Meaningful combat

I was not quite sure how to put my feelings into words. There are many on this forum who are far better in that analysis than I. However, I felt the need to at least attempt to describe what I feel regarding combat. Needless to say, I am quite nervous about combat.

Combat is going in the direction since the days of the focus and deck systems. I really like the direction things have come. With that being said I feel that combat doesn't feel visceral or interesting. I believe this feeling can be described as a lack of synergy amongst the various combat skills and combat itself.

I am going to try to avoid mentioning the combat systems in other games to further describe this synergy. Synergy, as I see it, is what allows combat to feel like pieces to a larger puzzle. The various skill trees are uninteresting, to me, because they don't quite complement each other at a fundamental but meaningful level.

Combat needs a spark. Something that can really tie it together. It just doesn't feel cohesive. Unfortunately I don't really have any ideas to make it feel that way, for me. Am I the only one who feels like something is missing?

I like that we are going to see weaknesses on armor and monsters. It's not enough though. The underbelly of the system is boring.

 

Hi padreadamo. I think you really explained well. I did have to look up visceral though to make sure I had a good handle on what it means I agree with much of what you've said. For me the experience has been lacking too. I think it is camera view while fighting is one thing that disconnects me. Also animations and sounds are not complete or implemented at this time. That part will change as we go along. I agree much of it has been boring. The Dev team has acknowledged this, well Chris Spears has. Also next release much will change since combat is a prime focus right now of the Development team. Next release expect many changes, hopefully some of our concerns will be addressed in this release,but if not then we try again for the release after that and so on. That's the way it works around here. I have not seen you before so welcome and thanks for the nice post.

 

One problem that is definitely hurting SotA combat (besides the truly hideous core deck concept itself - but it seems that ship has already sailed) is that the animations are so... lackluster. Generic animations, questionable collision detection, and placeholder sound effects all conspire to make participating in combat almost a chore. It is the single biggest factor hurting the game right now imo. Not fun for many. The sound at least is almost guaranteed to improve eventually, but all three of these issues need to be addressed before combat is even close to a point where it can be critically (and fairly) evaluated.

 

Agreed, except for deck system I'm all for that one

 

I think combat will feel a lot better when there are some sounds added to give it clout....That alone will change a lot of the perception of weight.

 

i think the new direction it is going with this last release or two, and the way i see it going , is a good step towards what we can consider meaningful combat, just not quite there yet. i say lets have a build or two more of combat updates and see where it goes, before we start making TOO many suggestions - mostly because i trust the devs and the scrums are doing most of the work for us, along with the data mining they are doing on it during releases.

 

I believe your post is a big part of the synergy that I mention. Animations and sound being fluid are key to that "visceral" experience. I also think the way, or lack thereof, the skills work is simply boring as well. I have high hopes for the SCRUM team and what they are attempting to accomplish. I just hope we don't end up with a bunch of skill-trees but lack of cohesion amongst the combat system. The element that ties it all together, makes it interesting, is missing. I can't quite identify it.

 

May i take a bet?

Besides animation, sound, and the rest of elements mentioned here that, when implemented, will make combat a better experience, what SotA combat lacks at the moment is flow. Fights are just races in which you fight using your best against his best, trying to stack and get the destructive combo that will put your enemy down without a chance for him to heal. In that kind of combat, most of the advantage is based on numbers and chances (even more with the random deck system!). For combat to be meaningful players should have meaningful reactions besides powerful actions. When you have that, skills tend to be used in some order (save your big hits until you make sure your enemy doesn't have any defenses ready is the most basic example), then they're tweaked so no particular skill dominates or disrupt that order. That's when combat flow is established.

I said it's a bet because sadly i lack the data and the time playing to assure this. I'm just trusting on my previous gaming experience (which i tend to value as good) and then let the wise guys do what they want with my opinion and feedback. But until they prove me wrong by doing something better, this is where i stand

At the moment i have no doubt that Chris and the Scrum are working with that flow in mind, and that they will not settle with a combat that "just works". They're determined to make it meaningful, and i believe they will.

 

^^ I think your opinion is quite accurate with what I was trying to convey. There is no meaningful choices made during combat. It's just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. As long as the mob dies first, good! I'm sure things will get better. I was just curious if others felt the way I did.

 

would you describe one for me, so i get your full meaning, here?

are you thinking if you get hit in the leg and they roll a crit, they get you in an artery and you start bleeding out?
or moving slow because they got you with a poison coated weapon?

i think some sort of easily identifiable animation would be needed for each of those reactions for combat to be meaningful, but one problem i personally have is how far back the camera goes during combat when in 3rd party mode... just makes those animations kind of worthless, and detaches you from the actions.


or are you talking, more along the lines of what the origional everquest wanted to be (mage wars) before sony got their hands on it? where you saw a mage pulling out some tinder, and you had time to send a less powerful attack to break their concentration, or time a water based counterattack from their obvious fire attack to douse their flames, or ignore it and go for a high-dps attack of yoru own? that would require more of a turn-based combat system which isn't easily done with multiplayer online games of this type.

 

Sure! it's more on the lines of what you mentioned of everquest, And i stated we're already gonna get those because i'm quite confident the active defenses Chris mentioned are going to be this kind of meaningful reactions i've been expecting. What's meaningful about defensive reactions is that they allow you to avoid a hit; for instance my dodge is meaningful if i actually dodge one of your attacks, and my block is meaningful if i actually manage to block at least one of your attacks.

Why is that meaningful? why that allows to build a combat flow? Check below if you don't mind reading theory

Spoiler

If we took combat to the most simple layout, we have two basic choices (attack or defense) and the objective is clear; to kill the enemy before the enemy kills you. Everytime i can do something, i choose between those two, so if i defend i don't attack, and vice versa. For this simple system to be balanced, relative mean power of attacks should be equal to the relative mean power of defense. The purpose of attack is to gain advantage over your enemy or to weaken your enemy so it's easy for you to gain advantage in the next "turns", while the purpose of defense is to prevent your enemy to gain advantage or to recover some of the lost advantage by yourself.

In combat current state, the only defense that works is the second kind, commonly identified with healing. It's cool because the amount of health you recover is usually equal with the one lost by a hit (usually more). Current defensive mechanics identified with the second kind are not worth it since they only increase your resistance towards the enemy attacks for a short time (only 1 attack), so in terms of advantage you're choosing not to hit so your enemy hits you less in his next attack. In terms of advantage, it's no rocket science to see that it's better to use an attack, even when most of defensive moves have a reduced GCD (Dodge has none, for instance). The system still works, but you have the situation i described in my post above; a race where the only relevant flow change is whether if i hit you or i heal me.

I'm sooooooooo happy with Chris announcement because it's my understanding that by "active defenses" he's referring to put this kind of mechanics into the game, and in the best way possible; where the advantage you may earn is greatly influenced by your choices, and your enemy's choices. That's why if fighting against an enemy that may dodge or parry you'll try to use your dodgeable attacks while he's parrying and your parryeable attacks while he's dodging, and he'll try to do the same.

There are lots of ways of improving the flow of combat that are easily doable without resorting to actual turns. First thing is to lessen the attention the random deck requires (and for us to get used to it) so we're able to check or surroundings and react accordingly; without awareness we can't have reactions. SotA has what i think is a good choice and is to display the glyphs of the skill you're using over the character, that means that if your enemy is casting a fireball you're able to see the fireball glyph in front of him, so you may be able to use that fast attack that interrupts its fireball. But what about instant casting effects? well, you need to bet on those... but there are ways to enforce this flow, for example sequential combo implementation (see below) would reward players that use skills in certain order, and that will give high chances that after skill A skill B is used to unelash the combo.

Spoiler

Combos are made by "combining" two skills, let's say our combo X is generated by combining two skills A and B. By sequential combo implementation i mean that the combo effect X is unleashed by using two skills in order; first you use A, then you use B, and carries an additional effect because you used A. instead of current combo implementation where you hit the combo key (default R) then hit A then B and that generates the combo skill X that you ultimately unleash by hitting the appropiate key binding, or you do the same with the mouse

Other way of enforcing the flow is of course by enforcing the turn based feeling of combat. You can achieve that for example by changing the way focus is managed; if instead of skills taking bits of focus and making it to regenerate slow (as what we usually call "mana" in other games work) we raise the focus cost of all skills and giving it a faster regeneration (more like the Energy of the Rogues in WoW) then we could only use a few skills in a follow-up until running out of focus, so the choices matter more (if you want to defend you can go all out with an attack).

As some folks say around here... it's shameless plug time! Regarding this last suggestion, there is a more elaborated version of resource management on this thread... i have re-read it and i think it's still valid even when it's from the past year.

Wow, even using spoilers this is going to be quite long. Sorry but i got overly motivated when talking about the subject... just hope it's worth reading.

 

I think one of the major reasons combat doesn't feel meaningful right now has more to do with cosmetics then anything else...

Animations look akward and don't flow like a moving person....like rend for instance, your avatar does this weird twist and looks like he is getting ready to go to the bathroom more then he is fighting....he then jerks back into basic combat mode....

The animations need a constant flow so that it doesn't feel jerky...it should feel smooth like a person would move that way....right now it doesn't.

Also, sounds are not good at the moment.

 

I was excited to hear about the new skill system. A uses based skill system. This sounds really cool.

In fact if we have a use based music system where we can play notes we want rather than dealt notes from a deck, ... i'll just leave that sitting there.

 

Of course they're needed, but they're going to improve how combat is perceived, not how it's felt. Put all the cosmetics up right now and you still have a flowless combat where you still try to attack your opponent faster than he does, without almost no strategy. Devs will decide what comes first, but since some of us want combat to be a good experience from a gaming experience and others want combat to be eye-catching... probably they'll end working both at the same time, so i'm confident that we'll see progress in both fields.

 

Given the number of different animations and the number of variations each animation will need to handle different size enemies, I'm fairly confident that an animation overhaul is a bridge too far for episode 1. Maybe if they turn up enough cash, it might be an option for episode 2, but right now an animation overhaul is well into the "High cost / High impact" quadrant of the cost impact chart and fixes like making alligators not bark are a much cheaper way to see definite improvements.

 

I'm pretty sure I want both a good gaming experience and eye catching...the problem is...it just jarring at the moment and looks completely off since moves to naturally come back to neutral fight stance so combat perception as you said is awful.

Burzmali I'm not sure it is a complete overhaul, more of a transition overhaul.

 

I'm pretty sure i want both a good gaming experience and eye catching... the problem is... honestly i'm most of the time looking at the hotbar U^^ so it's difficult for me to enjoy (or loathe for this matter) the animations. As i keep playing i'm getting more proficent but it's still a long way to go before being able to keep my attention span focused in the field more than in the bar. From my point of view, i want them to address issues like attention span and giving some polish to the way combat mechanics are deployed before they focus on the visuals. But of course, that's my opinion... how could i value something i barely pay attention to?

I must say, though, that as i improve and i manage to look at my enemies more (that's equally important) i saw some strange movements my character did when i used swords. Now with ranged i don't see anything specially odd, but also not eye catching or fluid As i said before, hope to see improvements in both fields, and it's a pity that the new animations are not having a good reception. I also noticed something that somebody reported as a bug (indeed it is) related with animations; they are imposed over the Global Cooldowns, not allowing you to use another skill until the character finishes its pose. That's uncool.

 

Agree 100%

 

PVE: No real death penalties. No issue regaining your equipment. No hardship besides gear degradation from dying. EQ was so visceral due to its hardships involved in death. Loss of XP, having to go back for your stuff and if you died in a nasty place...having to get summoned or CRed. When you have this kind of detriment, combat, adds, aggro, it all becomes much more important. Much more vital that you survive. AI that moves and gains adds becomes deadly, not just inconvenient. being able to flee so easily also lessens the importance of combat.

PVP: Or what I like to call, dancing with weapons. Watching people duel is like watching two people dancing around shaking their groove thing. Just holding a weapon. Moving should make you lose concentration as a caster and make it very difficult to hit anything wielding a weapon. Combat should be much more fluid. Knowing how to glide left or right, charge in or fade back, and deadly if you expose your back. What we see is people spinning around one another. Jumping, strafing...just jigging to avoid your opponents hit box. (Much like AA or even EG used to be) IMHO, it's a mess.

 

Not played in a bit now (currently have a lovely ear destroying in-game bug), but my last impression of abilities was they lacked proper emphasis on their utility.

Pretty much every ability acted as "does some very random damage and maybe another effect you wont notice".

How much are people noticing knockbacks, knockdowns, armour reductions and such now?