3 skills but 4 profiles = horrible

At least on PC, it wouldn't have been an issue to have, say, 6 active skills.
I didn't at first but now I am starting to get annoyed by this limitation. My Infiltrator uses mostly incinerate, shield drain and cloak but I'd love to have as well. However, the whole changing Profile and waiting for cooldowns thing renders that option pretty much nonviable. It's just too inconvenient to use on a regular basis.

Yeah, I don't switch profiles at all. I'd rather have 4 or 5 skills in a single profile, but then how do you map them to a controller without a wheel?

I'm about 70% through the single player experience, I've switched profile; 0 times.

Even on Insanity, there is little reason to.

Oh I completely agree. I loved that in ME1 and Dragon Age Origins, and in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale for that matter. I just think that the current system could be much nicer with a tiny tweak, hopefully within modders' capabilities, and that is to remove the ability cooldown on profile switch. I see potential and value in that. Makes me think of many more possible builds with it - since you won't be punished as hard for spending points in a "wide" manner and going for some crazy hybrid combinations which use many more abilities, albeit with less impact per ability.

Who knows, maybe Bioware will decide to patch it. Doubtful, though.

Nothing, I would have preferred a wheel.  But they were obviously trying to get away from using one.

This design has nothing to do with PC\console. DAI had up to 8 active hot-keyed skills at a time, for the game-pad AND for the KB+M, and it was possible to switch them any moment when off-combat.

This design can probably shine on NG+, but it's practically useless when early in game. Basically it's just a passive buff, and you have to spend your points to use & improve it. There's no flexibility or freedom whatsoever. It's not 'make yourself a char18 dex-tanking rogue with the spear', it's 'make yourself a 3-button build with switchable passives' (alternative being 'two 3-button builds with neither skill above tier 2' or ' three 3-button builds with none of the skills above 1). There are 'open-class' systems, but that's not one of them, because profiles require the proper amount of skillpoints to be unlocked, and I can't be half vanguard\half infiltrator.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying 'gimme the ultimate all-in-one OP build', but it would be nice not to be restricted like that. And not to 'forget' the turret while using overload, incinirate and freez, with squad members having 2 (uncontrollable) skills max. I don't see how this system is supposed to give me MORE freedom, and if this thread is any indication - I'm not alone with this one.

It's overcomplicated and practically useless. Some people don't use it and some don't even realize how it works, which is NOT their fault. A design that needs studying extra manuals is a bad design. And don't even get me started on the 'favourites' UI. It's a nightmare.

I want the ability to switch profiles like dear old Dad.

Duck into cover, hit a button to call up a small dialogue wheel that has my favorites on it, select the profile, my character says "Sam, give me the "x" profile", and I'm right back into game play with the new profile ready to go.

One of the things I remember from ME2 and ME3 is that I spent hours going over the various abilities of the classes and bonus powers, and no matter how I tried I couldn't build a perfect class. There was always a compromise. MEA has to have a mechanic to restrict the skills, or everyone will build the best possible class (as someone said above, they will build a class that has an instant answer for everything).

I think the real question is how many skills you could give to prevent people building a class that does have an instant answer to everything. My feeling is that 3 skills definitely doesn't give you an answer to everything and 5 or 6 skills definitely would give you an answer to everything.

So I believe that 3 or 4 skills is probably the sweet spot. The problem is that if you give 4 skills, then people can choose fast recharging skills that allow initialise-->detonate-->initialise-->detonate, which would probably result in a constant chain of detonations, which would be way overpowered.

For these reasons I think they are left with the limit of 3.

I can't say for positive as I have yet to fully play but from what I've seen this is an attempt to allow you to have access to abilities you normally wouldn't. In all my games I rarely used more than 3 powers/abilities so this is a no. Issue. Might I switch? Maybe but it's not an issue.

If you use Overdrive, your skills reset automatically, which I've found myself using more when I NEED to switch my profiles to take down an enemy. 

But I do agree with you. 

Actually it is part of a much larger conspiracy by all game studios to get PC players to game like Console players so they can stop developing PC games altogether.

PC gamers must be assimilated, resistance is futile.