Skills are always active, Talents are always passive.
I think what Stabbey is saying is that the way D:OS split skills into active and passive, calling the passive ones Talents
Um...
D:OS has a range of skills that they often call "stances". eg Ranged Power Stance. Zero activation cost. Lasts forever.
It's one of several passive skills.
That's not what "passive" means. You have to ACTIVEly choose when to toggle the stance on or off. A passive gives the same bonus constantly. ACTIVEly using the stance skills at different moments changes how your character plays. Can you name any other non-stance "passive skills"?
Also, passive skills are another way to encourage investment in the memory stat. I've heard plenty of complaints about how mages get so many skill trees compared to other classes. Imagine that if you want to use fire magic (or any other skill tree), you first have to memorise a passive skill that unlocks fire magic. It makes sense, right? You have to remember the fundamentals of using fire magic before you can remember how to use a specific fire magic spell. It would be a fair way of encouraging mages to specialise.
First, no, it does not make sense. To learn fire skills, you're already paying a cost: spending ability points into Pyrokinetic. That's the point of having abilities, it signifies that you've learned the fundamentals of said ability.
Secondly, you're paying a cost in terms of Memory. Higher-level skills have higher costs in memory (and some possibly have costs in Source points). Unlike in D:OS 1, Memory does not care how many schools you've learned, you only have so many slots for all your schools. That encourages you to specialize because no matter how many different schools you put points into, there's only so many slots to go around.
Isn't a major goal behind the creation of Memory to limit the power of poly-school mages? What is the problem remaining with Memory which your "you can cast basic fire spells wow" passive solves?
