Why "card deck" combat will be skill based

My argument isn't that the skills you get dealt aren't random. It's that your random abilities appear in a sequence, that makes the UI not random, you know what button will activate your next random ability that you are going to get, it isn't a guessing game there. What ability it will be, will be based on what you know you have left in your deck, so in some cases even that will be predictable. (Assuming they don't go pure chaos and constantly shuffle the abilities together as they are used).

That is not a random UI, it's a sequenced then predictable order for where your skills will appear.

I don't care if it isn't called sequenced anywhere, you can see it for yourself in the video.

 

I'm sure I heard somewhere that computers weren't actually random. They just get a like of numbers from somewhere. But it's random enough for me.

When I hit the gas pedal, I want to go forward. Not get some sequence key from the owner's manual in the glove compartment, then crawl into the back seat and check the DVD player to see what the pedals are mapped to today.

 

I just reviewed the video from 16:27 to 21:08, again. I saw no evidence of predictability nor sequence in any skill placement, nor what skill appears on which hotkey. In fact there are many many cases where one skill is replaced with a different skill entirely, on the same hotbar location/hotkey location.

Are you referring to a different video, perhaps?

Regarding "assuming they don't go pure chaos and constantly shuffle the abilities".. from here:

DarkStarr wrote:
" Active Skills appear randomly during combat. "

Then I asked:
Does this mean Active Skills ONLY appear randomly during combat?
Specifically, is it true that Active Skills cannot be used, nor do they appear, via any other mechanism except appearing randomly during combat?

Then Darkstarr responded:
"Right now that's how it's working in the game. We have discussed ways for players to make skills appear more predictably but we want to test the full random first"

They are trying full random, first. There is no "if" or "assuming". As far as they've told us publicly, to date, that's it.

 

My 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3 was actually a stab at my wow rouges sinister strike eviscerate rotation. I think we need a thread to name the combat system. The card and deck thing seems to turn people off too early. The SotA Prism Strike Combat System! Yeah I know I'm no namematition.

 

You nailed it. I want to fight my opponents and environment, not the user interface.

 

Full random, not completely, the focus skills have an impact on the RNG. Without more detail, I can't say for certain, but this skill looks like the top 5 have a more favorable RNG.

 

It also clearly does not fit the definition of what they are doing. That was at the 6 months, the document is post the 6 month demo. Not to mention, the 6 month demo was exactly that a demo <-- to get it in front of a crowd, so whatever was hacked together was hacked together.

Obviously they long since fleshed the concept out to be a randomized deck with skills falling into random slots.

 

Here's my current understanding of how combat would work if we could log in and engage in combat (as of the time of this writing).

(Spoilers to avoid wall of text syndrome)

Spoiler: setup and assumptions

First assume a low level character with 6 combat bar slots available, no points in any of the focus skills, and a minimum number of slots for active skills to be made available to the player. We will start that minimum number out at 10.

Note that the 6 combat bar slots are currently bound to the number keys above the qwerty row, the '1' key tied to combat bar slot 1, '2' tied to the second slot etc. You will most likely be able to change key bindings before the main release, so it's really whatever button you want to press to activate a given combat bar slot.

The player will have some number of skill points spent on combat, magic, or focus skills. They can be active or innate skills. Only active skills can go into your pool of active skills. If you don't fill that pool up with the minimum number of slots, the 'unfilled' slots get filled in with 'slugs', which are placeholders. (And with the focus skills that we are currently ignoring, you could make those 'slugs' more useful.)

Spoiler: the combat cycle

When combat starts your pool of active skills is shuffled randomly (or pseudo-randomly if you want to be pedantic about computers generating random numbers). Once shuffled it is an ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat (but you don't know the current order). Every few seconds (we'll go with 2 for now) the first skill in the ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat will be placed in an empty combat bar slot. Chances are it will be the left most empty combat bar slot. 2 seconds after the first skill appeared in a combat bar slot, the next skill in the ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat will fill in the first available empty combat bar slot. Note that if there are no empty combat bar slots, no new skills will appear.

Let's call this the allocation of skills to your combat bar slots.

If you sit in combat and do nothing (and manage to not die), your combat bar slots will be filled with skills from the ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat until your combat bar is full. A skill in a combat bar slot will fade-out after some amount of time. The video people reference appears to place that at 10 seconds. So 10 seconds after your first skill has appeared, it fades out creating an empty combat bar slot.

The skill that just faded out goes into a pool of discarded skills that are not currently available for combat. You have the option of discarding a skill at any time, in which case it too goes into a pool of discarded skills that are not currently available for combat. The next skill in the ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat will takes its place. This goes on for a while until your ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat is empty.

Once your ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat is empty, the pool of discarded skills that are not currently available for combat gets shuffled randomly (see note above on pseudo-randomness) and becomes the ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat (or if you prefer, those shuffled skills go into the ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat). Now that we have more skills to draw from, this cycle goes on and on and on, then you die (or maybe your opponent does) and combat ends.

Spoiler: actual combat

Since you probably want to win in combat, chances are you will be using the skills that appear in the combat bar slots. Let's assume you have your choice of key bindings or you can use the mouse, but you are not required to use both during combat, but you certainly can. We'll skip the details and just say you use the skill in a combat bar, targeting opponents or locations for AoE, etc.

So a basic attack skill is in one of your combat bar slots, and you want to use it. You know which combat bar slot it is in and how you use the skill in that combat bar slot (keyboard versus mouse as per above). So you use it. It does damage and brings you closer to winning.

The normal allocation of skills to your combat bar slots (as addressed above) continues as normal, filling in empty combat bar slots. You don't know what skill is going to appear in the first available combat bar slot, but if you are really good at information management you may have a general idea of what is available. You know which skills are in your pool of active skills, which skills are in combat bar slots, which skills were recently used or faded out (which means they are in the pool of discarded skills that are not currently available for combat), how many of each active skill type you have in your pool of active skills, etc.

So like I said if you are good at keeping track of this information you can probably guess which skills are currently in your ordered list of skills ready to appear in combat plus how many skills are in it. So you know the approximate chance of one of those skills appearing in an empty combat bar slot.

Combat continues as you track all of that information. As slugs appear in your combat bar slots, you decide they are worthless and you discard them right away to keep combat bar slots open. Something more fun than a basic attack skill appears and you use it and do damage. Yay, damage.

Now let's say you notice that you have skills sitting in combat bar slots that form a combo. So you make the combo (again via your choice of keyboard bindings or mouse). Then you can use the combo. If you don't use the combo, it will eventually fade out. My guess is that the active skills that combined into the combo go into a pool of discarded skills that are not currently available for combat and NOT the combo itself. You will have to remake that combo in the future to use it again.

Spoiler: let's focus

You can spend some of your skill points on focus skills. I suspect a lot of players are going to want to spend points to lock a few of the combat bar slots, so that each of those combat bar slots can have one and only one active skill in them available for use in combat. These may be your go-to skills, your emergency skills, or skills you may want to use every once in a while. The combat bar slots don't care what you put in them, as long as it's an active skill.

With 2 locked slots each filled with an active skill taken from your 10 slots for active skills to be made available to the player, you only have 8 slots for active skills to be made available to the player, which means less active skills to get shuffled around randomly, and a higher chance those skill will appear in an empty combat bar slot. But less combat bar slots for them to appear in, so fewer choices for making combos and fewer active skills to use in combat, until they get replaced with new ones. And less information to try and keep track of.

I suspect PvP players will spend points on focus skills to reduce the time it takes for a new skill to fill an empty combat bar slot. So you may see new skills appearing every 1 seconds instead of the normal 2 seconds.

Players who like to make combos and aren't too worried about how fast they use up their active skills may want to use focus skills to increase the time before the active skills currently in combat bar slots fade out. And find a use for slugs, like further extending the fade out times.

(And I didn't even mention 'deck' or 'card'.)

 

I dont think its correct to think that if its not this system the. By default its gonna have to be like wows. There are far better ways to add chaos to combat than making someone stare at a glorified card came with vsuals that you cant enjoy or use the wow model. I stared at my hotbar enough with other games that didnt have this systeme

 

I'd like to see them drop this whole action combat idea, and go with a "Random Card Deck, Turn Based System".
Simple and effective, and it would nicely compliment the instanced zones.

It'll give SoTA a different feel and style that will really be distinct compared to all the similar styled games that have such a headstart and strong standing in the market.
This would also resolve all questions about PvE and PvP, and quite possibly get this game out ahead of schedule...and that's something we'd all like to see.

 

I gotta see this to get it but it sounds like a replacement for the "cool down" thing to keep people from spamming attacks.

Is there any games with more realistic combat? Where it's not "this move does blah blah blah more damage" and more along the lines of keeping your guard with your opponent and trying to get a hit in without opening yourself up. Things like feinting you'd have to do manually in pvp but it could be fun. Especially if the damage was realistic and the opponent isn't bound by an HP limit where they just fall over dead after sustaining such and such damage. I'd think like wounds/bleeding system where the organ damage and the bleeding is what kills you and it's never instantaneous. Even stabbing someone in the heart they have about ten seconds of knowing they're gonna die while being pumped up on adrenaline to the point of barely feeling pain. Which makes for a very dangerous enemy lol. Or that if someone started an attack and you hit them in the head, the attack still finishes because the momentum had already started.

 

No combat will ever be realistic as long as its behind a computer screen

 

And if it is a replacement for cooldowns. I dont see how its superior. Hotkeys and cooldowns are very efficient so you dont have to constantly stare at a hotbar. Its just not efficient to do that it seems like group play would be horrible. It all depends on how far they take the system. Id be happy if it were just a novelty lite version and incrementally chabge it if it works

 

This is the same system as just about all games but we need to look at cards instead of the combat.

UO had the perfect combat system but that wouldn't be new and innovative, LOL.

 

Every time I read the phrase 'deck combat' I just giggle about how it sounds with a New Zealand accent...

I think the system has potential but... I imagine the UI will be very distracting. wonder if when a new skill appears on the deck, the graphic could appear shadowed into the middle of the screen then shrink and slide across to the deck on the periphery? Not brilliant for immersion in the game but allows u to focus on the 'action'.

Just thinking out loud. This was meant to be a post about Kiwi's decks!!

 

WoW has pretty much adopted a random system in their latest content patch. rPPM (random procs per minute) trinkets and enchants.

 

I was able to predict where they went except for 1 instance, the male avatar has a shield looking ability that didn't disappear when I expected it to, the same ability on the female avatar did disappear as expected. I don't know if this was a glitch with that ability or if that is working as intended, in either way I would know/learn that the ability doesn't fade out, likely either a longer fade out counter or no fade out counter, requiring a discard to be replaced. If you weren't able to watch and predict I suspect you weren't even trying, because I know you are smart enough to figure that out. Skills are supposed to be used, discarded, or fade out before they drop and are replaced. so if it's full then you wont be getting one.

The 2nd part what I meant was, there are 2 ways they can make the system, they can make it so when you use an ability it goes right back in a random place in your draw deck, or they can make it so it's held back till you use all abilities then they are reshuffled. That is the difference between pure chaos, and managed chaos. pure chaos you can not predict at all what might come out. if they hold your abilities in reserve after use then you'll know what and how many you have left and calculate the odd and you'll be able to calculate your risks and it isn't so chaotic.

 

So the developers, directly, state the system is random, yet you're claiming it's predictable?
I think it's time you take your argument up with Portalarium, because at this point, the logic train has departed from this discussion.

 

Your question is worded to sound like you are talking about what skills will appear, not where they will appear. So unless darkstarr can clarify if he meant where they appear and not what abilities will appear we will be at an impass.

It makes no sense that they can appear randomly for several reasons, 1 the focus ability that lets you save skills means it can't be replaced. 2, as skills fade out those spots are open for new skills, 3, you are supposed to need to discard to free up slots.

I believe you didn't phrase your question to say what you meant.

 

Yes I know that much, but you know what I mean. Just because you're not really flying a plane doesn't mean there aren't flight sims that could be called "realistic".