Combat in general

I have not played sota in a long time—the last time I played was before combat arrived. So this is my fresh perspective of combat when I recently logged in. TLDR: It is weird and horrific.

I find myself normally around the South-Eastern part of Novia and the some parts of the hidden vale poking around and I feel like everything is very claustraphobic within the zones. It is incredibly difficult to see monsters or animals 25 feet in front of me, especially in the plentiful swamp lands around Ardoris. Nameplates don't show up until I practically get on top of a monster and by then he has engaged me. I feel like like they engage me, not the other way around. Tons and tons of trees, tall grass, bushes, big flowers and in general the zones feeling small and critters placed in fixed positions 50 feet from each other makes me feel absolutely miserable playing ranged combat with archery or magic because I have no room to make use of root or snare abilities or kite if need be. I feel like the root spell and snares ability/spells we have are some kind of gimmicks since they are not effective in any meaningful way (atleast not in the beginning). A real root spell would hold a monster still for 30-60 seconds while you unloaded spells on it (and each damaging spell having a chance to break the root) for example. Melee is the only thing that seems viable. Or am I doing it wrong maybe? Is magic or bow users in this game supposed to in melee distance of their opponent?

Now that I shared that, I understand they are going to work on combat but... the zones we fight in are part of the problem for me. I am used to playing where I can have large open territory and seeing a monster a good distance away and making my own engagements. For me, even if they make combat glamorous... the way the zones and monsters are setup I have no idea if I could stomach a ranged or magic user when I adventure by myself. Is there any really large open areas in Novia I can hunt? Wide and spacious fields anywhere?

 

Hey, great feedback.

 

Hi Karkona. I agree with many of your points, completely agree with how aggro range, shooting range, and nameplate viewing range are too similar, and i'd love to increase at least the third one. I've been playing a ranger almost since i started here and i'd be happy to assist you if you have some doubts. Regarding the zones, may I recommend you to visit plains or desert biomes? there are less trees there and it's not as unconvenient. About the trees getting in your way the only advice i can come up is to keep the view as parallel as the ground as possible, since treetrunks are less bothersome than treetops.

It's also true that at the moment ranged combat is best fought in close range, kiting the enemies without putting too much distance (at least that's what woks for me). Weird, huh? fingers crossed for early improvements

 

I am definitely searching for good places to hunt with some wiggle room, I've found southern grunvald barrens to be HUGE improvement. I can't help but feel those swamps are going to leave a bad taste in newbie ranger/mages mouth's unless they get some love in them zones. Space out the monsters a lot more, don't make them all aggressive perhaps, and trim a lot of the bushes and trees. There is A *lot* of woods/swamps now that I look around the map.

Edit: one other thing is how monsters and animals are 'leashed/tethered' to a fixed spot. If i smack something and run 50 feet, he gives up and runs back home. I'd wish for the tethering to be extended or actually removed completely. Crazy you say? I know trains of 50 mobs chasing a player to the exit of a zone would be result but, that I would actually like to see some serious chaos happening then people could perhaps choose to band together and help one another or be selfish and run and leave victims in their wake, atleast we'd have an event like that to make a choice. I wouldnt go full crazy and let 50 merbs sit at the entrance all day long—have them eventually go home at some point after they havent been engaged in a while. If thats not viable atleast have the leash/teather be bigger.

I'm at risk of derailing the topic, but there is something odd about this game... its like it lacks any form of 'evil' apart form the monsters. I can't put my finger on but, everybody in the game is so nice to each other (in game wayyy too many nice folks) and I feel like its because we are never put in compromising positions like the one I just mentioned. We feel completely safe, and with no strife, there is no struggle, with no struggle there can be no hero to come in and save the day—so lets make some hero's and villains by cutting the leashes on the monsters. This would also open up real big pulls for groups who could aoe down a bunch of monsters at once. Things would get real.

 

The cramped scenes have always bugged me from day 1. The pvp zones seem to have monsters spread out better for ranged I think though. I can see what you mean about the monsters. With such small scenes they're all bunched up in places, and they aggro too easily even when you think you're at a good distance away. The casters/archers can still hit you as you run from a distance that players couldn't hit you from, and they seem to have unlimited focus. I understand some things are off, but I don't want them to chase forever like they did in Saga of Ryzom, man you could run across zones and still not lose those things lol. Hopefully, after the final wipe they can give some much needed attention to combat and monsters a bit to make it right though. I have faith they will. The cramped scenes though, so far. Maybe they'll pass through them to make them larger too after final wipe.

 

Yessum. I thought it was important to share. I know a lot of folks have been knee deep since day 1 and might not know what a new person experiences (kinda overwhelming and brutal learning curve even outside the combat system which i still have not figured out, my decks are crazy). If we get newbies, and they bump into those cramped zones it might scare them off. I hope they consider revamping some of the newbie zones or re-arranging the monsters atleast.

Edit: and yes I understand what you mean on the leash/tether system. The game might be hard enough as it is without cutting them loose.

 

Aye, your feedback is welcome and needed, thank you! Like you say a lot of us have been playing for long time and can't see sometimes the problems a new player would see. Sometimes we deal with things and get use to it and it becomes the usual, thank you again for your feedback. Welcome to the community!

 

There are a ton of barriers to entry in this game, making it very unfriendly to new players. The game tends to info-dump on the players, either in the form of being bombarded by tips when they first log in, or requiring reference to a very large document outside the game. Now, hopefully, as they tune the intro sequence this will change, but as it stands the game does very little to explain it's mechanics and systems. Hell, I knew what I was getting into and I still wrote the game off for nearly two weeks while I perused the internet answering my numerous questions. I know people don't want the game to be hand-holdy, but the game should give a good guided tour of all the menus and systems as the player encounters them. Not all at once, but as needed.

 

The "small" scenes is another good point where we can ssee that single player and MMORPG don't work very well together.
In a single player game scenes/areas need to be interesting. There should be secrets, things you can discover and do and there should not be too large spaces that are empty because this is boring when you want to explore and discover things.
Yet in an MMORPG large and open areas are needed because many other players will be there, too.
SotA now tries to please both. Scenes are not immensely large but still too large/empty for a good SP experience but they are also too small for a good MMO experience. We see, both groups don't get what they want.

 

Oh i forgot to comment about that! the cramped zones are also one of the things i currently dislike the most. I like to believe that it will improve when roving monsters are in game (monster patrols running around in the Overworld Map) because you're creating an endless source of monsters. That may justify to depopulate most scenes and make all the monsters to be more organically placed. That way if you want to kill a lot of things you stay in the OW hunting monsters, and if you want to explore and kill you enter in a scene, hunt a couple of patrols, enter in a camp if you're brave enough Or does anyone find interesting to have bandits in a road, wolves at the left and spiders at the right? as if there is not enough world for all of them

Yes that has been discussed as well and we've been told it has been worked. I agree with you that we shoulnd't mistake hand holding with explaining things properly... and i think we need both great explanations and some simplifications

 

It's interesting you bring this up, because I have never understood the need for the scenes, and every explanation just feels a bit... excusey to me. Kingdoms of Amalur managed to create large areas that were very interesting. I don't think they were seamless (aka, they had some load screens on borders), but they were large and open, yet still fun to explore. In fact, it felt very MMO-y in it's map construction, but played like a single player game with it's story.

 

~Info Dump to the Overwhelmed~
I totally agree with you here !
I've been studying this problem in depth and there needs to be a much more simplified instructions and quest, apart from such needed info dump that could intrigue the player later, after they've become accustom to the basic mechanics.
A work in progress for fuel for thought... ~BART~ ... Most players here don't start from scratch very often at all!.... I'm hoping it spurs provocative thought in the beginnings of our game.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/sota-basic-training-programs.49024/
it's not what I recommend, yet it's a thought provoker meant to get others involved with the new player proses.

The other thing that is desperately needed, is an "easy quick start" basic condensed instruction from the mountain of information we already have.

~To my great and glorious highly character skilled friends~
"You're going to be wiped soon, so get interested in our beginnings and share"
*or I'm going to be light years way ahead of you* ~Time Lord~

We need new players a more welcoming experience, and not just by our personal ingame instruction...
~Time Lord~

 

I'm going to reference Guild Wars 2 for their tutorial method (or at least the one they had at release). Basically, the first time the player opened a menu, they would get a semi-transparent overlay guiding them through the menu and explaining what everything was. It also let them choose whether or not they wanted to see that info again next time they opened the window (in case they didn't have time to go through it all right then). This creates a guided experience that moves along with each individual player's natural inclination to explore the menus.

I know that there are contextual tip boxes that pop-up in this game, but they are small and very text heavy. That was fine in the 90's when storage was at a premium and using space on tips was not desirable (especially since we had manuals back then!), but nowadays we can afford to create a strong, interactive learning experience to engage the player at their own pace.

 

your being your own worst enemy Darkmoon



]

 

@Lord_Darkmoon You still don't get it, do you? Everything has to be about Single-player Vs Multi-player for you, doesn't it? I just pointed out single-player games as examples of "the things you hate about MMOs" yet you have to gals to preach about how single-player games are the best and how the MMO portion is ruining your game.

For as long as you keep posting about how "MMOs this and single-player that", I will do my best to keep posting about the absurdity of it all.
It's one thing to enjoy a specific thing, it's completely another thing to carpet bomb hatred vs an entire game mode when games of the genre that you claim as the holy grail still suffer from the same things you despise.

It'd be supporting you if your methods weren't so disgusting. It's got nothing to do with MMOs!

And the sad part is that, regardless of whenever or not the SP will be good or bad, you'll still see the MP portion with disdain... and you'll never be satisfied as there's always going to be something.

Obviously.


@Karkona I'd like to remind you that the devs are currently looking into aggro behaviors of the various enemies out in each scene. So, hopefully, that'll help rangers out a bit (and possibly stealth-ers too).

 

I don't hate MMORPGs. I did play many and enjoyed many. My point is that I don't think that the features that make a MMORPG a MMORPG don't play along well with SP RPG and vice versa.
If this can work then I haven't seen it yet.
The Division does a relatively good job in this but even in this game I don't have the feeling of playing a true SP game.

 

@Lord_Darkmoon What's that got to do with the OP's issues with Combat? HMMMM???? Couldn't you simply have made a post about improving combat, instead? Of course not! Do you not see how obnoxious you're being right now?

But that's the thing; what you talk about are roughly a genre's typical short-comings rather than what defines it.

 

The OP complained about scenes being too small and that he wasn't used to this in MMORPGs. I just voiced my opinion about this statement.

 

The OP never once mentioned MMOs or multi-player.

... like... AT ALL.

 

Maybe he could clarify if he played SotA like a MMO or sees it as a MMO.

But I don't want to argue anymore. Maybe I misunderstood the OP.