6-Month Demo!

That is right! Now give me back my ba-ba!

 

What we know now about the card system:

• There is a tile bar
• Skills are represented as tiles or cards
• We can make it more likely for a particular card will come up if we stack the deck
• Spells show up randomly on the tile bar just like skills

If they didn't want us to talk about this they shouldn't have had the combat system in the 6 month video. Don't tell us not to comment on something that you explicitly revealed.

 

While we may not be getting Dev+ "chats", there is a wealth of information that is given to the Dev+ backers in regards to the direction the team is going, threads specifically asking for opinions of various topics from crafting to combat. The team is actively seeking feedback via the Dev+ Forums. To say they tell us nothing is a huge exageration, maybe it isn't enough information for you, but it is far from nothing. "You" have been expressing your concerns for months, and the team has told "you" that they are listening, but they have a concept that they are developing and have said time and time again that the concept is fluid and constantly changing. To say that that "system is exactly what everybody was concerned about" is incorrect because we have not seen the system yet, all we have seen is a WIP of that system, a WIP that we have been told is very far off from what they plan on releasing to us to test.

I have been paying attention to the threads because, yes, combat is very important to me. I don't understand why you are AMAZED that the Dev Team is progressing down the path that they have told us they plan on going. Just because a portion of the community has expressed concerns and dislike for the direction they are heading does not mean that they should instantly stop what they are doing. They have a design plan, if they ask for input all we can do is supply that input, it is then up to the team to decide if they find that input valuable. Just because they aren't doing what "You" tell them does not mean they aren't listening. The team has told the community that they are aware of the concerns and that they are reading the feedback, but they have also told us that they plan to see this concert through to Alpha at least so it can be play tested by "us".

I've read them, and nothing has been "fulfilled" because nothing has been released to us officially to test and comment on.

We have been told that every item on that list is still very much WIP. The team hasn't told anyone "not to comment", all they have done is ask that when making comments to keep in mind that what they are showing us is a very early example of combat and that it does not represent the final concept.

 

It has already been stated that there is time set aside in the production schedule to rework combat, and go with a completely different method if needed.

 

Interesting points you made. I'm not experienced with game design. I know with inter-cultural communication that some cultures view time differently some people expect you to be there 5minutes early to your 3pm meeting, while other cultures view the meeting as being in the afternoon sometime, and other cultures are more direct and others are more indirect while communicating. Traveling to a place where the culture is totally different can result in culture shock. It also can lead to big misinterpretations when two parties are talking but they both misinterpret the message because they both encode the message differently. Many times people get offended by another culture's actions when the other culture isn't aware they are doing anything out of the ordinary. It's possible I don't understand the process, and the process and logic of game design is such a foreign concept (and I don't know it) that looking at one phase of design I get confused, and that leads to a type of culture shock.

It is really hard for me to try to figure out why there would be a system where spells would come up randomly. Maybe in game design it is necessary that placeholder technology is commonly used in these cases, until they figure out the way spells will be handled. Not being a game developer I wouldn't know that, and maybe game developers do know that. This could result in miscommunication between both cultures, I get upset, and the devs don't understand why the big deal, and they get upset? I only know what I've seen, and it is very unsettling, and it makes it appear that the development process is totally insane because I don't know how to make sense about what is available to us. Is that fair feedback? I hope I'm explaining that properly.

Since the devs all have experience with game development, maybe they also don't understand why some community members are so unsettled by what we witnessed because in their minds everything is better than expected at this point. However if my concerns are baseless, then it is because I have no reference to explain the decisions that have been made.

If it turns out that this is a communication breakdown, then I apologize for trying to persuade the devs to fix a system that appears broken when they are approaching the project from a completely different viewpoint. I hope this feedback is helpful to the devs so they might be aware that the messages being sent back and forth might be misinterpreted because of a lack of cultural/experience based context.

 

This!!

And This!!

Awesome synopsis Isaiah!

 

Hmm...

They may not have come right out and said not to comment, but they may as well have. Basically they said they will welcome feedback once they release the combat prototype for play testing. Which inversely says the do NOT welcome feedback now.

 

The crazy thing is they need not have done any of this. They should have cut the combat out of the 6 month demo and had the correct discussion with the combat demo in the dev+ forum.

As things are they are just washing their dirty linen in public.

 

I too see the random hotbar catches more attention during the fight. Kinda have to pay attention to it to utilize the actions it's presenting... To much draw away from the game. I did like how it was done randomly in UO, where if you had a spear and at random times it would generate a paralyzingly blow. Where the war hammers would generate crushing blows... In the beginning of these being introduces, they all happened at random times. I liked that sort of chaotic combat.
Hard task set ahead of them, but they do have many more years under their belt than I. Something will come about, I'm sure.

 

That is true in the early days for wepon skills, however it did progross with primary and secondary skills coupled with various spells/buffs all of which were controlled by the player. Mage spells have always been controlled directly by the player (no random spell casting).

 

Well, after reading all 400+ posts I can safely say that could have been done in less words..

Really enjoyed the demo, durn exciting! Looking forward to an intensive on combat with feedback when Portalarium is ready. Thanks for listening to the requests for housing walk-throughs.

@Sir Frank - I can't bear the thought of trying to find your post to quote, but excellent example of healthy feedback, and I really like the idea of placing visual cues on or near the target rather than on the hot-bar.

Good feedback on lighting & windows, crafting tables & female avatar. And Venger - I agree with you about UI. I would like to see much of the UI turned off (displaying stats & dmg numbers for instance) in order to promote an RP play style. Some of these changes I see as optional, like turning off a chat log window, but some I see as essential for stopping the min/max. Not an issue of player freedom, imho.

 

I have to agree. I won't really comment on the card system for now, but I will say that the thing that made the UO combat system great is that, in a way, there was no combat system. You had damage spells, healing spells, and movement/manipulation spells and you were free to use them however you chose. Then there were sharp/heavy things that you could hit people with. From this combination of essentially independent elements common techniques and styles emerged which allowed for fine tuning of things like cast times and damage multipliers, but the essential quality was simplicity. Give the players tools, and they will find the most intuitive ways to put them to use.

As a side note: bring back words of power.

Aside from combat, I do have some comments about the visual design of the game shown so far. I have nothing to say about the graphical quality at this time, as I understand that it's still in the early stages and, frankly, looks pretty good as is. Howerver, some parts of the design do bother me. I feel like it has more of a WoW feel than I would have preferred. The human models look good so far, but some of the housing, monsters, and particularly the heavy plate armor look a bit cartoonish, reflecting a style which WoW popularized and, to my frustration, has influenced MMO design ever since. This is only my personal opinion, but I'd like to see the visuals more decidedly moving away from that trend toward a more realistic design. This is not to say that it shouldn't incorporate fantastic elements, of course, I just prefer to avoid things like absurdly bulky/ornate weapons and armor, cute monsters, and silly houses.

I also hope to see a lot of variation in the cities. One of the things that made Britannia so great was that each city had a very distinctive feel, and you got the sense that these cities had been well planned and developed to suit each's inhabitants. Generic medieval settings get boring very quickly, and while I understand that very little has been revealed so far, I just wanted to put that out there. Limitations on what types of housing are available in certain cities, perhaps even specific to lot locations, could go a long way to prevent cities from looking too similar, as well.

 

This post will be lost in the sea, but here goes anyway.

To those who hate the new combat system because it isn't UO, you should give it a chance anyway, just because something is different doesn't mean it's automatically worse. I've played several RPGs where you have a random "hand" of skills or items each round and they were great fun. (Maybe a little bit of randomness is what PvP needs to give it that spark of fun back.)

Here's a theory:
The majority says that the downside to the combat system as-is is the lack of control over what skills you get to use at any given time. This is the key thing that makes a character's style of play unique. (I would argue that this is a moot point in most rotation-based MMOs and the implication is that SotA does not use the common A-B-C style of rotation combat.)

How it works right now, we assume, is that there is a "deck" that you build out of skills, and each "round" of combat you get a new "hand" of hotkey skills to utilize. Firstly, 10 skills every 3 seconds or so is way too much. Half that at five is enough. Now, lets say we change the way skills are drawn into the hotkey hand a bit. Why not make it so that the hand of skills drawn is drawn from specific pools that the player sets up? This way skills able to be utilized are still random, but the player gets a little control over what he can do each round.

A mock-up might look something like:
A fighter character might have:
3 "attack" skill card slots, from which his sword skills come from
1 "defense" skill card slot, to use a shield-based skill
1 "escape" skill card slot, for emergencies

A wizard character might have:
5 "spell" skill card slots, three fire and two lightning

A healer might have:
2 "spell" slots with healing, 1 with earth magic, 1 with attack and 1 with defense

Each slot will draw a new skill every three seconds or however long the timer is set tnce again, I have to reference Card Hunter. Card Hunter has hands that are drawn to every round and they managed to create an astoundingly fun game. There's always a little "where's my card??" frustration, but it's balanced by the joy at getting an amazing hand.

 

I completely agree with this. I also found the art direction of the plate armour terrible. Why not just have realistic looking plate armour and not all that shiny stuff? Leather and cloth armours looked great, and then it seems as though the dev took some mushrooms and started on plate.

 

Never played UO so I can't say how combat systems appear. MOST of us don't like the complete randomness fo skills. Your generalization is fine but when someone goes in for hand to hand combat and only ranged skills pop up, that makes no sense. I want to use an individual spell so as not to draw added agrp and all I get is area affect spells. That just doesn't work and isn't even vaguely realistic to how combat should flow.

 

Interesting........

One of my mages has 80 spells.......all of which I can cast when and whenever I want.

Why would you ever think 5 card slots would make me happy......thats 5 random spells.....RANDOM....FIVE!!!!.......as opposed to EIGHTY that are NOT RANDOM.

 

I'm not even a healer and my character has hmmmmm let me see 4 heal spells plus all the buffs..........if I was a healer and only had 2 heal options, I may be a little upset.

 

Here is a thread on the 'epic plate' armor we saw in the demo, great place to share your views on that.

partially random would be more accurate

@tekkamansoul - interesting idea on drawing cards, thanks for sharing. I am going to attempt to weigh in briefly and constructively on this issue. Actually, I guess I'll pop over to Bubonic's thread for that lest I get it all going again.

 

Not all have access to that forum sadly, myself included.

 

DarkStarr,
The tour of the homes and narration by LB was excellent. I think this does a great deal more to selling the homes than just a few pictures in the add-on store.

With that said, I watched the full video for a third time and have three major observations that have persisted throughout each viewing.

1. The village houses do seem extremely small. Maybe this is just due to the perspective of the video. Maybe they will seem larger once we are in the game. Why not increase plot sizes by 25%? This would allow for larger houses at the lower level, increasing the functionality of the home, which might drive more people into the market. Right now, I don't see how many people would be encouraged to join at the citizen or edelmann level due to the size of the homes.
2. The plot symmetry seems identical for each plot. It would be great if plots could be "about" the same. This variation in size and shape would add character to each plot.
3. My eyes are constantly drawn to the skill bar at the bottom during combat. I think this is due to the random placement of the skills. While I might be able to see the reasoning behind the randomizing of skill availability, the randomization of skill placement would kill the combat portion of the game for me. I would engage in combat only as needed, not for fun. I don't want to watch a skill bar when I'm fighting, I want to watch the combat. Please don't take that to mean that I want to see skills floating around my target. I like the screen layout right now, I just want to know what hotkeys are bound to what skills.

Thanks for listening!