Quote Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor View Post
It's called playing a MMO.

If you're running out of space, invest in a MMO mouse which is designed specifically for this. I scarcely even use my keyboard—virtually everything can be done on my mouse. Using modifiers comes with the genre.
Bad design being common doesn't make it any less poor design. One should not need an MMO mouse for something designed for both M&KB and controller.

That being said, I'll agree that we aren't running out of space yet. We've left the zone of ergonomic comfort for most hand sizes short of using a MMO mouse, but we're far from overburdened. But that doesn't excuse bloat. And the current combo system outside of a squared table of abilities is bloat. One decision, and without modular components or variation outside of complete intentional failure, requires multiple keys. One does not choose to Impulse Drive in order to Impulse Drive. They choose it in order to DoT and push up Blood, which are together a bound decision. Those 5 keys together represent 1 choice. And it does not feel much better than being asked to confirm four times over whether one wants to exit a zone.

And if people are feeling a bit taxed for space now, that is something worth mitigating. It needn't take anything fundamental from the game. Much of it can be as simple as just working out how mod key-states are handled, opening up access to mod keys onto movement keys for additional abilities without sacrificing movement when accessing keys elsewhere with the same mod key-state as newly used for those further skills. Voila. Now between 1234QWERASDF I have access to 24 keys off Shift, 36 with the addition of Alt or Ctrl, or 48 with all 3 mods, all without having to extend my reach. But in the current treatment, I cannot mod-bind WS or either QE or AD without losing access to movement when mods of those or any other keys. Just giving a "Maintain Mod Key-state" option would grant us 4n or more additional comfortable keys over n additional mod-states.