Lepel and Lurker, how about the way Guild Wars does it?
There are different skills for different situations.
- normal auto attack
- special attack that does more damage
- a special slash that causes bleeding wounds
- a special blow that causes the enemy to get stunned
- a special stab that interrupts the enemies special attack
- a special attack that does less damage but draws attention
- a whirling attack that damages all enemies around you
In Guild Wars you can only take 8 skills into combat. You have to decide which ones you take and which ones you leave. When you use skills they drain your mana/endurance/or whatever depending on the power of the skills. Skills also have cool down timers depending on their power. So you can not use skills by clicking them fast and repeatedly. You have to use them in the right situation to be effective.
e.g. if you see that your enemy prepares for a special attack you would use your special stab to disrupt him. If you don't you would take serious damage.
When two enemies attack you you could use stun on one taking him out of the fight for a few seconds so that you can finish the second opponent...
Some of the skills above only make sense if you have a party. You could get an attacker off your healer with your attack that draws his attention.
In the beginning I thought the guild wars system was great and I really enjoyed it. but after a while something started to bother me.
You could just use some fast keys to lock on to a target and start pressing your skillbuttons.(not randomly offcourse it does require a great deal of strategy)
And the quest for "the perfect build" (by this I mean the build that suited me the most) kept me happy for quite some time.
The lock on is good for a mesmer I thought and it felt natural and its pretty good for a monk too. (they were called monks right ?)
But as a warrior you could just select a target and it would auto hit it,
same for a ranger.
As an elementalist I think you should have some spells that use some sort of lock on but not for all.
Offcourse this is my opinion.
And when im using a bow I like to aim.
Some skills like a fire ball or some range effect spells shouldnt be locked on to a target but a fire ball should be aimed and the range effect should just be cast on an area im aiming at or pointing too.
I guess the guild wars system is pretty good when you have a team of players you are used to play with and you adjust your builds for the benefit of the team.
but this isn't the system I would choose in a single player RPG.
Allthough I liked the fact that you could only take 8 skills at a time, this made you think in advance about the pros and the contras and plan out your fighting style. (while in the fight itself you wouldn't need to worry about oh no I got 100 different skills wich one should I use)
I guess maybe a combination of guild wars and gothic 3 would be nice.
You control the "basic" attacks in about the same way gothic 3 does
(right mouse button, left mousebutton and the combination of both do different attacks wich slightly change as you master the skill)
But in addition some extra skills in about the same way guildwars uses them.
The nice thing about it was that some people I knew in guild wars weren't too fond about using those skills all the time. They enjoyed rushing into battle and the only real skills they used were some kind of healing skill and maybe an attack skill that temporarily boosted your attack.
The way they did this was just get some enchantments that stay active till either you run out of mana or someone removed it from you.
Are there people that would hate a system like that or ?
I just want some comments some pros or contras I might not think about right now.
EDIT: Some caps <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />. I'm going on and on about the fighting because in alot of rpgs I think the balance is: (roughly) 1/3 of fighting, 1/3 walking, 1/3 other stuff).
And because the fighting in other RPGs imo often really was boring.
