Combat Redux

I'm with you, Wanderlust. I had been considering moving from Lord Marshal to the Baron 3 tier.. but with the way combat is now.. I'm going to put my SotA investing on hold.

I'm hoping the devs do the right thing and revisit combat. I believe it's the only way this game will see an Episode 2.

 

Guys, don't forget that MMO combat is an abstraction of turn-based combat (like, from other games), not real time super realistic combat.

Shroud functions similarly. It can only accept combat input every 1.5 seconds - this is for a lot of reasons, but mostly so people aren't constantly desynced, which happens ALL THE TIME when playing action-based games online.

 

Abstraction, yes. But it isn't turn-based. Everything else is real time: movement, positioning, maneuvering. There are no "action points" or anything like that to determine when an action will be performed, or how many inches you can move in 5 seconds. The trading of blows is roughly turn-based based on stats (swing speed, cooldowns), but as you said, it's still an abstraction. The combat takes place in real time.

Which is to say all of this is rather moot when we have successful MMOs using this same understanding of "abstraction" that are still more interactive, dynamic and engaging than this system. Game theory aside, SotA's combat still isn't up to snuff from a mechanical standpoint, and is just a mockery of any sort of combat system when considering everything else included and missing, be it for MMOs or single player games (both of which SotA intends to compete).

 

This is a good point that hasn't been previously raised, and it's very true that MMO's that attempt an action-based combat have significant problems with desynch and they make compromises that always raise complaints. I hadn't thought about that in this context but I can see that tekkamansoul is probably right. But all this means is that combat in Shroud will require some restraints that are time-based, and card combat is one way to deal with it. But it doesn't follow from this that card combat is the only way to deal with these constraints. There are other creative solutions that could require real-time decision making that sufficiently slows the process down to a manageable level, without forcing the user to stare at a hot bar waiting for random cards to come up.

 

The game tick cycle. Yep, EVERY game has some iteration of this, even action games. Ticks, cycles, (fixed)updates. A loop that would be considered a 'turn' in a game. But their are a couple points to be made about that.

1) The length of the turn can be tuned to create the desired gameplay. Anything between Zelda's action based style to civ's "wait for you to do something". It depends on the intended feeling of combat, power of the machine, and amount of things to do. Make it fast enough and it won't feel turn based. How fast is the right amount? Depends on the feel you want for game play.

2) While it has these delays between results of actions, or time until something is available, ALL mobs/PCs/Actors are happening simultaneously. This is actually one of my "why this style isn't a good fit for this game" moments. Card games, with constantly changing interfaces are best when the player can assimilate the information they've been presented this hand with the game space they're looking at. Having everyone throw cards as fast as they can leaves a certain level of player out of the difficulty curve. That's not 100% bad, but worth noting, as balancing it for optimal audience size is just one extra trick you'll need to do.

Now...


As for the abstraction part of things, the level of abstraction cards brings is greater than the amount of abstraction needed to enjoy a more stimulation style, action based RPG. The abstraction either creates a disconnect between what we're seeing and what it says we can do, OR it's not being utilized in all places because we're giving most of the control over to the player and trying to shoe-horn this bit in other places making it feel like part of a different game.

 

Combat damage ranges need to be more reliable. It is not fun using an ability and having it randomly decide to do 1 damage instead of 30. That's not armour or resistances working against you, that's just random chance, and it sucks.

Abilities need to have their effects be more obvious. If I use Riposte I want to see how much damage I stopped. I want to look at Riposte and think to myself "I should use that to reduce some damage on the next attack" not "I should use that because it popped up in my action bar and should be immediately clicked like every other button I have."

By the same virtue, what is currently in the game to give me any idea of when I should use Riposte? Everyone is throwing out random abilities. There is no indication of when someone is stacking or comboing.

Also, the lack of ability details is annoying. I can see the reasoning, keep it mysterious I guess. But on the other hand we are testing a system we have no details of. We need to see WHY an ability does between 1 and 50 damage. We need to see how much damage Riposte is blocking to know if it's worth it. We need information so we can provide feedback.

All we know right now is:

1. It's not fun
2. The lower ranges of damage are extremely random.
3. The effects of abilities are hardly noticeable.

 

I never meant them to. I fully understand that they dislike the system and they have every right to. My point is that it doesn't help the developers to improve something though if all you have to say is 'You do it bad'. If you'd be writing a recension of Romeo and Juliet (for school/work) and you'd say the book was boring, I doubt you'd get a decent grade/feedback. If you'd say the arc of suspense was lacking tension because the pattern of tragedy development was too obvious from the point... (you get the idea, I guess).

I seem to recall you writing a posting where you mentioned that one of the main parts of incentive on PvP (as e-sports) is about competition. Hence winning or loosing are a main factor there. Not to mention that the simple fact somebody managed to win these matches would kind of imply that they have a solid grasp on the system and took enough time to evaluate it.

Ok, not much to say there.

You have just scored my point for me. In this relative scenario, the hare is fast, but compared to a greyhound it is already slow. What about an ant? It's slower than the bunny if we compare absolute speed, but if we factor size, then the ant would be faster than the rabbit.

Where? I'm sorry, but I couldn't find any?

I won't have the time to properly respond on the other postings, so I'm going to delay (or skip) it. But I wanted to highlight that @Fikule did a good job. He said what he dislikes and how he would like it to be changed. So I'm going to take the opportunity and give a rough stance on the system as is for me.

First of all, I want an action roughly every one second (or less for more powerful ones), because interrupting is a main idea and if people like me have an average ~200 ms ping and you want them to have a normal human reaction time of ~500 ms that's about the limit. I enjoy the idea that I can see the move my opponent is preparing and try to stop them. Yes, it is not fully functional yet, but I give them that leeway since it is pre-alpha.
I like the idea of having a meaningful choice. People can go for more chaos (random deck mode) and have the benefit of possibly higher damage spikes (stacking) and better combat preparation at the drawback of less reliable choice of action and increased need for peripheral vision. I would like the locked deck mode to get the ability to trigger combos later down the road and hope that is being considered and worked on (I highlighted that already in previous postings). I dislike the fact that there is too little variance (especially positive 'buffs' and 'damage reduction') and the skills not being believable (e.g. the usage of polearms would hardly justify growing a skin equal to plate armour as it does now).
I hope that the cover system, evasion and blink are going to be (re)worked on, so that they can stop spells (e.g. I blink behind a rock while the fireball is already flying, it should explode on the rock, or better yet hit the ground where I was before the blink like I recall Chris mentioning in an hangout).

I long for the confirmation/time that changing armour on the fly is being removed, again, considering this pre-alpha. And I'd like 'no armour' to automatically use the light armour skills.
And that is just a very short stance on the subject (as I've got to leave IRL now) to give a short vision of how I would have considered constructive criticism (specific points mentioned and suggestions of 'improving' included).

 

I'll start with the stuff addressed to me.

1) But, that's exactly what you're asking them too. The question should not be "what's wrong with combat" but "what's right with it?" New. Different. Not WoW. Ok... annnnndddd? Because Rock, Paper Scissors meets all those criteria, and yet we can all agree that would be a horrible way to determine combat. By asking the detractors to tear it down when it hasn't been shown to stand is unfair. You have to present why we should like it. It needs to be sold, and so far, I haven't heard one thing that makes this system better than anything else that doesn't have the same hang ups.

That said, we still find ways to do exactly that. Immersion, low skill ceiling, too much focus on the interface, the forcing to net decks is as bad as classes, etc. I could go on, and have, often.

2) You would recall correctly. PvP is about the competition. But so what? You have to show why THIS competition is good for THIS game. Why it fits with this play style (PC-centric, not console or tablet). Why it fits this game world. Why this change is needed over an evolution of the tried and true. Why we need to completely break off and do something new.

And by asking: Have you beat these people? doesn't show anything. At all. The questions are devoid of context. If there's enough of a level gap, no... they don't need to understand the system better than me. They can brute force it. That's before we talk about the ability of the system to just be unfair. Remember part of what the devs said is they want a skilled level 20 to be able to fight a level 50. From what I'm hearing... that isn't happening.

And lets, for laughs, say you're right. That people have learned this system well enough to be better at it than others. So what? It doesn't make it fun, engaging or immersive. It doesn't make people WANT to do it. It just means it's learn-able. That's not a selling point, that's a base requirement. But the part of it that is NOT learnable is getting comfortable with your skills and their position. There will be no 'muscle memory' so to speak. Not getting in a zone and just playing. Is that a good thing? Not to a lot of people. At some point a game shouldn't be work. It should be relaxing. Any learned

And again, that's just the PvP side. This combat has to work as both a PvP AND a PvE system. You can't just point at one piece of one side that could be equally done by something else and call it good.

Now to poke on one little thing outside of that:

You made the race car analogy. The truth is the driver might not know exactly the mechanics behind why the car handles like crap in turn 3. When my users come to me with a complaint about my program very often the ONLY clue I get is "It's slow" or "I don't like the way it looks" and I have to do the digging. That's part of being a professional. We learn our craft, and we're expected to do the work to dig the info we need out of our clients. Mechanics are constantly barraged with "It makes a clunking noise... sometimes... it might be coming from the wheels, or maybe the trunk... I don't know. " That's their job.

Is it easier if the person also speaks the same language? You bet. But if they did, they'd probably just fix it themselves.

And with this career and type of product, they're lucky people are even taking that much time. The cost of just getting another game is so low, it's only due to some strange loyalty that people do stay and fight.

Everything you just said in that last bit doesn't need the deck system to work. The closest you get is stacking and combos. Could easily be done with out the deck system. Right click to put up a block, start pressing buttons, first button press will start draining focus for a charge up. Release for the attack. While you stand there, you're vulnerable. Could get hit, interrupted, killed, etc. Second key starts applying combos. Same problems, and then both skills go on cool down, for one all or nothing attack.

 

@Logain: don't get me wrong, I am NOT a twitch player and I have plenty of patience. My wife and I don't play RTS games precisely because we don't like the frenetic pace of crazy-*ss real time games that put a premium on muscular reflexes over cerebral play. This is not about things going too slow. It's very simply about things not being fun for us. Apparently it is fun for some others, I get that and it's ok. Reasonable people will see things differently, that's always going to be the case. Like you, I much prefer to have time to think about my actins, this is why my wife and I were such big fans of Turned Base Strategy games in the past (e.g., Master of Magic, Master of Orion, XCOM), where there was literally nothing happening while we considered our moves. If I wanted that level of time to think in a multiplayer fantasy game, I could play Heroes of Might and Magic, but we are beyond that now and want the real time combat that is a signature component of the modern MMO. Our favorite combat MMOs are those which offer us choices and control, but put limits on those choices. The LAS (Limited Action Set) hotbar with only 6 of 8 icons instead of a screen full of 7 hotbars with 87 different icons. LAS play requires thoughtful consideration of all the possible encounters to be faced, and challenges players to get to know ALL of the abilities they use and know them well. That part of SotA is awesome, I love that we have an LAS hotar in this game.

Control is one of the things that many players (this one included) like to exercise. I hear complaints all the time in MMOs about RNG. One of the most hated forms of crafting is "RNG crafting", as in ArcheAge. You go through all of the trouble to get your skills up to the max, you pour in huge sums of currency to get the best mats, and then you hit the "Craft" button and a product comes out with "random" stats. That's how it works in ArcheAge and players HATE it. Randomnes has a definite place in any game, and in particular in combat so that random occurrences can smooth out the curve and assure that the best gear isn't always going to win, and the worst gear isn't always going to lose. Skill comes into play and utilizing the tools available to deal with the unexpected. That conforms to real world crisis and challenges us to think and respond creatively. It's fun. But random effects occurring during battle is NOT the same as the random availability of having your tools available to deal with unexpected events. One of the biggest problem people complained of in Magic: the Gathering was getting "mana screwed" at the beginning of the game. And so the developers came up with several solutions to overcome this problem (e.g., mulligans).

This game sacrifices control in the name of innovation. Here, there is no way to overcome getting mana-screwed in a completely unlocked deck. You could have 20 heals in your deck and if your mob gets a wild-*ss crit that nails you and you're not able to get away in time or draw that one card you need, you die. So Portalarium comes up with the solution of locked cards and that helps to a degree but comes at a high cost. You could lower that cost but then there would be no reason for anyone to use a random deck. The more you try and bring these concepts together, the less justification you have for having the distinction in the first place3.

The bigger, other problem is that I am constantly looking at the deck, not the action. The best combat systems I have experienced presented subtle mob cues that alerted me to impending actions which I could then respond to with a controlled response. But here, I have neither the control nor the ability to watch for whatever subtle cues might exist. I have no idea if they do because I don't ever look at the mobs while fighting.

Final point. The response that "please don't turn this into yet another button mashing clone of every other MMO on the market" creates an unnecessary dichotomy. There are not just TWO choices, there are an infinite number, restricted only by the imagination of the developers, who have proven they have the chops to innovate and aren't afraid to try something creative and new. So if this doesn't work, it doesn't mean we have to be a WoW clone, it just means that something different and perhaps every bit as innovative and charming, can replace it. Have faith in Portalarium to be able to accomplish this. I do.

 

Combat is a dealbreaker for me. Period.

I played Ultima Online, WoW and recently LOL extensively, and all outmatch combat in SotA by magnitudes! I am standing there, dying by boredom hitting some mob that is dumb as a rock using random popp ups! Sorry, but this is not appealing at all! If you don't like combat issues, make a game that does not rely on it. If you want to include combat, give us something that relates to a modern game in 2015!

 

When I learn a skill, I want to be able to use that skill when I want to use it. Not have it pop up randomly. Yes, I can lock the abilities but that comes with a large focus penalty so clearly, the developers want you to use the deck system.

I see a lot of people complain that they don't want the combat system to be a WoW clone but I have to wonder, why is that so bad? You know why a lot of games use it? Because it works! You have all the skill you learn right there in front of you ready to use minus any cool downs. However, I'm not advocating for a WoW clone but what this game has doesn't work either. It seems the devs when they were thinking of the combat were trying to hard to be innovative and didn't think if it was going to be fun. In other words, they were being innovative just to be innovative, not because it was necessary.

There are a lot of other problems with the combat but most of those can be solved with some polish in later releases but the deck system needs to be scrapped.

 

Just checking back in after running around in some other MMOs for a bit. I remember why I didn't like GW2, the combat is ok an interesting enough, but theme park MMOs just get old very quickly and have no soul. We went back and tried The Repopulation, another sandbox with an incredible crafting system but for some reason I cannot fathom, they have split the alpha population into THREE servers and they are all dead. The uniquely appealing crafting system only works with a solid population, so that game is out for now. We have settled into The Secret World, which is a lot more fun than we expected, for a theme park MMO. Very unique, and the combat is quite fun.

But I keep checking back here getting interested every time I see a new patch. Have there been any updates to the release schedule that take into account what appears to be a growing dissatisfaction (or at least a growing acknowledgment of same) with combat?

 

Other than a cover system for ranged combat and guild warring, not that I've heard or seen.

 

I can understand that people have different positions on this, but what I don't understand is why the developers haven't said boo about the issue. They invited the discussion by stating in the FAQ that they would consider other options and enough players have asked them to do this that you would expect at least a post saying "we've considered it and we believe that with the improvements already scheduled it will be much more appealing than it is now". Or, even better, "We've heard you and we are actively discussing and thinking about other ways to enhance it to deal with the issues you've been describing".

But nothing? What happened to their keen interest in what their backers are thinking?

Disappointment.

 

It's been two months since being told we'd get a document on PvP looting ideas after 50+ pages of player input and discussion.

But hey, chin up - they're putting in street signs.

 

Someone asked if I could produce a link to the dev post where they said that if the card combat turned out not to be fun, they would "probably try other options". Here it is:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/lets-talk-about-combat.4094/#post-76877

 

Still funny to see how all those concerns haven't been addressed in almost two years. The kind of funny where you're laughing and crying at the same time. Well, mostly crying.

Okay, it's just crying. Lots of crying.

 

There's another thread running about a suggestion for a UI update to make the decks more palletable, so I will leave that there. If I were swinging for the fence I would love to see conscious vs reflex vs passive abilities, as opposed to just active vs passive and randomness. A limited - as in pick your favorite 6 for the situation at hand (maybe still be swappable "decks") - statically assigned, traditional bar for conscious skills. Available all the time. Then an "invisible" bar or popup area that displays reflex abilities for a very short time based off of events in the battle. Add to that movement and cover modifiers to dice rolls and you can have a very simple, intuative, immersive system that doesn't stray too far from the current skill trees or semi-turn-based nature.

 

At the R17 Post Mortem held yesterday the Devs showed that they are aware of and discussing not only the combat issues but other issues as well that are discussed in the forum. They admitted that combat has not received any attention for around 6 months (aside from tweaks to related systems which even degraded combat) because the focus was on other mechanics of the game. They admitted that combat was not "fun" in its current state. Combat will enjoy an overhaul in the next couple of releases. It will make combat more enjoyable for some people who hate the way it is now, other people will continue to hate it.

The point is, the Devs do know what the problems are, are actively discussing solutions amongst themselves, and are addressing problems according to their own schedule. Imagine what would happen if the Devs replied to every negative discussion saying "yes we know this is a problem and will address it when our schedule allows". The backlash would be nasty, especially if the Devs didn't actively respond to follow-up questions. It makes perfect sense for the Devs to keep out of such discussions. It would be a lose-lose situation for them.

 

I haven't been able to listen to that post-mortem yet (I strongly prefer the term "de-brief", but I digress), I will try again. Thanks for pointing that out, I'm glad to hear it!