Combat movement

@Chris

So, basically, combat movement speed won't be an effective way to avoid my opponent anymore.

With my own experience, combat speed was absolutely not a big deal in closed spaces (especially with body slam which will, by the way, get improved with the stun/knock back/whatever effect) and was only an advantage in vast open spaces.

From my own point of view; I can only see two valid reasons behind this : the totally stupid bonus granted with Dash or the fleet flute. The problem is that the solution will destroy completely every other movement speed skill or bonus, including Sprint, Berserker Stance and Wolf Speed potions, which grant much smaller bonus. And when trying to nerf speed builds, you are about to completely destroy light armor archers builds which don't use completely dumb speed solutions like those damn artifacts or the magic spells.

I don't know what to say. *shrugs* I suppose I will give it a try. But I already know what to expect and I'll just have to stop playing at this rate. I'm not very used with this type of rant, sorry, but I have to be honest : combat is a decent part of my fun. If I can't compete in PvE or in PvP with a build which is already weak, I can go play something else

Can you really think that cutting a wide number of diverse bonus by HALF is a balanced solution ? When I already complained A LOT about the disparities between Dash and Sprint or Fleet flute and potions (I agree that berserker stance is another matter as it grants a lot of other bonus) ? With more than 120 in Acrobatics (12M xp which only grant +5 dodge or alike), my best sprint bonus is about 2.6/2.7 when Dash is 3.6 with Air tree GMed (17M which grant MANY other bonus including magic resistance, and offensive spells with oh !... Stun !) and can easily go beyond 4 or even 5 !!!

 

i know me and Hornpipe have had our differences, but she is correct here, Cutting movement speeds in half in combat is wrong, there has to be another way to do this?

 

(because this is an angry cat post!)

This is another somewhat baffling nerf - we already had the number of movement altering effects limited to 2 because "reasons." Now another nerf and still fail to understand what problem or behavior you are trying to 'fix' here? I think knowing what it is you are trying to achieve may make it more palatable but just seeing something like this is a bit anger-inducing.

Now whatever the reason you think we need to "move slower" in combat - I suggest that before a global change like this is implemented there are CRITICAL things that would need addressing:

1. The extremely long time it takes to exit combat, even if everything around you is dead. It can often take up to 10 seconds after sheathing your weapons for the combat status to go away, and it has always been this way. This change is just going to create additional delay if you're trying to move on because its now going to hamper your movement.​

I'd be ok with the movement reduction in combat, provided that when the last mob dies I can immediately leave combat status and go about my business.

2. The fact that when fighting a (pve) archer of any sort, you are perpetually in 'disabled shot' status moving at snails pace, 100% of the time, and they can reapply this repatedly with no apparent diminishing effect whatsoever. Chasing down archers as a melee character has gotten so painful that many players avoid entire zones because its simply too irritating. The only thing you could really do to mitigate this was bump your in combat movement, this change is going to make fighting archer/mage as a melee char even more of a chore than it already is.​

I'd be ok with the movement reduction in combat, provided that once I've been disabled once (or even twice) I can't be effected again immediately to be kept in perpetual snail mode.

3. Kiting is a thing. Positioning in combat is a thing. Its a valid tactic used by a lot of lighter-armor wearing archer/rogue/mage types who count on MOBILITY as part of their SURVIVABILITY. It has been said that we want 'player skill' to be important, and not just have everything based on gear and experience levels. Reducing player mobility is reducing the impact of player skill, which seems to go completely against stated objectives.​

4. Lastly, some of us are old. The playerbase here has a lot of older gamers. At least me personally, I do not have the dexterity to 'roll out of the way' and manual dodge things that I did 20 years ago. One of the main appeals of Sota is that while there is some benefit to being able to do this (call it being more skilled), you aren't completely screwed if you can't. I'm concerned about the direction with combat movement changes because I rely on the additional speed to get myself out of the way. While this change in and of itself is probably not going to make a huge difference here, its a step in that direction, toward becoming an "action game."​

5. Not wanting to be in combat is rarely a choice. Something launches an arrow or fire effect at me from MILES away while I'm zooming by it will hit me when I'm well out of its range, and drag me into combat, even though I have no intention whatsoever of engaging with the mob and/or fighting. If anything hits you - AT ALL - its dragging you into combat. I'm concerned with this change very simply for the inconvenience factor of running through a zone trying to get someplace. The mobs are no threat to me, but aren't worth my time to stop and kill, but yet, because something's pinged me from miles way, I now slow down. The only thing I can say about that is it already sucks, and having it halve my movement bonuses is going to suck even more.​

THEN because of issue number 1, I'm "stuck" in combat for a long time even if I never pull my weapons out or intend to fight.

@Chris So, I'd really like to understand what behavior you are trying to correct with this change. Perhaps the community can come up with alternatives that will be less globally damaging to how players engage with monsters.

 

My biggest issue with last release was the change of the siege engineers. As a pure melee build I simply cannot do sieges anymore because the engineer archers hit you with slow effects which means trying to actually hit them with a sword becomes almost impossible. When you are slowed you simply cannot catch them and if you try using body slam / engage opponents to close the gap you end up with not enough focus to actually use any skills when you do get into range.

If this is to become the norm and cutting down movement speed in combat is how you begin every fight I will be FORCED to pick up some magic of some description to be able to hit things at range. I dread to think what kind of movement speed I will be now if I get hit by an archers slow effect (25% my current speed? 10%). When a game tells you can do anything you like but then makes things impossible to do unless you go with a specific build...maybe its time to introduce classes.

 

i have kept my blades/light armor build all this time, even though it's always been less effective than switching to heavy would be, because low move speed is no fun. i have watched players i helped when they were starting out blow right past me in terms of what they could take on alone, and was okay with that. i'm not even zooming around the map: i just have the light armor innates and sprint, no dash or fleet flute; i rarely use wolf potions and never plan for them in combat. i knowingly sacrificed a bit of survivability to have the build i enjoy, but what you're taking now is more than a bit. being dead all the time is no fun either.

 

Well this is pretty awful on multiple levels.

I bet they don't like players kiting mobs. So instead of something logical like enemy melees whipping out a bow or throwing daggers to attack kiting players, they just nerf the player's movement speed? Why not just go one step further and give those lovely 0 damage hits because "the mob can't fight back"?

And what about those enemy archers that hit melees with disabling shot? Hey everyone what's more fun than having ranged enemies absolutely destroying your movement speed that can't be countered or negated? Having a permanent, stacking movement speed debuff on top of that!!! Also, this will obviously only affect players! Because screwing with players' movement makes the game so fun, we're doubling down on that and making the game even more fun!

Speaking about fun, we noticed players trying to bypass sieges to get into towns. Clearly they don't realize the fun they're missing out on, so now the one-shot tier 1 mobs that do low single digit damage will shoot the player to slow them down for at least seven seconds to remind them of all the fun they're missing out on -- you know, the fun of all the archers near the catapults that hit you with the fun shot that reduces your movement speed to fun (now fun^2) mode.

 

Agreed. This was not very well thought out. You simply can't continue to make the ranged avatar even worse! Why does the pendulum always swing so darned far?! If you must do something like this, you don't go and cut it back by something ridiculous like 50%... That's the equivalent of saying choose just ONE of the speed buffs. Jesus. At the very least try 15 to 20%, and see how things go. Come on, guys... Pretty much anyone that uses range, or needs speed for other reasons, like Scoffer mentioned, is just going to LOSE it in this update.

 

If this is PVP reasons, can we make it so that a hit from another player is the only thing that makes the speed decrease? I really REALLY hate PvP being the reason for so many of my nerfs. I know that it ends up being the case many times, and it is so awful knowing that I have zero interest in fighting other avatars.

 

If PvP is the reason, then the nerf should not be on all movement rate bonus, only on Dash and Fleet flute. All other bonus hardly exceed a "4" move rate bonus all together, if not at the cost of a substantial investment.

I doubt that PvP can be summoned as a serious reason here, even if I know how you could feel about that. But as long as no reason is publicly stated, we can only wonder.

Note that I won't wonder for too long. This little paragraph in the R54 instructions draft has been the hugest slap in the face of every person who rely on speedy gameplays. It's just my way of playing every RPG. But when a game just tells me "I'm not for you", the message is just plainly clear for me.

Therefore, personaly, I will not insist on posting ten more messages in the hope of convincing. I will wait for tomorrow, judge and make a final decision depending on whether I'm pissed off or not when I play.

 

Also, if this goes in, then ALL monsters should have the same exact debuff when they're in combat mode as well. Especially the bosses. ESPECIALLY the bosses that are also somehow immune to player debuff skills/spells.

 

Same here, Hornpipe, as a pure Archer, this will effect me really bad.... If I find that I can't compete the way I have been, then I will definitely be looking for another game where it is not so frustrating and punishing playing an archer type. Just in case this change is here to stay, I will be checking the web for A replacement, I have a few in mind … I invested a lot of time and experience in speed, as an Archer, you sure as hell need it.... Please Chris, do not nerf us again....

 

I was running around in my light armor the other day and was thinking it felt ridiculously slow. I can't imagine how slow it will be now on combat.

 

Same here, AO and I feel the OP's great frustration with this decision. Light armor melee loses a lot by not going heavy armor (lose out on: Body Slam, extra damage resistance, extra strength, etc.), but I've really just always been a light armor melee fan and not really a fan of heavy armor builds as a playstyle. Any reduction of modest movement boosts through skill investment would be an appalling change - let alone by HALF! If the Devs want to downgrade the super-speedy Fleet Flute and Dash, that's perfectly fine.

I would also add that fluid, seamless movement in SotA is already not as nice and zippy as many other mmorpgs I've played; the game has other strengths, but easy, deft movement is a bit of a struggle IMO (thus diminishing what little speed boost one has earned through light armor training is rough).