My card combat feedback and suggestions

Alright, having given the card combat system a fair test over the weekend, I want to provide my feedback. I tested out combat against animals/monsters, against players in 1v1, small group fights (2v2 or 3v3) and just free for all chaos (attacking everyone I saw and being attacked by everyone I saw).

I died a lot, I killed a few people, and I got a good grasp of how the system works and what I will be capable of doing with it.

I spent most of my combat time with 2-5 of my guild mates, none of whom participate in these official forums yet (but I am trying to convince them to start), but all of whom fully agreed with my assessment of the system, so take that how you will.

Unlike quite a lot of people I saw and fought, I didn't just pick the most powerful combinations and fully developed trees. I wanted to try out different play styles and different combinations of skills and see how they work within the system, rather than just going for easy kills. I suspect that a number of the people who absolutely love this system did not apply the same mindset to testing, but I digress.

I will list what I liked about the system, what I didn't like about the system, and my suggestions for making the system better.

What I liked

Variety of skills.
In looking at the trees, it looks like there will be a good variety of skills to play with and develop a character with. It looks as though the game wants to allow a good mix of play styles and encourage many unique types of characters. I am looking forward to seeing a minimum of 'cookie cutter' builds and it seems like the variety of magic alone will achieve that.

Combat pacing.
So far the pacing of combat looks like it will be about right. Not too fast with a bunch of instant death that you don't see coming, and not long and drawn out to the point of becoming boring. It seemed like the average 1v1 fight was taking maybe around 45-60 seconds on average, which seems like a good time to me. That of course changes and will change as people get used to moving around and kiting and such.

The system worked smoothly.
Regardless of what I think of the mechanic, it did work smoothly and as it was supposed to. It was hard to visualize earlier how it would look once it was implemented, and it exceeded my expectations in that it was pretty straight forward to use and I didn't encounter any hiccups as far as bugs or anything not working how it should.


What I didn't like

As a direct counter to my positive comment about variety, this system actively discourages it.
There is no reason to make a diverse and interesting character type in this system. You are actively punished for diversifying your skill set in a few different ways:

The more skills you add into your deck, the less likely you become to draw any of them. If they are anything other than offensive skills, then you not only become less likely to draw them, but less likely to draw them at a time that you actually can use them or need them. ​

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The common rebuttal to this has been to just lock in a few skills that you want available, but again, you are punished for this by paying extra focus to use them, and by those skills taking up hand slots. This also only works out well if you have just a few skills you want available (like a single heal). What if I want to play a character that has a lot of utility spells, or a character that switches between bow and sword depending on distance of his enemy? In that case I can not rely on the random draw to give me the skills I need for the situation, so I might as well lock in the majority of my skills. This punishes me by paying extra focus, and being limited to only the amount of skills available as my max hand size, instead of the 20+ I could be rotating through in an unlocked deck.​

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If you choose to build different decks with different skills in each -ranged and melee for example- and try to swap them out during combat, you are punished by paying extra focus skill points to swap more efficiently. It also gives you a time delay where you are swapping instead of doing damage to your enemy. Even if the time delay is small, you are still at a disadvantage compared to someone with a narrowly focused offense deck that can just keep hitting you. Even with a quick deck swap, you get access to different skills, but are still subjected to the randomness and hope you get something to make the swap worth it, or use locked skills and pay extra focus for them.​

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The system actively punishes those who want to diversify and rewards those who stick with a very narrowly focused character, specifically, a character that is nearly all offensive skills because those are the only ones you can rely on being useful no matter when you draw them. You can 'get around' the system with locked skills or deck swapping but you pay a cost to do so, whereas someone with a narrow focus can easily be more effective and more efficient at combat.


The random draw system makes no intuitive sense.
This system makes no sense to anyone that has not followed the conversations on the forums and read all the dev posts. My guild members, who do not follow the forums, were taken by complete surprise with this new system. That in itself is fine, if they can reasonably figure it out on their own, after all, that is exactly what any new player would do when the game is released. The system should make enough sense that someone can figure it out. Currently it does not.
Common questions I answered multiple times as I helped my members get set up:
"Why can't I use this skill when I want to after I learned it?"
"Why won't this skill show up when i'm fighting?"
"Why do I keep getting melee skills when i'm nowhere near them? I need a ranged skill"
"How do I make <insert context specific skill here, heal, coup de grace, etc> show up when I can actually use it?"
"Why do my skills show up randomly in different slots? How do I make them show up in the same slot so I can remember where they are?"
"Why do I have to pay extra to use a skill when I want to instead of when the computer tells me to?"

The case of context specific skills is probably the most dramatic example of this system making no sense. The computer will happily deal out skills to your hand that you can not use. Ranged skills when you are in melee, melee skills when you are at range, healing spells when you are full health, coup de grace when your opponent is full health, etc.

When you are 50 yards away from someone and they are at full health and you are dealt a coup de grace skill, it simply makes NO SENSE to have that card at that time. No reasonable person would grab that skill, at that time, yet the random system will deal it to you, and expect you to 'use what you are given'. This is supposed to make the game somehow more strategic, or more tactical?


It makes no Logical Sense.
This is perhaps my biggest pet peeve with the system. It simply makes no logical sense. It is inconsistent with the rest of the world and the rest of the game systems that are in place, as well as being completely inconsistent with reality.

Crafting is a logical process. This material plus this material makes this item. This item plus this item makes this weapon. Its a progression that you can reason out and apply logic to and have positive results.

The conversation system is a logical process. You initiate a conversation with an NPC. They will reply to you based on the questions you ask them, and give you information based on certain keywords that you want to know. You can use reason to ask the right questions to lead to answers that you want to know.

The combat system is a completely illogical process. You learn skills, but have limited or no control over how they are used. You choose skills for a certain situation, but may not actually draw them for that situation. You invest heavily into mastering fireball, but cant actually choose to cast fireball when you want to. The game dictates to you what skills you can use and when, regardless of your mastery of them. There is nothing logical, realistic, or tactical about not being able to use a skill that you are a master of at your discretion. It's like telling a boxer he can only use his Jab when the referee touches his nose. So instead of watching his opponent and using his fighting skills, he is watching for the referee to touch his nose, throws the jab once, and goes back to watching the referee for another signal.

It quite simply makes no sense and is not a system that you can reason your way to your desired results. In order to achieve your results you need to stack the odds in your favor with more copies of the skill, in which case the odds are in your favor but still out of your control. Or you lock them in and be punished for it, as discussed above.

It is distracting
This has already been mentioned many times so I won't beat it to death too much, but having to sit and watch the hotbar is distracting and immersion breaking. Even after getting to know the icons, you still have to watch the bar to see where they will pop up so you can hit the right key. Or if you fill your deck with just offense skills, you can just spam whatever keys you want. Anyone with a variety of skills or spells in their deck will be stuck watching the bar though in order to know when to cast and what to press. It distracts from the combat rather than immersing you in it.


My Suggestions to Make it Better

I don't believe in complaining without offering a solution, and the devs seem to have made it pretty clear that this system is here to stay regardless, so the following is my suggestion for modifying this system to something that I think would solve at least some of the problems I discussed above.

I think that the core of the problems above is the complete randomness of the draws.

I have suggested it elsewhere but I will explain it again. We need different hands.

How it would look:

Have an 'offense' hand and a 'defense/utility' hand. The interface would look almost exactly the same. You enter combat, and the hotbar pops up. Instead of one hotbar in the centre of the screen, you now have 2 hotbars, one offset left, one offset right. Set the max hand size for each one to 5 or 6 or whatever, instead of the 10 that we have now, so that the screen isn't too cluttered.

Keep the current system of dealing out a random rotation of cards, but have them sorted into their respective category now instead of all going into the same bar.
So on the offense side, a mage may get dealt fireball, fire arrow, fireball, searing ray .... while on the defense side, at the same time, he is being dealt root, heal, gust, fire elemental, douse... etc.

You could still have just the single deck, no need to complicate things and have separate offense or defense decks for this change. Splitting the hotbar into 2 parts would be a simple change and allow more variety and larger number of cards in one's deck.

What would this change fix?

This simple little change would fix a lot of the problems caused by the random draw system, while still in keeping with the intended spirit of the system.

You still have your random draw and rotation, modified by the focus skills.
You still have the 'chaos' and unpredictability of combat' that many feel is a must.
You still have the 'new and innovative' feeling, instead of a traditional static hotbar system.

However, with this small change, you gain the following benefits:
- You can add a much larger variety of spells and skills to your deck, and have a more reasonable chance of using them when you get them.
Since you will always be rotating through some defense and utility skills, and always rotating through some offense skills at the same time. So you don't have to worry about getting a defense skill at a bad time that you need offense, and you don't need to worry about getting a fireball at a bad time when you need a heal. They are in separate hands.

- You gain much more tactical options, by having some offense and defense/utility skills available at any given time, you have more choice in how your combat goes. You can choose to play a defense skill, or go in for the kill, rather than being forced strictly into what the game has dealt you.
Keeping in mind that you still are at the mercy of the RNG for exactly what skills you will have in each hand, so there is still the chaotic aspect to it, and making the best of the skills you are dealt. This just dials back the randomness to a more acceptable and slightly more realistic level.

- It makes it easier to remember your hotkeys, as hotkeys 1-5 would always be offense, and 6-0 would be defense, for example. The skills would still change places in those keys, but at least you would have some level of consistency.

- It opens up more options for mixing and matching skills and play styles, and it opens up more options for the much anticipated combos! Not only can you combo your offensive abilities like they had planned, but maybe now we could get some options of combos that mix offense and defense skills in creative ways. Playing both hands effectively could add some depth to combat and open up a lot of possibilities for both the players and the devs.


In Conclusion

The system as it is right now is not fun, and makes very little sense. It is easily one of the worst combat mechanics I personally have ever played.

However, I see some potential for keeping in the spirit of the system while making some easy changes that can dial it back to a more reasonable level, while opening up a lot of opportunities for various play styles.

Thanks

 

Keep in mind the locked slot penalty was intentionally made to be pretty bad in order to encourage people to use the random system for now.

There will be further balancing so that locked skills have the right cost/reward vs having it in your deck. You really shouldn't have melee skills in your deck unless you intend to be in melee combat. My early speculation on this system is most people will be running around with about 4 locked skills and 6 random ones for the combos that we will have coming up in future release (next release maybe?) your system would make combos too easy to come up. Which would then need to be balanced so they weren't overpowered, if they make combos difficult to come up, they can make them more powerful.

The game will normally start you off very differently, we wont have 80 pts and all of these options available. Our skills will be trained at trainers and they will be eased into the deck system instead of thrown into it.

 

Mishri. The fact that there is a penalty at all plays into my points that I made. Even if it is a small punishment, it is still a punishment.

You say that you shouldnt have melee skills in your deck unless you plan on being in melee. Well what about my point of different play styles? What if I want to have some ranged skills for when Im at range and some melee skills for when im in close? This system punishes playing anything out of the norm.

 

Switching decks is likely the best answer, You can likely balance that out with some focus regen items(not in game yet, but they are coming) so you can play the way you like to play.

It isn't punishment so much as it is balance. Locked slots would have too much advantage, On the other hand, in testing we might find a balance where locked slots simply can't be used for combos and no further ill effects to keep it balanced. We might find we need no penalty to switching decks. We'll have to see how well it works, with no penalty would people switch mid-combat too often just to get what they want? or would wiping out the player's hand be enough?

We may find that quick deck switching is the norm and that is how we keep our characters unique. This is pretty much a "first draft" for the vision, it can change quite a bit as we test it and the focus penalties can easily be changed if needed.

 

I played with draw deck on Saturday and a locked deck on Sunday (same skills and playstyle both days) - and I don't believe the locked deck focus penalty is a penalty at all. It's more the price I theoretically had to pay for those 28 extra skill points. I say "theoretically" because I wasn't able to actually run myself out of focus even with the +50% costs. Perhaps I was bugged or something, however, as others seemed to have problems.

 

Well, thanks for providing your input, but certainly I cannot agree that it is one of the worst systems I've ever played for combat.

I actually had a lot of fun playing PvP. Thought it was a blast.

You are kind of falling into the trap that many people do during the pre-alpha and reviewing it as if it is final and will not be tweaked.

This test was really just to see if it would be accepted by the community as a viable system, and it is not how it will end up, not in the allocation of skill points, the available skills, or anything.

Some of the points you made about random I don't understand, because you could have both some random skills and some locked skills. Or you could completely have just the skills you wanted by locking and offset the penalties via focus. So you could have your "I always have this" glyphs and then get some randomized ones as well, which I thought made for unpredictable, and I would argue fun, combat.

I was actually excited to be in a chase and praying for a root to show up... when it did and I closed in on the kill because of it, or sometimes they jumped out of it right away - that was fun !

 

Lord Trady, thanks for the response but you should read my full post. I never once commented on the skills balance or balance of skills or anything, I focused entirely on the system as a mechanic and what was wrong with it, because I know it is a pre-alpha and that is what we should be testing.
I actually addressed every single point you just brought up here.

 

I did read your full post. You did talk about balance of skills because you said you wanted to be able to do both ranged and up front at the same time and felt it wasn't balanced because you had to "put all your energy into one build type".

You also said that it was an illogical process in general.

I think that in the heat of combat you don't really know what will happen and that is what this system is trying to simulate. There are also reason for giving random so that issues around connection speed and timing in a MMO can be mitigated to some extent. I think it actually led to some very interesting combats depending on "the random nature of battle".

You made a lot of assumptions that this number of skill points is going to be representative of the game in general, and Chris has already said elsewhere in the forums that it isn't, that we will have many more skill points than we had in this release, so I think your assumption is actually not 100 percent on point to start with.

Just my opinion tho....

 

Sorry, I think perhaps you should read it again, because I said nothing of the sort.

What I actually talked about was that the system punishes you for building a character with a diverse skill set. I used a ranged/melee mixed warrior as an example, where the system currently does not look at the context of the skills at all when dealing them to you.

I also never said anything about the final number of skill points either so I'm not sure what assumptions about that you feel I am making.

If you have actual counters to things I DID say, or different perspective on the problems I actually DID list, or feedback on the suggestions that I DID make, then I would love to hear them.

 

Look I already told you once I've read it. Please don't tell me twice to read it, it's condescending. I don't want to get into an argument with you. You said this it is one of the worst combat system you've ever played. That makes anything else you wrote suspect to me. Again, this is just my opinion. Not everyone in the world is going to agree with you. Thanks for writing such a thought out post about it.

To that I say:

I was referring to these statements. In the final game, we will have many more skill points, not the limited number we were given for essentially testing one deck, so this should no longer be an issue that you want "a lot of utility spells" or "diversifying".

Well that is why I made the post I made. I'm sorry you didn't draw a correlation or want to get involved in a one on one argument. I've said what I have to say. Thanks for your feedback, I don't agree. I think you're off base and I think you're being argumentative.

 

I agree with quite a bit of what you said. This system could fall victim to the 'Flavor of the Month' syndrome that lots of other complex character customization games have issues with (Champions Online).

Let's hope they are really focused on making sure this doesn't happen.

I'd like to see the card system they have now integrated with TSW's deck system....

Just my two cents.

 

I apologize if my reply came off as rude or condescending, it was not my intent (and is not with this relly either).

However you pretty clearly missed my entire point of my complaints. Those quotes you took from my post have nothing to do with total skill points, or having enough skill points to build that type of character.

The entire point I was making about diverse decks was in regards to the randomness of the system, and how the more diverse your deck is, the less likely it becomes to draw any of those utility spells.

Again, I dont intend to be condescending, it is just annoying having my issues that I put thought into misrepresented and dismissed casually because of that misrepresentation. (Not impying it is intentional either I just want my issue to be clear to everyone reading this)

 

Okay thanks for that. When you write a sentence with 3 bold words such as this one:

That's a little aggressive. I hope you can see that.

As far as the random nature of the system. I did not have a problem with it. I was successful (quite successful in fact) with the random system, and I actually kind of liked it. So as for your suggestions on how to change it, I'm not really bothered. I still think some of your concerns, which I quoted above, will be solved by more skills and skill points that will eventually be available.

If the fundamental issue for you is that you never ever want to get randomized skills, and can't deal with having locked bar or some combination thereof, then we are not going to find much common ground.

 

My suggestion : Scrap it all.

I'd rather have it like UO. If melee warrior...click attack, then double click your target, chase target, and hope you get more lucky with your hits.

Of course UO had pots and bandaids to use +/- some spells etc. But you get the pt.

Lets not try to reinvent the wheel with combat, keep it simple and get on with the rest of the game systems. There is no time to perfect these card tricks.

 

I thought the card system was interesting enough to continue polishing it to see what it can be.

I liked the interactive nature of it. It requires a little more attention (perhaps a negative) and thought (a strong positive) when engaged in combat. It is not a mindless combat button pushing game like some MMOs have.

A thing that I felt needed work were:

1) The frequency of blanks seemed high for a warrior even with only light armor. Perhaps that is intention at fewer skill points. But I did increase the frequency of runes. Would a basic skill symbol be better than seeing a dull blank rock, even if it does the same thing?

2) It is a little perplexing how one will rely on healing, either solo in groups. What if a healing card never comes up as needed. I could see that being a bit distressing. How will healing cards be tied to actual need to see those cards?

 

You can lock an individual card of your choice.

 

What is really worth mention is that actually there was not a penalty to switch weapons on combat, only time associated with the swap. A small UI upgrade could allow fast swapping. And the deck should only show cards associated with your current weapon set up. This would be a good solution, IMHO.

Ps: The backside of being able to swap weapons? Time and cards spent from your total of points.

 

I think alternatives to random deck combat should have been put to the community for testing. You could be stuck with random deck for 5 - 10 years. Imagine years of it?

 

Now how do you explain the existence of "Dallas mode". It is what you are asking for. I think they already have metrics to exactly know how much people used it.

So, lets wait Chris wall of text about R8 xD.

 

What is Dallas mode? If its locking skills with focus penalty, no, I don't mean having access to a couple of skills on a hotbar. I mean having unrestricted ability to cast any learned spell or use any skill at any time as far as manna, conditioning, reagents allows i.e. from a spellbook or from sigils ala Ultima 8 etc. I am suggesting unrestrained freedom.

Casting explosions at a brick wall for no reason if your that way inclined. Etc (not having offensive abilities confined to a combat mode)

With random-o-deck engaging only when your character is very sick, severely wounded, receives a brutal bludgeon to the head, delays curing poison too long etc

Something like that!