Chris' Release 8 Ramblings!

Yes, I think this is the current mechanic to sidestep the issue to some degree.

 

Because i dont have access to play right now. So i cant record videos of gameplay.

Anyway, i dont understand you very well, first you said:

So, i replied how i think the focus tree actually helps specialized play styles to exist. And then you said:

So i dont get your point. Do you think that focused builds are viable? What do you meant by "pure" archers?.

Remember that what we have now is only rough balance to get the system fun. There are a lot of core elements missing that will impact very much the combat: Stats, deck swap (i am against it), combos, complete skills trees, etc...

 

I think there is a single tree that is viable currently, and developer self-admitted, swords. So a pure "melee" fighter. Pure "archer" would be someone who is very ranged, to the point of getting mostly "ranged" attacks instead of jabs and sword stabs when the distance is closed and your ranged attacks are less effective or reduced etc...

I feel they need to extend that to the other areas, but not at the cost of making something like focus a "must have" skill tree.

I just voiced my opinion on the focus tree in the combat hangout, my exact IRC messages when it was being discussed:

Violation will most likely post the notes soon enough, or you can watch the entire hangout as well

The point is, focus becomes the innate ability that it should be to reflect your "skill" and "knowledge" in the areas (other skill trees) that you "focus".

You should have a separate pool of points to put into that "tree" outside of the deck.

Perfect example is the fact that Focus, as a "tree", has ZERO cards, just innate abilities.

Cheers.

 

I see your point now Joviex. But i like the Deck "random" system, so i disagree.

 

Chris,


Frist off thanks for this, So just for my own clarification as it stands now your able to lock skills, is this gonna remain ?
After watched the video, and how you guys are using this to help prevent gold farmers, I can say grate job, there all-most nutting more, i cant stand in a game than gold sellers farmers.. they ruin most games economics.

 

Latency is a function of distance first and foremost. Network quality can only worsen your latency, not improve it. Assuming the servers are in Austin, it's at least 100 ms to anywhere in Europe - and that's mostly in the coastal France/UK corridor where the vast majority of the undersea cables land. With the company I work for, our Houston office normally logs 110 ms to our London office and 125 ms to our Santiago one - and that's a private network without Internet overhead. Austin's better connected than Houston, but it's also a few hundred miles further - from the trans-Atlantic cables to Europe, at least.

 

great update on the balance!

first of all, im a fan of the combat deck system.

But now a question what makes our brains go even more "BOOM".
How do you handle NPCs when you look on combat decks, lets say you try to balance a "boss encounter" what should be challenging, where your group needs to coordinate well to survive. When the fight should be close at the end of a fight, and you arent that lucky with your cards popping up in your deck it can be easiely be frustrating when you have to try it again and again until you are lucky enough.

Will NPCs use combat decks too? in that case it seems impossible to balance a fight right?

thanks for reading, just wanted to hear your thoughts on this and sorry for my english.

best regards,
Rick

 

Yeah, I kinda agree with you here, 'focus training' is so essential to all competitive character builds that it deserves its own separate UI section and possibly even a separated "experience bar" with different scaling like you're suggesting.

 

Yeah I can get behind focus having it's own separate skill points.. so on level up you can invest points in that separate to your combat/crafting points.

The one thing we would be missing is an old, old wooden ship, known as diversity - in focus only.. which might not be a bad thing. On the other hand those that don't want many focus or want a ton of focus skills might find the system unappealing.


Overall I think the issue of using a bow and not having a ranged attack comes up Only if you have a very random deck with few ranged attacks in it, not a good deck. Likely what I expect is more deck switching, you'll go for your ranged bow deck, and you'll get what you need within 3 skills, (or just auto attack if you don't want to wait for a skill). Using a bow to hunt; patience is the key, you are always waiting with something in sight, waiting for the right shot this is VERY realistic in that sense. You aren't going to just start shooting as soon as you see someone, if you want to inflict maximum damage you wait till you can get a good shot at the heart.


This comes down to, why are you thinking of (using the deck) for melee when you are at ranged? we should be using multiple decks once we get higher level and switching them for circumstances. I expect out of combat deck swaps are free, and with assigned hotkeys. I'll likely hit F1 and my melee deck comes up, F2 and ranged, F3 and my fire deck comes up, F4 and my healing.. etc... I don't expect much changing once we get in combat, likely just 1 switch if circumstances change. If you have a ranged deck it should be designed to keep enemies at range while you shoot, melee should be about breaking roots and closing distances to keep in melee range..


Right now to be effective in combat you likely need 5-10 of your 80 points spent in focus, and if you really want control/certaintity of what you have more like 20 in focus... In my brief experience, anyway.. I didn't get a lot of R8 playtime in. So I still think it's best left up to player preference. You probably wont notice it so much if they bump us up to like 180 skill points in R9. So we can diversify and build more custom decks without changing out skill points.

 

Then make it wider. IOW, add more "entry" level skills, dont just make it deeper/longer.

Have some "aspect" appealing to everyone to "focus" their builds.

I see focus as the system tweak point for the "class" I want to play really.

Fast draw? AGI/DEX
Wider selection bar choices? INT/WIS
Slower fade time? CON

How about something to "command" or call up certain marked skills when needed? CHA/LDR
Or at least an ability to increase the "pull chance" on certain cards? 5%, 10%, 15%...etc for each point invested? LCK/INT/WIS
Maybe increase the "multiplier" of cards (you are "focusing afterall")? STR/WIL/CON

etc...

Since the cards are the "abilities", focus feels like the central area for how you manipulate said abilities, i.e. the class (use case).

Hence my argument to split it away from the "deck" and make it a separate skill point sink.

 

It's nice that we can have multiple decks, but any given deck will rely on corresponding skill allocations. In the final game, will we be able to have multiple sets of skill allocations that we can switch between? For example, can I have one for ranged, one for sneaking, one for close quarters sword combat, etc? As a specific example, if I build a deck for ranged/sneak, I might not want to waste skill points on sword skills. (I'm relying on memory here, so if I've misunderstood how it works feel free to correct me.)

 

I think the idea is specifically to have you allocate points you can't use in every deck. For the moment, the idea is to avoid having a max level, so reaching level 80 will only give you more flexibility, ie. you can have more decks, but not more powerful decks.

I think that's what they mean by "soft level cap" (you can always level up, but at some point it'll mean playing 1000h for just one level), as opposed to "hard level cap", which is the WoW way (there is a max level to reach and that's it).

That's my understanding but I don't think this either the exact plan or the definitive plan (and please tell me if I obviously got it wrong )

 

I dont like haveing multiple decks

 

specialize means for example building your char all around fire tree

 

Apparently I'm missing out on this racquetball phenomenon...

 

Chris,

Thanks; solid explanation for the 'why' behind the decks.
I had very little time to try R8 and fell off the learning curve. (I've had 'real world' distractions for months; but this last one...was a doozy.) Still, I made a real effort to make many mistakes (jump off buildings, back into walls, people, animals, drop items, etc.). This included running into bands of elves in the woods and getting repeatedly slaughtered. Yay! Yes, this is not a complaint; I was trying to idiot-test some aspects. Since I didn't know the system, I couldn't help but be an idiot at combat.

Your raquetball example is good. I've a very small bit of experience with H-to-H combat, and many acquaintances with much more (fencers, senior black belts, police). They all report a triple-level scaling of performance. Level Zero, you think about what you are doing. This puts you in the slow response -- it's fine for all amateurs, it works if your action fits the circumstances and the other guy is NOT an expert. Level One, you have a small set of conditioned responses. When the right triggers are presented (i.e. conditions), you are extremely competent; otherwise, they don't activate and you're at Level Zero. Level Two, you have a large set of conditioned responses whose triggers (conditions) mostly overlap. Then you blend from one to the other with a minimum of delay and are extremely competent; but you still can get caught out if you hit something you've never trained for or experienced. Also, no move is perfect (as in, once started, unbeatable); there always is a countermove -- but you have to start the countermove before the move is 'finished', and get ahead of the attacker.

Any time you have to think "what happened?", you lose several beats. That's enough time to lose a match, take the hit, fail the block, drop the shot, etc..

Some moves are "pure" countermoves and thus are 'rare'. For example, Norimi is the counterthrow to Ogoshi. You don't use Norimi unless and until your attacker starts to throw you Ogoshi. But if you then throw Norimi, the attacker will end up in the final pin-and-choke while still trying to figure out just why their throw, has them on the ground beside you. (I speak from solid experience in rondori as to this precise point.)

The sense that I got (but couldn't get the time in to test) was that carrying the 'rare' card in a locked position made sense when from the situational origin, you expected the range of attacks which include the trigger for that card. Carrying 'ranged' attacks for sword-melee, made sense if you expected a 'Gust'.

I'm hoping for a chance in R9 to get some real play-time in to test more sensible efforts.

 

Hm.. I suggested at some point that the Focus tree would basically be compatible with a rogue's skill wheel. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...rs-sneeking-here-for-a-sec.10588/#post-179114 I wasn't able to work out the concept, though.

There was also some discussion a while back about whether Magic and Combat skills should have different XP bars.