What Light Armor combat should look like

I think there are huge issues with this btw, if you're talking about casting one spell after another to mix spells. For example, if you want to combine a Fire magic spell and a Water magic spell to produce Steam, but don't want a Fire or water spell to fire. The only way to prevent that, other than through a combo key, would be to have a delay before the spell fired. But that would also make it really difficult to stack combos in triplicates or double combos, since you would need all the spells to be on your combat bar at once. You couldn't "save" a combo on your hotbar to be used later, which I think is really important -- and which I think would be important to melee combos in light armor combat, too. You'd want to save a move, then move in with it later.

"Skillweaving/spellweaving" is generally creating new moves out of two existing ones, not adding one to another. The place where I saw a successive combo mechanic, in Tera Online, I found it unimpressive. You just did one complete move, and then did another to combo. I really didn't understand the point of it, overall.

So, I don't know; I'm guess I'm saying I appreciate the way they've done it -- I think there are reasons for it. But as for my OP, I was just throwing out the idea that it might be possible for both mechanics to be in the game in some form.. both 'weaving' and successive combos.

 

Sorry for keeping this up but imo it's something that could make combat much better. Some issues can be worked around, but i must acknowledge some others are worthy of thinking...

the Steam is one that i consider minimal... It's just matter of perspective; we can either have a skill as a byproduct of combining both during preparation (current implementation) or while fighting (sequential implementation). For example, we could prepare a steam spell by combining two other skills, or we could think that to create steam i need to apply heat to some water, hence we could create Steam by using a water spell, then using a fire spell. The other case where this may bring some conflict is in situations where the spell target is different (like Sacrifice) but i just checked i talked about it before.

The huge ones are those regarding preparation and skill handling.

Those would be by all means gone. But we should check what we could earn. We'd get a more organic, less keytaxing way of implementing combos (also less distracting). We'd get a major strategic element (usable for both PVE and PVP) in place because if a Combo requires you to use skill A then skill B, defenders watching his enemy using skill A should expect skill B, having reasons to bring up defensive moves. You don't have those with current implementation... and if you want to save a combo for later you can always keep both skills in place.

I agree there are reasons for the way they've done it, but i imagine a lot of good stuff in sequential implementation that can't be found on the current one. I also think we have enough cases of "why don't we have both" so if the alternative to current implementation is having a different one... i'd keep the one we already have.

 

@KuBaTRiZeS,

I still think there are a lot of interesting combos you can do that don't make sense if you do them one after another, and are maybe even better examples than the Steam example. So, for a lot of cases, I think you can use one spell for the form and one spell for the effect. One simple example is say combining a Flame Arrow with a Fireball to create a rain of fire. This could "work" in sequential combos, requiring at least one spell to be completed first, but its sort of clumsy. But there are also more complex examples. Lets say you could combine a Chaotic Clone spell with Shadow Form for astral projection. Or Air's Embrace with Gust to produce a Levitate spell. In a lot of these cases, doing one spell before the combo would really mess with what you want to do.

The great thing about the way spellweaving works is its composibility; you an create entirely new spells from existing ones. In that sense, it mirrors the Words of Power system we had in earlier Ultima games.

There are also a lot of examples on how it can work well with ranged fighting to create new attacks. Like combining greek fire with an arrow to make it a fire arrow; combining water with an arrow to make it a douse arrow.

Now, sure, it is key taxing with free attack -- though I don't think it was so much with auto-attack. I think that's why they've announced they're now shifting the focus on skillweaving to magic and ranged. Because magic and ranged users have a distance anyway, and aren't necessarily going to be right in the action. Also, because the whole idea of spell composability is fun, it makes sense to shift in that direction.

But there are a lot of ways magic does and will combine with melee that are meaningful and fun. A spell can change form by combining with Whirling Blades, for instance -- allowing you to, for instance, turn a Gust into a AOE around you. Tumble is out right now in favor of Evasion, but it could also theoretically change the form of a spell in obvious ways, or modify the Tumble. Smoldering Shiv is a good example of a magic + melee combo currently in the game. There are also a lot of possibilities of really great melee + melee combos. So I hope it doesn't completely shift to magic and ranged, and we still get some melee combo action.

In my original post, I suggested that if Light Armor combat is more about movement, then you get a break on this, and the movement is important tactically to using combos. Say you want to use a combo but are in the heat of combat. You do a combat roll to get out of the way... back up a bit... prepare your combo. Move closer into the fight, unleash your combo when your ready. That makes sense to me. Movement gives Light Armor users the necessary space to use combos.

On the other hand, for Heavy Armor users, toughness gives them the space to use combos. They can endure attacks while preparing the combos they want to use. While Light Armor users can move to dodge and give them space, Heavy Armor users don't need to get space.

So I think its still something that can work with the current system.

I threw out the possibility of sequential combos just for discussion for certain melee + melee combos that you want to do in the heat of battle. I don't think it would cover all the cool uses of magic, though. Also, I don't really think its necessary for melee + melee combos to be usable; like I said -- just make combat involve more movement -- and movement is then a tactical benefit to using combos.

But I thought it was something worth discussing anyway. Just stating my opinions on it.

 

Necroing this perhaps, but think it has some great ideas. +1

 

The only ability weave game I've played is neverwinter nights.

They had ability cancels/interupts and timing chains so that certain skills could be done during the first atrack; or skill cancelled to speed up damage output.

See greatsword fighter.

 

I had not seen this thread due to its age and I agree there are some good points made that still have relevance. I've stated in another thread or two that the appeal for me in sword & sorcery games lies mostly in mobile melee styles. I'm not personally drawn to magic or tanky playstyles. Unfortunately, for as much time as I've spent trying to make the agile, light armor blades style really sing, light armor meleeing strikes me as a gimped flavor choice (with the light armor tree not really offering much in the way of flavor), which is pretty disappointing.

 

A lot of these requests require the game to be more "twichy". Now I am not for or against it but I would throw something out there for people who may not be up to date in this world of an aging baby boomer population. Accessibility is hitting city, state and gov really hard. I mean really hard. There are lots of laws on the books. This game clearly has an older player base. Unscientific surveys here show us all on average in our 40's. Even now in this game a lot of people do not PvP because its actually pretty twitchy in this game (at least the best players). We should be careful when it comes to being twichy, leave that to Call of Duty (which I used to utterly kick but at but now I cant as I age).

example, I was a big EQ1 fan. I started playing EQ2 when it came up as a rogue and it was ridiculous. There were all kinda of skill buttons on the bar for things like "avoid from behind". I hated it and quit, just to much micro management for trying to kill a monster.

Doing more advanced stuff like this would also require significantly more hot bar space for skills. I have never used any of the "hit on dodge/perry" like skills because I just dont have the space. I can barely get 3-4 attack skills on my main bar today.

 

@2112Starman

Combat needs to be more tactical, but not more twitchy, IMO. Twitch I think would be defined as combat needing immediate reaction from the player to stay on foot. I think what makes PvP feel a bit twitchy is that a lot of combat at the high end feels like a DPS race, so basically you're looking to do more DPS than you're taking, this puts players in the position of trying to heavily min/max the numbers. Its not really IMO because there's too much active tactical choices required of players.

 

If we have bone armor that is like a light armor that behaves a bit like a heavy armor, why don't we have a heavy armor that behaves like a light armor ? I present "Mithril". We need it. Get it done devs !

 

Though light armor with slightly more robust stats or heavy armor with a little less handicap doesn't address the large discrepancy between the clear worthwhileness of the heavy armor tree vs. the anemic state of the sparsely developed light armor tree.