Active abilities in ME:A (Updated)

Feb 4, 2017 1:41:18 GMT fade9wayz said:

Feb 4, 2017 1:22:05 GMT @tzeenchianapostrophe said:

That wasn't what his post was about, he answered another post of someone saying that they played sentinel with 6-7 powers, with a post saying that he played his with 2-3 powers.

Which is nice for him I guess, but I don't care, and neither does the poster he responded to.

As for balance, the idea that you need a 3 power limit for the game to be balanced is false. There are many games out there with a larger number of abilities, and many of them managed balance well enough.
Hell, if "balance" is the problem, they can just add some super-hard difficulty for people who want that. Personally I care more about fun and immersion in a SP game than about balance.

And where was he pushing his playstyle as being better than that other player's. He just stated that it could be done with only three, which is not false.

So in short, you just don't care for counter-arguments and opinions. Nice.

Yes, and those games limit the player in other ways to achieve balance. It may not be a 3 power limit, but it will be something else, like limiting the amount of ammos/grenades you can carry, universal cool-downs, classes limit. In this particular game that is MEA, we have to take individual cool-down and the classless system into account if we want to have a proper discussion.
Ah yes, just throw bullet-sponges at those crazy asses who like high difficulty, there's no need to think seriously about the game mechanics instead. I care about fun as much as you do, but again, my fun isn't less  valid than yours.

A couple things here.

1) The whole "my fun isn't less valid than yours" argument rings hollow to me.  Limiting powers in favor of balance (an issue I will get to in a moment), or your fun, necessarily inhibits the fun of players who would like more tools to play with.  Giving those other players those tools does not necessarily inhibit your fun.  You can always limit yourself to 3 active powers if you feel having access to more would unbalance your game; other players, however, cannot add more powers to the hotbar than the game allows.

2) The balance argument also seems off.  As has been mentioned, a 3 power limit is not the only way to balance the game.  There are plenty of games that balance things just fine without such a restrictive limitation.  Also, nobody is asking for bullet-sponges in exchange for more access to powers; that would not be good game balance.  A few examples of what I would consider better ways to balance for players having the freedom to choose more active abilities with individual cooldowns would be to lower the effectiveness of each ability, to give players fewer points to buy their abilities to encourage them to specialize, to add new enemy mechanics and tactics, to improve the ai, or to design fighting areas that challenge players to get more creative with their tactics.  Better yet, do all of those things.

Some limitations on active powers can be good, but as I said in my first post in this thread, I feel like three is too restrictive.  It may work for some players and some play styles, but I feel the cost to others is too much.

As an example, when I played through the original trilogy with an infiltrator, I only really used tactical cloak, disruptor ammo, and incinerate.  I had fun and my character was very effective.  3 powers worked.  When I played through with an adept, I used every single ability I had because I had fun with every single ability.  Not all of them were optimal, but I didn't care.  A 3 power limit would have felt boring to me, and I would not have finished.