Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
So, we've got two possible rationales here:

  1. The devs are trying to keep under ~35 buttons despite even controllers having access to 48. For this reason alone, they in roughly equal parts (A) recycle abilities, giving back near-identical skills at higher levels, and (B) put out uncreative bloat or unpolished clunk that is then, at best, removed and replaced with a newer, shinier recycled or equally half-assed ability.

    [I.e. controllers hold back job kit design.]

  2. The devs recycle abilities even while having a quarter to third spare space for the same reason they so often put out uncreative bloat or unpolished clunk: because it apparently isn't worth their bother to invest so much time over more than a handful of jobs' quality of gameplay.

    [I.e., Creative bankruptcy / insufficient job developers / low perceived profitability of spending that much time on jobs' quality of gameplay / insufficient developer effort for whatever reason... holds back jobs' quality of gameplay.]


Given that the first has never come close to being the actual bottleneck, I'm having trouble believing it's the key factor here.



Claw-gripping has nothing to do with how many keys are available to you... It is only done to be able to move and look around while using those keys.

Yes, and it's uncomfortable as hell to me. I wasn't saying it had anything to do with the number of keys. But if you need to be uncomfortable to access all the combinations of keys, it's not a good design.