The best way to test combat.

It's more than interesting, is true

Having higher standards means you won't settle with what's common, and that's good. I also expected something more original to be done here when i saw the deck system, but my dellusion doesn't refute the fact that what's common do work. I'll keep discussing alternate mechanics because is what i'd like to see featuring in SotA, but i don't see any reason to demote others work nor to be angry because the wind is blowing against your sails.

Good straw man with that example, but i'm talking about two systems that work; DPS oriented systems or Hit and Counter oriented system. So better to choose between Ping Pong or Tennis.

 

.......... interesting

 

Translating: Baron Drocis victory will be mine when I fight you ingame All about playtesting for sure

 

Exactly what baron drocis describes more or less is already happening in the combat scrum, which he has never actually tried to log in and participate in. There have been multiple times where we would all gather in the same place with Chris to set the levels for everyone to be the same level and gather using the same gear and we would fight. That is part of the many types of testing that has happened in the scrum. You claim the scrum is using "siloed" thinking, but no the reality is that its just thinking that doesnt agree with you and doesnt agree with your need to attack everyone who doesnt agree with you directly.

It is not siloed thinking - it is having an opinion that is not your own. The kinds of tests you have asked for have been done MANY times, and youd know that if you actually participated IN the testing and scrum sessions rather than just shouting your "opinions" from the roof tops and then sniping anyone who does not agree with you.

 

Well said Wrath.......

 

can't agree more with this - bullying your way in, just won't work.

as have i. i was invited (as PvE) and declined due to timing of the scrums and my workload. I really wish i could have been there, especially for the archery side of things. so many more tweaks are needed to make it...right. but with constant feedback in a positive nature (no doom and gloom, offer suggestions instead of only bashing existing methods), they'll get it right. thats the entire point of indie game development, get it right and focus less on deadlines imposed by marketing departments who force their way onto the big-boys table..

 

I'm in the scrum to give feedback, and I've done that. I'm doing that now. There's no requirement that says random people on these forums have to agree with my feedback. Nor is there a requirement that says I have to play or test according to random people.

I feel confident in my observations.

 

Random people on this forum should have just as much weight as you in opinions and feedback. It's good that you put forth your opinions, but I would suggest considering their opinions just as much as you would like everyone to follow yours.

 

While I should just keep out of this ever increasingly inflammatory conversation, those of you who know me, know I don't do well at that. So, my two cents:

1) Yes, everyone's opinions count, but let's not be so naive as to think they all count equally. I can say I think my hammer should do more damage than anyone's, while the dev team thinks that is a stupid idea and I can't have it. My opinion does not count as much as theirs. In this discussion, the team has decided to go with the scrum as one of the main data gathering tools. It is not the only way possible and perhaps not the most effective, but it is what they have chosen and it is yielding data.

2) Just because something is common does not mean it is ideal. It just means more people do it. Sometimes it is difficult to break out of a paradigm, even if it is sub-optimal. SotA has stepped out of many ruts to give us something that many thought could not be done. However, the combat system is not as innovative as it could be. Mind you that is not all bad, players expect some familiar things and DPS is easily understood by gamers. It is my opinion that this is an excellent example of siloed thinking. (Making it better and better but not changing the foundation.) [of course, that is only my opinion and see #1]

And I am out of pennies, so I will shut up.

 

The thing is, Jivalax, the combat system *is* being innovated and there *are* a lot of great changes and evolutions that are coming that is outside of a typical DPS model. The free combat (or rather the basic exoskeleton we see so far of it, as it's just in its earliest iterations) is the start of that. It is, however, not the end. The combat scrum has and likely will be briefed to this so that future iterations can tune and give a thumbs up/down on some of the best or worst before the "raw stuff" hits the streets but it is by all means not sitting there just making a "Better DPS' system. Not by a long shot.

There are a couple of misconceptions about the combat SCRUM. The first of which is what is often heard a lot on the forums. I hear "we need an XYZ scrum too". Well, first people must understand that the combat scrum is in fact exactly that - a scrum team. There are weekly meetups and also tests in QA builds (When there are some) and on live. Focused tests provide exact numbers, identify bugs, and provide things which equate to small tasks that the scrum master (Chris) ferrets back to the design and development team. Then that process repeats ad nauseum when the tasks are done and the builds are out to test again.

The combat scrum are not game designers and not supposed to be. If anything the combat scrum is incredibly hard work, but it is not supposed to be an open forum except wherein feedback or issues found within the new design direction and/or fixes to problems. We as players are blessed to have a chance to give feedback and help the direction of the game as its built out through completion, but the Portalarium team are the designers and developers and thus the vision of the game is ultimately their own.

 

I agree. Which is why many of the negative reactions to the OP are unjustified. The message I keep hearing is that a small group of scrum participants don't share your weighting system for one reason or another.

 

If the developers don't value my feedback then there's a very easy solution isn't there?

I understand that I'm in the scrum at their pleasure. But you must understand that too. Your post suggest to me that you appear to think that I somehow got into the scrum by accident.

Things may change in the future, it's up to the devs. But your post assume a lot about what is helpful and valuable feedback. I would hope that someone other than myself would provide different ways of looking at the current system, because if we're all thinking alike then no ones really thinking.

 

I think perhaps you either did not read my pot as intended or we have some miscommunication. Because is seems like we are arguing over something we agree about. I said there are innovations in combat, but that I think they are siloed. Fine, at some point you have to draw a line in the sand and work from there. Making combat rely on the player's (not character's) ability to throw live chickens at a touch sensitive wall is very innovative, but not optimal (and very mess - and noisy. Don't try it unless ... well just don't try. Trust me.)

Since a choice was made in the fundamental mechanics of how combat works (line in the sand) the only way to go is to "make a lot of great changes". It should be obvious from, oh about 300 of my posts, that I think the dev team is fantastic. I love the work they are doing. That does not change the fact that we still aren't throwing live chickens at a wall (thankfully).

And obviously we are not ready to "hit the streets" yet. I am here because I love to test. It has made great leaps and bounds since R2 when I first ran tests and had the opportunity to contribute to making this a better final product by finding ways to jump off the world. (That's as bad as throwing chickens don't do it.) But, if there is a point we disagree on, it is how this is not a DPS system. I don't understand. Call me slow, it would not be the first. Because, as far as I can see in the end, my ability to kill stuff is all about the amount of damage I can do per second. (Or does DPS have some chicken reference I am unaware of?)

 

No you are correct Jivalax, I do think we agree - i just dont think it's siloed thought. I am long winded at best, my fatal flaw what can i say? However, the second half of my statement was more in response to a vast group of people here and elsewhere in the forum who have sort of misunderstood and misconstrued what the combat scrum is, what Agile/scrum means or how they are trying to apply those agile principles in this combat scrum group is all. I was not meaning to say that I think you are not testing or were testing improperly I know your posts, and i know you've been a committed community member hehe.

As to the DPS system comments: Right now we have a system with DPS, that much is for certain - I agree. What I am saying is that the long term plan appears to be going in a direction with a lot more player agency and has a lot of various combinations, counters, blocks, and dodges. I shall wait to see what comes around the corner, but my prior design experience is seeing the landscape over the long term. I do think we will see this equate to more than just DPS at the end of the day.

 

To my understanding the combat scrum is a player gathering in the QA servers with Chris where you discuss certain combat elements, come up with some ways for testing it, and then give him your opinion so he and the team can start building a solution, isn't it? I use this opportunity to clarify the concept, since it's something founded while i was away and just heard it mentioned here and there during summer.

Amen! I guess "the landscape over the long term" is far more visible when you discuss it firsthand with the devs; at the very least, you guys know where the focus is and all of that... Though it seems not everyone in the scrum thinks that's gonna happen. From my point of view, current iterations have improved the combat system greatly, and combat math seems to be working better than before, but that doesn't take away that all the changes have been done from inside a DPS system frame, and i fail to see how those changes aim towards actual combinations, counters, blocks and dodges.

Don't get me wrong, i know there are many good reasons to keep a DPS system core, and i also think you CAN have all those in a DPS system core... i know it's feasible, but from my standpoint i don't see how we're getting closer to that kind of system. I'd like to add that my opinion is not only influenced by how the combat system currently works (that's sort of changing, after all... still too soon to be sure where this is going) but mostly because i fail to see how indirectly related mechanics (skill trees, health & focus management mostly) may support a combat with meaningful counters and including some turn based feeling (at the moment it feels more like a race...).

Sorry if this is a bit messy... i keep re-reading it and i can't take out the general feeling of confusion. Maybe i am a bit confused with this "we can but are we trying?" way of thinking. If something feels specially gibberishy (is that even a word? ) i'll try to clarify it.

 

If you come out to my events, i run a lot of PVP scenarios, from 1 vs 1 to many vs many, to capture castles you name it ill come up with it! Most of my events involve a lot of high end PVPrs, as well as noobs. There is a lot to learn from them. I would suggest you come out and check some of them out. Every Monday night at 8pm eastern (if im not working or have real life stuff going on that i need to tend too) There is a lot to learn from these events, for players as well as Devs!

You can look in "gladiator wars thread", or Release 20 events, or on the avatars calendars, it was on the events book in the game but for some reason its not (or wasnt) last time i checked under repeating events. You can also message me in the forums here and i can answer any questions you may have.

 

Well, I guess I should clarify that I see the landscape for a few reasons. Main one though is just because i've been through the game design process many times before - it was my profession for some time. Though, there have been hints in the past the developers have stated about where things are stating. Me, I look at things like the recent free attack system and I think to myself why would they do that, then my head goes to all of the things they would need to do to adapt the combat system we had to work with that free attack... When we started seeing the first things on that list in my head such as touch spells be directional attacks, and two handed weapons actually having a cone of attack rather than striking a single person - i begin to fill in the blanks to see where things will go from there.

I am an archer, for example. I play as an archer in almost every game I play. I start seeing things like the cover system be announced, and the fact we can already roll and dodge and flip, and i hear the future of the cover system, and then i see the new free attack system come in and the ongoing changes to the combat math. I think it's safe to say that one can predict we're going to start seeing a free use attack system with a bit more action, movement, etc coming in. The fact some spell combos like with Juxtapose start to really become key - such as evaporate - in big boss battles and even PVP. I think well likely start to soon see skills and combos coming in to counter other skills and spells, and things like positioning and cover (which already by the way have some effect, position effecting your damage avoidance score for example) being taken into account. We've seen the combat improve month by month but they can only do so much in a months time before the next publish...

I understand your sentiment exactly. You were perfectly clear in what you said Actually, though, it is most often the small unrelated features and changes that have the biggest effect on systems at large. But it is ALSO important to remember that many PARTS of the combat system right now are, at best, placeholders for the pieces to come. I try to get people to see that, half the time they snap back and the other half of the time they either try to come to that understanding or either they at least show some patience as things come along.

The main problem many have is that most people, most gamers especially, are going to be wired to seeing a system only by what it is now. I mean, that's a natural state of being a gamer after all. However in a pre alpha (using their definition RE: Feature completeness) such as SotA, those who have that eye for design and have been through the game development process are probably the only ones that are going to truly see the sum of the parts and be able to read the tea leaves so to speak. Theres nothing wrong with coming from the gamer perspective though, its a good thing and probably one reason why potalarium is doing such open development in the way they're doing. It is a risk to them though, as there are going to be players who come in and try to make a lot of assertions or comparisons based on their experiences with vastly different games and development cycles. Even being in alpha, beta or steam early access games is a very different experience from what portalarium is doing here.

Now who's the one ranting though so ill stop for now. Cheers!

 

Also to clarify @KuBaTRiZeS - the combat scrum is designed to be an actual scrum working session in some ways. Agile SCRUM is a software development methodology (really more of a framework than a methodology), and portalarium develops their product in a very agile fashion. In the use of scrum here is that there are ongoing tests done in combat with very specific test conditions where we meet and give input on those test conditions as well as test things such as new monsters to see what their balance is like in general (in their most raw, often very un fun ) format. The "SCRUM" as far as the players are concerned, are the engine for feedback which then reports things or gives feedback to Chris whom makes JIRA (change requests or fix requests) entries, which portalarium's project management then assigns to an individual for resolution.

The SCRUM players do receive some feedback or some posts from Chris (or other members of the team) indicating the direction of certain systems design changes coming. The scrum's job is to take that input and give feedback to PORTALARIUM's design suggestions, and suggest changes or pick out the weak points/things they havent thought about in that design. Iterations to that are made where eventually it goes from design to implementation. Then we go back to the point of testing the implementation as per the above paragraph.

The combat scrum players are not there to design. And while like any other player to the game they are more than welcome to openly discuss their thoughts on specific game mechanics, skills or systems it is not actually the focus of the group.

Though it isnt a 100% accurate use of agile scrum principles, it is working very much off of the baseline. We have an exit criteria, that criteria is to get the combat system to a system everyone agrees is fluid, plays well, is in a position that portalarium can approach it for balancing, and is free of major issues or bugs - and most importantly, works in the framework of SotA. The scrum team in this case being the players best suited to solve the problems presented. Each brief or question given out by chris is one of those problems, which we collaberate and give insight on how to solve the problem. Those bits of feedback provided by players then create tasks to be carried out by portalarium.... and of course the various meetings and combat tests we participate in become validation criteria (Did the fix/change work? does it or does it not suck?)

A bit more about agile scrum - https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/scrum for those who are interested.

 

Thanks for your explanations @WrathPhoenix. The SCRUM stuff was very enlightening, now i know how combat is being developed (when i looked at the translation of the word i thought it was some kind of joke Chris made up lol)

I also thank you for sharing your vision, I could share it as well because these changes may be an indicative of a DPS system leaning towards hit and counter elements... But i'd like to outline the may. You see, in my opinion all these changes that are taking place aren't a definitive sign of that progression you foresee. All the defensive mechanics we have at the moment are mitigation skills, not counters (that includes Evaporate); they just "reduce incoming DPS from a specific source" which is the counter version of the standard DPS system. We have a free attack system which one way or another will become the key of this combat experience, but that just pushes us from the targeting model, not from the DPS model. We have jumps and rolls that cost focus, that's true... but they've been since combat were introduced and still today nothing productive came out of those two for its use in combat. Depending on how it work, Cover may be the mechanic most close to being a counter... but it's not a player driven counter because it also depends on the environment.

Of course i'm talking about this as the other side of the coin, not trying to prove you wrong nor starting a big discussion about how all this elements may unfold... just pointing out that as i see it, hit and counter system is not going to happen 100%. So what we really have here are two possibilities; combat direction may change, or may stay the same. DPS systems are common, popular and because of that there are more data about them, so if we had to bet right now, i'd say that the core of Combat will stay DPS shaped. Regarding the inclusion of counter mechanics... i think they'll require much more work than just mitigation, so that increase the chances of everything developing in the DPS model if it's true that at least alpha is going to happen within a year (sorry for this biased data, is once again just the expectations i made up regarding everything i've been reading around) and thus reduces the chance of having counter elements. That train of thought is what make me think that even after this changes, we may still not have counters, nor a kind of turn based feeling towards combat.

Of course that can still happen! we have a commited team of developers that had proved in the past that they're willing to reach a little longer to finally releasing the game we want (us and them), i'm just not sure that's going to happen. Only time (maybe Chris) can tell what will happen. Besides, there are stuff with far more priority that this we're discussing, like unifying locked and random combat and make random combat more appealing and for it to require less attention... i know some changes are planned towards that goal, and i'm looking forward to them! Let's see what happens with counters then.