DPS Wars

I know combat is being worked on. But I'm not sure that people really "get it".

This is our combat system.

I spam DPS at you.
I heal myself.

You spam DPS at me.
You heal yourself.

Whoever has the most hit points at the end, wins.

If you think I'm wrong, show me a video where this isn't the case. Just one video where DPS and Levels are not the overwhelming decider of who wins and who loses. Personally, I can't think of a single act of "skill" performed by another player in combat over the last 9 months. It's all DPS and Levels.

Is that really what we want?

Because here's what I want.

I spam DPS at you and you block that.

You spam DPS at me and I take damage but counter your move with a powerful attack that does more damage to you!

You take my damage, but then counter that attack.

I block your attack.

The winner ends up being the person that makes the best decisions. Levels mean very little, and DPS means very little because blocking and countering trump them both.

Why on earth are we not doing this? Am I just ahead of my time here? Will I need to wait another 50 years, be a broken man on my death bed before I will see an intelligent system that is more than just building your character to min/max damage reduction and damage output? Or will SOTA someday PLEASE allow me to block and counter damage?

 

To laugh to die, try to be melee, you do not even go over dsp stage. You ll just DIE

 

Truth!! I had a fully tanked up char with top-notch crit-gear (pure melee with enough life for heals and the earth passives), and took on a fire/death mage 30 levels below me, and had my clock completely cleaned. I never got him below 95% life, and I found myself eating dirt in about 30 seconds.

 

I was trying to do something more melee-related but when I sparred with Themo (I know... I was outmatched) but I couldn't even catch him, let alone hit him. I was trying to root him with a skewer skill that doesn't work, though.

Standing still should give compounding mage bonuses but moving should give compounding mage penalties.

I'd love for mages, archers, and melee to all be about 50/50 in PVP (all things being equal) which I'm sure is their goal - just need quite a few (okay... many) more tweaks before we get there. I do think that amount of cards should still do more damage, as well (5 levels of a skill should still do more damage than one level of the skill, regardless if you stack them or not. Also, while I'm on the subject, is there a reason that someone who wants to specialize in say mining can't put more points in the innates for those skills? I don't want to stop at 111 points of mining if I don't have to... why can't I just add twice that much to be twice as good instead of "maxing" and having to put points in other things...

At least they are hiring new staff so that's a good sign... 2015 here we come!

 

Ok, well Id say when we ALL had EQUAL skill points Id say that was skill when people consistently won over other people.

So you want blocks etc? Does that make it person with fastest net connection wins?

Lets be honest there is no perfect indepth combat system for ANY MMO. If you talking bout single player, I apologise.

 

There are games that do it better. SotA just isn't one of them.

So instead of computer speed or latency, everyone should be equal through the design of a terrible combat system? I mean, this isn't 1997, it isn't like there aren't other games in this mysterious new genre called "MMORPG"; there are plenty of MMOs out there with competitive combat designs, and they face the exact same issues that SotA does in terms of connection and lag. That isn't exactly an excuse in 2015, and it hasn't been for over a decade, so why is it suddenly popping up now as a reason we have terrible combat?

2016. No way they're making their November '15 launch date.

As for melee vs. ranged, this system supports ranged combat (mages in particular, with the imbalances they've shackled archers with in arrow costs alone). Unless they change from if you throw on a cloth gambeson you tear up the ground like a Road Runner cartoon, no matter your stats elsewhere, you're gonna' see a lot of Speedy Gonzalez mages strafing while safely stacking and comboing at a distance. Warriors will be a cute role-playing template, but no one with any competitive nature will pick up pure melee skills.

So much for classless character building.

 

So in alpha you are whinging about skills being unbalanced...let that just sink in

Combat system is getting worked on..its better then what it was...in alpha.

Few releases ago we had pure strength builds, hybrid builds and mage builds. All worked all killed each other so coz things have been tweaked in one direction no need to summon the doom and gloom monster.

Honestly Dewd you are so full full of negativity that even when you hit on a good point its covered by so much emotion I turn off.

 

It might not be so bad if they spent the last 3-6 months on combat evenly or even in chunks rather than street name signs. The fact it took them this long to spend their limited resources on a game mechanic everyone will have to participate in is inexcusable.

Should I *cheers* and give everyone a slap on the ass? "Good job, guys, keep up the fantastic work"? We got enough people neck deep in the Kool-Aid; some of us actually have to critique this mess.

 

the only skills that really seem to require any sort of skill are skills like fireball and moonbeams.

 

I'm saying two things at this point.

1. I agree that MMO combat is always bad, but if that's the only bar we have for SOTA we're short changing ourselves.
2. The design of SOTA's combat is broken at its core. It's fundamentally unbalanced. So we need to change some of the core mechanics to make it balanced. We need to stop tweaking DPS here and there and give players the ability to take DPS out of the equation. Blocking does not have to be a button push that makes your character hold up a shield and "block" the next attack. Yes, that would be bad because of latency. Blocking means that if you throw a fireball at me, I have a way to make myself completely immune to it. But then by using that defense I should open myself up to a counter attack by you.

The difference between a counter and a block is important to understand here. A counter is something that can be used against a specific attack. You thrust at me, I counter with a parry! Only parry is not set up to work against your thrust, only to give a stupid defensive bonus.

A block is something that would literally BLOCK that thrust. So I would use a Stance that will BLOCK ALL thrusts, for example! This might sound really unfair at first...but you have to realize that the point of this would be to also open me up to other attacks like double slash and take MORE damage if someone uses those.

What's brilliant about this system is that it can use turn based "elements" with cool downs making latency less of an issue. So it might work something like this. I thrust at you for 20 points of damage. There's now a "thrust" timer of 3 seconds. That means you have 3 seconds to parry my thrust and cut the damage in half, while also opening me up for a counter attack. My parry timer of 3 seconds starts!

It's now your job to either attack again with thrust, or do something else. If you attack with thrust again during that 3 seconds, you will be blocked by my parry. If you use double slash, you will do DOUBLE damage to me because my parry is only set up to block thrust.

Notice there are no "turns" here. It's just cooldowns that give players that are paying attention the ability to influence the outcome of the fight using skill and not DPS and not levels.

It's so simple it kills me to think why we're not doing it. But that's high level concept. Actually mapping out the whole system would be complex and take time. But I think it would be well worth it.

 

I would also be very surprised if they met any kind of End of Year (even 1 qtr of next year) date. I'm thinking this time next year makes more sense. Unless of course they plan to launch with a horrible combat system and many of the stretch goals from the kickstarter incomplete.

 

They have a small team and needed to prioritize. It's hard for me to not be understanding of that.

But yes, the entire purpose of integrating combat into the early stages of gaming development was so you wouldn't run into this problem. The reality however, is that they simply don't have enough people to do everything at once like a larger game company would.

That's NOT their fault. It's a reality. So if we're all in this together collaboratively working on the game, then we have to appreciate when they have time to make street signs or when they have time to balance combat equally.

Agreed, I'm with you on that. But you have to stay on planet earth when you do that.

 

Right, and I would call those skills unbalanced compared to all the other ones that automatically hit. You would think skills that require you to aim and time correctly would be even more powerful than they are - but really they're kind of gimmicky in this system.

 

Then they should have allocated resources more wisely.

Look, I wasn't expecting a AAA title when this game was announced, I was just expecting a great game from the likes of LB. I'd argue literally no one is here because of combat. I don't think any backer came here because they saw Richard Garriott's name and said, "Yeah, that's gonna' be an awesome fighting game." We came for the RP, the community, the exploration, the storyline and character development/consequences. It's the game they ultimately promised, anyway.

So why create a completely unorthodox combat system that everyone has to use with a limited team with limited backgrounds in developing combat and PvP skills and balancing when the game doesn't focus on those things? You have $10 in your back pocket and you need to eat for the week; you don't spend $6 of that on a hotdog and a beer. Likewise, if you're making a car/driving simulator game, you don't spend 30% of your resources (time, money, staff) on creating an in-depth character generator for the avatar behind the wheel; you spend that on making a sweet car customization creator, developing physics and so on.

They simply didn't prioritize this at all, and it isn't like they haven't known this combat was a problem for over a year now. That's the thing: I know you specifically have been waving a red flag for at least that long on the topic of DPS. Freeman and others on card combat or boring/mundane/repetitive/redundant skills, whatever it may be. They're just now getting to it, supposedly 5 months prior to launch (which we both know won't happen). So while I can appreciate they have a small team, they should have gone with something that would work and work well, and build off of that when the time and money allowed it, not come up with something completely different with little to no background in doing so.

And as far as allocating time, I cannot excuse that. We're talking about the grandfathers of PC gaming (or gaming in general), specifically in the RPG department. We're talking about the fathers of the modern MMO. These guys knew what they were getting into. If a handful of folks in a garage in the Eastern Bloc can kickstart games and be moderately (if not overwhelmingly) successful with their Kickstarters, what's Port's excuse?

 

Well, the only things I expect from the combat in a LB game is for it to not center around grinding, to have some realism, and to have tactical choices that matter.

But I do think the combat matters. The combat in early Ultimas wasn't the most advanced, but it was also a fun part of the games. Its also a necessary part of the game to do well, if you want the game to have some meat on it outside of the story and for the game to not be strictly linear. I mean, when combat suffered in Ultima VII, it was actually a huge hit to playing outside of the story. Combat was a big part of U4,U5,U6, and it made the games feel very non-linear, more about travelling, adventuring, questing. There was a story also, but it was often in the background as you went around the world doing other things. It wasn't even always obvious what to do next in the game story-wise, so you just had to go around travelling, adventuring and fighting until you figured out what to do. That wouldn't have worked if the combat wasn't somewhat fun.

 

I would argue that the combat system is what it is preciously because they only have $10 to eat for the week. That the amount of time and money they've spent on combat has been (partly out of necessity) because they need the other $9 for something else.

The frustrating thing for me is that I think there are ways to get more out of that $1, but we're collectively focused on remaking bad MMO combat that focuses on DPS instead of blocking and countering.

The game isn't finished yet. There's no need to jump to the conclusion that all is lost. That's what I mean by staying on planet earth.

The other part of all this is combat is "fun" in PVE because you get to win all the time.

Combat isn't fun in PVP unless you're a really high level that can stomp everything. Make me level 100 and I'll systematically kill everyone in the game that is 50 levels lower than I am. I'll kill 90% of everyone that are 40 levels lower than I am. Maybe I'll do a little better than that, but I'm being conservative and just trying to prove a point.

That's the problem with combat. The deck system, especially with the latest changes is kind of fun. I don't mind the distribution of "cards" at all.

 

I wholeheartedly agree. My point is combat isn't the selling point, and it isn't what LB is known for. The combat systems were fun pre-U7, sure (I loved the freedom in U6 of having a spiked helmet to headbutt people with dual-wielding boomerrangs or a halberd/spell book a la UO), but it wasn't exactly mind-blowing. It was neat and fun, and that's all. In short, it got the job done, allowing (as you say) us to spend our focus on just adventuring and sifting through corpses in Destard for invisibility rings and such. That's what they should have aimed for, though, not coming up with a completely different combat system when they simply don't have the resources for it.

As far as not being grindy, it's grindy. To have realism? I haven't seen any in the combat yet, and don't imagine I will so long as cards are involved. Tactical choices, same thing. So the things we expect and the things we're getting are totally different, hence the countless threads on combat since 2013.

I'd argue that I'm pretty rooted on the ground when I look at the numbers. It isn't that this game will launch over two years behind schedule, it's that it'll launch a (barely) 2013-era game in 2016. It isn't that this game isn't finished yet and we need to give it more time, it's that the time is running out. There are things that simply cannot be ignored and must be realized, which I have no faith that Port's weighed heavily. The money ain't comin' in for this game to keep going on at this rate. Cut the stuff that's crap, stop trying to work on a system that will take at least 6 months of non-stop work to maybe get right (which is a big maybe, a bet they literally cannot afford to make) and go with something safer that will bring more people to the game. Then get this released Q1 next year before there're so many alternatives that SotA is forgotten completely.

The MMO market of 2016 will already pull members and backers away in huge swathes, and the single player market of 2016 will laugh manically as it masticates SotA into mush. Alliteration aside, SotA's running out of time by all objective accounts. We can't be spending the next few releases on combat spinning our wheels. We need to be working on something that actually works and we know works from precedence. Combat isn't going to be the draw to this game, we know that, but it will chase people and keep people away if it's bad (which it is already doing and has been doing for some time now).

 

I don't think precedence exists for "working" mmo combat.

I'm not a fan of the current combat system because it's too much like current and past MMO's. Not because it's not enough like them. That's where you and I part ways in our logic.

I think regardless of how you distribute damage, if it's in a random deck system or you can just push and play to your hearts desire the game is not balanced. That's because it uses DPS and levels as the deciding factor, which is what all MMO's do.

I have faith in Portalarium though, otherwise why would I upgrade my PVP town to a metropolis?

 

Did you play ArcheAge? While the gear was stupid, there was a sweet spot of like a month and a half where most everyone was on equal ground. The skills in that game balanced the traditional cooldowns of MMOs (a necessity for SotA's playerbase) while providing a slew of counters and blocks. There was no such thing as a perfect rotation: if someone put up a particular counter and you tried your rotation, you deaded, fast. It was deceptively simple. "Oh, I'll just knock you down and chain nukes while you're on the ground." Redoubt. "You wasted your entire rotation, now smile while I dry hump your skull."

With one button you blew away melee, but the cooldown was atrocious and it was short-lived. It also slowed you down immensely, making you extremely vulnerable to AoEs and magic nukes. It was a tactical option, and if you didn't realize it was going up and got in too close without a way to get out (Drop Back, for example), the counter attack was going to be painful (Shield Slam for the stun, Bull Rush for the combo to trip stunned targets, Boastful Roar and whatever other combat skills were prepped for the kill). However, if you could get away (Drop Back to Stealth and move away, wait a few seconds for Redoubt to drop and then charge back in), they lost one of their main defensive skills. I'm not saying it was perfect, but it was amazing and highly tactical. DPS is always going to be an important factor, but I was always underequipped and even out-leveled a lot, and a tactical knowledge of my skills, combos, cooldowns and knowing what to use and when kept me alive in circumstances most people wouldn't have bothered even trying in.

I think SotA has far more potential, in that regard, than ArcheAge does, so when I say precedence that works, I'm referring to something like that. Just gotta' keep a rein on power creep with gear and consumables.

 

I'm not sure you can do any of that in a card combat based system.