Post an Idea for the Combat System

Lets get the ball rolling on just posting short ideas for what might improve the combat or make it more fun.

Don't go crazy on detail, keep it simple. An idea doesn't have to fix all of the combat woes. Just post something you'd find fun or useful for combat.


For me:

Natural Combos. Make skills react to conditions or other abilities more naturally.

i.e.. Ground Smash could jump to, and deal extra damage to knocked down enemies. A good natural combo with any knock down ability on yourself or on an ally.

 

Well, there is no way around: "Change it so that you don't need to ever look at the bar if you're very familiar with your character and build".

 

Fatality finishing moves, like beheadings, impalement, incinerations.

also, maybe non fatal finishing moves that could end a duel without killing your opponent.
edit:
it would be nice to be able to move your glyphs and combos around in your bar. or maybe move combos automatically to the lowest or highest number sort of like a priority.

Special moves that reset other peoples hot bar (chaos tree PvP only)

 

ok, maybe for hot bar, the numbers can be set to categories. still random but for example, you could set 1 -3 as fire school, 9 as focus, etc. this would be priority only, so if your draw doesn't fit the bill it just comes on as normal.

 

I like Destroying Angel's opinion, but hope it's not so brutal as he decribes!
Certain finishing move adaptation would do nicely just like 'Conan online' implemented a while ago.
Current combat movement seems so light. It's like hitting air with a sword.

 

yeah maybe its a bit much, i played a lot of mortal kombat as a kid. also i hope that post didnt get me put on any watch lists...

+1

 

I play Mortal Kombat myself LOL. I'm expecting MKX coming out next month!

 

I don't have any ideas atm other than what I've suggested in the past. I don't know whether they're worth repeating, but just in case anyone's interested.

An Attack/Defense toggle, where you can switch from an auto-attack to an auto-block, the value of which will depend on what you have equipped in your hands and what you're trying to accomplish. It would make a shield useful for active defense, and turn off auto-attack for archery.

More utility arrows and consumables for stealth characters, and the ability to do combos between consumables & magic.

Better AI for enemies so they act more intelligently, plus equipment to reflect what they're fighting with. An elf archer should have arrows on his body, useful for a player archer to pick up on killing him, and he should have limited arrows, relying on hand-to-hand in short range. Enemies calling for help, or deciding to let you fight one-on-one, depending on the circumstances. The more enemies act intelligently, the less grindy the game will feel.

 

Some suggestions:

1. Counters/Blocks. Skills like Parry and Dodge shouldn't up your DR for one hit but rather increase parry chance or evasion (duh) for X seconds. Making it so it lowers damage taken on the next hit for 10s is meaningless; by the time the cooldown finishes you'd already been hit 1-2 times, meaning you still took damage (albeit not as much) and wasted the opportunity to dish out damage in the interim.

2a. Normal Hotbar. The card system is a novelty at best and will grow old quickly for the majority of players. It's leftovers from when the game was a handheld phone app where you'd use your finger. The card system will not retain players going post-launch.

2b. Skill-Specific Hotkeys. If we cannot have a normal hotbar to make the game more appealing in the long term, then hotkeying abilities to specific keys would be better. This way, at a glance, you can see if something came up and can hit the hotkey for it - the same one, every time. "1" is always "Off-Hand Attack", whether it's up or not. If it isn't, nothing happens. This way I don't have to: look at the hotbar to see if the ability is available; see what number it's attached to from 1-0; press that key which changes every other second. It's whack-a-mole right now and it's lame.

3. Meaningful CC. Instead of just "I mezzed you, nuclear launch detected" or "I knock you down fo- oh, wait, you're back up again," have the trips, knockdowns and the like do more than just act as a speedbump for 1.5 seconds or take you out of the fight until the Second Ice Age. Knockdowns should discard 1-3 cards immediately, for example. They should be tactical and brief, to create openings, not just slow you down or take you out of the fight indefinitely.

4. Natural Combos. To build off of this, ArcheAge had a fantastic system. If cards are available - say Double Slash and Thrust - then you could hit Double Slash and Thrust would still be usable. If you hit Thrust immediately after, then you'd go into another "double slash" (for the Quadruple Slash combo).

5. Reagents. Cheap reagents with a single reg required at the bare minimum for all spells.

 

Button combo fatalities.

 

Combo and glyph stacking buttons, so my eyes and fingers stay at the right locations more offen.

 

Just updating this post and the others listed below with a quote from DarkStarr. Short version: They acknowledge the current combat is problematic but as of yet haven’t had time to get around to it. But they are aware of this and do consider it to be an issue.

 

Improved Animations and sense of weight + balance, add more movement to it. It feels boring as **** now....

 

Set up some sort of cross sharing agreement with the Crowfall devs and use the Crowfall combat system.

 

While the deck system is quite refreshing i cannot stand drag and dropping cards onto each other. Its just too clunky.

What i suggest is to make a mechanic that lets you push and hold skill button and the longer you hold the more cards from the same type it picks from your hand to the corresponding held button slot skill. After such action player should have few spells under same button he held and will need to click it again to cast those few cards. It would also compensate the time that one would need to put into drag and dropping, while making people that are used to use a keyboard rather then mouse for card stacking happy.

 

Current mental meanderings on combat:
These are not exclusive systems and could be mixed as desired.
1. Three free locked hotkeys that can be used in combos; the rest work as is. This keeps your primary skills always there, but allows for combos and the feeling of adjusting fighting to the styles coming up.
2. Sounds for each style, so you can listen for your styles. This one could be one of those "better in your brain" ideas. The sounds could get intrusive if not done well, heh.
3. Styles are in two or three tier chains. So your base skills are tier one. Then advanced styles can only be used if your base skill successfully hits. A glyph for a style is actually a stack of two or three cards. If you pull off the first style, you can use the tier 2 style. If that hits, the powerful tier 3 style pops up in the same space. If it fails either the whole stack goes away or the first card pops back up on a short cool down. This will keep each encounter less predictable because you have to adjust based on your successful or unsuccessful styles. The combos would have to be reworked for this. Perhaps your primary three or four slots always have your skills of choice and each combo goes to one or 2 specific combo slots.

Mental wandering done. Back to the forest I go.

 

Being an avid support player in any game I play, I would love to see some support *pun intended* for healing roles. They've put some effort into making a life tree, which I find wonderful. I don't know what their stance is on healers, but in one way or another I think it brings fulfillment to the game. One way I could see the card system being improved is having a static single slot ability bar, maybe #1, that would have reduced cost, cool-down and whatnot as a locked bar. Having the card system is fun, but I think taking the best of both worlds and having hybrid bars being supported on a deeper level would be amazing.

 

Actually I think Crowfall will be a really cool game. I'm not sure how factions and guild wars will work in Shroud, but the whole concept of Order, Chaos, and Balance sounds really cool.

If wars have a win condition, having an Order vs Chaos might be interesting if there was a balance faction as well trying to keep the score even. If it ends up in a close tie between order vs chaos then Balance could get the win....

I'm not sure what they have planned, and I am not particularly one who advocates for reasons to pvp (i think pvp is reason enough in itself), however if there are battles with win conditions then why not have a third faction that is not loyal to either side, and just wants to keep the scale balanced, but have a shroud of the avatar way of implementing it though.

So I'm not sure what is meant by a combat system in this thread. I offer this as a pvp type combat system. However I like how the deck works, all though it does need an auto stack feature.

 

Here is an idea, K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid)
On your action bar you have skill sets. A different set of abilites for each action button 1, 2, 3 ....
Those sets would be what action will my character do when I press Mouse button 1 or button 2
The complexity comes in with mouse aiming and no tab target locks.
The variety comes from how you set your skills up in your character build.
For instance, a standard fighter with a sword and shield could have set 1 setup to Parry on mouse button 1 and Shield Bash on mouse button 2, then if needed could swap to set 2 for taunts or heals etc.