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

Whoah. SOTA developers are transparent and pretty open with the community, no need to get knickers in a twist saying they arent listening about the perceived issues with the combat system. I am sure it will all work out.

This aint no Greed Monger kickstart lol

 

Keep in mind they didn't work on a civil war-inducing, fundamentally critical element of the game (combat) for 3-6 months and made little to no mention about it, and their lead combat dev says things like "most people like the card combat system" when it's clearly the exact opposite. When those things happen, we've got legitimate concerns to question.

 

Well WE dont know if the majority dislike it. The squeaky wheel gets the oil!

Freeman puts good points in all his posts. Its too early for it to be doom and gloom

 

Assuming, just for a moment, that it is a 50/50 split (and I can't imagine anyone thinks it's better than that), then it's still an alarmingly high ratio for such a core mechanic to the game. You can't have the most common game mechanics being split between love and hate for a game to be successful, no matter what the genre is.

 

I've heard that said for two years. Can someone give me a date when I get to pull out my End of the World sign?

 

Depends on which official release date they pass up you want to pick. You've got October of last year, if you want, or you can get it prepped for 5 months from now (next release date).

 

sooo....when are they fixing combat?

 

This is a pretty important topic. The combat system, for better or worse, is one of the most used systems in any computerized RPG type game (MMO or not). It has to be a fun system or the game itself becomes unfun.

Right now, this game seems to have two competing systems in it and that's problematic. What it takes to make one system work is actively discouraged in the other system. I'm going to try to discuss the conflict without specifically "voting" in favor of either of them. I may do that at the end of the post, but I want to try to treat each fairly first.

System 1 - Active Combat
This is the "twitch" system discussed in this thread. It's a system focused on the visual of the avatar-playfield and constant action and reaction to what's unfolding on it. Ideally, such a system is about positioning and advantage, about watching for and exploiting tells and patterns. It's a system that works best with fewer active skills, full customization of key assignments, and next to no looking at the UI (other than perhaps to check a timer/recycle).

System 2 - Card Based Combat
This is the "glyph" system in its unlocked form. It's a system focused on the visual of the deck of cards in your hand and the cards on the table. It's about building the right deck and playing glyphs in a combo that give you the greatest advantage. It's a system that works best with many skills, large customization of decks, and an ability to see what's in play for both you, your teammates, and your opponents. In a well realized deck system you should be able to skillfully play off of what's in your hand as well as what's on the table (from enemies and allies).

The current situation
We don't really have either system - we have something in the mix of both. The open glyph system really calls for watching the UI. Whether it's a hotbar or a hand of cards, you HAVE to look at your hand to play cards because of the randomness of a hand. But, looking at the hand is anathema to action combat. Time spent looking for possible in-hand combos is time not watching for tells in the field. Having an opportunity emerge, but not having the card in hand is frustrating. There's a reason action-combat players are chafing. There are action elements, but a locked out toolkit.

The deck system suffers from an emerging action combat model. As encounters increasingly get reactions (jump to avoid this damage), watching your hand is a liability. Also, at least right now, the advantage of the open deck is somewhat arbitrary (and I know everything is really arbitrary in a design). Open deck skills are better to encourage use of open decks. Combos are nice, but have a long way to go (but they seem to be on a path to making that more interest). But, there's so many things missing from what would make sense for a deck based combat game.

There's some very good posts in this thread discussing auto-sorting and larger card sets for decks. I agree with those, but would point out that I'm not sure that's necessary to make a card-based multiplayer RPG work. I do, though, think that a card based system should be immersed in the cards - not the playfield. I should know what's been played, by the enemy and any allies. I should be able to counter cards on the table and I should be able to combo off cards played by others (not just ones in my hand).

But the above paragraph wouldn't work at all in an action combat environment where watching the world is preferred to watching the "card table."

My point is that what it'll take to make an interesting action combat system actively works against what it takes to make an interesting card-draw system (and vice versa). I don't think there's a middle-road, but I'd be happy to find out I'm wrong about that.

My preference
Frankly, I'd like to see chucking the action model and going full bore into what could be done with a card-based model. I can throw a virtual rock and hit a dozen or more action combat MMO's or RPG's, I can't find anything that's really attempting to bring a card-draw, deck-building model to the table.

But I'll also concede that action combat is safer and more likely to have adherents immediately understand what they need to do to play well within the system. If it were my job, or my investment capital, on the line, I'd probably be building an action combat model.

 

After reading through 9 pages, I figured I'd add my two cents.

I've played SotA for about a month now. I was so excited to have finally been in a position to pledge and get early access.

I have two major gripes, on that doesn't belong in this thread and has to do with the disconnected feel of the overworld map vs an open world environment.

The gripe that does belong here is the interface.

I tried to enjoy the random deck, glyph, one hotbar or rotate to other hotbars system.

I've come to this conclusion.

I like wheels. I like them to be round. A round wheel will do it's job, provide you with a nice ride, and get you to where you need to go with maximum efficiency.

A square wheel can also get you to where you need to go. However, it will fight you the entire time, make your travel extremely difficult, bless you with a bumpy ride, and have you wondering why you didn't simply choose the round wheel.

Sometimes there are benchmarks of industry that work fine the way they are and don't need improvement.

The hotbar is just that. The hotbar allows a person to customize their skills to their liking. Multiple hotbars (I use 3-5 in various games), allow people to map out their character's tools in a manner that they can understand and works for them. The concept is simple and it works.

Of all the things that could be improved upon in MMOs, the hotbar should be at the bottom of the list. Hotbars serve a purpose and they do it in perfect fashion. Stack a few of them together and you're on your way.

The deck glyph system is, well, square. It's a nice piece of fluff to make people say "wow, that's a new twist". Beyond that, it doesn't make SotA a better game than the WoWs or EQ2s of the world. In fact, the hotbar in EQ2 and the flexibility it gave a player should be the template a lot of mmos should be using. Stellar hotbar.

Anyway, I think the deck thing is a bust and it will likely prevent me from playing SotA. It's simply not enjoyable and the "random" factor is not an option for me. I like to know where my keys are at all times, use my debuffs and chains as they should be used, etc.

So, I'm not going to tell anyone they're wrong for liking the glyph system, but I will say this: I've never witnessed such a vocal outrage to a "hotkey system" as I have on the SotA forums. It's clear that much of the community aren't fans of the deck system. I believe SotA would attract, and retain, more players by giving people a traditional hotbar system.

That's all.

Winter

 

This is great:

"The hotbar is just that. The hotbar allows a person to customize their skills to their liking. Multiple hotbars (I use 3-5 in various games), allow people to map out their character's tools in a manner that they can understand and works for them. The concept is simple and it works."

I do not mind using the deck system, I have not seen it in a game before so I like its newness. However I do not like having to constantly look down at the hotbar to see which skills/abilities/spells have popped up ready for use. It is VERY distracting, I do not even both with doing combos since its even more time spent staring at the hotbar.

With 3-5 hotbars I can map skills/abilities/spells to my hotbars and I know where they are and when to use them, no staring at the hotbar.

If I choose to lock my current hotbar, its too limiting ... not enough spots for skills etc to be used.

 

I'm slightly puzzled. SotA has a 'traditional' hotbar system, if you so choose to use it. If it is balanced or not is a different subject, but it does exist and is useable.

Are you using more than 20 (active) skills? Don't you have incredible trouble training them all?

 

Nope not at all, do you have more than 10 skills in your deck you use?

 

~looks puzzled~ But... you just said the locked bar didn't have enough slots for you to use. Now you're saying you're using less slots than it offers. I'm officially confused.

If I would have to lock more than 10 skills (didn't have to so far), I could easily just switch between decks on the fly during combat, effectively gaining 20 slots.

 

I guess it does have a traditional hotbar system to a point. I should have elaborated further.

Having only one hotbar, in locked mode, is extremely limiting. The rotating hotbar thing where you switch hotbars in and out, is just a time consuming version of being able to create multiple bars and stack them/lock them together.

So, perhaps the root of the problem is the lack of meaningful skills/combat arts/spells.

If you only "need" 1 hotbar for all of your combat functions, that says something about the overall system. It's lacking.

If I had 30 skills that served a valid purpose, I'd use them all.

I'm not here to tell anyone their way is the wrong way or that they're wrong for liking this glyph deck system, I'm simply stating that I'm not a fan and it is likely a dealbreaker for me. Locking 10 skills or randomly choosing from whatever the deck deals me is not my idea of immersing myself in my character's skillset.

 

You can have more than 10 skills, because you can stack many glyphs into the same 1-0 slot

You also have a hotbar that is for out/in-between combat, and deck swap in-combat and out of combat (Y)

On top of all of that, there's the 'forced CD' of a locked glyph and shuffle/stack options and RNG options to machine-gun mid to high CD skills.

Mix/Match. My main deck has:

2 locked low-cd Magic glyphs for 1,2
5 unlocked, stacked 3 deep, Blade skills + trip
3 unlocked, stacked 3 deep of 5 different buffs

Also it seems the # of glyphs in your deck seem to weight the likelihood of it being drawn (and perhaps the position in the stack)


My training deck has me machine-gunning 1-3 stack spells every second, even though CDs are vastly higher than that. Yes it takes some serious focus, but it shows the huge potential for the game rewarding twitch play.

This could easily be used in a party setting instead, where you utilize 3-4 core damage/cc moves.


Does combat itself need an overhaul, yes. But there's a lot of customization here that has never existed in an MMO

 

Very well put. It makes combat extremely not fun, and it has taken the excitement of countering your opponent through timing and strategy a complete toss of the dice instead of a demonstration of player skill.

I started off really liking the deck system, now I very much hope it will be scrapped so we can have the devs come up with some great timing and counter based combat. We all know they could pull it off.

 

I apologize for the confusion, I most certainly do use more than 10 skills per the limiting hotbar. Having to look down at my hotbar waiting for the skill I need to populate using the Deck system is quite distracting. If I lock my hotbar the 10 skills is in no way enough.

 

The game feels more like a housing simulator meets Second Life 2. It's extremely frustrating on my end. The hangouts don't address any "real" concerns. The world will be empty without decent combat rendering the housing system a bunch of empty lots. /frustrated.

 

Agreed as always Freeman. I'm completely disillusioned at this point.

 

While I agree people should be civil and should give feedback in a respectable manner, I would welcome the negative feedback if I had a restaurant or if I were developing a game. I wouldn't want a restaurant where the chef only made my loyal customers happy, I'd be seeking out the problems people had with their meal that said they wouldn't come back, and fixing those problems if they were legitimate problems. I'd listen to my customers, not toss them out of my restaurant, or dismiss their opinions if they were legitimate, because if I didn't I wouldn't be in business very long. Just because the chef put their heart and soul into a meal and feel it's perfect doesn't mean it is.

People that are devoted to a project are already in, you got them. They'll like anything you throw out to them and say it's the best thing since sliced bread. Then of course, there are those like myself that are invested on a leap of faith, hoping it will be the best thing since sliced bread. I would welcome that negative feedback on major systems going into the game that people aren't happy with. When it comes to combat in a video game it's a major feature that has to be done right, and it has to be something that people buying the game on day one of release can easily jump into and enjoy. Currently, combat isn't that. I understand it's a work in progress, and hopefully by release it can become a good system.

In any work I do, I would rather have it questioned and reworked to become better during the preparation stages for a project, even if it meant I had to scrap all my hard work and start over. Rather than to get to the day it is released, riddled with problems, and seen as some sort of disappointing failure.