Combat system / newbie feedback about it

Hey since we're still in alpha I will try to make this suggestion (one last time). When I force ... sorry "invite" friends to play SotA one of the first things they say is that they don't like the combat system. It's too slow and too clunky.

While I loove complexity in a game and while I loooove SotA I have to agree. WOW is not a good example in other areas BUT their combat system is great. Not too complex and not overly complicated. I think something closer to that would do SotA a huge favor.

So is there any change @DarkStarr and @Chris that you will make the combat system less clunky and faster?

Don't flame guys and gals! Let's be reasonable here, ok? ok!


Here a random newbie player feedback that was not posted in this forum here (no, not me, and no no one I know BUT it reflects thoughts about the combat system that I hear from my newbie friends too):

Spoiler

So I've been following the game passively from last months, jumping between the free trials (R46 to R48) to test the game and make my mind about it. My comments are from the perpective of a casual gamer. An hour and half is all I can put in an MMO each day. Currently playing GW2, but I've got a long... long... history on UO. I started playing UO in 1998 until 2007, and to this days it is still the best MMO experience I've ever got.



Gameplay:

My first thought when entering the game is remembering when I played on a custom shard back in the time on UO and admins designed themselves the starting areas and it didn't fit together very well. Personally, I would have preferred no starting area at all to what I saw since it don't give a good impression when starting the game, feels rushed.

Then you experiment with the combat system. And it's slow and clunky…. I get the nostalgia around UO, but with all those other MMO around here that's not an engaging system. For me the baseline nowadays is WoW. It's a balanced combat system, simple to get around, not too fast paced (like let's say Black Desert Online), but with still some complexity and yet still kinda boring and grindy. But Sota is just too slow and clunky…. and not fun.

But the main problem, from a casual player perspective, is that the game just can't be played by casual players (except if you've got a massive amount of disposable income to spend on the game via RMT). It's like it's consistently reminding you that new players are not welcome. Let take for example the death penalty. This is a very punishing concept for casual players, just that is enough to make me stop playing. As an avid explorer in MMO's, death is a very common thing. In most MMOs, when you die your items are damaged, but that's it, you repair them and you're good to go (and sometime a temporary debuff applies). That I don't mind, but here you get a permanent XP loss which is totally against casual player.

The good thing however about the game seem to be the housing system. (that I couldn't experiment in the trial). I've however watch a few videos about it and it seem pretty great. Kinda remind me Second life. You pretty much do whatever you want which is a great thing, but also come with some negative impacts (see performance).



small note: It's often the small details that make a difference, but it's kinda surprising that there's no animation for the rope/ladders in the game. You are just teleported. That feels rushed. Same for the boats, a little animation would have been nice…



Performance:

This game was tested on pretty much the best hardware available right now: Samsung PCIE x4 M.2 SSD, dual 1080 TI SLI graphic cards, 4,5ghz quad-core intel CPU, 32gb of ram. And yet there is still major performance problem and frame drop, particularly around PoT. There seem to be few limitations for the number of objects a player can place on his lot, so some users abuse it and it causes massive frames drops.



Graphics:

I've played recently Albion Online, another kickstarted game with a 10 million $ budget. While clearly not the best-looking game, Albion manage to keep a consistency in the art style and overall looks good (but repetitive).

SOTA on the other end, seems like if you took random 3d models and textures, then throw them in a scene without real art direction. That give low resolution texture next to high res one, lack of details in most scene and that emptyness feeling that I constantly get. I get this is not a big budget game, but keeping consistency and art direction isn't a question of budget at that point.


Community:

I've been following the threads over here and on the official forums, and I get that's this is a politically charged point, but from my outsider perspective, the official community management is very problematic. I get that you need some form of order, but the moderation of the official forums is to say the least very strange. IMO, when you engage with a community (particularly with a kickstarted game), you need to accept criticism. But browsing the official forum (and sub reddit) it seems that all form of criticism is suppressed. And I don't know all the stories over there, but still from my newcomer perspective it seems that all player a not treated equality… which give me the impression (real of false) that donations do influence your moderation level with is alarming to say the least.



In conclusion:

⁃ IMO the game cannot in his current state survive on the market. I mean this very politely and in an objective manner, I've got no stake in the game, but seeing of Albion Online is tanking right now and was way, way more polished, this is an evidence.

⁃ The real strength of the game is the advanced housing system, but at that point it would just be easier and cheaper for me to just play a virtual world game like Second Life if I want to show off.


Major actions would be required to salvage the game at that point :

• Wipe the game at launch.
  • This is mandatory if the game want the slimmest chance of success. Players hate to be late to the party….
• Completely rebuild the combat system and remove the deck.
• Remove death penalty
• Add fast travel between scenes. (not just recall or teleport)
• Implement major limitation to the housing system to limit the number of objects (like Second life where you are limited to a certain complexity)
• Limit the number of scenes and remove those empty.
• Restore credibility
  • Embrace criticism from the community, don't fight it.
  • Treat each player equality, regardless of their monetary contribution to the game
  • Forget the Launch vs launch thing, that just feel very orwellian.
  • Charity add-on store items should result in a 100% donation to the charity. (just that cost the game a LOT of credibility)
  • Stop/limit supporting the RMT on the main forums.

Thanks!

PS : English isn't my first language PS2 : I'm kind of new on reddit. Thanks for understanding!

Just some food for thought for the devs

 

i just want to say, i like the combatsystem and combat way more than pure tab targeting systems.
what i dont like is the way the skillsystem is setup - i also like the skills and schools etc... but i dont like that we dont have caps and diametral effects and such, but to have to use so many buffs and switch decks etc...

 

Thanks! VERY good start into a reasonable discussion!

 

I will be making a deck building video, and I have some combat videos killing bosses already. Can look at some of these to see some good examples of combat. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/macs-videos.104253/

 

I'm a casual gamer.

The combat system in this game isn't wildly more complex than any other combat system. It is rather unique, with the rotating glyphs, other games will give players will give them five or six quick bars that can be filled up with dozens upon dozens of icons, not this game!

Still, the combat system is NOT difficult to parse. It's just different and takes some time to figure out and even then... it will take longer to master.

There will be no wipe to this game. Persistence, is persistence.

They do promise us more characters, it was right in the original pledges... So, there will be newbie characters in the game, from those of us who have been around and even with that... housing will still remain a limited commodity.

Many newbs will be relegated to renting room in an Inn... I might open up one of those... if I decide to buy another Village Lot, the income from that could be nice and not to bad for other players to rent as a guild-house sort of space.

I agree on some of the art. It might benefit the community for us to start gathering up art that we would like to see brought up to the higher resolution standards we are seeing elsewhere. There's also so much more that should be done with suggesting how to run things with the graphical settings of the game for better performance. I also think that once they put the game into a "final launch" mode, we should see better performance out of the gate, as they will probably take clients and the server out of debug mode, all of those debug logs have GOT to be slowing things down...

 

I don't appreciate the dog piling by certain users. I also don't appreciate not so subtle jabs at a game I love.

The combat system is a blast and has no issues that I can see. It's a much more player skillful system than something as simple as WoW. It also has limitless freedom of choice.

 

Difficult or complex might be the wrong words anyway. Maybe unnecessarily original? I absolutely get and appreciate that they tried to do something that nobody else has done, I really do, but no matter what you call it, in the end it's just not really FUN and that's what it's about right? Yes it's a matter of taste, no doubt, but if you played other games and compare it, it's just not making me look forward to combat. I don't know a single person IRL that played SotA that LIKED the combat system. So I think it's a flaw that should be addressed to make the game even better.

And I want people to like SotA, hence the suggestion to rethink it.

 

My opinion is that the problem is still in the tutorials, or lack thereof, not in the system itself.

Hopefully there will be some good player made video tutorials for the contest, but that isn't a replacement for a solid in game (optional) tutorial.

For one thing, how many new players even realize that you can hit K and there are more glyphs to drag down to your hot bar? I've seen 2 examples of people not realizing that today alone. That is bare bones information, and if that is catching people, then the whole locked/unlocked thing is certainly.

I don't think moving unlocked glyphs to later in the game helped out as much as we would like. It's still super confusing when you get there unless you have someone talking you through it step by step.

The friend I keep mentioning who started in August needed a blow by blow of how the whole thing works, over voice chat. I helped him build his first deck, and then he said "Whoa, it's like a whole new game!"

How many players never even see that game? There needs to be a solid tutorial.

 

I'm conflicted about combat in SotA, which is actually an improvement as I used to just have generally negative sentiments about.

First, during the kickstarter when there was talk of 'low impact UIs' and such, I was hoping for a non-hotbar based combat UI. Any game with a big hotbar will only ever be tolerable to moderately engaging for me at best.

On top of that, deck building always seemed cumbersome to me. I sort of loathed thinking I would have to rebuild a deck between scenes or even within scenes just to go fight a new enemy.

Then, combo forming drew me completely out of the action on the screen and made me stare at the hotbar.

However, now I find that if I focus on a handful of skills, I can get by most places with one or two decks. The heat system, while not ideal for my non-hotbar ideals, is much more enjoyable than the unlocked system.

So, I'd still prefer a lower impact UI style of combat with more emphasis on aiming and passives, but things have at least substantially improved in the last year of releases for my tastes.

 

I really enjoy the combat system in SotA. I don't really have any specific complaints about combat overall... maybe some graphic tweaking and balance stuff.

 

This is basically what people I know are saying. And also my opinion.

 

The most awesome thing is that everyone has their own opinions. Just because one person likes something does not mean that others may not like it and wish to voice those concerns. Please do not take this as a statement against you but as a general statement that blankets any and all voices that wish to be heard no matter the concern.

 

good you added: "that you can see", but i like the combat system too

can you tell me the freedom of choice i have by building a PVP ready char.
What freedom i have to build archetypes that are pvp competetive?
what freedom i have about choosing different decks to kill bosses, how many decks you know are able to do boss killing and how much do they vary?
I would like someone who could explain me the limitless freedom of choice i have if i want to success in this game and partake in all aspects of the game.
Or are we talking about the freedom to choose to be weak compared to those who choose the limitless freedom to skill 200 skills to 100 and higher?

 

I'd advise those people to make the most out of the heat system. I find it a much better alternative. I also agree with the comment, though, that this combat is better than many examples of tab targeting where you basically stay in one place and spam a hotbar. As MMO's go, it's not bad; it's just that I think most MMO combat is mediocre at best.

 

It's challenging, that's for sure and it CAN be a major PITA when the glyphs show up wrong and you're facing an Elven Wizard that just spams heals, with endless Focus, while you will run out of focus. If my glyphs fail to come up in the right order... I just run away from Elven mages, there's no point otherwise. There's even less of a point with water elementals, you can't even get close enough to them to get off a couple of hits, they only switch between that glowy water attack or massive heals on themselves, even better than a higher level Water Elemental Pet does...

Fix those two mobs, or... I do agree that the deck system should be dropped and replaced with three to four possible quick bars that I can load up with glyphs.

 

Not sure what axe you're trying to grind, but try doing it with someone else. I won't feed into negativity.

The game has no classes and no limits. You can choose to make your Avatar into anything you can imagine. Does that sate you?

 

SotA is the best Game of all time! I like the outstanding combat system, no game will ever has this diversity!

 

would support skilling everything and make specialisations more weak - people then build as many decks as quick bars are available and switch between them all the time - also bad for PvP, you attack a plate wearing tank, to figute out he can also be a fire mage, a watermage, an air and archery using ranger and whatnot. including gear!

will be fun, if people in open world pvp will have 2 decks with completely difernet looking gear in their two decks.
Confusing as hell, but i doubt we will see massive open pvp - it will stick to tournaments and random encounters in pvp scenes.

 

doesnt answer my questions, but anyway - have fun

 

I guess I'm not feeling the same as the OP. What exactly is "slow" or "clunky" about the combat system? Deck building? Skill activation? Lack of counters?

When I play, I'm generally an archer. I use the majority of my deck as locked, and charge glyphs and attacks while moving. This requires a lot of moving parts in order to execute, so I'm generally feeling that combat is quite active. However, I do also occasionally switch to melee, where it feels slower just because I can fight without moving. But even then, between stacking and combos, I'm not exactly bored.

What do you think would make the combat system feel "faster" to you?