Deck system works for magery , but not for melee !!!!!!!!

i have watched a stream yesterday and chated with the streamer.
i asked him to show melee combos by combining 2 melee attack glyphes.

but what we find out....
-its horrible to be a melee fighter in a world of mages and fireballs (there is no Jump/charge)
-non stop removing cards with right mouse click to get 2 meelee cards , at the same time ,to make a melee combo is horrible. when you stand right infront of your enemy you should be able to attack him instead of removing cards
-we got the idea to make a 7 hand deck, for a pure melee fighter
so we can have 6 melee attack glyphes fixed, to be able to combine them to 3 different combos when we need them, and the last slot should rotate heal and stun immunity
-but it wasnt possible !!!!! you cant combine fixed melee glyphes !!!!!! just the random selected appearing gyphes can be combined


that is a ultra bad way to make a combat system for a fighter, it just dont work !!!
the game need a drastic change for melee combat.

-"fixed" melee cards have to be possible to be combined to a combo with an ability you can get out of the havy armor tree
-or simply remove melee cards from the game and give players another "hotbar" for melee attacks and another way to do melee combos

 

My biggest concern has always been combat and it's implementation; however, the deck system works amazingly well even at R9 imagine what the system will be like on release!
Anyway's, to melee; I found that the player needs a mixed deck that includes both ranged magic AND melee, in fact I suggest making a mixed Melee/Ranged Magic/Life deck.

Also, we need a way to hot-switch decks on the fly, in combat.

 

I think you can switch decks in combat now though I am sure of it. I have not tried to do so myself. I would like a way to more easily switch weapons though.

 

you can´t mix up magic spells and melee combos well .
attacks take more focus when they are fixed cards
you dont have enough hand slots

+ spells will fizzle in havy armor .


a heal spell , stun immunity and maybe a charge is a must have, so there wont be much slots left for melee combos, especially when you need to combine 2 melee glyphes to make 1 combo. instead of clicking one melee glyphe and press random shown up keys top perform it
there was somewhere a thread about combos in age of conan. why not try out something similar to that ?

 

I agree 100%, the melee just doesnt seem to be working out for me and although i like to play around with magic sometimes, i usually prefer to be a melee fighter.
Im hoping some changes are made to make melee more user friendly.

 

As the person I think you were watching I have to say that after thinking about it some that being able to combo off of Fixed glyphs would just be too easy and would make the comboing system kinda redundant. Not to mention the fact that when you combo it becomes one glyph so where would it go? What would happen to the other glyph slot used to make it?

I agree about the lack of melee gap closers though. It was just root root root fireball fireball fireball all night. Perhaps when Lunar magic become available that will change some things, but it wasn't until I added some ranged in my deck as well that I started to have any success.

That said, I was running Light Armour, 2 Blades so I couldn't really take too many hits. Someone specced into Heavy Armour may have a better time.

For combos though, perhaps when glyphs come up that can be comboed they can be highlighted? Still have to worry about the deck construction, and play attention but in the chaotic scrum of melee it can be hard to notice sometimes.

 

As the person I think you were watching I have to say that after thinking about it some that being able to combo off of Fixed glyphs would just be too easy and would make the comboing system kinda redundant

why ?? spells and melee attacks have cooldowns when they are fixed cards, when they are randon they wont have. they also take more focus.

it woudnt be redundat at all i think when you hit the 2 melee attack glyphes that are fixed ,to perform a combo out of them should just start a combo with 2 hits and you have to press the right buttoms to enlarge the combo from 2 to 4 hits

maybe there are better ways but the way it is done now is .....

 

"The Spirit of the Warrior and Our SotA's Evolution"

Our SotA Combat System will go through many evolutions, of that we have no doubt.

As an avid PvP observer and commentator, I take time to watch what is going on within great fighter's character skill builds and look for those things that are expressing themselves onto our battlefields. I also have opportunities to ask some of our more talented fighters (when they have time) for their general comments.

During R8, we saw how magic and ranged combat were "all the rage in fighting fashion", yet there were some of our top PvPists, that had searched out some hidden strengths of the melee skills within that release.

Now in our R9, we have seen "ranged combat" become the dominant flow within the battles, "as archery has come into our fighting fashions" which is very similar to our ranged magic.

Within the 2 observations given above, "the world could seem upside down" where we are building our SotA from the seed of magery being first planted and then growing the rest of the skill tree/s from it.
When UO was first born, we saw within the spirit of that game that it's audience draw was from our wishes of a medieval time, when Knights Ruled and there were a few magical Merlin's within that mind set that drew us to that medieval time setting in games as well as in fictional or factual myths and accounts of the medieval time periods. So, within our real world history, Knights were the factual and Mages were the mystical, with archery falling somewhere in between. Archery was thought to be very weak against the Knight, yet there were legends and some myths that grew it's literary following within such stories as William Tell and Robin Hood. Knights too had their myths in the forms of Excalibur and other swards that had been handed down from old leader to the young. "So, in our real world history, all first began with the seed spirit of the Knight".

Here we have our modern gaming world interacting with that which we know from the real history books. Yet, "this is a medieval history also" and one that can well be said to be just as enticing to we common folks who have common jobs in our common real world. "So in this world of combat evolution, it's a bit upside down from before".

Magery is a big attraction to games of fantasy, thus our creators have been concentrating on that very valuable market and began their build with their first seed as Magery. Now in R9, we have begun the evolution of those magic ranged spells into ranged archery, which could be considered melee, but truly isn't.

In UO, we saw Magery quickly overtake the Melee Knight's skills as well as the powers of Taming overshadow what could be considered the big brother of the medieval spirit, "Knighthood". The fancy and fantasy overtook the real, well known and plain. Now, it appears that Knights must have Magic and the Archer in order to even be in our world of online gaming, because that is what is demanded most in our online MMO gaming market.

"We Are Only Beginning"
I'm certain that our gaming developers will be enhancing melee within later builds, as at this point we are in development and not a finished game. The nature of UO's development being one of the first games to have a constant evolution, our game will be taking that "constant evolution" gaming concept to another level, where our game won't ever be "finished", but will be in constant improvement and in constant evolution so as to set a more aggressive pace for the rest of online gaming to be forced to keep up with. This is what Richard Garriott and his team did in creating UO such a ground breaking success story and here within our Shroud of the Avatar, Lord Richard and his team will not be hindered by an overseeing EA/Origins Gaming Giant to ever hinder his and his team's vision of "what should be".

"Will Melee ever be a basic way of fighting?"
We will have to wait and see on that one, whether or not Magery and Taming will far overshadow the Knight, yet I am sure, that we haven't seen the true Knight yet, but I know our SotA Melee Knight is coming.
Maybe in the next build, Our Spirit of the Knight will come...
~Time Lord~

 

What I wonder is if the deck system is such an amazing advantage then why is there a negative multiplyer for focus for people who want to use a fixed toolbar?

I really enjoyed the deck system in R8. I had loads of fun. R9 they changed the discard rate, by not allowing us to discard at will. We have a one second discard timer, that also keeps us from executing an attack as well durring that time. So I found that in R9 the deck mechanic that I enjoyed so much in R8 had now become a disadvantage to me. In R8 there was a clear advantage to using a deck vs using a static bar. Now that is not the case (if you remove the focus drawbacks).

However, I have to agree with this OP regarding swords combos, because it was difficult to even see the difference between the various sword icons because they all look so similar. So I had to look even more closely at the toolbar rather than my opponent. It wasn't working for me at all. Keep in mind I was using eppic cloth because with heavy armor there are all these slugs to deal with. It is miserable to even try to fight normally than to try the combos with slugs.

So what I mentioned above about the R9 deck system being inferior to the R8 deck system bothers me. If it stays like this, or it continues down this path then everything everybody argued about the card system has now happened. I'll wait till R10 to give to see if they make two steps forward after this step backwards.

I think we should all go back to the old card combat threads and PvP threads and take a look at what people argued about, and see if people are complaining about the same things now. I think you will all find the predictions are starting to line up.

EDIT: Just allowing us to click off all the extra icons on the combat bar without the one second delay sounds like a small thing, but it would make a huge difference. The combat system should be useful not a burden. If only that one change happens I would be pleased. I would still not like slugs though, but one thing at a time.

 

It's not just melee-only types who suffer under the deck system. Those of us who play hybrid classes (or build them, in the case of SotA) can't catch a break with how things are structured. Playing a ranger, a paladin, a cleric or any of the other D&D-style classes just won't work with how things are structured now. That's a problem. That's a BIG problem.

 

Well after slaying elves all afternoon and trying different things out I have to say that I think I do about as good with a locked bar as I do the rotating glyphs.
It is slower yes but with a locked bar it seems I can plan a little better about how i fight at least as opposed to being at the mercy of the deal.

 

I thought R9 was supposed to be about "BALANCE" of the PvP? I don't see that

 

I hope that changes. It would be a real shame if the deck system they are designing has no advantage over the more traditional model.

I understand what they are trying to do with slugs and having a few locked cards and a few random cards or whatever.

If they just allow us to click off the discards quickly without a cool down that will be less of a battle with the combat system.

If they can do something to work around the use of slugs I think that is better as well.

Also they need to create a tool box type thing for potions and special go to skills.

Or if all of that is too much of a problem then maybe they should consider going back to a more traditional model. I dont know yet. R8 was fun, but we didnt have to combine cards into combos either.

Sent from my Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk.

 

There needs to be something that counters the ease of using combo's.

They just need to find the right balance of reward vs cost in said system. You have said many times that it takes to long to recycle skills. Well great, now how long is just right? It can't be right away or it makes the combo system a synch. There has to be a reward for getting the right skills up. This is directly connected in how you build your deck, the better you build it the more likelihood of getting the combo you want. I should say that better is relative depending on what you are looking for, there should be enough different combos that give advantages for a player to select different layouts depending on needs. This is really a meta game.

The slugs are an interesting one, they are there to balance out heavy armor wearing castors...perhaps with armor skill these should go down? Or you can select melee skills that will use slugs in some way as to make them less costly? These are two ideas. I'm sure others can come up with more.

You don't have to combine cards into combo's, but you should want to. That's the job they have to do. Look at ways to make them worthwhile to use.

R9 wasn't about balance....none of these are about balance yet I believe. They are about testing how things work in general. I think you will see the combat system wavering back in forth between to easy and hard until they find that medium, like a feedback motor.

 

there is a big drawback of fixed cards , you cant combo them, what makes the melee fighter unplayable with the deck system, with fixed cards and with random cards.

i think people should have no big dissadvantage by using fixed cards , except players getting a second hotbar for melee attacks and the melee cards getting removed from decks and appear in the new melee hotbar.
noone should be forced to use a random system he may not like and spells have cooldowns when you have them in fixed mode, which will nerf it . spells in fixed mode should defenetly not use more focus , at least when you are using reagents to cast them

 

I agree. In fact I think the static deck people should have no negative focus modifiers either. If people want to play with a static bar they should without being further hindered. If the card system is really better then let it prove itself against a static bar with no focus modifiers.

In R8 I clearly felt the deck system was more potent, but in R9 it seemed about even and at times maybe the static cards were an advantage over the deck system. This is my point.... If you had both options without focus modification would people choose the static bar over the cards, would most poeple choose the static bar or the card system?

If they continue to build the system so that people would rather choose the static deck over the cards, then there is something wrong with the cards. It needs to go back to the way it was in R8 so that there is usefulness to the card system, instead of people saying I really wish the static cards weren't such a cost in the Focus skill tree. For me in R8 if I had a choice to use the static deck or the cards, I would have chosen the cards even if it didn't cost more focus to cast with static cards.

EDIT: So here's the question. Are the devs building the card system to be an efficient system that is useful/effective, or are they trying to hinder us in combat because they are supposedly creating a realistic experience?

I hope the glyph system is useful and effective.

 

i use heavy armor and a locked deck and a LOT of points in focus, to increase my hand and decrease locked focus cost, seems to work great in pve but not so well in pvp... i agree that not being able to use combos is what is definitely hurting me there.... also my armor / weps are taking a ton of damage. I can foresee a roaring trade in replacements/repair work, lol. Also quite a market in heal potions because i'm lucky if i can get a heal spell to not fizzle.... ever consider the bandaging option?

i would not use an unlocked deck for tanks at all.

 

It is a great point about melee and decks. Melee players are often already busy moving to close on targets in PVP. Can they do that and keep an eye on a changing deck? We have seen many other games adapt melee to deal with ranged players: Initially with things like archer pets, stuns, bubbles vs. ranged, rushes, teleport to target, and more. Most recently, we seen a few games with hot swapping that allows one to fight at range, then change to melee. What will SOTAs strategy be? Is the ability to use focus to lock certain skills enough for melee? Should selecting a melee skill grant a certain amount of focus so that a melee player can make this investment in locking certain skills more easily?

 

Also with the change in R9 about having the discard give you a universal 1 second cool down on all skills, (So you cannot discard, nor use skills during that time)... a melee fighter is at a worse disadvantage.

Here's my reasoning for this:

• Melee fighter has to run up to players to hit them, it would be nice if they could discard the slugs, and also discard skills that are close to fading away because if they fade before you reach a person it would have been better to have a new skill come up.
• Melee fighters have too many slugs, they cannot use a true deck system they need a hybrid, (which I didn't think was the original plan. I thought Hybrid toolbars were meant for people who thought the deck system was too confusing, but now I guess it is an expected tactic).

Why not remove the slugs entirely, and only have an additional focus for using skills? Why do we need slugs at all? A slug basically says, "Yes you do have a combat system, but it isn't completely useful to you." Why build a combat system that is 1/3rd useless? Why not just give us less slots with a minimum of 4?

If platemail was an inferior armor, nobody would have wasted the expensive materials to make it. Somehow real warriors seemed to use this type of armor? Why, if it is equal to using a more comfortable leather armor? The fact is, heavy armor is SUPERIOR to light armor for their fighting style of that age. Let stuff like rogue/ranger skills (that require light armor) be the balancing factor not slugs.

 

Should the slug system be flipped? Should heavy armor have few to no slugs, while light armor (ranged) has more slugs?

Seems this would improve melee's chances in PVP, but decrease light armor effectiveness in PVE. So the reverse problem.