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My R18 Feedback (World Map and Combat)

Discussion in 'Release 18 Feedback' started by AndiZ275, Jun 19, 2015.

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  1. AndiZ275

    AndiZ275 Avatar

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    Greeting everyone :),
    the Pelican error seems to be fixed, so I was finally able to do some testing again. My main points are still nearly identical with my R15 feedback I wrote some time ago: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...criticisms-and-suggestions.22982/#post-335891

    I miss Out of Combat Skills, that would make SotA stand out from other MMOs, I miss more detailed journals and the interface needs work.

    But I have two R18 specific things here

    About the Combat in R18:

    - I like some of the combat changes, like setting Skills on specific places of your action bar. But my main problem with the combat system is still there: The Stacking. Drawing skills from your bar through mouse or through the R key still takes my out of combat and makes it distracting and hectic.

    I'd love to see some Auto-Stacking-ability in the Focus skill tree (for each point skills my stack to a higher level) and maybe an Auto Combo skill, too (since we already have a combo menu, you could manage combos suitable for auto stacking there). This would take a lot of the stress out of this combat system and would allow me to concentrate on the fight itself, positioning in combat, etc.

    To go without stacking is no option for me, since I want my combat to be as efficient as possible. And when I have combos available I want to use them (without being overly distracted from combat)

    About the World Map in R18:

    - With the World Map going bigger and bigger, it's getting much more difficult to find stuff and the overland map (which is WAY TOO DARK at night and in the morning) doesn't really help much. It takes forever to find anything, NPCs aren't helpful at all. And the Random Encounters are annoying as hell (even worse when you face in another direction after leaving the encounter). At this point, walking around on the overland map is probably the worst part of the game for me.

    My suggestion: An additional World Map, where every location you already found is marked. And maybe where you get informations about the difficulty of enemies in an area, or which area is controlled by which group, which NPCs are there, informations about possible quests in a region, etc. This world map could be easily implemented and accessed on the overland map just through scrolling out.

    And another way to make Overland travel better (in my opinion) would be through trainable Out of Combat skills. Scouting would be an obvious skill tree in this regard (with skills like: faster travelling speed on overland map, less random enemy encounters, better sight distance, faster travel through bad terrain, etc.). Or a Cartography skill for advanced map writing...

    ---------------------------------

    Again, most of the other stuff is still identical with my R15 feedback, so I leave it with those two points.

    SotA has a lot of potential and I hope (and I'm still quite optimistic) that most of the problems I have can be solved before release.
    Cheers,
    Andi
     
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  2. Retro

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  3. AndiZ275

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    yeah, we're pretty much on the same page here (it was more fleshed out in my R15 feedback :) ).

    There are so many possibilities for cool adventure skills (like the name of your category): Rune Reading, Cartography, Fishing, Scouting and Pathfinding, Stealth, Thievery, Alcohol resistance, Companion and Leadership skills, Better Conversation Skills (higher chance for underlined words), Acrobatic Skills, Taming and Beast Mastery Skills, and so many more.

    And no other MMO I know of uses those skills properly. So SotA could be a real standout in this regard (I know many Single Player RPGs, that do them very good). And of course there could be special trainers for these skills or learning by doing (you may only invest points earned through taming in other taming skills; or sage skill point for sage skills; etc.). The possibilities are nearly endless...
     
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  4. smack

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    Yeah, the R18 combat changes are a great start to put combat back on track, but you're absolutely right: combos and stacks are still a major, critical flaw in how they're currently implemented. It still draws your eyes away from the onscreen action, which is the absolute most critical thing to focus on -- not the UI. I like your ideas about auto-stacking or auto-combos, which many others have proposed as well.

    I will throw out another one that I'm sure others may have proposed: make stacks and combos as part of the deck build. When you build your deck, stack your skills so you get them dealt as a stack, but you sacrifice the # of available skills during combat and potentially face slugs if you don't have enough skills in your deck to meet the minimum for your level. Same goes with combos. This completely mitigates the UI focus problem with stacks and combos, as they now just become another skill to execute, in whichever hotbar slot you've assigned it to appear in. And it adds another layer to deck building strategy.
     
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  5. Otha Livinded

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    In a roleplaying game where you play the part of an Avatar and actually fight monsters on screen, no combat UI can be successful when the design is created to be noticed- made to be seen and pull you out of character.

    Playing your character is the point of the game, after all. It's Shroud of the Avatar, not Go Fish.

    This is the one huge design flaw in the deck system, and no amount of fiddling with it is likely to change what is this flawed premise.

    Making the system more complex by adding the option to lock the deck only makes for balance issues and screwing things up further.

    The only solution I see is a redesign of the deck system giving roleplayer types of players the option that dealing with the deck only happens outside of combat, or, some clever design work that moves the "deck" onto the player's screen in the form of numbers appearing around the character than the player can then react to- options near the players shield, sword arm, or on the monsters themselves that tell the player they can say, cast an offensive ice spell or use a specific sword skill.

    This would keep the player's eyes where they belong, and lessen the immersion ruining aspects of the poorly thought out deck system.

    In my opinion.
     
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