Why MMO Combat Sux!

In my opinion, there's a very loud and vocal group of people that want as much twitch as possible because that gives them a competitive advantage over the majority of gamers, not because it's fair or competitive. I agree that moving around a lot is "fun" but that's only until I fight someone with a connection speed that makes my chances of winning about 80% less likely. Then moving around is no longer "fun" and instead it's horribly frustrating and stupid.

So to answer your question about combat, no of course it doesn't mean we have to have a turn based combat system. It means that if we don't have turn based elements we'll have a combat system that is unbalanced, horribly frustrating and stupid.

For example:

 

You were fortunate then.. I frequently had 500ms-1000ms pings.. PVP was no fun for me. (this was '99-2003) I lived in a small town in AZ, played on pacific, had dial-up.

 

Yea, Ultima Online was a nightmare if you had a bad ping. The main reason for that was that every square you moved required confirmation from the server that you were occupying the new square, so the faster you got confirmation the faster you could issue another move order. The result was that people with a really low ping could actually move around the map faster than people with a high ping. A notable speed advantage is so devastatingly powerful in PvP that that made a real mess of things for people with a slow connection.

Personally I'm still a bit sad that they didn't continue refining and improving upon all the good stuff they figured out in Tabula Rasa. Elderscrolls Online basically uses a variant of the Tabula Rasa system, it doesn't feel as smooth as TR, but it still shows a lot of improvements that make me go "I really wish someone would continue developing in this direction".

 

I agree.

The combat system is failing...The gamers are speaking loudly and clearly. We are tired of decade old combat systems in MMO's.

Shroud is not bringing anything new to the table. Randomized glyphs... Please... This is just going to make it at best, slightly different. It gives players even less control of a situation we already feel is lacking in control.

 

Well, that's kinda true?

So, lets break some stuff down, and admittedly some of this is from memory so it may have changed since I heard it.

The servers will be one central, but they're for match making. The instances will be hosted off the initial local players machine. If they leave, it falls down the line. It's ingenious in some ways, but it does mean if someone's hosting is going wonky, it probably will suffer. I'm betting (but have no confirmation) that some of that behind the scenes match making will be based on ping, and if it's not, it needs to be.

As for broken combat killing the game. Absolutely.

I know a lot of people point at U7 and say "It had bad combat, and many people love U7". Yes, but U7's combat was passive. It really didn't ask you to be part of it. That was what made it bad. It wasn't annoying, it just wasn't there. This system demands you be part of it (if you're going to have any combat in your play style at all). You can't ignore it. If you don't like it, it will drive you away.

 

Oh, man. Playing a mage post-AOS on 150+ was awful, and to everyone with <50 you were "bad/a n00b/<insert insult here>".

 

I had to dial into UO.

And this was the first time i did nit like living not in the city.


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Thanks for the video Marcello. It reminded me that I have been doing all my battles Solo-Player Online with an uncapped fiber-optic connection. I have no lag during battles so I was always happy when SoTA would make one of the creatures move, like the elf ranged fighters. I guess others are experiencing a lot of lag. I only have lag in Adoris and Owlshead when a lot of people are present. I am also going to get a new PC in 4 weeks to replace my old clunker. I am not going to say how much it costs because people will either say I am crazy or stupid. I will stop asking for the creatures to move around a lot. Maybe I will do a little more crafting for awhile. I also intend to ask SoTA if there is any repetitive work I can do for them for free that could utilize my new PC.

 

Creatures moving isn't too much of an issue. It's an issue in a FPS because they require precision shots, for us, we'll have them targeted so they can move and we can be a bit behind without a huge issue. I'm for both creatures moving, and creatures having attacks that require we move (They just need to have a "charge up" so we have time to respond/deal with lag)

 

Just to be clear, instanceing doesn't speed up a server per say, it more provides an opportunity for a dedicated server. The net server usage is still the same. What it can save is the size of data packets that have to be sent to each client. If you are in a city zone with 100 players, the server is sending a packet that is a city plus 100 players long, 100 times! If you are in a basement with one player, your packets are smaller. Most MMOS want a lot of people to be together, so in general the instances are more for client keep up speed as net packet sizes for the server will generically stay the same, at least relatively.