Constructive Criticism of 6 month demo Combat Card System

Please try and keep to constructive criticism and/or suggesting ideas/alternatives. If you want to say you don't like the combat system, simply do it in the other thread with everyone else.


Seir, I like what you've done there, but it could get in the way of other targets on screen. I like the staggered stack tho

 

You can make semi-circles in illustrator using a curved path. I don't like the idea of the hud being smack-dab in the middle of the screen, though. Chris had mentioned the idea before, but it was either shot down or he didn't like it much himself.

@Juvez : as far as 'macroing' to be able to pick the ability you want, you'd have to write software that does image recognition and it's not that easy, which is why captcha systems weed out spambots. Most cases require a human eye to discern the image. Also, if you're pressing 1 a bunch waiting for the IR system to find you a fireball, it's likely it won't come for awhile; you might as well be facerolling the keyboard at that point.

 

I agree, specialy whit the facerolling. But its still possible to do even if harder, and who knows even if someone hack something beter later if the game gets popular enought and then no need IR system but something faster. Enyway i still dont think it should be the reason to do more clumsy system (in my opinion), but i will wait and see till get to try myself. But one think is sure, they have a LOT to do, if they want to sell this combat system.

And sory of kinda offtopic, will shut myself from here now

 

Historically, when a "cheat" system is popular enough, counter-measures will be implemented.

A typical, if dated, example is SoftIce: at some point it was so widly used to crack software protections that producers of various games and commercial programs introduced code that was able to detect if SoftIce was running. If it was, the program would just terminate itself.

The bad is that of course that would force the developers to detract some time from content creation and allocate it to cheat prevention.

 

My concern is that I noticed during the demo, that I was watching the hotkey bar at the bottom of the screen and not watching the actual combat (which was/is enjoyable). Now, we can make the tiles smaller and more transparent (need to balance being able to recognize them). Also, I mentioned being able to use preset positions or being able to freely move them as you like, so to each their own. I just didn't like the thought of staring at my hotkey bar and missing a beautiful game

 

I reckon all our attention was on the 10 icons at the bottom because we've never seen before and because we were all waiting to see them.
They would have gotten 100% of our attention anyway, even if they were purely decorative and not used for actual combat.


That said, as I've pointed out before 10 is a very dim number - go play LOTRO and enjoy your minimum of 48 icons taking half the screen.

 

Same here, thus my though about custom placement (love LotRO's approach). I think we need firmer numbers on max number of skills and reasonable numbers of available skills at a time. Is it 10 or is it 20 or is it 50? No clue. It just needs to be easy to access (since things will fade in and out) and customizable since everyone plays differently.

 

I'll just throw in here that I really like the way it looks. I'm assuming the black circles are blanks that are added in (no ability) due to equipment or skill level or something. They populated quickly, 1 second so within 10 seconds you had 10 abilities and your first one was cycling out. You also were able to enter a combat mode before engaging so you can wait for the skills you want to come up if you need to. (frequently it looked like that wasn't an issue). I think the only way you'll run into an issue of the skills you need not coming up is if you build a bad skill list. It looked like the skill he had the fewest of were fireballs, as they came up the least. Really cool.

I love the randomness and strategy of building a skill list. It looked great to me. I really prefer the skill placement as shown as it's the least intrusive. putting it around the monster would be terrible in my mind, blocking the view around the creature, especially against multiple creatures.

I do however, fully support options for changing layout, I'd want mine to be like that default, they could easily program other layouts for options.

 

Personally I love the change to the standard MMO combat system. It's gunna come along.

 

Ok, I'm a huge fan of Magic The Gathering (I even won some tournaments in my active times, when I was younger; damn, I'm getting old) and I like the idea of a deck based combat system.
There is one thing you discover very early in Magic: Loosing because of bad luck happens mostly, when your deck is flawed. A well designed dack will win most of the time over a flawed deck.

But: Like it was said before, Magic and other Card Games are Turn Based. In real time there is the danger, that it will distract from the action on the screen. So it is important to have symbols for skills, that speak for themselves and that are easy to comprehend. I quite liked the symbols in the demo, since they were quite clear.

To the UI: With or without a Deckbased system, there will be some kind of UI in all cases. One thing I didn't like was how all skills vanished instantly after combat, instead of slowly removing them (so you coul eventuelly plan, when there are other enemies in sight or not far away)

I like the approach with 8 keys (0-7) for the deck skills, but I would enhance them through four aditional slots, that are not random, but your permanent skills, that you gain through enchantments, for example (I think, a maximum of 4 would be sufficient).

=> You'd have 8 deck skills (keys 0-7=, that change from time to time + 4 permanent skills (keys 8,9,10,and the key right to 0), that you can use to plan combat.

As an example: When you play as a thief, you could use 4 enchanted items for your 4 permaskills: 1. One hide/invisible skill (to escape from combat) 2. One Backstab Skill (massive damage from behind) 3. One massive damage skill out of a hiding state (to open combat) 4. one stun or root rune (to prevent enemies from fleing or persecuting you)

Another example: As a mage you could use this four permanent runes: 1. One Root skill (to hold enemies at distance) 2. one healing skill (to heal yourself or others) 3. one AoE-damage spell 4. one single target damage spell

So you'd have 4 skills with which you can plan your combat + your deck of other skills.

This would eliminate a lot of the randomness, that many people fear, since you'd always have some important skills at hand (I don't know how charges for items will be handled, but I hope they won't be too restrictive).

But: Enchantments for extremely powerful skills and spells should be very difficult to make and have very few charges, so you can't just rely on your 4 permanent-skills, but have to build a working deck, too, where your most powerful skills are.


Cheers,
Andreas

 

As an additional note: I'd be in favour of a somewhat customizeable UI too.
Being able to move things around, and possibly change how big the borders are or the colours would be enough for me.

 

Great post Andi.

I think the only thing I would change would be to have the 4 skills be your basic attacks and have them placed 1,2,3,4 on the bar. These 4 would not alternate but remain static. That way, all of your more powerful spells and hexes can occupy the rest of the hot bar and randomly cycle. I would feel more comfortable with something like that, and it would be a good compromise between the "card system" and something more traditional.

Still, I'd just as soon have UO style macros in place and get rid of the UI centric hotbar all together.

 

There is no way to get everyone to agree on a UI. best to just make each piece a floatable object and let people put them where they like. Give them choices of fade in, always on, size, etc. Personally I'd like to see the Skill Lists up by where the Target is "somehow" but i'm not even sure where that would be. It might be nice to have a hotkey that could move the Skill Lists from around the target to the bottom of the screen...or lets just say Position 1 and Position 2... This would allow for better combat agains say one or multiple opponents.

I think what is important is to seperate the two issues... Combat by Skill List, and UI Presentation. They are both important, but two seperate issues.

 

Just keep the following in mind when suggesting to limit hotkeys beyond what has been shown so far.

There are, I believe, over 180 skills possible shown to date.
Of those a subset will go into your "deck" to be shown on your hotbar locations.
The largest possible selection (10-12) of hotbar locations will give you the largest versatility in combat.

Any restriction of either the deck amount or hotbars visible will have enormous implications for making combat truly dynamic, and your personal freedom of choice in gameplay options.
Even the removal of one hotbar location could mean you see one ability 10%+ less often. That's considerable, so all of you asking for a GW2 or similar system (less than 6 hotkeys available) please consider the consequences.
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As far as a constructive alternative goes, I would much rather see reactionary combat based on all variables used in combat, instead of having to keep my eyes glued to the obtrusive UI. (resists, stances, defensive moves, offensive, stealths, summons, teleports, etc)

If that's not going to happen, having combos and chains be the random or reactionary portion of combat, shown on a second hotbar, from a deck of those available, would be a great option. Essentially it just moves the current system to an extra hotbar, or adds a static hotbar below, whichever perspective you like.

 

Personally, the number of available hotkeys/selectable skills is not the issue (I made a small number just cause it was fast n' easy). 10 is fine, whateva. My main focus would revolve around the word "reactionary", which goes againt the grain for me - I would much prefer "anticipatory" or "strategic", where we get to do a bit of planning rather than just clicking on what's available because it happens to be available.

 

"Strategic". I like that. I would restructure a "deck" system so that it's less about cards randomly popping up on the screen, and more about planning your engagements. You could say that once you use a special skill or spell, it's spent for that battle, until you rest or something. So you would set up your hotbar with the skills you want, and your deck would be arranged in the order of your choosing. So when I use that fireball as my opening attack, it leaves my hotbar and is replaced by the next card in my deck. This opens a lot of doors and gives control firmly back to the player. A pragmatic player would have some healing and buff spells mixed in, while the more determined types would have mostly offense in the queue.

And for those of you who would say this would lead to one button spamming, I think you miss the point. You could put a 15-20 second timer on the slot that is refreshing with a spell from your deck, so that you are forced to "play your hand" before accessing your draw cards.

 

GW2 had so much promise. The skill reduction was good. The auto-attack skill chains ‘1’ key were good. Basing skills on weapons was good. The weapon swaps were good. The ‘6’ to heal was good. The active dodge mechanic was good.

But skills 2-5 were more or less whac-a-mole. It didn’t really matter what they did. It was something better than auto-attack. So you really just hit them when they came off cooldown.

If 2-5 had made sense, it could have been good. 1) Map them to logical things like defense, cc, finisher. And have them this was for every class and weapon. 2) Instead of just throwing a long cooldown at you, do something intelligent such as have the button always there but weakened. And give you the stronger skill based on situation. E.g. combo x resets the cooldown

I would love to see SotA implement something similar to this. As I’ve outlined many times. I’m very much OK using a deck type metaphor to manage procs, chains, combos, cooldowns. I want the fewest possible number of buttons and UI elements, all of which represent real choices – not skills which basically do the same thing.

 

I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to roleplaying games. I like to control every aspect of my character. Their appearance, their stats, their skill, and when and where they use them. With this combat system I don't feel that I am in complete control of my character's actions. Yes you can stack your "card deck" to have certain numbers of skills, or have different decks for different situations, but those mechanics seem limiting.

That said, I'm all for having a non traditional combat system. The current MMO hotbar system, while tried and true can be a bit boring at times. I'm playing Final Fantasy 14 right now as a Black Mage, and my spell rotation for attacking an enemy is always the same. Why? Because that's the optimal skill order to do the most damage. If I deviate from that, my damage drops off and my character is far less useful. I feel like Portalarium is attempting to remove similar scenarios with their combat system by introducing a bit of a random factor. This should in theory make things more dynamic and interesting. But then there's the caveat... I don't like having less than full control of my character and their skills.

The Secret World had a pretty interesting non standard combat system, based off of the idea of builders and consumers. Certain skills built resources, and others used them, so you would have to use a small handful of skills at first, and then larger numbers would become avaialble as resources built. Of course there were also other skills that could be used at any time, and even if I didn't have enough resources to fully pay for a consumer skill, I could still use it with a diminished effect. It made for some interesting gameplay. In this system, while I don't immediately have access to all of my skills, I build resources to use them. I am in control of this, and I decide when to use those skills, full power or not.

I think that the card system could work if this game was turn based and more tactical. If I have time to think about my moves, then it makes sense. It doesn't particularily make sense for a fast paced real time combat system. I think it breaks immersion (i.e. I'm a high level swordsman, and I can't remember all my moves!) and to me it just doesn't seem fun. That's the killer right here.

I will give Portalarium the benefit of the doubt though. The game is still early in development, and their ideas are at this point still in their infancy and unrefined. There is plenty of time for them to prove me wrong and make this system look fun to play.

 

I am also among those who like being in control of their character and having skills and a system that makes sense. For me it does not make sense that my character, who some day will be a master mage will not be able to cast anything he has learnt over the years at any time. Not just during combat either, maybe I want to summon a demon in my basement or light some candles with a ignite spell.

Another point for me is that a system with random availability of skills as proposed is derived from turn based games like Magic the Gathering, and something created for turn-based games is not likely to be compatible with the opposite, realtime games. Their fundamental design is entirely different.

With what I have seen, read and thought about it so far, I just can't seem to convince myself to like the concept. I will still give them a chance to show me something more and wonderous about it, but I am skeptical. Regarding providing input to improve upon the system is difficult when I disagree with it's concept. Improving it from my current point of view would simply be discarding the entire concept and returning to the drawing board for new, different ideas for a different concept.

We will see, I am at least happy about the fact that they wanted to try something new and also have time to scrap their new proposition if it is bad and unwanted.

 

In other games you can't just cast your spells at anytime you want. Either you need to wait for the proper target, or wait for a cooldown, or wait for the right distance.