Does anyone else HATE the proposed card system??

almost every new invention that radically changed the way people do things comes with opposition. For instance there were a lot of people who thought telephones would never take off. However in 1984 the US Governement had to force AT&T to split it's recources into several smaller companies because they had such a gigantic monopoly. They devloped UNIX which revolutionized network communications systems, and developed many new ways to create high throughput data, and long distance communication systems using fiberoptics as a medium. The Internet would never have been what it is today without the telephone.

Speaking of that many people thought the Internet was just a stupid fad. Many of those people said they would never use a computer. Now they are old farts that use iPhones.

Give new ideas a chance.

 

Rotations and concrete skill sets are predictable, and one of the many reasons that people pay more attention to their interface than what is going on in the game world. Does it make for better balance? Probably. Is it actually fun? Debatable. Dealing with chance still leaves room for player skill to shine. It just wont be as calculated or easy to pull off. Just ask the nearst poker player.

 

As a person that never managed to like Magic the Gathering or any other such card game, I really hope it wont be like that.

 

All indications are that if you WANT your "deck" to be all one off damage dealer moves, without any need for coordination or combos, that you will be allowed to build such. I suspect that there will be deck builds that spam other moves, like protection, or self heal. From that perspective, I think it will be very little "like" MTG.

 

I for one am looking forward to the unpredictability -- I'm strongly against min maxing style of gaming - for those looking to compete it's about understading the card system and understanding when to pull a crad and how to stack --- for those that don't like a twich game this is a good medium; but i'm still concerned because I've nevered played a combat system like what is being proposed in SoTA ... however - all MMO combat systems i have played have been boring - the only one I enjoyed was the first iteration of the Warden in LoTRO - when everyone thought that you had to be a lunatic to paly a warden (waden).

 

From what Chris Spears said, nothing is final. So I'm on the fence until we can try it out.

Sounds like it might be cool, though.

 

Which era of UO are you talking about here? Anything post-AoS was fairly balanced, but garbage for other reasons (grinding being a primary one). Anything pre-AoS was horribly unbalanced. The mage combat, undoubtedly was the best mage combat I've ever seen, but I could cast a few earthquakes and destroy 10 non-mages with ease. It is true that melee/mage hybrids were great, but that doesn't make things balanced. There were many UO players that quickly realized that PvP was disallowed for pure melee/archers.

 

There were different eras pre-AoS too.

I am talking about pre AoS, Renaissance with special hits with 2 handed weapons. I can assure you you would not stand a chance against a wellplayed 2-hand macer with some magery. Crushing blows that was the macers special hit could take out 60-65 hp from a mage. The mage could heal beetween the macers hits, he could get in 1 greater heal if he was fast. But in the long run he run out of stamina since the macer were eating his stamina with every hit. And just healing yourself dont kill and dexer, it just remove your mana. And i can assure you you would not get away 1 earthquake if you met a good dexer. And earthquake just about never killed anyone, just dropped them low in hp. Seems to me you killed dexers that didnt knew what they were doing.

I agree that pure archers was crap though since they had no special hits.

I was in and saw so many free-for-all duel tourneys where everything was allowed. The character that won just about all of them was someone using a 2-hand mace. Only problem he could have was a mage with wrestle stun and with protection on.

My guild had some of the best PvP players on Europe and UO was definetly not unbalanced if you knew how to play the game. Actually it was one of the best balanced games i ever seen where mages and dexers had about a equal chance to win.

 

Ah that makes much more sense now. We're looking at different times, which is why we had disagreed. In the Renaissance times, yes melee was given some love for sure. Still, dexxers were not as good as wrestle mages and dexxer mages, but they were better. Before that though, you have to admit things were very different. Before basic spec attacks, I felt like a God in a world of mortals, dropping natural disasters and conjuring great chains of lightning, wiping out entire guilds of dexxers easily.

 

Yes i agree on that.

Well wrestle mages were very powerful especially if they were a couple of them.

 

it was always a good rule of thumb to fight only one mage at a time in UO. If you were on your own that is.

 

i bought the game cause i saw LB's credentials and the demo looked like a rpg game,
and the 3 month demo confirmed it .i thought the game would feel like shyrim,the witsher2.
the people on the forums seem more informed than me about games and have played longer
i just hope the game will be immursive and cards dont do it.its your avatar supposed to be in the game,
i dont walk in my dreams with a pack of cards-dont like the idea.

 

It is a new idea, which is why I have put my money into this game. I just hope that if it is a total flop in the Beta, that they come up with a new idea before the final launch instead of saying we know it sucks now .... but tough.

 

My skepticism is due to:
1) I’ve never played any card games like this and it’s a real stretch to imagine how it would work. I simply don’t get the analogy.
2) Buttons in MMOs (e.g. WoW) are much too random already. I cannot reliably use skills because they are based on cooldowns, procs, etc. so that I’m fighting the UI. I want to see what my character sees and react how my character would react. With a very small number of reliable actions.

Having cards isn’t necessarily bad. But they need to effectively remove several layers of complexity and start over before adding a new one.

 

The card or rune idea they have is a supplement to combat. You can still attack without using them. The idea is that in real combat you might not think of all of your skills at all times. Richard Garriott talked about some fencing competitions he was an and he would think about matches later and realize he knew the right move for that situation but he just didn't think of it.

So the card or runes (they haven't decided yet what to call them) will represent your skills, special moves, and abilities of an item etc. You get to create decks before hand with the skills you want. There is a minimum and a maximum deck size. Also wearing heavier armor lowers the number of cards you can see at one time. These cards will change somewhat randomly and you have the option to lock one in for later use. They will appear and fade out while you are in combat. So basically you can be fighting and say hey that's a good move and click the card to supplement your attacks.

I hope that helps. It isn't a fully card based combat system. The cards represent moves that you know, but it's just a different way of dealing out those moves and also prevents the user interface from being filled up with icons all over the place for your moves.

 

Any chance you have a source for that information? From what I've watched, listened to, and read, the card/rune system is not optional, and will be the only way to attack, in SotA.
If there's a quote or video with information that contradicts that, I would love to see it/read it.

 

It will not be the only way to attack; either Richard or Chris said that you could go through a simple combat without even using items in the "deck". Not sure if this was part of a Dev Chat, or the Telethon; I'm sure someone can find it.

 

At about 12:50 he talks about not having to use the card-type system for every combat.
Skip to about 16:34 and listen for about 10 minutes for the proposed card/rune combat system.

 

Having to use it in any combat is one to many.

Why even use cards when you could trigger a spell with your key buttons.

The card replace my keybutton and even worse the card will be a random card (spell).

I see very little speed, skill and flow with using a card system. Only reason i can understand why they go with cards is to please the less skilled players/newbies. And if so then the seek for improvement flow out of the window when it comes to SOTA PvP, newbies can win just on pure luck, they got the right card.

 

@Ara I too hope they don't do that for the magic system.