Glyph/Deck Feedback

I too can deal with it being worse this release along as next release we see significant improvement. I was also hoping to see less slugs for heavy armor. Ahh well maybe next release..

 

I wouldn't count on a reduction in the number of slugs in subsequent releases. It seems as if they really want to penalize people for casting while wearing armor. Even leather armor produces some slugs (as I discovered last night) ... I haven't tried cloth, so I don't know if it produces slugs as well...

 

Isaiah I can sense your level of stress by your posts because you use stress and tension a million times. I agree with several of your thoughts but remember this is a work in progress so I trust that improvements will be made based on player feedback and player data. So I recommend backing off the ledge and continue to post your feedback on your experience. The dev team will be better off with specific feedback and not the world is ending stuff.

 

Good point

On a different note did you play UO and if you did what shard? You name sounds familiar

 

I personally don't mind getting penalized for trying to cast magic spells. But its a problem when even using a build using mostly melee cards you still get a ton of slugs using heavy armor.

 

Nope, never played UO. Up until now, all of my experience has been in single-player games.

 

Shouldn't there be some stress though....it shouldn't be click click and hey we are good....

If there is no delay on discards then it will make combo's ridiculously easy....oh you need those three cards...well just click through until you have them.

I'm not saying a huge long delay but there has to be something.

 

Yup, that does seem pretty unfair. Heck, last night, 2/3 of my cards in my deck were melee cards and I was frustrated waiting for my blade attacks- 4 cards of each - to pop up. (Not great when a kobold is trying to smash you to a pulp!)

 

maybe they can resort to using more of a focus penalty for heavy armor rather than a slug penalty. That way we aren't fighting against the combat mechanism.

I wouldn't say the world is ending, but it sure is in pretty bad shape. Especially when there are people indoctrinated into insanity, slaughtering people and slaughtering little children putting their heads on spikes in the name of religion. Something is really wrong. Those wackos could end up in every country if we let that crazy doctrine metastasize. World may not be ending, but it surely needs some serious help @jschoice

 

To be honest, I like this way better - discarding should have a cost for the deck system to work - if you can keep throwing away the cards at no cost, deck building is not so important anymore - you can just compensate it with fast clicking. If slugs are a problem in a deck, maybe it is not a good deck, or maybe the game is unbalanced, but fast discard is a poor fix for this.

If you have great micromanagement skills, you should be using them on character positioning, not on card-clicking - the card part should involve tactics, not speed.

 

That's exactly what I think, just stated better.

I'm sure they will balance out the slugs as we go forward or have some way to minimize them somehow through skills or whatnot.

 

For the system to work? I thought the system was to allow us to fight? So you mean for the system to work we have to be happy about being stuck with the cards we get and be frustrated while trying to discard. I'm sorry, but that is backwards thinking. R8 was great, I liked the deck system from that release. R9 not so great. I feel hindered by the system. I'm not going to say that it is a total disaster, but if it keeps going down this path it very well may be.

Also the slugs are a real problem that needs to be addressed early (like now). The reason is that people wearing heavy armor will have to lock their skills which might not seem like a problem now, but later on it will be when more and more combos are created. Locked skills cannot form combos.

 

While I have not joined much PvP, My current build is a heavy armor one. I'm not having much problem with slugs really, I just keep discard speed at fastest, and about 8-9 slots, plus one fixed slot. Maybe there are better builds out there, but the point of my build is to minimize the slug damage from heavy armor - and in this sense, it is working really nice. In R8, I had no idea you could discard skills, so it was really important to me to be able to fight despite having slugs all around my deck and not being aware I could to get rid of them by clicking. With the ability to discard at will, that build is inferior, since I'm just spending skill points to reduce my number of mouse clicks.

You say you are frustrated by having a bad hand, but I see the challenge as trying to have a deck that *never* leaves you with a bad hand. On the other hand, I get frustrated if my tatics don't work because I have to be clicking all over the place. The key for a deck is that you should not have to discard, you should play with the cards in your hand - if you see a card being useless in too many situations, what was it doing in your deck in the first place?

I understand that this system is harder, but it is harder for everyone. The reason I think this is superior is that the randomness blurs what will be the best builds, and prevents people from just spamming the same moves or combinations over and over again. But in the end, I like it because I feel challenged, not frustrated, so the question is why are we feeling different about this system?

 

I find my focus is on the cards more than on the battle at hand. If I am rushing an opponent, I really cannot look down at my deck until I am in range. Planning what to do as I get close is impossible unless I know what is available for attack, and what position that ability is on the screen. With luck my opponent is still in range when I finally click on the attack. I would be OK with the deck system if I could move the cards individually around the center of the screen rather than a solid line of cards at the bottom of the screen or positioned closer to the combat and blocking my view. I am in full agreement in any case with the OP. Discarding cards has a built in penalty in the fact that you take time to recognize the need to discard and click on your selection. This should be penalty enough, no cool down needed. In summary, I would like to distribute my deck by moving cards individually around the combat area. In addition those cards should have a visibility slider so that with some user set transparency, they will allow me to keep my focus on my opponent while being able to see what cards are available without moving my eyes across the screen, being able to focus on combat situation even through transparent cards.

 

No offense but I know how to create a deck. I kicked the hell out of most people in PvP in the last release. R8 everything seemed great. Even if you get dealt a good hand sometimes it is nice to be able to massage the cards you were dealt. Having too many of one card vs another. I didn't say the cards I wanted didn't show up.

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Also I'm finding a lot of stuff I don't like. I'm amazed that more people aren't complaining. I tried setting up a swords deck and I found it VERY stressful (Again) trying to keep track of creating combos. It's almost better not to have combos.

Everything I've tried in this release I am having a hard time finding fun. I'm amazed everybody is having such a great time. Creating combos is simply not fun for me at all. Having only one combo when I was a mage was more fun, but having to keep track of two different combos that I had in swords was a disaster for me. I was constantly trying to create the combos. THIS ISN'T WORKING.

You can call me names or say I don't know how to do this all you want, but my track record in R8 should prove different.

EDIT: The combo between the fire arrow and the death ray is easy, because the icons have such high contrast, but the sword cards all look the same, so you try to mix trip with one you really have to look to see which sword icon you need to combine it with. that is why I'm having trouble with the sword combos.

When I switched back to the fire arrow and death ray it became aparent that was the problem I was seeing with the combos. So this might be fixed by creating some contrast between the existing sword glyphs.

 

My apologies for that, I see you more experience with the decks than I have (and to be honest, I did assume one of the problems was the way you were building it, sorry about that). But it seems our disagreement is not about the balance, it is about what we consider to be fun, and I'm afraid we are not going to get on even grounds about this. What I think that is happening is that your gameplay style relies on having several different skills, as opposed of me having several copies of the same melee attacks, and not really bothering with combos. I've never really had the need in my experiences to discard too much cards, so the discard problem is not really a problem to me. And considering that this is a problem to some play styles other than mine, this will place me on even grounds with these other styles, so this is why it works in my favor.

Hmm... you know what, combos aren't really working, I see your point. It is too complicated to execute them, so I never really bother with them - but why have them if the players are not going to use them. And if they are made more powerful to compensate for that, it will be even worse, since you will be forcing players to do something frustrating in order to be competitive.

And the bar is too low in my opinion too - it should be at our eye level, next to the action, but that could look ugly/weird.

My solution would be to have cards spawning always at the same numbers, for making it easier to cast them. Thrust would be always 1, if you had 0 Thrusts, the number 1 would be grayed out, if you had 2, it would show a pile of 2 cards with the thrust, and spend the older one when 1 is clicked. Slugs would be on a separate corner for discarding. The problem with this setup is that I have no idea how combos would work out.

But maybe I'm getting out of topic - my point is that some things about this system are frustrating to me, but I see the discard cooldown as a valid mechanic, not as a problem.

 

Perhaps it's my fault for not keeping up with the news and game mechanics, but why on earth did the creators decide to go with a deck combat system? I mean I'm not going to jump the gun and say it's terrible, but I was just sort of let down by finding out I can't cast what I want when I wanted to...Any thoughts on this?

Remember how in Ultima Online there were hotbars that you could cast from? Well maybe it's my fault once again for comparing UO to this, but I'm certain even in my subconscious mind that this is why my heart had sunk when I saw the real combat system for SoTA.

 

The main issue for me, and Im going to read into some of the things other people have said is that you end up looking at your "deck" as opposed to positioning your character and fighting. Latency also kicks in with spells insta fizzling and you got no idea why. There seems to be a global cool time on skills. I also noticed the auto attacks dont really do that much but then will hit rediculously hard. So in short Im pretty confused and a bit meh on all the combat.

I like the idea of the deck system...just...it feels clunky and not too intuitive.

I am also not a mouse clicker I use macros and a G13 normally to do my attacks. Understand there is obviously a learning curve...just atm I feel there are some system limitations.

 

To me, the deck system remains a detractor from the game. It's cumbersome and randomized. Making potions part of the glyphs too doesnt make any sense and the restrictions on a locked deck is very limiting as well. Spells cost too much to cast in the locked system and why be penalized as to how i want to play?

 

I agree that clicking away unwanted cards was better in R8 than R9, but I do think Slugs have an important role in the game. They're the balance between light and heavy armour. To do away with them would just make heavy objectively "better" in every sense much like the earlier releases where every crafted plate and went out there.