Just to avoid any confusion on expectations, we are not basing any design decisions on what is standard or proper in an MMO. That is very important to note. We call Ember a Massive Planetary Wargame for the sake of clarity on what we are looking to make. With that said I can say that player abilities, in some form, are very likely to in Ember. Though it's hard to say for certain until we see how things shake out in combat iteration.
I disagree with this statement about what combat boils down to. I find that to be, at best, an oversimplification of terms. However it is possibly even a gross miscatagorization of the factors at play in combat. Particularly when applied to the wide variety of what a mission objective may consist of.
I think it's fairly accurate to say combat always involves that and tends to revolve around that, but not to say that is all it boils down to.
Though I do agree that calling all factors of damage in and out dps is a hard mislabling. Also, I agree with the end point that the goal is not to stop people from thinking about the efficiency of it but to make that path varied ,mysterious or challenging.
I think it's fairly accurate to say combat always involves that and tends to revolve around that, but not to say that is all it boils down to.
Though I do agree that calling all factors of damage in and out dps is a hard mislabling. Also, I agree with the end point that the goal is not to stop people from thinking about the efficiency of it but to make that path varied ,mysterious or challenging.