My guess is that it has to do with the game being made for both PC and consoles, and that balancing for all made the changes desirable.
Why? The previous two games were released on consoles and PC too. They had more abilities, and the first game wasn't even dumbed down.
Okay. Why did developers shrink the number of abilities?
Thedas is in a recession.
Who needs character building these days? Roleplaying is now narrowed to choosing bedroom furniture and banging the person you liked. Basically Sims.
And the fangirls are pretty squirty over it, bringing in cash... So hush...
I lolled so hard.. 
I nearly chocked while eating some nuts.
Because more abilities are too hard for your average Joe Nobody, so bioware had to dumb it down a bit. ea's word not mine.
IMO it is to do with MP.
Mp balancing is a separate entity from sp. The only thing they share are abilities.
It would've been far better for the mp team if the sp team included more abilities as it gives them a larger pool to create classes from.
SNIP
Conclusion of my wall of text : stop yelling "there is not enough skills" because it's not the real problem. I'd like you to yell : "more variety of plastyles please" and "more skill differenciation BW please" because that's the real problem. There are fewer abilities because the RPG industry realised that it's not worth it to work on hundreds of different skills if only 10 will see the light of the day. Better work on 10 skills that feel truly unique and that get used.
This is exactly the case. So many useless filler skills in older RPG's.....
Why are there fewer abilities, more weapon restrictions, loss of character attributes, skill locks and abilities that do not work properly ?
I voiced this back in the day, before the game even launched, when we were shown sneak peeks and the words of the Devs were :- "8 skills is enough" , "8 skills times 4 party members equals 32 in total, that is strategy and tactics !".
As for skill locks and abilities that make no sense, blame Multiplayer. The abilities that does not work in a large open world environment like those elemental walls are perfect for dungeon crawling. This 8 skill lock in combat is ripped right out of Diablo, a dungeon crawler. Yet we still have blind fools saying that multiplayer did not affect single player in any way.
As for loss of other things like character attributes as well as the similarities between skills in each tree (especially in magic), well they say its a balancing issue but really, they just want to make the game so easy to the point that it can be played by the most noob of us. The recent words from a CEO from EA makes it bloody obvious that they want their games to cater to those with the least intelligence and lowest capacity to strategize.
The market that Bioware wants to corner is not the market that is filled with people who like to discuss strategy, builds, roleplaying, tactics, gameplay or what have you. The market they want to corner is the YOLO, instant gratification, Micheal Bay, Call of Duty, dating simulator, trendy-isms crowd.
Look at the forum as a whole. Most of it is about how Solas makes their Lavellan feel or about Dorian's side boob or how they would like Cassandra to dominate their male Inquisitors or about how Blackwall is a creep for pursuing Josie or asexual romances...bla bla bla...
The point is we, gamers like us are ones that Bioware no longer care about. At best, they pay lip service to us. This is true of most of the AAA gaming industry. This is the price we pay for trying to make something part of the mainstream. They become neutered, diluted, dumbed down and simplified because the mainstream = mundane mediocres. Catering to the mainsteam = catering to the lowest common denominator.
Gamers who still value things like skill differentiation, skill variety, actually challenging combat, roleplaying that is more than just a line or two or a war table mission or two should look towards other game developers, primarily Indie game developers. Transistor, Shadowrun, Torment, Pillars of Eternity, SkyWind, etc....To name a few...
I mentioned in another thread that I did not personally buy DAI, I merely did one playthrough on my friends account and watched the small variations on Youtube.
From the money I saved, I did buy this RPG game that came out in 2014 called Transistor. It is made by an indie company called Supergiant Games and Transistor > DAI in every way.
Coming from some 400 spells in Baldur's Gate II to the about 20 activated abilities for mages in Inquistion is underwhelming to say the least 
Maybe I only used about 100 of them in one playthrough. But that wouldn't stop me from using 100 other spells in the next playthrough, and then change them again on the 3rd playthrough etc..... Also, using 100 spells during an 80 hour campaign is far more interesting for me than having only a meager selection of 20 to choose from.
Choice and options, that's what I prefer.
Coming from some 400 spells in Baldur's Gate II to the about 20 activated abilities for mages in Inquistion is underwhelming to say the least
Maybe I only used about 100 of them in one playthrough. But that wouldn't stop me from using 100 other spells in the next playthrough, and then change them again on the 3rd playthrough etc..... Also, using 100 spells during an 80 hour campaign is far more interesting for me than having only a meager selection of 20 to choose from.
Choice and options, that's what I prefer.
Add the amount of classes and weapon styles into the mix, and the fact that stats were important, and you might be even more underwhelmed.
Add the amount of classes and weapon styles into the mix, and the fact that stats were important, and you might be even more underwhelmed.
I am 
I voiced this back in the day, before the game even launched, when we were shown sneak peeks and the words of the Devs were :- "8 skills is enough" , "8 skills times 4 party members equals 32 in total, that is strategy and tactics !".
As for skill locks and abilities that make no sense, blame Multiplayer. The abilities that does not work in a large open world environment like those elemental walls are perfect for dungeon crawling. This 8 skill lock in combat is ripped right out of Diablo, a dungeon crawler. Yet we still have blind fools saying that multiplayer did not affect single player in any way.
The 8 skill quickbar limitation "for tactics!" is an utterly transparent corner-cutting measure to reduce the developer workload on the interface between PC and console versions of the game.
It's worse because the only thing they would've had to do to satisfy both groups was to give the quickbar 14 slots instead of 8 and bind the 8th D-pad position to a shift function that would swap between two sets of 7 when a controller was plugged in. 14 slots would've covered just about every *useful* active ability you can realistically acquire over the course of the game. It's also two functions fewer than the number of keys available for binding on the average keyboard's numpad.
A better idea would be to develop games in traditionally keyboard-reliant genres to use the input device they've been built up around, instead of just choosing to forget that consoles have been able to support USB keyboards since the PS2 came out! Gah!
Why? The previous two games were released on consoles and PC too. They had more abilities, and the first game wasn't even dumbed down.
Well... I believe that's why we have insane Thousand cuts. It's a balanced and definitely worked-out ability that justifies taking so much away from us, like telekinetic Prison and Fire/Ice Cone and three types of direct Shiled+Sword frontal assault. And sustain modes, who in the f*cking hell needs those, right?
Thing is you try to justify the simplification of the gameplay, the dumbing down of it. Which I personally can't stand idly.
I'll try to aswer these as clearly and as respectfully as I can.
FIRST : We have an insane Thousand cuts because the devs at bioware have no clue about balance. Plain and simple. They forgot the capital interaction between 1k cuts and passives in the archery tree. Individually, both abilities are sort of OK. It's the combination of the 2 that is broken on high dragons. 1k cut was not made OP because designers wanted to "dumb down" the game. That's tin foil hatness.
SECOND : I'm totally trying to justify the simplification of gameplay. Because it's what happening right now in the entire industry and it is happening for a good reason : it makes the game much funnier to play for a lot of people. Call me a white knight if you wish. That won't prevent me from sleeping at night.
Quick remark : Recent RPG and MMORPG combat mechanisms draw from the same premices:
Some people consider this a "dumbing down of games". It's kind of true since you are not expected to do the math crunching in order to have a viable build. Just watch out for telegraphed attacks and here you go. The rest is just min maxing, speed clearing and bragging rights.
There is one last thing that completely bugs me : The Witcher 2 has an even smaller pool of skills than DAI, yet, some BSNers claim it is the very last true RPG and shun DAI because it has too few skills. I mean... really O.o ?
I think that it is a highly advanced system of in game interaction through well adjusted actions. Necessary digital selection has established that the most beneficial structures of combat must be adjusted to the progressive world.
BioWare: we don't want you to get confused.
BWTwitter: GOTY celebration continues.
BWTumblr: hush baby, it is alright.
why? because console players might get scared or rather consoles themselves and gamepads might get scared. I fully understand that DA:I was made with pc in mind but alienating console players would be a bigotry, -ism -phobia etc.
I enjoyed playing inquisition but the combat really wasn't its strong point. But I am finding playing as a shield and sword warrior a lot more fun than in the previous games though, maybe just because I like the charge attack 
I know lots of people hate on DA2 but that had the best combat for me (still can't beat the game on nightmare mind so obviously I don't know as much about the combat as a lot of people on here). Blood magic was heaps of fun (worked better than in DA:O I thought) and the tactics menu was excellent, those are probably the two features I'm missing the most in Inquisition.
Thats why.
Yep, that's why.
I'm really missing the tactics screen of DAII though, so maybe not all the features removed were horribles. However this screen was only used by the truly aware gamers. I'm sure most ppl ignored it.
Well I disagree with Ploppy. Inquisition removed customizable tactics, 'nuff said.
I miss most of the skills from dragon age origins they were nice and you could have more than 1 special spec if you had awakening. the skills were more interesting and better animation in same cases. they probably limited the abilities since you can only have 8 at a time. I find that limiting players to specific builds is terrible they should be have unlimited ability slots and have made more abilities
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