6-Month Demo!

this is the classic version of that:

http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm

Although I think the first picture should be, What the customer asked for. As they usually ask for something totally different than the envision or think it would be.

 

Often we get a customer opening up a ticket asking how they can do something really complicated and.... odd. You have to get them to step back and tell you what their real goal is. In many cases we can give them an easier and more logical solution that doesn't involve the oddness.

 

I just have to point that "people who argued against the card system had 5 or 6 likes" got their likes from same 5-6 people. It really seems to me that theres the vocal 'ney to card' group of 6 or so and then the rest. And Im not trying to argue here, just pointing out. I my self want to wait, test & see and then judge.

 

No, it's like a deck of 52 diffrent cards, and you decide ahead of time you'll only use 15 of them that you decide before you even meet your opponent. Once met in combat, you then don't get to lay them out in any strategic order, just throw them chaoticly at your opponent in a game of war. Who ever put down the better cards at that point wins.

What, you spent the time collecting the entire deck? Too bad. You have to decide what hand you're going to try and draw before all that, and using all the cards only makes it take too long to pull off. You're going to just put in all your high cards and hope for the best.

Sure, it's possible to build a deck that always loses, or one that will usually beat most other decks. But once the game starts, your skill has very little to do with it. And the skill you put into your deck before can be undone by luck. So we get to the battle cry of the wait and see crowd: Salvage it, don't scrap it.

To salvage the system you have to unhook the ability of luck to be what loses the game. You have to reconnect the player to making choices that reflect their character. If you do that, then you've eliminated the need to build decks in any real sense. You're just using D&D style vancian magic....Which I'm not against. But for combat skills as well as magic? Tougher sell. I don't go into a sparring match thinking I'm 40% likely to throw a kick, 10% likely to throw a punch, and I"ll spend the other 50% of the time grappling, blocking or eveading (even split). In fact, my class uses the saying "Act, don't react." We don't just deal with what's there, we don't just react to openings. We make them. We are in control of the fight.

In a real fight take all my facilities in to combat with me, envision how I'm going to win, try and make that happen, but also roll with the changes to combat. I don't say "Oh man, he's decided to be a long distance fighter, if I was going to use my short game today, I'd own him. But I decided this morning I was only using kicks! Guess I'm going to lose...."

If you want to say "But this isn't real life..." that's fine. But this isn't a turn based area fighting game either.

 

How they are doled out? That may not even be close what they are planning. The UI may be totally revamped. I just think its impossible to judge the combat from that small sampling.

 

Yeah and real life doesn't have cooldowns either... every system has it's trade-offs for fun gameplay. You can argue cooldowns don't make combat fun, but without them it would certainly be much less fun.

They also said that how the skills are being dealt out is not anywhere close to being done.

To me it isn't even a salvage it, I want to play it like it is and see how it works and if I like it as is.

Just from the gameplay you can tell he has fewer fireballs than anything else in the deck because the other spells kept coming up, and he still got it within 11 seconds each time. It looked like it started drawing as soon as he entered combat mode, even w/o being engaged so you can wait till what you want to come up does (atleast for now, might not be final vision for it).

 

*Waves hands in a X-cross pattern* STOP Please wait Mr. PK, I need to wait for my flamestrike roll to come up.

Yeah, that should go well.

 

Why isn't the text we speak above our heads?
I don't like having the large chat box open.
I thought we wanted to keep the screen clean?

 

Gotta say, I absolutely loathe chat-boxes. Floating text all the way!

 

Randomly. That's the cornerstone of what they're selling. Randomly from your deck skills will appear. They said they want to fix the UI. Not the core mechanic.

As I said, you can make that claim, but this is still a bad fit for this type of game.

But let's go there. Real life most definitely has cool downs. Heavier kicks are slower than jabs. Combo flourishes may require a second of catching your breath.

It doesn't really matter what he had in the deck since we'll build our own.

Which is actually part of my problem. I spent the xp learning fireball, but needed to be sure that I had sleep for the orcs I was going to fight. But they have a dark ent fighting with them, and even though I know fireball, it's the right spell to cast, and I've got time because I'm ambushing them, I don't get to cast it.

This is a simple thought experiment of the system that is a problem regardless of the UI. Only by allowing full access to the skills I've acquired through play will that not happen.

If there was a logical or story reason for it I'd be defending it. But unless the lunar portals cause Alzheimer's I can't think of one.

It will hit alpha. We're too far gone. I agree people should understand and not just knee jerk on this, but we've been told a lot.

 

CARD SYSTEM WORKS WITH COMBAT AND ARMOR SKILLS:

The combat skills would be okay if they come up random because they all are focused on chipping at, hacking away, or defending yourself from an opponent. You might not get that heavy knock back skill you want right now, but instead the weapon breaker skill comes up and you use it. You never kill a person right away unless they are a total newbie. The weapon break skill and armor break skill helps you defeat your opponent in a similar fasion as knockdown and crushing blow (I'm using bludgeoning skill tree as an example). If your opponent's armor gets messed up you will do more damage over time, and also if their weapon gets trashed you're doing fine.


SPELLS ARE DIFFERENT:

Like I said before spell combos would work fine if they were in the deck system as individual cards with combos to heal or to damage. However since spells do not all focus on chipping away at an opponent, and since there are far too many spells to effectively build a deck, there must be a way to cast individual spells apart from a card.

Imagine that you can cast Firestorm one time at will, and then you follow up with a spell combination that appears in your tool bar. However now you're in trouble because the guy didn't die, so you use your wand (charged with "blink" spells) and teleport half way across the forest hex and run. However you need to meditate so you run around a tree, then thankfully since you can cast any spell you want at any given time you cast "vanish". Then the warrior comes running past that tree and doesn't know where you went so he keeps on running. With your heart pounding you manage to stay hidden by that tree until your focus completely regenerates.

Now this would not be possible if you have 40 to 60 spells in your deck. There is no way you could count on vanish popping up right when you needed it. Now I did create a wand of teleport but that only casts one spell. That's an example of a pure mage that works. Without being able to cast that vanish spell on demand you just keep running around trees until you can cast vanish, and by that time the warrior might catch on to what you intend to do.

Same with the rogue skill set which has yet to be truly defined.

 

WOW.. HOLY AWESOME.

Towns structures are looking fantastic!! Townsport looks fantastic. I hope to see lots of LARGE towns and explore.

Here's my (constructive) notes if anyone of the Devs read this thread.

Wizard Tower - add large mirror in entryway (perhaps with effects or a unique magic version that looks back at you)

Inside the Tree House should not be stone-tile. It should likely be wood based interior lining or cloth.

Will there be PvP inside homes? I hope so. That would be fun with the larger ones.

So far the level of quality is really getting high in everything manifest in the game!

 

Now this is a more complete video. We can (hopefully) forget about their last demo.

With that said....
1) Still not sure about the combat system. Guess I'll have to wait until the alpha/beta to try it out.
2) Are these the final version of the graphics, or will they recieve some sort of refinement? This is a pre-alpha video so I have to ask. They kind of reminded me of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
3) Nice houses. The developers seem to have put a lot of work into them
4) What about farming? Maybe they haven't got around to implementing that in game as of yet.
5) After seeing the two character models it begs the question, will we only have one of these two models. Or will we have a customizable character system similar to an Elder Scrolls or World of Warcraft...or has this already been addressed and I've missed it. Would be kind of weird if we all looked the same.

Going to have to think about backing the game in order to get access to alpha/beta testing...

 

I really don't know about this combat system. Hopefully its just that I don't have it in my hands, so it just SEEMS like its horrible and full of holes. I don't know, I'm still trying to keep an open mind about it but it really didn't look good to me in that demo. Looked more confusing than anything.


I REALLY don't like that it was still in the hotbar format. So not only is there still the concrete hotbar UI, but we have to pay MORE attention to it because its always changing? I dunno about this.







That being said, I am far from freaking out about it. The game looks frickin amazing and I am excited to play it, with or without this weird combat. Who knows, maybe they'll nail it and it'll work. I'm not worried because I think its clear that if it ultimately doesn't work they are both willing to and able to change it out with little effort.

 

Those houses looked pretty good. I want to earn one of those Viking style houses!

 

For the past three or so days, it kind of sounds like you have been saying "I am going to be a mage, don't screw that up pls, but I dont care what you do to melee combat."

Lol, that is not very nice

 

I still don't see how this will be a feasible system. If I'm out of combat and want to do something how do I get the skill to come up. Trap detection for a thief would be one excample.
Will I be able to pick a lock? Disarm a trap?
Spells are another issue, if I want to use a spell as a lead off or a pull, how do I call up that spell? Don't tell me random becuase that does not work for situational fighting. It's like going into a gun fight and only having your knife skills available.

 

I think the chat box is necessary. Without it you have no way of seeing conversation history. So I think they need to have that, but given their stated goal of minimizing the UI and keeping your view in the 3D world, it should be hidden by default, something you choose to show if/when you want it so you can see the history. There definitely needs to be chat bubbles though if the intent is being able to hide it and minimize UI.

I think it would be a simple matter to have a static out of combat bar where stuff like that can be setup. Maybe a separate bar with static configurable skills which is beside/above/below the dynamic bar. Or maybe you designate certain slots on the bar as static, which then lets you put stuff there whcih is always there. Who knows, definitely stuff which can be ironed out in alpha/beta.

 

I wasn't expecting the combat items to swap out at that frequency. Should be interesting. I liked the video. Alpha is definitely something to look forward to.

 

Was thinking about playing one, but i wouldn't under the current system. I would play a pole arm heavy armored palidin with some healing. I would adapt. However I believe they will end up making this system work.

Honestly see it more of a problem for a mage than not. But like I said people who are for the system have no better argument than to attack the person rather than express why the combat system is so good. So why don't you stop attacking people individually and debate the issues?