Watching my deck, not the screen -- oops!

Discussion in 'Skills and Combat' started by FanofIolo, Feb 2, 2015.

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  1. FanofIolo

    FanofIolo Avatar

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    Playing a mage type, when attacked by a mob, I am so engrossed with stacking and combining the glyphs appearing in my deck that I sometimes find myself firing off spells without once looking up at the screen. Yesterday at the control point at Brightbone Pass, I was fighting with a party against a hoard of skeleton mages. When I finally looked up, all the skeletons were down, and I discovered I was firing spells against a friendly player from another party. :confused:
     
  2. no_excuses_its_released

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    OK, I'll agree it's a distraction, but once you get the hang of it, it's not hard to split your attention between the two.
     
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  3. Barnabas Znick

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    May as well play Tetrus, it's about as random.
     
  4. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    It is a little frustrating I agree, but like everything it just takes a little practice. My gripe with it is that it takes away from being able to watch what's happening, much to your point FanofIolo.
     
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  5. Barnabas Znick

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    I realize it takes practice to learn it, but it doesn't make it good. :(
     
  6. Manerd

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    I think that if we could move the combat bar we could place it where we could see it and the screen better.
     
  7. Duke Death-Knell

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    LOL...same problem here. I found myself wondering why all my glyphs grayed out only to realize all the mobs were dead.

    Or I look up and there's like a gang of mobs beating me to .....dag gone I died.
     
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  8. smack

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    Yeah, they've still got a long ways to solve the usability problem of bringing a turn-based card combat game into real-time action combat. I don't think we're going to see much progress in this area for quite some time though.
     
  9. Duke Death-Knell

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    Well what gets me is all the stacking and combo's. I'm always staring at my glyphs looking to stack. Then to use a combo I have to look down to hit "R" then drag and drop the one glyph onto the other. Not a very intuitive operation.
     
  10. smack

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    Yeah, in addition to the current design, where you build a stack or a combo and leave it your deck until you're ready to use it, they should also allow the option for dynamic stacks/combos. Execute two Fire Arrows in a row? Same as a 2-stack Fire Arrow. Execute a Fire Arrow and a Death Decay in sequence? Same as a Fiery Decay. Doesn't have to be exact, but something along those lines to mix it up and give us more gameplay options.
     
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  11. By Tor

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    Out of my many gripes against card combat.. focusing on the card minigame and not the game itself is my main complaint.

    Maybe instead of putting it in the standard mmo-style hotbar at the bottom, it could be translucent in the middle of the screen..? That way you would see the randomized glyphs and the action in-game simultaneously. They could even have a slider where you could adjust the opacity to your liking.
     
  12. Albus

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    Nice idea, would be interesting to test out and as you say with options to change the look, in keeping with Manerd's post
     
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  13. Duffrey Blake

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    I remember that Richard and Chris wanted SotA to have a minimalistic UI free of all the clutter. I still hope we currently have the exact opposite just because it's pre alpha and better for testing the system. Once SotA is live, i don't want to see glyps, bars, floating numbers etc. all the time as in every other wowish mmorpg.
     
  14. By Tor

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    I'm all for a minimalistic UI as well..and not a fan of card combat. Since its here to stay though, I thought that a transparent and movable hotbar may solve the problem of focusing too much on card combat instead of what's going on above it. This transparent bar would only appear during combat just like the fixed bar does now.
     
  15. Tahru

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    What if combinations options just appear in a bar above the hot bar so there's no effort to combine them nor memorize how to construct them.
     
  16. Sir Seir

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    We keep asking to push the UI up onto the screen, maybe someday...I play the toolbar minigame too much as well.
     
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  17. TheMadHermit

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    That's exactly how I see it. Glad I'm not alone.
     
  18. Morkul

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    Once I stopped to use the mouse for making combos it was much easier to keep control of what happening on the screen.
     
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  19. KuBaTRiZeS

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    I'm glad this topic keeps coming up, because it's one my main worries. It's true you can get used to combine glyphs and look at the screen (a bit) using hotkeys, but the attention it draws is still too much. I'd like to see a movable UI, but i also think the skill management time must be reduced (for example, making the glyph stacking something that happens automatically if you left two copies of the same skill in the hotbar for 2 seconds or so) and sequential combo implementation could be great (i use A skill, then i use B skill, B skill has an extra effect because it's been used immediately after A).

    Nonetheless, i'm also with Smack and TheMadHermit... i also think it's going to be a while until combat gets polished; there are other stuff to be done, and i'm happy with the current goal being "add all the core mechanics" while fixing major issues. After that, maybe we see flawed-but-functional systems fixed.
     
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  20. High Baron Asguard

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    I really fear this is what will sink the game and prevent the rest of the chapters being made
     
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