I Hate Card combat.

I'm so sorry I've tried it and I hate it. Currently I'm using locked deck system and I find it dull. I'm not sure why this system is being used in a mmoorpg bit isn't it why we have mtg and yugio? Am I the only one who feels this way if so call me crazy.

Also I really really miss usage based skulls but you really had something there in Ultima online.

They say the devs listen it's why I'm posting here.

 

It doesn't really sound like you've tried it at all if you're actually comparing it to card battle games. A completely locked deck is more or less the same as any other MMO with abilities on a hot bar.

Card battle games pit card vs card. That isn't what is happening here. It's simply that cards/decks are sadly the best analogy we have.

 

This is absolutely nothing like MTG and Yugio. I really am at a loss how anyone who has actually used the system can even make that statement. I wouldn't even call it card combat. If you're using a locked bar and not random glyphs, then you didn't even try the system.

Usage based skills promote macroing unattended. Combat can also be macroed as well.

 

Can you be more specific about your criticism? "X feature is bad" is not useful feedback. (Alternatively, how would you expect the developers to respond to your complaint?)

 

I didn't think anybody who tried the decks ever decided that locked was the way to go, other than having to keep an eye on the bar it is better in every way.

 

Hi and welcome olddog. I hear your first thoughts on combat. Many had the same concerns when the combat first came in, and truly it hasn't been all that long since it has come in.
I don't think the deck/glyph system is going anywhere. Hopefully you can give it some more tries.

I play mostly PVE for crafting and rollplaying. The combat system will be evolving and added to more and more. At this time for me it is best to wear augmented plate, lock a heal, and pulling spell that burns, I use fire arrow and loveto punch them in the face with fire fist(well joking about in the face, although that would look cool).

One thing I really like about this system is the surprises, no one knows what you will do next, even you at times. It is an adreniline rush, and sometimes you have to move around, get behind things, run in circles, stand on your head, (Just joking on that too, but it might look cool). Right click removes slugs and unwanted attacks or whatever quickly from your hand.

I don't think consumables and buffs need in the deck and the light spell though. There does need to be a non combat section, if we want light we should have it.

So I'm not sure how much you have played, but I do hope you can keep watching the game a bit, to me some things are so very special about this game and what it will have.

For a very small example, We will have treasure hunting, fishing that will be special, secrect doors/passages, so many interactive items, items that you can place on the ground, mysteries to solve. Right now not much if any content is in, it is barebones, so hard to get a true pickture sometimes of how amazing the game will be. The quests won't be quests like anyothers. You will be questing with choices that affect the virtues of your character. You chose how to complete the quest. They will have interesting and immersive stories to them. So best of the best to you always. **cheers**

 

Old Dogg huh.....you wouldn't be one of the Basement Boys from way back when would ya???

 

Sorry I should have clarified a few things better. I keep getting swamped by monster because I always have to watch my screen to see if I have an attack ready. I feel like it's difficult to ballance fighting and screen watching for my card draws.

I'm a bit older I will admit mabey this is a young man's game.

 

Sorry haz I have no idea what your talking about. And Bloodgood I'm sorry you feel that way.

 

I've found one thing that helps me is to not focus so much on one thing or another. I've got 4 locked abilities and 4 random. I know if they're dark I have no target selected in range.. when they light up.. bam. It's not unlike driving a car. You keep your eyes on the road but you glance quickly at the mirror or console to see what you need then back to the road. Same basic skill.

Everyone is a little different. So far that's what is working for me.

 

You have two choices. You can either constantly dart your eyes back and forth between user interface and the mob as intended OR button mash. The good part about button mashing is that you don't have to be CONSTANTLY reminded that you are playing a video game because you aren't looking at a hotbar every 5 seconds like you are raiding in World of Warcraft with a bunch of addons. I highly recommend the latter because it's not as random.

 

Hey there Old Dog, I used to play Day of defeat, Team Fortress and Counter Strike with a friend named Old Dog, and since it appears you just came on board I thought maybe you came thru Steam, and you might be an old friend....instead, maybe you'll be a new friend. I'm an old man as well, 59....just waiting for the big six zero. Not that it really matters much, still feel like I'm half that age (until I look at all my grandsons, got 7 of 'em).

What the guys here are saying, is it will take a bit of time to get used to things. The battle hotbar is different than anything I've used in the past and at times is a bit frustrating, but can't allow it to screw with ya. It's only as hard as you want it to be. Example: My bar has 3 locked glyphs, Healing ray, healing touch and root. The rest are dynamic. When you create your deck, you use only as many glyphs as you need to use to get to the minimum amount required. Those should be the glyphs that provide the most damage so they pop up more often. There are exceptions of course but at this point it's not important, as you get proficient with using them and building decks, most of the exceptions will become clear to you.

With the right glyphs in place, it really is about mashing (clicking on) the correct glyph. If you have your best damage glyphs in place, hell, just hit them when they are available. After doing that for awhile, you'll begin to recognize which glyph is which out of the corner of your eye, and be able to chose what you want to hit the baddie with. It really does become easier and much more cohesive as you get used to it. I will part with one bit of info that I have said in numerous posts......do not stand still when fighting. Stick and move, stick and move. Step thru the baddie so you are behind him to hit him with the most damage. If you keep moving you will also take less damage.

For me it is easier than for some. As an old man who has had numerous accidents thru out his life (don't get me started), my hands don't always work the way I want them too, so I came up with a solution. I bought, years ago, a logitech G13 game pad. It has 3 pad keys and 22 available keys to program to whatever you want. That gives me 66 things I can program the keys to do, it also has a small thumb joystick. I use it with my left hand, controlling my movement with my left thumb and targeting and going in and out of war mode with my left hand. A few of the keys are programmed to do certain things, but right now, at this stage of the game, I use my mouse, in my right hand, to click on the battle icons to attack. It makes it easier to stack glyphs, and when the time comes for me to do combos, I'll set a key to the "R" command and click with the mouse.

If you see me in game, give a holler my friend, I'm no expert, but I am enjoying myself and would like to see you enjoying yourself as well. Haz Mac in game.

 

I'd like to point out the dev's know the current interface for the Glyph system is less than optimal and they are working on other GUI's for it. They haven't got one ready for a release so it's tough to say if they're close to having something that works.

I have to agree with others who've pointed out that just complaining about things you don't like without offering a viable solution isn't likely to get the results you want. For that matter it helps for you to know yourself what results would make you happy.

I agree the standard hotbar style from other games and the locked deck is boring, that's why Portalarium is trying something new. I highly support Bowen's suggestions for using a Hybrid deck and learning to have a good sense of the peripheral actions on screen. Back in the day we'd call that having good situational awareness.

The random Glyph system really does reward having the skill to take advantage of the opportunities offered without it being strictly fast twitch muscle memory. Being able to design a deck that allows you to have the opportunity to keep a stacked glyph or stacked combo ready for use in a situation where it has maximum effect and the skill to actually achieve that in combat are two different and complimentary skills. Skills that are exciting and rewarding to successfully pull off.

But as always YMMV
Batoche

 

The locked bar of skills at the bottom of the screen really isn't "card combat" so that is why I was confused what you were talking about.

That has been a standard in many computer games and RPGs, MMOs in particular since World of Warcraft came out 10 years ago. However if you've never played WoW or a game like it, I guess it is new to you and takes some getting used to.

A locked bar you don't need to watch or look at all after a while. You'll get a feel for what skill is what number, and how long the cool-down is. In fact, some people record a macro that just executes a "rotation" of those numbered skills in the most mathematically precise way to maximize their damage per second (DPS). You just then press one button to execute your rotation. I think that is practically akin to cheating, or no fun at the least.

SotA offers 3 options.

1. Locked bar, which is the easiest to play. This may be hard for you now, but I think once you keep at it for a bit and memorize what skill is where and when it comes off cool-down.
2. Random glyphs. This is harder to play and does require you to watch your bar and the screen at the same time. Again, that is a learned skill from playing games like these over time. Don't worry if you don't get it immediately. Since the glyphs pop in random order, you're not sure what skill will be in whatever slot. This mode allows combos and I think it makes combat more dynamic and enjoyable. Since it is more difficult, you are rewarded with lower focus costs for skills (though you also penalized with slugs).
3. Hybrid allows you to lock a few skills in select slots and allow the other slots to fill with random ones.

 

I'm not a huge fan of the rotating deck combat, which is why I have a locked deck. I prefer to have a set skill list that I can call upon. I found it very awkward to have skills disappearing and slugs showing up in their place. Felt far too chaotic to me. I think the locked deck is a good way to start, I just don't like the Focus penalty you get. That to me seems backwards. Seems like casting/using the same skill over and over would require less Focus than constantly changing. I've seen several mentions of the hybrid deck, so I might try that out for R13. I'm not a magic user and prefer the melee approach. Maybe a rotating deck lends itself better to casting magic.

As I mentioned, I think the big problem with the rotating deck are the slugs. You may need to lock the deck at lower levels so you know you can make a hit, then change up to a rotating deck once you have more skill points and negate the slug factor. It's still highly experimental and there has been a lot of feedback. I hated it the first release it came out. I didn't even use combat for one release I hated it so much. Then the skill tree improved and I locked my skills. I've been pretty happy with it since then. Locked may not be the best strategy so I will keep experimenting. I have my glyphs lined up 1-6 in how I like to attack with Double Swing first, Thrust second, Rend third, etc. I try to start with a Double Swing to the back of the head if I can get away with it, then go down the line.

May not be the best layout, but I can kill things

As an aside, I used to think of them as cards and it made me "hostile" toward it. When I thought of them as "glyphs" and "skills" I warmed up to how they worked. Seems trivial, but getting away from the "Yu-Gi-Oh" did help in liking the system.

 

Card combat hates YOU.

 

I tried the auto deck the first time yesterday and it was quite fun. There is certainly a random risk and reward element to it which is pretty cool. Only time will tell if I stay with it, but it is a really neat way to mix combat up! No more muscle memory.

What I am still trying to figure out is how the skills work with the deck and how the number of slugs is picked. I noticed that the size of the deck varies based on the skill choices, but I am missing the connection. There will definitely need to be more in-game instruction on how these things work. I am sure it is trivial once you "get it".

 

Welcome to Shroud of the Avatar Tahru.

 

There seem to be at least two factors that affect slugs I can tell.

1 - Armor. Wearing heavy armor restricts you, so you get slugs from that. There is a skill in the heavy armor tree to reduce this and I highly recommend maxing that with 5 points in that skill.
2 - Minimum deck size. This one is a bit odd. I get that if you intentionally had a small deck, you reduce the random factor and can more easily control what skills come up when, so they want to somewhat force you into larger decks. As you level up, you have a higher minimum deck size and if there aren't enough glyphs in your deck, you get slugs as a punishment. In a way, this punishes you for leveling up. But when you level up, you do get skill points to buy more glyphs.

 

Why bother with it? I don't use it? I only plan to use it when I play as a chaos mage.

You can use locked glyphs and I never run out of mana. There are some great builds too. This game offers lots of choices. IF you dont like it simply do not use it.