In regards to the "distracting" nature of the deck system:

Well it may work then! Being so similar and easy to program, it just may be passable. The last suggestion of optionally dynamic slots is to provide a way to hold the reward of more than 10 abilities, at the risk of it being random and requiring more hotbar focus. The primary objective is to leave the system seemingly intact while give a tiny bit more center of screen and physical movement time to casters, and more hotkeys usabilty.

 

This makes me quite sad. Chris is a great guy and obviously very intelligent but I don't see a real alternative to making this system great. Maybe instead of "no auto-stacking or auto-combos ever, if nobody likes it we go back to locked-only" we can maybe try it first?
The point of the system isn't to fight the interface, as I feel it is now. I doubt that what essentially amounts to re-organizing a Scrabble or Mahjong hand is what the system is attempting to pull off. A user interface should be seemless. You shouldn't have to think about how to input the command you're about to perform, you should be able to perform it from muscle memory. The fact that the deck system gets in the way of this is inexcusable.

The way I saw the glyph system was essentially the way that Baten Kaitos or Card Hunter did it. You build a deck of offensive and defensive skills and draw them randomly as you fight. They aren't drawn to random keybindings on your keyboard, but simply into your hand. If you want to play two cards as a combo, you simply select the first card and then the second card. In a system like Shroud's where stacking glyphs (ie comboing them with themselves) is possible, you want to be able to launch the stacked attack immediately without having to reach across the keyboard. This is nothing that breaks the fundamentals of the system - its USER EXPERIENCE. It's things that just get in the way of the meat of the system.

I know you're not really arguing that the UI is fine, but some people are, and to those people:
Fighting the controls is not fighting.

I agree with your response to these points for the most part. Allow me to contribute my own, framing with regards to the current stigma against auto-comboing and auto-stacking:
1. Never going to end, for sure. Changing the input isn't going to stop anything.
2. Also has nothing to do with auto-comboing and auto-stacking. Making the interface better for all users is never a disadvantage for any user.
3. At the moment it's whack-a-mole with no possibility of rotations. Why can't this be compressed into something much more elegant? If glyphs stack in the way the image implied above (a very elegant solution), everything in the player's hand is apparent - including the number of a certain glyph he has. Suddenly, if he can easily tell with a quick glance that he has 3 Thrust glyphs, then an immediately tactic springs into his mind - double thrust to conserve stamina, then combo the last thrust into another skill - Flame fist, stacked on #2. The next four inputs can be done without looking at the hotbar at all.
4. Wouldn't auto-stacking remove the "twitch" ("omg gotta stack my glyphs before my opponent") and allow people more time to FOCUS on strategy?

No, it's so easy to just tell the system to not draw any more after your max hand size. It would minimize the amount of finger-stretching to numbers 6-0, too.

 

Waitwhut.

So you're saying I'm role-playing a role-player of myself? I'm role-playing LARPing, basically. That's how abstract this rabbit hole is going. Why can't I just log in and be or do whatever I want to be or do? Like, for example, I'd like to be a great swordsman, but this combat system dictates that I'm an amateur. I am a better swordsman irl than this avatar of me. Never would I have thought my online persona would be so pathetic as to not know the fundamental basics of how to use a sword. A child with a few episodes of Black Sails under his belt would know more about swordplay than this punk claiming to be my "other consciousness." Can I get my actual consciousness in the game so I can kick him around a bit, show him how actual combat works? My avatar's a wussy.

It isn't a sport. It's a game, like the other 2,000 video games out there that are remotely like it. Skyrim doesn't have this nonsense. Are you saying that Skyrim isn't a marvelous role-playing game? What about Morrowind or Oblivion? The Witcher? Mass Effect Trilogy? Fallout? Diablo? Dragon Warrior series? Final Fantasy series (at least until VIII)? Earthbound? Baldur's Gate? Neverwinter? Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Galaxies, for that matter? Chrono Trigger? Secret of Mana? System Shock? Thief? EverQuest? Wasteland? Vampire: The Masquerade? Shadowrun? Suikoden series? Deus Ex? Persona? Planescape? The Shining series? Phantasy Star?

Or maybe any of the Ultimas? They're kind of old, I know, but they were pretty detailed RPGs with decent combat systems, particularly VI, in my opinion. They didn't have you fighting your character to remember how to swing a sword, and like SotA (ironically enough), the protagonist was also the same person sitting at the computer playing. (Spoiler Alert: You do eventually ascend and sacrifice yourself in the end, but it's no big deal 'cause the last game was so terrible that killing yourself was a reprieve, anyway).

I get it, as you said, you're not competitive, your twitch skills and reaction speed need improving, yadda yadda. But you're saying, in a nutshell, that the game that's trying to go back to its roots and bring sexy back shouldn't even go back to its roots. You're defending randomness and pure chance and nearly passive combat as though that's how RPGs have always been, when they grew in popularity specifically because you were able to assume whatever personality you wanted to live in that person's shoes while playing and given extreme depth in character customization to play how you wanted. You're even redefining role-playing to do so.

Do you not find such a position completely ludicrous? I get it if you like the combat system, that the randomness and the deck building and everything else is your bag of potato chips, but to go so far as to redefine RPGs based off of SotA's highly controversial combat system, even when SotA was trying to get back to its roots (which is why we all backed, anyway), is absurd.

That'd be fine, and I would imagine would circumvent the situation that Chris would see as "auto-stacking" or whatever. It'd also provide a sense of "charging up" because you'd have to spend that extra second to stack up all those cards quickly before launching them.

It could go either way, honestly. Some people may never want to play with a hybrid system, and would play with a less punitive locked deck. Personally, even with how well you visualized and showcased how to make the hotbar more UI-friendly, I'd still use a locked deck if I had the (practical) choice. I don't like a game telling me I can't do something "just because." Am I exhausted? Did the enemy knock me down or put up a defense that I can't attack him? Did I get disarmed or maybe even my arm is tired from repetitive strikes? Doesn't matter, there needs to be a reason for it other than, "ASK AGAIN LATER", like it's some damn Magic Eight Ball.

Personally I feel archers and mages can already take advantage of this system. Being that you can back up and strafe, the ranged fighter sets the tempo of the fight. The warrior chasing has to keep up. For mobs, this is easy, but in PvP situations, not so much. A ranged fighter has one task: play keep-away. The warrior has two: keep an eye on where his target is moving, and anticipate where he will end up to intercept. In most games, this is basic cat-and-mouse mechanics and makes for fun mobile combat. However, there are two differences with SotA from a fundamental standpoint:

1. Keeping an eye on the action. Even with this upgrade you've proposed, I still don't know what skills I have available without continuously glancing down and monitoring what's available and what's not. It makes it better, yes, but it's still distracting. We're in this state of mind that it works better, so good, let's use it. But people on the outside looking in are still thinking, "Why did you guys develop such a terrible system? Have you not played video games? Do you know what video games are? Or what controllers do?" That's how this system looks to a ton of people.

2. Random skill availability. Again, this is a big deal-breaker for a lot of us. It's hard to sell me that I can create a sweet character from all these skills only to have him sometimes be able to do what he's trained to do. In the context of chasing down a ranged fighter, what happens if I get a skill to trip or stop the running, and by the time I get close enough to use it, whoops, it's gone? Or I get there and it isn't available? My character trained to do this very thing to stop runners, and when it's most appropriate he just... forgets?

"Man, what was it that I trained so hard to do to stop people from running?"

"...was it... tripping them?"

"Mm, no, I don't think so."

"I'm pretty sure that was it."

"No, no. I think it was Stone Fist."

"I'm pretty sure it wasn't Stone Fist. That's absurd."

"You're right! It was GUST!"

"You're an imbecile."

Those are huge issues with the system. Adjusting the UI and input helps, but it doesn't fix the problem, nor does it address the other myriad of issues it has. So I (and others) have posited that this system is incapable of solving those issues and therefore want a completely different alternative that isn't punitive because we don't like Chris's half-baked card game.

I'd like to know how you think it can, though, Strum, since you've put the time in actually trying to make it work.

 

Yes. This. Thank you. Expanding, that's why my last post suggested being able to opt for one ore more fully dynamic slots - like they are now - allowing more skills than just the sum of your slot count, at the expense of hotbar focus and randomality. In the end this system would truly exactly mirror the current system without extinguishing any of the current functionality (the true nature of a mirror), and at a very low tax for developers. Nothing that the developers don't want, and a small possibility at looking at the action. It passes the house, how do we send this to congress?

 

At the end of the day this is as true as you can get. I would love for this thoughtfulness to be involved, and maybe it will.

For me personally I have been looking for a game that handles housing, guilds, quests, crafting, and economies the way SotA does; and as long as combat isn't insufferable I'm there. As it stands, it is borderline for me. Continuing, it has been echoed numerous times that a full re-write isn't likely. With that in mind I'm going to fight tooth and nail to get something pushed through for tolerability sake, so I can focus on the rest of the game. So yes, I am picking a niche argument, ignoring the bigger picture, and running with it. Maybe the unlikely will happen, and it's got my vote, but this is what I think has a chance. Simple as that.

100%. My argument was sticking primarily to PvE, for sure. Now this is pending testing obviously (and these are arbitrary numbers), but I would see it as ranged builds would benefit by "one unit" in PvE and "one unit" in PvP; while the gains in PvE are N/A for melee, but melee would gain like 5 units compared to the one that range gains in PvP, possibly narrowing the "tempo" you spoke of. This is obviously just speculation on my part, but I have done quite a bit of visualisation - I'm a bit neurotic/obsessive like that!

 

Gotcha'. May I ask this, then: Why not make the locked hotbar better? I know you're focusing on the deck system to make it more tolerable, but curious why not do the same to the locked hotbar? It wouldn't require a re-write (the deck system is going to need some serious overhauling anyway, even the most devout supporters will admit that much), but rather making the glyphs that already work for the locked hotbar "work better."

Or let me put it a different way: instead of making the UI less clunky, the randomness, the breaking of immersion, trying to balance two hotbar/combat systems, etc. etc., why not focus on making the skills themselves more interesting as well as buffing the AI? Say, for example, the random deck is accepted by the backers and we move forward; would you not agree that the skills themselves are unimaginative and dull? How about the monster AI?

Do you think that even a working deck system will make combat tolerable with the current skill definitions and monster AI? I think regardless of the UI or whether you use random or locked decks, the skills have to get completely redone and monster AI needs serious consideration. Right now the AI is worse than UO circa 1998, and the skills are a wide variety of flavors: vanilla, vanilla bean, french vanilla. I credit this to the fact that the deck system requires so much focus off the combat that we cannot have monsters doing crazy stunts, while skill availability being dodgy means we cannot have skills that are too tactical or too situation-specific, else it would make them obsolete and further encourage the min-maxing already prevalent.

 

Oh I totally agree. But I see skills and UI as much more of placeholders than I do the foundational deck system, which is in risk of sticking.

And yes, technically improving the locked deck would accomplish he same thing, but would entirely supercede the deck system, which I think the devs would like to se work. That's really the basis of why I'm trying to suggest ways to make it work.

 

I actually agree with your post in most respects, but I did want to point out this fallacy, lest you or others build a house of cards on it. It is possible to role-play yourself. It is possible to role-play your near self, a you who only had some slight changes (What if you won the lottery?), or more distant cousins (what if your sexuality was reversed? Your gender identity? Your birth gender?) OR very distant roles. Saying that I am not role-playing if my character is too similar to myself is a common fallacy of role-playing, but the truth is that the best actors and role-players find an aspect of themselves in their character, and it is that similarity that makes them able to play the role.

 

Actually it is. That's the entire point of the card system and why another system isn't being used. They want you to be paying attention, and they don't want to hear everyone mumbling about twitch mechanics, or active defense, etc. The only way to achieve a system that's stats heavy, doesn't rely on what's happening on screen to feel too actiony, is to put all the drama in the interface. Those are the only two places for it. Within the game world proper, or within the interface.

If you start auto-stacking, or auto combining, you ruin the original goal of the glyph system which was to make you continually interact with it. If you're not going to do that, you might as well switch it out for something less obnoxious.

Now, for Umbrae's post. Lots to go through here.

Actually... no. It's not. A quick google search:

By your definition Wolfenstine 3d is a role-playing game.

Moving on.

But it's still supposed to be 'you'. Yes, it's in real life an avatar of you, but in context of the game, it's YOU. If you're genuinely role-playing, you're not making that distinction. This is you, as you would act, if put in these situations, and the stats are the results of what happened to you on those adventures. It was one of the most powerful things about Ultimas in their early era that drove me. When I talked about what happened in games early on it was often my character does this, or my character does that, but Ultima changed that. Suddenly my descriptions of them became 'I' did this, or 'I' did that.

But, lets dig a little deeper into that. It's supposed to be a representation of me, so who knows better what I would do in a situation than me? Apparently, according to the game, it does. It knows what's going through my mind.

No, if I can push a button real fast it shouldn't necessarily translate into 100% skill in the context of a role-playing game. Or at least in the context of an old-school RPG, where stats matter.

BUT... there are many, many, many ways to achieve that. Global cool downs, fatigue that doesn't auto-regen, uses per day, penalizing spamming by making each attack slightly less effective without a break... That's off the top of my head, without getting creative. Most of those, done by other games. It wouldn't be hard to use one of them instead if that's your sole concern of a traditional style game.

What we are talking about, however, is that the push of a button lets me shoot a fireball. The only real questions are, "how often and fast should I get to do that?" and "why is that the amount?"

In most games there's some resource. Mana, reagents, location, training, etc. that limits all these things. The mecahnic is part of the game world and lore, and you, as a player, can make peace with this. With cards, however, there's a new thing: Because the game said so. There really is no in game reason why you haven't drawn your card at a given moment. It's completely meta to the experience, and while I could understand another development shop doing so, it just doesn't sit well here. In fact, the mere thought of it is the exact opposite of why I pledged money for this game in the first place.

The man who said "other developers don't get it, they just slap up a game. We need everything in the game to make sense in the world. If you see a piano you can play it. If you see a chair, you can sit in it." apparently isn't taking that thought process through to "If you know a skill, and have the means, you can use it." The game is going to get in the way of that. Even if it's only occasionally, it's a sad shadow of what was promised.

Right... the to hit, damage done, defense, resist, etc. All those RNG numbers are fine. No one is asking this get turned into a FPS. We're just saying that a random system creates far more problems than it solves.

Again, look for anywhere anyone is asking for this to be a system that spams attacks as fast as possible. We just want one that A) makes sense within the context of the game, B) doesn't create an artificial ceiling via RNG for game play and C) doesn't waste time and resources on something a large part of the community doesn't want, and might hurt the game long term.

No disrespect taken. I think one of the biggest problems is people here my tone as this:



When we really are sounding like this:



And until people stop acting like someone who sees cards as a destructive part to the game are just people trying to destroy the game, or troll, or "Rage", there will be no progress.

Go as deep as you want, I'm not even looking for air yet. As one of the few people here who can claim to have played Pedit5 (almost beat it one time) and still have my little brown book from D&D, I can handle what you throw at me.

 

Adding my post to this thread rather than starting my own because, despite the personal bickering, I think there are some good ideas within.

I'll start my own suggestion for an alternative by stating I agree with the side that believes that having to focus so much on the hotbar is the chief cause of the poor combat we have here. I'll also state the line up of skills suggested by the original poster is a good idea, one I was mulling myself, but I would go one step further.

Have a stance set what cards you are likely to draw.

By which I mean, imagine both you and your opponent can take particular stances;

Defensive
Aggressive
Balanced
Spell Casting/Ranged

These in turn match to suits of cards, aggressive cards, defensive etc; As so far all healing is done via spells, I'd put it in there for now, as this is just a rough outline. You can also build a card deck as currently, weighting as you please, fixed decks remain as an auto generated deck, and as in the OP, the skills once randomly drawn appear in fixed slots on your hotbar, that is if an attack card appears it's always in either slot 1 or 2 (or where ever you want it). Meanwhile both you and your opponent's "Stance" is visible, and can be switched in real time; if you are defensive your shield is up or the mob moves it's limbs across it's face.

Keep the Squibs in, so each suit adds up to a fixed total (let's say 20 for now) of cards, with squibs making up the difference. So if you build an defence heavy deck, with 18 defensive card, there are 2 squibs in the defensive pile. Meanwhile your attack pile has a lot more squibs... Once you enter combat, if you raise your shield, it assigns an 85% chance of pulling defensive cards, a 10% chance of pulling an Aggressive, and a 5% chance of pulling a spell (figures just for illustration). Aggressive reverses those roles of course... the idea being that your skills are roughly in line with your stance, but there's a not-ignorable chance a surprise from another pool can be sprung. You know now to be using keys 1-2, or 2-3 ...

And maybe the order in which the cards are placed in each pile is at first randomly generated then fixed and cycles back around. This gives you the opportunity, if the fight goes on for a long time, to start calculating opportunities ("ok, he just used 5 double strikes in a row, I'll bet he doesn't have any more of them left, where as I think if I swap to attack I've got one coming up")

Let's also keep skill combinations and stacking, but instead of having to trigger them from where ever on the hotbar they're stacked, have them flicked off the hot bar to a "special" location... which has no decay timer now, and which has a single key which triggers what ever is being built there. So an Attack appears in hot bar 1 you like, press Flick-1 to store it. Another attack appears in 2 you want to add, Flick-2 and it automatically combines. Meanwhile one of the wrists/eyes/whatever of your character starts to glow indicating to your opponent you're creating a special (or some other in character indication). As they can see your stance they can roughly guess what type of attack it will be, but not know for sure, and whilst you're holding those cards off to one side, they can't reappear in your combat bar.

Then when you're ready, press the special key and all the stored cards proc. Or, if you want to slowly shuffle your order of cards to make a permanent combo of moves, release them back from the special slot into the pack in a new position...

Ok, I can hear people starting to think "This is getting a bit complicated", and maybe if you're stood behind a wall whilst someone waits for you, you'll have time to really play the card game... In sieges and other similar scenes where you have time to plan, this may indeed be possible, and add more depth to the game. Indeed it may even add to ambushes because your opponent can be in combat mode and setting up an attack before it's sprung on you ... that would need to be balanced with play I expect, combat mode timers or indeed put a timer on specials back again... But if your opponent has any sense, whilst you're stood there with shield visibly up and slowly working out a set of moves, they've switched to ranged and have stepped back and are merrily blasting away at you. So what do you do? The idea is to allow both control of your own character and have to watch what your opponent is up to...

Meanwhile terrain and cover also pays a part; I like the idea of setting fire to bushes etc, and perhaps taking particular stances should enable bonuses, such as ranged gives a movement buff but damage resistance decrease etc, whilst shields up buffs damage resistance but slows you down... so if you put your shield up they understand that allows them to move a bit faster and maybe put a bit of distance between you, and gain the time to cast a heal or do something else.

The negatives of this is that it adds 5 new key commands at least to the combat (different stance keys, and proc special) but it does give both a deeper card game sense of play as well as shifting your focus to matching the play style of your opponent. It also means the animations on the PvE mobs needs to be improved so you can "read" them visually to see what they're doing. And whether the AI can be smart enough to be challenging, or they can be designed so they are fixed challenges (dragons tend to prefer spell casting cards etc) I don't know. As I say, this is just a rough draft first idea to keep card combat but integrate it into actual MMO gameplay.

 

In case you haven't checked the R17 Postmortem, you should. Basically they say combat sucks, and its their fault and they haven't touched it in months. They mention heavy overhauls in most areas such as combat feedback, training and skill trees, bugs, locking and comboing mechanics, and much more. They specifically said R18, 19, and 20 will be combat heavy, and they would like to revisit the question of "how is the combat system" at that time. I am interested to see how that goes!

*wishing I was Dev+ right about now.*

 

I hope you don't think I feel this way. I really don't harbor resentment for anyone on any side of the PVP or Combat issues. We have been here since the begin I do understand your feelings and statements. This is why I mentioned meaning no disrespect as I know people are passionate on this issue, and we just obviously see things differently. I think sometimes all of us have moments where we do not treat people the right way, but that is the way of emotional beings.

I also liked your images for illustration. Feelings are hard to judge on forums like this, and I also feel many have taken my statements differently than I intended. I am aware I see some things uniquely and not necessary feel any of these things are right or wrong, and I am only expressing myself with no expectation of acceptance.

As to Strumshot's post, there are some changes coming to combat. I have not seen the hangout yet, but I have read the posts in Dev+. I have confidence that the Devs will figure it out and listen to everyone on this issue.

 

For what it's worth... not about you. But yes, there are people who've said so, to me, directly, in no uncertain terms.

 

One of the things that I have seen as most detrimental to the debate on these forums has been the plethora of posters who seem to feel that direct antagonism IS what is meant, and is the way to go in responding. I could call out names, but that would be almost as divisive as the behavior I'm describing. In my experience, it gets summed up in the comment "maybe you shouldn't be here". The profound arrogance of that statement, devaluing first and foremost the poster's pledge, money spent that they will never see again, which paid their admission to these forums, and then in rapid succession the value of their contribution, the validity of their opinions, and the expectation of mutual respect that we ALL signed up for when we joined these forums... it disgusts me.

I think people are taking the issues of this game's development far too personally. Unless the devs are telling someone to leave (in which case I rather suspect that they do not need our help), nobody should be speaking like that. Those divisive responses have cost us a great many supporters already.

 

Basically, back to this topic in 3 months

 

They acknowledged problems with combat but everything they said sounded like a commitment to make card combat better. I saw no interested expressed in any alternatives so I came away feeling that they are gong to sink even more resources into the existing system to see if they can make it fun, and no real consideration of an alternative. I'm all for that, if it's possible, but the cynic in me sees this as the beginning of the justification for keeping this system and I don't honestly believe there is much chance they will ever scrap it, no matter how many players dislike it.

But I will give them the benefit of the doubt and try out whatever they put in place. It's possible they could make it more fun and engaging, we'll see.

 

I would get on it now. They're working on it now. Get your ideas, and your points of view in now. What do you like, what do you hate, keep on it. In 3 months, they'll want to know where you were 3 months ago.

@Wanderlust you have some reason to be concerned. I think there are still deck holdouts that will try hard to not let it die. But I also think if Garriott wants a UI-less game as he now said again, then that can't involve keys that have random values assigned to them. Meaning non-deck combat must be fun.

Hopefully, and something I'll push for, is to make the locked combat fun and if they have time, go back and add decks, as opposed to the other way around.

 

Let me, then, resubmit my proposal! The only way to play with no UI is to either not actively play - basically just watch a movie of your character fighting (so fun!) - or to have a memory of where your abilities reside in terms of fairly simple keystrokes. The most elegant way I can see to keep card combat and allow muscle memory is what I proposed. Granted, it may get a bit more interesting with no UI - which garners a locked deck a bit more - but in theory you could speed-spam shift-1 before hitting just 1 if you want to use any and all stack you have available; or they could buckle and allow a key for "use whole stack." So it certainly is doable. I figure combos are out either way, so at that point we are splitting hairs between locked or draw-style.

If they wanted a user driven, immersive, reaction-based, combo-inclusive, no-ui combat game, they would have needed to throw a large team and large budget at it from day one and it would be the very, very core of the game. All advertising would be to the tune of "look what we are doing with combat!" As a life-long rpg/mmo programmer (hobbyist) I can glean the scope of such a project, and IMO it would at least equal the whole of a traditional game. I don't see that in any way being what is going on here, so some more witty and intuitive approaches are required to get close to a compromise of "traditional" turn-ish-based stat combat, card strategy, and a reactionary no-ui playstyle. When you look at it that way, I bet we only end up with 2 out of 3, and the real question is which one goes away.

 

Which brings me back to my age old question... why bother?

If we can add new things in a different area... something to change it up, but not interfere with Garriott's dreams of a UI-less combat screen.... why not just do that? It feels like a monkey trap to me. It's time to let go of the banana.

 

#outofcontext #thingsmymotherhassaidtome