Combat Feedback for R5

I was some how expecting something more structurally experimental and not so conservative. I'm personally done with non-interactive combat systems like WoW or even Guild Wars 2. Auto attacks, action bars, all that peacock combat where I'm watching attacks seek their target and fly slower than snot. The whole MMORPG convention of the last 15 years has run its course, I can't really sit and play games like those anymore.

That sort of stuff was acceptable when in the isometric POV, it felt appropriate in that form of perspective, but for me it is just weird in the 3rd person perspective. The 3rd suggests something that is not really happening in an MMO. Why mess with peoples heads when you can orient them for what is really going on?

I want to feel connected to my characters actions in the 1st and 3rd, which is why collision oriented combat is increasingly my preference, and why I am so drawn to things like Mount & Blade. It seems like an ideal fit for this game from my view. It pretty much strikes a balance between the action and non-action camps of thought too, because it's engaging but not really twitchy, and you can have a mostly automated version that is very easy to use. It also has the potential to be one of those things that people talk about, like war stories from EVE. That's the kind of thing RPGs ought to tap into, especially with this increasing motion in the sandbox direction in game design.

 

Hm. I do not think this will become a twitch based action RPG anytime soon.

I still wish there would be more freedom.

I really think there needs to be the freedom to just fire a magic spell wherever I want without having a target selected. And there needs to be the possibility to do something reactive against magic and blows fired at you, like reactive dodging or interrupt magic. Especially with a card based system, which is really perfect for something like that. They could make this an interactive "Magic the Gathering" card based combat system, and I would have a thousand ideas to make it fun.

But with the current system... I dont see any way to make this fun after like every cookiecutter MMO of the last 15 years has done something similar. Just having random spells will not make this system work. At all.

What is the point in making SotA combat like WOW? I am quite sure WOW does it much better at this point in time than SotA ever will.

Skilltrees - Get rid of them. They shout "WOW clone" all over. Do something innovative. You dont know what? Ask us.
Skills - Just calling them cards does not make it better. Either REALLY go for a card system and do a real time "Magic the Gathering" type combat, or do something else innovative.
Weapons and Armor - People want interactivity. Interactivity does not imply twitch based. Combos are a good start. How about being able to recognize enemy combos and actively stop them?
Magic Skills - See above. Lets do reactive stuff.

Reactive Combat - Just some throw away ideas.

People have cards, right? Ok, lets say there are 30 combos of cards that everyone knows (and that are shown in the enemy combo window) that will do some REAL bad damage when they are completed.

For example:

Stun - Ice Prison - Mace Shatter

So we would be able to see which cards the enemy has played and which one he plays next (every normal card takes like 2 seconds to play, interrupts only take 0.1s). If we see him cast "Stun" we could then make sure that if he plays "Ice Prison" we interrupt him so that his combo breaks. But then, he may play a protective card that protects his casting of "Ice Prison", so if we see that we may have to wait to interrupt "Mace Shatter" later on.

Of course, there would be more combos, so if we interrupt "Ice Prison" he may be able to proceed to another combo. And this also implies that cards are somewhat random and that you cannot have 20 interrupts.

THIS is what I call interactive combat. Please, no mind numbingly stupid WOW combat anymore, its 2014.

Do something innovative.

 

You have to remember the combat you played in this version isn't the combat that they plan on having in place. Yes it resembled the WOW combat model now because you didn't even have your skill decks in...

 

Well, yes. But then, 6 months ago they had a demo that was better than this.

So why are we going back in time?

 

It was a placeholder put in because they didn't have enough of the cards ready to use the full system...it was in the release notes.

 

Internally run demos tend to be heavily scripted. It's not the same as a public release (of any type) by a long shot.

 

Did you see the video? It was not scripted.

 

By scripted I didn't mean "push play and let it go." I meant content selected specifically for that demo. They didn't show up with what they had to date and no plan. They polished things.

If you think it looked better than what we got in R5, that's perfectly valid. Personally I don't really see a glaring difference I can't come to terms with; it looked good. Why didn't Release 3 look that good? Lack of polish, among other things.