Make charging passive in free attack mode

You can check the hangout here (i learned how to copy with timestamp! i was a right click away from knowing it! praise me! ) Lots of interesting information that's worth to be commented. I know i'm looking forward to all of this.

I agree that's the main point. When writing that post you quoted i was thinking only about the physical act of putting more strength in the hit as i think @DaemienX pointed out (i'm not a golf person so i'm not familiar with the terminology ^^U).
Trying to generalize i'd say "charging" is just part of an attack, that as a complex action has a mix of everything you mentioned there.

• Think: which is actually made by the player.
• Ready: what's currently pressing the mouse button.
• Add momentum: Charging.
• Aim - make sure you don't attack thin air!
• Release - both the attack and, currently, the mouse button .
• Recovery - this defines the time until you may release another attack.

From all of those (and from my point of view), Think, Ready, Aim and Release are more mental than physical, and that's the reason why they are handled by the player. On the other hand, Add momentum and Release are mostly physical, because even when accounting things like technique or posture as "mental"... those should be internalised to be properly done so in the end they're a reflex, physical. That's why they're also handled by the game in the form of modifiers our character get from his skills.

The time of a short attack is the one where you readied and added the minimum momentum to swing/shoot, then recovery (That's what could be called attack speed). Recovery is also the Global Cooldown we experience in skills (which is something i like from SotA since some skills have longer GCD than the other).

I must say that after hearing the hangout again i have second thoughts about what i wrote up there... even at the passive auto charging xD Probably i'm less sleepy and my gears are grinding better? Dunno, but i do like hearing that we should expect changes

Oh, I still think keeping momentum at maximum should consume a certain amount of focus, though (since stamina is accounted in focus as well)

 

Just a heads up that Unity makes a distinction between GetMouseButton, GetMouseButtonUp and GetMouseButtonDown.

From my experience playing SotA so far, It feels like a "quick attack" is triggered by GetMouseButtonUp whereas a "charged attack" is triggered by a GetMouseButtonUp if GetMouseButton yielded true.

 

The tail end of the hangout has Chris talking on the subject though I'm not sure that is what you mean by "exact". Dev+ people will find out a lot more on the subject either before or after this weekend.

 

Thanks for the timestamped version, praised be!

Perhaps it's better to wait for the QA version then before commenting further. There was a lot of interesting information indeed, though some of it felt a bit - anxiety-inducing for an archer (things like making Disabling shot probably almost useless against a larger group). Introducing time-based combat did sound interesting. Well, we'll see.

I did about an hour and a half of playtesting with the "click once to charge, click a second time to attack" thingy. The good thing about it is (obviously) that it's much less strain for the hands, making it possible also in the practical sense to remap attack to keyboard (next to the glyphs). The biggest drawback is, of course, major inconvenience to quick attacks. I think that might be a showstopper for that idea: as an archer I don't really use quick attacks, but for a melee guy their tactical possibilities are too much to be given up, or even be inconvenienced much (probably even more in the upcoming targeting system). In principle this can be worked around by assigning the 'Start charging' to a different key/button - tried that for a while as well, technically it works okay, permitting quick attacks with one click, just like passive charging. But what a waste of a perfectly good button.....because I can't escape the feeling of complete irrelevancy with this charging method either. One gets easily confused about whether one is charging or not (experienced this at least twenty times in the first half hour of testing), so it actually forces you to habitually restart the charge after every attack, so it becomes automatic -- then again, why the need to click that button in the first place? But as said, probably best to wait and see how the upcoming targeting and other changes affect this.

 

...and even after that, there is not that much to say, before the R29 goes live, except that:

I love the new system. Or at least, what it strives to be. The modified mechanism makes the OP proposal (including the auto attack part!) very elegant, well worth revisiting after R29 goes live.

The only thing I don't like in the new proposed system is precisely what has been discussed in here: constant pressing of a button is kinda dumb, and as the new system is putting harder demands to the skilled use of mouse, the constant pressing down with one finger makes it even harder -- as a personal example, normally my fingers have taken at least 10-15 minutes of combat before they start to go numb, in the new combat system it took less than five minutes, because of the added tension. The OP proposal would be a perfect fix to that.

In a delicious twist of irony, the current proposed system requires holding a button down to auto attack. I predict that it won't last (will probably be shouted down), but while it lasts, it's going to give those using auto attack some good insight about the "joys" of chronic button pressing.

 

This is an accurate recreation.

But remember: according to some, this equates to skill and engagement!

 

Considering that those terms are relative, those people are essentially right.

It's certainly more engaging than watching your character fight on his or her own.

 

Yep, Auto-attack is 100% less engaging.

I'm hoping the upcoming combat changes make it more fun, because right now it's boring as heck (also a subjective opinion).