The game is designed in a way where any type of burst perfectly coordinated with achieve a kill, and since EVERYONE can burst in the most efficient manner then the only thing that matters is the timing, which can be quite variable despite your own skill level. You can be as good as you want, if you don't coordinate with your team or have someone who can't coordinate with you well enough then you won't get kills, this is why culling 5 is so common even without paladins.

The same problem happens when healers are so easy to play compared to the past. Healer has to be be strong to a degree since they have to counter the moves of 3 other players. And when you make dps and tanks easy to play, you have to do the same for healers. And since there is such a thin line coming in between a kill and not a kill more often than not you don't get a kill due to the even slight disconnects of coordination between the two dps and the tank. Therefore a lot of the time culling is required to get a kill. Such power also affects the world outside of Feast in that Rival Wings itself has experienced a Meta of just pure healers. Healer is easy to play yet impossible to kill by even one person.

How casualization harmed ladder

With the reduction of skill across the board, it can be easy to see that more players would be able to compete with even the top players. In the past, Heavensward always had activity in the lower ranks as well as the higher ranks. Season 3 and Season 4 especially in that unranked to silver games were popping relatively often even by the later stages of the season, which were all 4 months or more by the way. In contrast Stormblood unranked and silver games are basically dead by the middle of a season. And seasons now only last FIVE-SIX WEEKS at most and games for lower tiers are basically dead by the end of a season. Why the drastic change from Heavensward to Stormblood? I thought simplification of the game was supposed to attract more casuals not scare them away? The honest truth is that simplification has literally elevated anyone who isn't literally a bot or basically doing nothing to higher tiers that they otherwise would not be in if the game actually took more skill like Heavensward did. If everyone is able to waltz their way out of silver and lower by applying little effort, you have a dead game mode for the lower set of tiers in this game. You might as well not have a ladder at that point because if anyone can potentially get into platinum then there is no reason to restrict Diamond players to just playing with platinums. You already have players that would normally be kept lower down in the tiers that the system is supposed to prevent you being matched up with in the first place.

Healthy PVP REQUIRES skill in order to separate players into appropriate tiers that they belong in. Both for the sake of having actual balanced games and so people can start playing whenever they wish instead of being forced to start playing right away. It actually makes me sad that SE continues to shorten the seasons in a vain attempt to make unranked to silver tier not die out before it ends only to find that it dies out even faster. That isn't to mention that shorter seasons also make the ladder balancing itself out close to impossible. Almost all games will be considered unfair in some way or another, all because the season is so short.

Games are very predictable

Not much to say about this, but with the changes made with pvp have made the games just a constant cycle of burst wait burst wait burst wait every 30 seconds or so. It is ultimately uninteresting in my opinion and the lack of depth I explained earlier makes the decision making displayed in most games uninteresting as well.

Diminishing returns, why what we have now is awful

During Heavensward diminishing returns where far longer, taking up to a minute for a certain crowd control ability from last use, with you becoming immune from such effects after third use (other than silence). In stormblood the diminishing return is now only 10-15 seconds with the crowd control only being allowed to be used once before the target becoming immune. The implication here is that in heavensward stun and other crowd control was considered a valuable resource that PUNISHED you if it was used wrong. Now in stormblood you can barely call it a resource anymore, it is basically always available when you need it and even bad use of it can be quite effective. This fact also contributes to how it ultimately makes the game feel uninteresting. When stun/silence/root/sleep is ALWAYS there when you need it how can you consider its use impressive in any way?

Conclusion

In the end, simplification harms the game in many ways. Games are unbalanced, ladder is a mess from dead ques and locking out the part of the playerbase that it was meant to attract, people climbing to where they don't deserve, experienced players quitting due to an uninteresting game state. I can only describe Stormblood PVP as SE creating solutions to problems that create more problems, when the biggest problem from the beginning was the first "fix" which was making the game simpler. Many of the problems SE has tried to fix in stormblood was NOT a problem in heavensward. Longer seasons were not a problem in heavensward, then they did become a problem in Stormblood due to dead unranked and silver tiers which shortening the season did not help it just accelerated the death of those tiers popping.

While I understand that Square Enix cannot make a drastic change right now, I am literally begging SE to PLEASE make PVP have a similar amount of actions to PVE by the next expansion. If PVE players can handle the amount of buttons they have, PVP can too. It is EXTREMELY important that players in PVP can differentiate themselves from others with raw mechanical skill rather than just being able to land burst at the end of a countdown.

Thank you for reading, feel free to discuss whether you agree or disagree and I will do my best to respond.

add more buttons so I can win more, thanks

Hello I disagree as a controller player adding more buttons will only complicate my game more I work full time and also am a student, reworking my controller hotbar for more buttons and abilities means I have to take the time to get used to where I put those said abis, time which I don't have

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Originally Posted by AirWeaver

Hello I disagree as a controller player adding more buttons will only complicate my game more I work full time and also am a student, reworking my controller hotbar for more buttons and abilities means I have to take the time to get used to where I put those said abis, time which I don't have

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If you can do it in PVE you can do it in PVP, thank you.

too many buttons make the game too hard for me ><

I do want more skills, but I disagree with a lot of OP's points.

Truth be told, I much prefer the current CC game more than HW's. There's less stun locking flying around but CC is also in play more often. I feel like it has also made the classes that do have access to the various CC abilities more important I guess.

I also remember the old pvp being similarly predictable, probably because of the reliance on pve skills and their really long cooldowns. I played mch back then and I remember raging strikes and ricochet being a big thing for burst.

And I just don't like the idea of being able to pretty much carry a team solo, at least not past the really, really early ranks.

They won't add as many PvE abilities to PvP, this isn't 3.X anymore. But what SE should do is give each job 2 more abilities each expansion. That, along with new jobs being added in the future, will keep PvP feeling fresh and different.

Also, more wolf collar rewards.

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Originally Posted by Mutemutt

I do want more skills, but I disagree with a lot of OP's points.

Truth be told, I much prefer the current CC game more than HW's. There's less stun locking flying around but CC is also in play more often. I feel like it has also made the classes that do have access to the various CC abilities more important I guess.

I also remember the old pvp being similarly predictable, probably because of the reliance on pve skills and their really long cooldowns. I played mch back then and I remember raging strikes and ricochet being a big thing for burst.

And I just don't like the idea of being able to pretty much carry a team solo, at least not past the really, really early ranks.

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CC being in play more often makes the game predicable. That's what makes the current meta game constant burst attempts off stuns/silences with burst that takes little set up. It also means that CC in general takes a lot less thought and is not punished as much if it happens to go wrong, because you will have another chance to do it in just 10-15seconds.

Old PVP doesn't strike me as predicable compared to stormblood pvp. When you watch a samurai in the current game what do you expect from them other than a dash into a midari? Then rinse and repeat until you are successful? With the way jobs were in the past being able to potentially get a kill on their own with the right circumstances, you had a lot more variety in how a game could unfold.

I don't see the problem with carrying in solo play. If you think a person deserves to be dragged down by their teammates by purposefully reducing the number of actions they have access to then I find that strange. In a game with a healthy population this wouldn't necessarily be a issue. You would have plats with plats, diamonds with diamonds, high diamonds with other high diamonds etc. So artificially lowering people's ability to play better and making everyone the same is just a cheap fix to a problem it shouldn't have to fix. Fix player participation by making better PVP modes and offering more incentive to play with rewards for the average player.

Objectively speaking lowering the number of actions has not even helped participation. Rival Wings has been dead for a long time and in retrospect Rival Wings has died due to the game being so simple that everyone literally just plays healer. Rivals Wings not being pvp but a resource collection game.

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Originally Posted by joep

They won't add as many PvE abilities to PvP, this isn't 3.X anymore. But what SE should do is give each job 2 more abilities each expansion. That, along with new jobs being added in the future, will keep PvP feeling fresh and different.

Also, more wolf collar rewards.

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Honestly I don't know why you would suggest adding 2 abilities per expansion, why not suggest what you think should be a hard cap on the number of abilities and have them just do it immediately upon expansion release? I personally believe 20-25 + 2 additionals is fair.

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Originally Posted by AirWeaver

I work full time and also am a student, reworking my controller hotbar for more buttons and abilities means I have to take the time to get used to where I put those said abis, time which I don't have

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Please enough with the full-time work/student defence, you do have the time, you just can't be bothered. Almost all of us lot on ladder work too.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

Honestly I don't know why you would suggest adding 2 abilities per expansion, why not suggest what you think should be a hard cap on the number of abilities and have them just do it immediately upon expansion release? I personally believe 20-25 + 2 additionals is fair.

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It should be a gradual process, not overwhelm players with 25 abilities in PvP again. Even with 9 buttons right now, a very small percentage of players have managed to completely master a single job in PvP.

I mean, I’ve seen it on your stream as well. You get frustrated with your teammates at times when they don’t use their safeguard or TBN. Now imagine introducing 15 more abilities all of a sudden. It would be overwhelming to most players.

As a WoW PvP player, I love having lots of abilities, trust me. There is room for higher individual skill and you can carry more. But this game and their community isn’t quite there yet. And I think things should be implemented one step at a time and not in giant leaps.

I also think it’s important to be realistic. Do you really see SE going from 9 to 25 abilities for each job? Especially if the expansion is around the corner and they add 3 more jobs, which would also have 25 abilities of their own? It would be a massive undertaking, let alone balancing it all. We already saw SE having balancing issues through out stormblood with jobs having only 9 abilities.

However, giving each job 2 new abilities seems way more plausible and easier to balance/test. I’d rather have them do this and have a somewhat balanced game than have an insanely imbalanced 5.X.

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Originally Posted by joep

It should be a gradual process, not overwhelm players with 25 abilities in PvP again. Even with 9 buttons right now, a very small percentage of players have managed to completely master a single job in PvP.

I mean, I’ve seen it on your stream as well. You get frustrated with your teammates at times when they don’t use their safeguard or TBN. Now imagine introducing 15 more abilities all of a sudden. It would be overwhelming to most players.

As a WoW PvP player, I love having lots of abilities, trust me. There is room for higher individual skill and you can carry more. But this game and their community isn’t quite there yet. And I think things should be implemented one step at a time and not in giant leaps.

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Yeah I mean it's not like some of us want PvE level of abilities in PvP, just some versatility/options. Like it'd be nice to have some proper CC and other utility again, rather than it being restricted to a single role or few classes.

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Originally Posted by joep

It should be a gradual process, not overwhelm players with 25 abilities in PvP again. Even with 9 buttons right now, a very small percentage of players have managed to completely master a single job in PvP.

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Lol. People come from PVE with 30+ buttons plus several role specific additionals. It does not matter if a low amount of people have "mastered" a job in your subjective opinion. The game/pvp deserves to have a higher skill ceiling than it does now. when I watch a samurai complete a "high level" burst by just pressing midari at the correct time it's a complete sham.

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Originally Posted by joep

I mean, I’ve seen it on your stream as well. You get frustrated with your teammates at times when they don’t use their safeguard or TBN. Now imagine introducing 15 more abilities all of a sudden. It would be overwhelming to most players.

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So what? A lot of the time people can still climb and win even making mistakes like that because what matters most in this game is landing burst in the first place and completing that burst is extremely easy for basically all jobs.

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Originally Posted by joep

As a WoW PvP player, I love having lots of abilities, trust me. There is room for higher individual skill and you can carry more. But this game and their community isn’t quite there yet. And I think things should be implemented one step at a time and not in giant leaps.

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I don't coddle and baby people. In heavensward there were a lot of high level players doing amazing things with what they were given. With the changes a lot of them have decided to either quit the game or not bother with pvp because it is low skill. Should we nerf PVE to the ground to 9 buttons because people are as bad as you say? with the way you want to implement change it would be a decade before it was acceptable and by then SE might as well have made a brand new MMO.

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Originally Posted by joep

I also think it’s important to be realistic. Do you really see SE going from 9 to 25 abilities for each job? Especially if the expansion is around the corner and they add 3 more jobs, which would also have 25 abilities of their own? It would be a massive undertaking, let alone balancing it all. We already saw SE having balancing issues through out stormblood with jobs having only 9 abilities.

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SE manages to "balance" PVE and add more to it every expansion. Do you honestly believe they are not capable of huge changes? They REDUCED pvp down to 9 buttons in the first place. I think the fact that they have trouble balancing 9 button pvp shows the flaw in your argument. They would have trouble balancing the game whether it had 9 buttons or 25, it does not matter, and that is true for almost any game you play.

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Originally Posted by joep

However, giving each job 2 new abilities seems way more plausible and easier to balance/test. I’d rather have them do this and have a somewhat balanced game than have an insanely imbalanced 5.X.

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"Seems" isn't the same as truth. And let me tell you this, the fact that there have been balance issues the entire time with 9 button pvp on the first try same with 25 button pvp. Stop this notion that more buttons means it's harder on SE. They already have a base skeleton off of PVE and they can add in PVP abilities and strip away unnecessary PVE abilities all the same.

It would also be nice to have some of the stuff implemented in stormblood with all of our buttons back, like the timer for the dr so it can be easier to see but having it as 1 minute like back in 3.x and the enemy party list as well. I also have to agree that the skill ceiling literally died and I hate how short these seasons are getting. It also didn't make any sense to have season highest rankings being your actual rank and starting in a higher tier based on your tier from last season. I liked working up the ladder from scratch because it made getting diamond more rewarding. Now all these matches are just see how has a inexperienced player who doesn't know how to coordinate with a team of high level players and abuse that to win cause of starting in a higher tier.

TLDR what i wish is for more buttons to separate skill levels but also keep some of the changes to make newer players learn faster to become better like, the enemy list and the dr timer but having it the same as it was in HW in your enhancement bar. Get rid of highest ranking being your actual ranking and get rid of starting in a higher tier based off of your ranking in the previous season that way matches won't be skewed anymore.

I like simpler moveset that's PvP specific, rather than awkwardly trying the old piecemeal shoehorning of PvE moves into something resembling PvP balance.

For one thing, a more simple moveset makes it easy for casual PvP play, and PvP needs new people if it's to survive at all.

That it's a PvP specific moveset means that it can be balanced precisely for PvP without regard to the needs of PvE. Because it's a shorter list of moves, balance is easier to strike between existing jobs and any new ones that get added later.

Skillful play doesn't require a larger list of buttons to push. Good players have stayed on top regardless of the moveset. Coordination and teamwork are more instrumental to winning at PvP than a bloated list of abilities. But a shorter list means it's easier to keep things fair and for new players to be at ease when trying out PvP for the first time.

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Originally Posted by AmyRae

For one thing, a more simple moveset makes it easy for casual PvP play, and PvP needs new people if it's to survive at all.

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People actually paying attention to Feast PVP or PVP as a whole realize that lowering the number of buttons does not actually encourage new players to try out or stick with PVP. All it does is alienate players that actually enjoyed engaging gameplay rather than monotonous repeats of spamming the combo button over and over again.

The true mechanism that drives all content in this game is the rewards. And If you have been paying attention prior to the most recent patch Frontlines and especially Rival Wings have just been crawling along or just straight up dead content. Now with the release of a new mount, hairstyle, and other rewards people are actually taking a look at PVP. So stop the false talking point that a low amount of buttons encourages new players to try pvp. It is just wrong.

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Originally Posted by AmyRae

That it's a PvP specific moveset means that it can be balanced precisely for PvP without regard to the needs of PvE. Because it's a shorter list of moves, balance is easier to strike between existing jobs and any new ones that get added later.

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Within the PVP community even now balance isn't the first word that comes to people's mind when thinking of the current content. If anything the lower amount of buttons restricts SE's flexibility in actually making change without drastically changes jobs. A good example is Summoner which has been straight up bad for a long time and the way they made it "better" was by removing tri-bind and adding whither. So the only way to balance a job is by removing skills and adding others? Pretty sad to me. What is also sad is that summoner is still by far the worst job.

It also stands to reason that with fewer buttons that you basically make the jobs more "samey." How did they make White Mage better? they made it more like Astrologian by giving them a ability VERY similar to essential dignity while removing what made White Mage unique, benediction.

So nah, balance is still as broken as it was before, but you still have a gamestate where the only way to make jobs better is by making them similar to others. Wow, how interesting does that sound!!!

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Originally Posted by AmyRae

Skillful play doesn't require a larger list of buttons to push. Good players have stayed on top regardless of the moveset. Coordination and teamwork are more instrumental to winning at PvP than a bloated list of abilities. But a shorter list means it's easier to keep things fair and for new players to be at ease when trying out PvP for the first time.

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What I said in my OP is that we can have both skill and coordination. Reducing the amount of buttons required to be good for one does not solve the problem of new players not playing pvp and the only purpose it really serves is to make the game play less interesting and boring. All of the problems you say reducing buttons somehow fixes are outright wrong while creating the issue of people being unable to reach a higher level of play due to straight up restriction of actions.

In the end, if SE actually had better frontline modes and a better reward system for the casuals then the teamwork and coordination that you covet would actually become more common even in a game that is really complex with a lot of actions. If you had 100 times more people engaged in PVP teams would be more balanced, matchmaking would be more fair. In that way you would be creating the situation of more coordination and teamplay by virtue of the number of people playing PVP, not ARTIFICIALLY FORCING IT by making everyone capable of doing the same simple burst/healing/tanking or whatever.

And your little comment about fairness. Is it unfair to be a better player? PVP is not about being fair and making everyone the same. If what you actually mean by fair is by players not getting crushed to to bad matchmaking then that issue is fixed by a healthier PVP population. At that point you would have bronze vs bronze,low gold vs low gold, high diamond vs high diamond etc.

You don't make a game great by severely simplifying it, I am sorry, but that is the truth.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

People actually paying attention to Feast PVP or PVP as a whole realize that lowering the number of buttons does not actually encourage new players to try out or stick with PVP. All it does is alienate players that actually enjoyed engaging gameplay.

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Yup, this is very true, based on my own experience. I am in a PvP fc that completely died with storm blood PvP. The PvP veterans hated the new PvP, and I have seen new people try PvP saying "Where did my abilities go? Why are my bars all messed up?" and being turned off by it.

please bring back chat, my thumb hurts by pressing nice job quick chat non stop

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Originally Posted by NessaWyvern

Yup, this is very true, based on my own experience. I am in a PvP fc that completely died with storm blood PvP. The PvP veterans hated the new PvP, and I have seen new people try PvP saying "Where did my abilities go? Why are my bars all messed up?" and being turned off by it.

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That hasn't been my experience at all. Sorry you feel that way.

I still think it's a smart, inviting design that makes it easy to play. Some of the ideas would work well in PvE for that matter, like using one button for a 1-2-3 combo, or transforming abilities based on your stance or previous actions.

I would also love to see this.
So often in PvP I spend the whole thinking ‘I wish I had X ability’, ‘X would have been so useful here’.
Having more abilities (theoretically) means more strategic consideration of what you’re doing. I’m not saying there should be an XI-like amount of skills, but at least a bit closer to what we have in PvE would be amazing.

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Originally Posted by AmyRae

That hasn't been my experience at all. Sorry you feel that way.

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Lol. She wasn't stating a feeling, she was stating facts of what she has seen herself.

Please don't minimize the pain this update has caused please. It is a little insensitive 8(

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Originally Posted by Connor

I would also love to see this.
So often in PvP I spend the whole thinking ‘I wish I had X ability’, ‘X would have been so useful here’.
Having more abilities (theoretically) means more strategic consideration of what you’re doing. I’m not saying there should be an XI-like amount of skills, but at least a bit closer to what we have in PvE would be amazing.

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Yes, I don't know why PVP has to be simplified when PVE does not. PVP should have a similar number of abilities to PVE.

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Originally Posted by Aviars

Yes, I don't know why PVP has to be simplified when PVE does not. PVP should have a similar number of abilities to PVE.

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It is probably because pvp need so many macroes if you wanna target properly. Target your team member, target your opponent, if you wanna make focus target macroes so you can cc your secondary target while targeting your primary target, marking your opponents, targeting marked targets + quick chat commands take lot space from your hotbars. That kind of keybinds are not needed in pve while in pvp are really useful and help lot playing the game.

having problems with hotbars in 2018 lul

I don't think we should go back to the button bloat of Heavensward with 20+ skills -- BUT -- I also think Stormblood simplified PVP a little *too* much. It was too drastic of revamp too quickly. Something in the middle would've been just fine. I will say that there are times when I miss certain skills -- like Testudo and Carnal Chill and things like that. They gave PVP flavor and variety.

Something I would like to see more of in PVP is meaningful traits. Right now, for DPS, for example, it's Safeguard and Recuperate or GTFO. By giving us the illusion of choice, we have no choice at all.

I would think (and hope!) that new abilities will be added with each expansion. Maybe a new ability here and there, like wither, or abilities swapped like tetra.

Yes! We NEED more DEPTH in the game. I think the devs can add 1-2 skills/abilities per patch before the expansion, ending with a polished product with the release of the next expansion.


I feel this is the best way to do it, because it also test out the changes before releasing the final version in the upcoming expansion. Included with this testing, suggestions by the PvP community, especially those at the top tier from ALL data centers, must be taken into consideration. ^_^

I found this tidbit from an interview with YoshiP in Korea during their live letter --

PvP uses simplified skill combos because we want to pinpoint the players’ focus on broader perspective of battle than using the skills in order. PvE combat environment is a lot different from PvP, where players need room in between combos to respond to various situations in the raids. That’s one of the reasons why we are keeping the the way of skill sets structured.

yet the majority of players can't get this broader view and tunnel vision like a boss