Too many spells/abilities!

There are a few things I would consider with this topic.

Players have been asking for spell consolidation for years.
The game doesn't have the dev power to revamp everything like that at this point.
Perfectly acceptable fix - some of your spells are useless and should never be cast. This means as a new or returning player you may have to pay more attention than button mash to become good. Thats how learning works. And it isn't difficult. Talk to people. Read the class forums. Ask questions in your guild. You will quickly find out what is good and what is a waste for your class to cast.

Another thing to alleviate the burden...
On all my fighters I take most of their single target, damage only abilities and put them in one macro button. Just saved like 6 hotbar spots.
I mostly played healers for a long time and they dont get much damage abilities so almost all their damage stuff except for maybe one or two is put into a single macro. And the debuffs can go into one I would imagine. Although iv been doing warden for a few years now and they dont do much debuffing.

The other thing is playstyle. Which depends on your goals in the game. My goal is to be awesomely effective in group and raids. So I want what works best. My point is, pay attention to what kicks *** when your grouping or raiding. My wardens hotbars are jammed full, but considering my playstyle is to clearwater 3 people and make sure no one dies which seems to be the most conducive to success......how many spells could I remove and still be great in a raid? A lot...

The dev's are not going to consolidate all the melee ca's into one. They don't have the time.
They aren't going to consolidate all the healers debuffs into one. They don't have the time.
Consolidate them yourself into macros. Figure out whats useless. Take them off your hotbar.

Iv been playing on and off for 15 years. If this game was ever a "rotate 3 buttons" game, no way it holds my attention that long. Think. Practice. Learn.

When did I even say that? When did the OP say that he had all that? They are 100s and play.other games mostly, but not because they want to have only 8 spells here, but because they have more people their ages to play with.
Even my main doesn't have all Ascension spells. He was talking about class spells and so was I.
How would you even think I could prove it. I am not going to name their characters or post birth certificate. Lol crazy

Ascensions only go to lvl 20 atm, and you cant use most of your spells/abilities from these if you are not in that ascension.
So, the most you can have is 20 spells to work with in a given moment. You can simplify them by not putting the buffs on that raise ascensions, like level 1, 5, 10,. So, you use the 10 spell and then do not put 1, 5 on the hot bar. This leaves you with only 18 spells to work with. They all have a long cast time and do not refresh all that fast, so I don't honestly see the problem with these overwhelming anyone.
I can't roll with just 3 spells people, seriously. You will be just getting hit for as long as they take to refresh. This is not to Tommara, but to Jovie. You can make macro and do this what you are describing. Make 3 and cast as many damage spells as you can on them. You have to match their casting times though, and it does take some work. I don't personally play that way, and not trying to turn this game into Neverwinter or whatever other games some of the people posting on here lately are coming from. This is EQ2, if I wanted to play a different game, I would be on it.

Birth certificates? I never asked that.

I just asked you to provide proof of your claims, because I don't think you know what you are talking about.

Just to be clear, I supported the OP because there are not enough hotkey bars to hold all the abilities allowed.

If you have reason to dispute that, provide it. Instead of using your children, and then getting all upset when I called you on it (which included a private message where you accused me of nefarious designs on your children), whereas my point is that I do not believe you know what you're talking about, and so am asking you to prove it, or at least explain using some logic other than "my kids are fine with it" .

Spoiler alert: I know that gaming devs delight in trying to make us make "interesting choices". I just don't think that UI limitations are interesting at all.

Now you want me to prove things that were not even discussed or claimed

I am sorry for the rudeness. There are kids that do amazing things that I surely can't do, so I really don't see it as an insult. I am not at end game. I only have a bunch of maxed level poor underdressed characters to be clear. Only played this game 8 years with no breaks. I should have posted a better response to you, that part I do agree with Tommara about. The rest, I don't.

This post I did mean to be rude. Again, I'm sorry.
I'm sure you know how to play your class or the mobs would not be dying so quickly. I do think dropping the merc is good though and maybe finding more challenging mobs to kill. Anyway very sorry for these posts

Couldn't resist taking the bait anyway. lol.

You get 120 hotkeys. You get 100 macro keys. You can load 24 spells on each macro. This gives you 2400 spells you can place on macros and an extra 20 hotkeys. You can even play with the macro page up, allowing for 10 more hotkeys. I believe there is a UI you can get that gives more hotbars, although not sure about this because I use the default and just customize it. If you truly need more then that, well wow, I am impressed by your extreme "end game highest tier raiding" skills then.

At this time in the game, I hit max spells button and my main is rolling with 142 spells with all her ascension, spells, combat spells. Even if you add the 29 ascension spells I am lacking, this is only 171 spells. So yeah, all of your spells can be on your hotbars.

This unintentionally sums up the problem very nicely. Yes, we can create macros so we're only hitting 1 key to cast all our single target damage spells (for example). If that's all it takes to play the game effectively, then why do we need 20 different single target damage spells at all?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want the game dumbed down to a handful of spells. however, they could combine or completely get rid of a ton of the chaff and it wouldn't impact our actual experience in any meaningful way, aside from making the game less overwhelming and more approachable to new players.

I actually just have Ascension macros. One spell for each on the macro, like AoE, buffs etc. This takes away the need to compare casting times, duration and refresh rates. And I can cast the macro no matter which Ascension I am in. Plus buffs until cancelled from regular spells.
I don't want to lose any of my damage spells. A lot of classes don't even get that many. And this game is solo only for a lot of people including myself. I wouldn't mind a buff consolidation for untill cancelled buffs but I use my spells. I know it's a lot for new and returning people but I didn't know it well 8 years ago either. These things take time to catch up to such an old game and experienced players.

Here is a vid of me showing my sk spells are all on my hotbars, you can see the macro I have and that yes I have all my damage on the hotbars, because I use them all. Forgive the slowness of it, I was setting up the macro on this char while showing it.

This is not suggested by me to play this way with 3 macro for all your damage spells. It is just showing the possibilities. I personally don't want to hit 3 buttons and watch a fight, which is why most of my macro (except one buff) is set up to cast only one spell. Yes it has 4 spells on it, but that one spell that it will cast just switches when I switch ascension. Again, setting the macro up to cast more then that takes a LOT of work as far as calculations go. When you get to mobs where you are casting everything you have on them, you will know why I want all of them. I don't use my fury healing spells except one, doesn't mean I want them nerfed or made into one, I know that other players are using all of them, and I know if I grouped, or raided, or even solo'd higher content with her, I would need them. So do I want every other fury that plays to suffer such a nerf because I am only using Autumn's Kiss? Certainly not, I would think that would be pretty darn selfish. Is it possible to set up yourself to be like wizard 101 where u sit back and watch the show, yes, do I recommend this? heck no. Do I think this is effective? nope.

Ok so further more on this. Sorry this suggested nerfs upset me and I can't gather all my thoughts on it all at once. Ok so when you are soloing, most of the time you are OP and killing trash, or whatever, and you are only using a few spells to kill the mobs. You don't use a lot of mana this way (power in eq2, mana was eq1 term sorry) and hence, can kill MORE mobs. Lets say you combine 10 of your damage spells, that is going to be 10 spells worth of power. You might not need to use this much spells or power if you are going to just kill trash, so this is going to use too much power plus slow you down. Ok, so then you go to a heroic zone and if you can even survive a few seconds, you are going to need all your damage spells or at least a whole lot more then you needed to kill trash. This is one reason I do not macro my damage spells. Also, a few years ago, this guy told me to make specific ones and when I cast them, I had to keep going back to my spell book to recast my AoE cause it was not refreshing the macro when it was ready cause the others were not refreshed. It was extremely annoying, but this guy was a raider so I thought, yeah do it, but quickly deleted that cause I need my AoE more often then he does apparently, but raiders play different then someone soloing mostly killing trash. They also have their AA set up different, due to their gear maxing certain stats that are vitally important for everyone. They might not have any AA in double cast, cause their gear has enough of it to max them out, but someone like me has to put AA into it. I don't know if they fixed this issue with the macro since then tbh I haven't tried it, way too busy with crafting lines and just basic lvl alts to 110/110. Anyway, macro usage is not just a simple throw spells on it and run, there is a lot to think about when making them.

It may not impact Your game, but it would impact others. Some people play pvp or duel, or actually like knowing which spells cast the fastest or hardest hitting or longest durations. Just because we have 30 or so damage spells, doesn't make them equal by a long shot. If the devs consolidate them, most likely we will be looking at having more spells like Ascension ones that take forever to cast and refresh but hit hard. No thanks. I would definitely be impacted by totally losing my dps

It may be that some people see it that way. But for other people, like me, the amount and complexity of the spells / abilities is the reason why I've been playing EQ2 (since the beginning of the beta) since the beginning and none of the very many other games with only 5 to 10 abilities on the bar.

If you or others EQ2's skills are too complex, play another game because there are plenty of other games that offer this, but there's no other game except EQ1 that adds complexity and depth to the game, as well as that amount offers personal character skills.

I would not play EQ2 anymore Just like all other games on the market, it would only offer 5 to 10 skills per class. Of course, to use the skills in EQ2 optimally requires a certain amount of experience and also the development of your own skills over many years. EQ2 is thus a niche product, if that were not the case, it would not exist for a long time.

The only thing you can really criticize is that some abilities that are broken by bugs need a correction to get back into full function and it's been a long time now to bring some new classed AA trees into the game for further character development to further extend the complexity of the game.

I bet if that does happen, you will see spell refresh potions on the market place. Lol. I won't see it though. I would be long gone

I sincerely agree with this statement. I came over to EQ2 at beta while still playing on EQ1. I have tried other games and sadly many of them are just to simplistic. There is very little skill or experience needed to simply mash 8-10 basic arts. EQ2 provides a varied range of players and even wider range of player abilities. Not every player is the same, nor is their skill level on their toons. Part of the reason I enjoy this game is the learning curve for the different classes. It not just a.. oh lets change to something new and bamm other than the names, all the abilities are pretty much the same and you compete with players that are dedicated to those classes. Here you can see and feel the difference in players that dedicate themselves to learn their classes and push themselves. You have to fight to get back to the top of your game here.

There are far too many easy mode, simple games out there, luckily EQ2 is not one of them.

may we not dumb down the game anymore please

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't want the game "dumbed down", but complexity for the sake of complexity is dumb in it's own way. EQ2 suffers from feature bloat, which is not unexpected for a 15 year old game. However, feature bloat can be partially mitigated by addressing unused, useless, or outdated features.

Let me explain my point a little better. My main is a DPS class. I have more single target DD spells that I could possibly cast. Sure, I could cycle through all of them just do say I used them, but that will actually DECREASE my damage output. Even if I cast no other spells except these ST DD spells, my harder hitting spells refresh before I get through the entire list.

In this situation, those uncast spells are useless. They're not even on my hotbar because you could rightly call me a poor player if I were to use them instead of the harder hitting spells. How would removing or merging spells that no decent player uses negatively impact your experience aside from making you a little more efficient?

I can't comment on the scout or dps classes. I don't play those

I play a warden and a dirge and I have all spells that are worth casting on my hotbars and even then there are some spots left for stuff like temporary spells or fluff stuff such as portal items.

This game has already become so easy. Almost all content is just tank and spank. It used to be different. When the game came out, players had to pull mobs cautiously and avoid adds, adds had to mezzed, mobs had to be debuffed, and you had to think about what to cast and when. Nowadays healers can just spam heals and overheal the whole time, if the tank loses aggro then somebody else will tank the mob. Debuffing is a waste of time except for about 3 or 4 spells, mostly from ascensions. Crowd control has completely vanished from the game which is a shame. This game has already become super casual and now people want it to be even more casual so they have to press just 10 buttons? People say they have to start over instead of taking their time and look at their spells for about 1 hour and learn what their spells actually do? Are you kidding me?

I took a long break from the game and returned just a few months ago after 3 years. It took me about 1 day to figure out what spells are worth casting these days, what AA are optimal for my class and arange my hotbars, so just a few hours to get started and that's it. If people don't want to invest a few hours to learn the basics of their class reducing buttons won't fix their problems. Investing 3 to 4 hours to get to know the current state of their class and their abilities would immensly help them though.

There are many completely useless abilities for each class that are not worth taking them into your hotbars. Just don't put them into your hotbar and you should have enough space.