Combat Feedback

Hello. I wanted to give my feedback about the game as it is now. It is amazing how much it has changed for the better since the first couple releases! I can tell you guys are passionate about the game. However, I am worried about combat. Here is an example of my experience:

I am exploring a beautifully designed and inspiring country side. I was sent here by a villager that had a very intriguing story about the undead. I find a secret path and search for what treasures may be hidden. Uh-oh, a skeleton! He attacks, time to defend myself! Okay.. walk up to the skeleton, aaaaaaand time for the card matching minigame. Look at the bottom of my screen and play match the cards. No good cards yet... Okay this is a good one but lets wait for it's match. There it is, drag and drop-Yay a match. Okay, now wait for another match. Look up at my health bar, still alive. Look back down at the bottom of my screen. There's a match! Drag, drop, click. Repeat until whatever it was that I was "fighting" (I forget what it is since I'm only looking at the action bar and not the actual combat) is dead.

I really am enjoying SotA, until I have to fight something. With the current combat system, any immersion built up from the other aspects of the game is brutally shattered. I find that the random glyphs and combo-making forces me to focus on the action bar for the duration of battle and I end up standing in one spot, playing "match the cards". I apologize that I don't have a better system to suggest to replace it, but please make combat more immersive and in-line with the rest of your well crafted game.

(I understand that you can lock glyphs, but doing so seems to cause your damage output to decrease)

 

The penalties for a locked bar were removed in R20.

I though the penalties were fair because a locker bar has a massive advantage and they need to be balanced for PvP. People seem to want the easier system, and be rewarded for the easier system, punishing anyone who uses the glyph system. I don't understand why we've decided punishing one group of players in PvP is good design.

I play with random glyphs because I genuinely like the system. But I build a good deck so anything that comes up is useful. And if I know I might be entering a dangerous area, I have my sword drawn ahead of time so my bar is always full of glyphs before I enter combat.

Don't blame the system for being broken if you're not leveraging it properly.

 

I set the combo button to my middle mouse. (Defaults to R) I only glance down occasionally to hold middle mouse and press the number keys to combine. Otherwise, I'm pushing right mouse and WASD to maneuver or chase ranged enemies. All while tapping or holding left mouse to attack. I don't need to look at the hotbar any more than my health bar.

Try using the combo hot key instead of drag and drop. Saves a crazy amount of time.

 

enderandrew: I wasn't implying that the current system is broken or too hard. It just seems out of place and breaks the immersion of the game.

Solstar: Thank you, I'll try changing the combo key and see if that helps to reduce the amount of attention required on the action bar.

 

It did for me. Now I just need to get better at deck building so I can better anticipate what will pop up where. I found leaving blank hot keys defaults to any card in your deck being drawn, which is utter chaos for me.

 

It just a common refrain I hear from others. I shouldn't have ascribed it to you.

It seems there are people who aren't used to this style of game and struggle with glancing at a hotbar and watching the action. If you've played WoW or a game like it over the years, it is a learned skill you've picked up along the way. Eventually though your rotation of skills and cooldowns becomes rote. You have to get exceptionally efficient and just perform the exact same rotation over and over again as quickly as you can.

I was doing Nightmare Operations in SWTOR half asleep. The game literally bored me to sleep at the most difficult while my guild was getting server firsts.

The glyph system is very refreshing for people who've spent years with a traditional hotbar and grown bored of it. I love that SotA affords players the choice between the two along with a hybrid.

 

The WoW hotbar system is so bad. It literally makes me want to avoid combat as I simply cannot stand such a system anymore. It is so done to death. Just pushing 1 2 3 4 rinse and repeat. How is this exciting? I really wonder why such a system was introduced into this game.
The card system was at least a little bit different and something new. But now that the penalties for the locked system have been removed most people will play with the locked system as it is easier to use. But this does hurt the game. As now combat isn't something unique or interesting, it is a boring WoW clone. Sorry to say that.

 

Would SWTOR be better if your hotbar abilities randomly appeared in different places? It just seems like an artificial way to make combat interesting. Instead of PvE or PvP, it's PvHotbar

 

As opposed to everyone performing the same rotation and gear being the primary deciding factor?

The problem with static/locked hotbar is that people will do the math and find the optimal build and then people will copy that, macro the rotation and just repeat it with surgical precision. How is repeating the same thing for years with no real deviation enjoyable PvE or PvP?

 

I don't disagree at all. I'm just hoping and wishing for something new and different

 

It costs less focus to cast a stacked glyph than a locked one, at level 30 a third of my focus is drained attempting to cast that fire weapon spell.
But my melee skills are actually better as locked skills so i can focus on positioning and aiming and charging attacks. I would be at an advantage if i learn to us eunlocked skills wih it but it would take some work

 

I have my first 6 unlocked in melee and it definitely takes some multitasking, making combos.

 

If you are not getting the glyphs you need ALL the time, you have put too many different types of glyphs in your deck or limited the slots they can be dealt to poorly.

 

You know that WoW hotbar system first came out in Ultima IX... and WoW stole it...

 

Not easier - simply less frustrating. Also I disagree with the whole "it being different" thing. Giving me a traditional hotbar anyway and then just randomly changing what spells and abilities appear in the hotbar slots (which is essentially all the system does in the end, combos aside) is not revolutionary or amazingly different.

I prefer more active combat systems myself but in the absence of that I'm fine with the current direction they are taking the system and I'm glad they have removed the huge penalties for locked icons (which were in my mind more an attempt to strongarm people in to using the random deck). Free attack is also a bit more useful this release and more fun though still needs lots of work.

 

The patch notes said the penalties for the locked bar were removed this release. Though the focus formula may be in place.

For a glyph/deck user they may 4 copies of a skill to have it pop up frequently. They spent gold and skill points to do that.

If you only needed to buy a glyph once to put in your locked bar, that wouldn't be balanced or fair. So it has a higher focus cost. If you buy multiple copies of that glyph (like a deck user would) then the focus cost goes down to a normal level.

 

It is not possible to spam (for example: offhand attack) with a locked slot because of the cooldown, so there is incentive to have at least part of your hand randomly dealt. The deck system changes in R20 give even more ways to be creative with character builds and PvP.

 

I hope to see enemies forcing you to react with debuffs and elemental weaknesses. I'm new to MMO style combat, but it's something I notice in turn based RPGs. Maybe the Troll will force that?

 

The cooldowns have been improved, and if its anythign like Rend is now, you can use it pretty liberally when its locked as well.
Im hoping to get two crafted swords soon to try out charge attack + offhand + doubleslash

 

I was extremely skeptical in the beginning about the deck system. In the first releases it was pretty frustrating and not very enjoyable for me. I, along with others, advocated for the ability to set cards in slots which is now in the game and it has definitely made the system significantly better. The way my current deck is arrange always gives me at least two and often more combos at any time. Since I build my decks so slots 1 combos with slot 2 and slot 3 with slot 4 etc, I am able to focus more on what I am fighting and significantly less on my hotbar. This system keeps me more involved then the system in games like WoW or Rift. In Rift I was able to set a macro of my entire rotation on one key which got old fast. I do enjoy action combat but those systems got old after a while.