Proposal for "radical" change to combat system

This may be a "radical" idea, maybe too radical for some of the PvP fans here but it would be a change to make the combat in SotA interesting and unique - at least more unique than it is now.

I hate the traditional hotbar combat, I simply despise it - sorry. It is a system that has been done to death, a system more and more developers move away from. It is a system that is boring button mashing. 1 2 3 4 5 - rinse and repeat. I can understand that this is a system MMO fans need for bossfights or PvP battles but let's face it - it has nothing to do with combat at all. Where is the thrill of swinging a sword or actively dodging a blow? Just standing around, giving orders and watching the hero carry them out is BORING and it also removes me from being the hero. Instead I become an invisible commander watching the hero do things which normally I shoud be doing - actively.

So my proposal is - change the system like the skillsystem has been changed. Keep the deck system but make it more active and reactive. The system would even retain some elements of a hotbar system but add more tactics to it.

When combat starts, in the lower right half of the screen a card deck shows up with the backs showing so that we cannot see the skills. In the lower middle of the screen 3 slots appear.

Left mouse click is an attack with the weapon in hand - we can attack while moving!
Right click is blocking.
Pressing "Q" is dodging and pressing "E" (or clicking on the card deck) draws a card. The card is randomly drawn from the deck and the skill appears in one of the three slots in the lower middle of the screen. The skills don't disappear over time. By pressing "1", "2" or "3" we use the skill in the slot. As the skills are not disappearing over time, a skill can be saved to use it more tactically. By pressing and holding the associated key, we can discard a skill, so that the slot is freed up for a new one. We would be in charge to draw a card, the cards would not be drawn for us as it is the case with the decksystem we have now.

Basically combat would become very active and the skills would become special attacks whereas now the special attacks are nothing special. As there are only three special attacks in the slots we would have to use them much more tactically and with care. Also the focus would shift towards the active attacks, blocks and dodges with the skills becoming special.

Many might be used to a traditional hotbar system like in WoW and if you are used to something then you want to keep it. But the system is BORING, whereas combat should be fast, full of action and reaction! If I had the choice, at least I wouldn't want a system that has been done to death and from which developers shy away more and more.

 

While I don't disagree, I also don't think that this type of combat system will work with SotA, simply because of latency. This would be great for single player though

 

But for example TERA, Dragon' s Nest or Vindictus use active combat systems too and those are MMOs...

 

Please, don't give the DEVs silly ideas :/

What needs to be changed/adjusted is the general feel of the combat, many skills are also still totally useless.
Many animations are still not smooth. For some combat animations you have to wait until they are finished (very annoying).
Some animations are also taking too long in the end frames, maybe they should remove some frames here and there , looks akward sometimes.

Work on the smoothness, feedback, special effects, balance etc. of the combat system & its skills and leave the hotbar/deck system as it is.


And btw. play Elder Scrolls Online, that's exactly the combat system you want minus the drawing a card thing.
But be warned, ESO becomes very boring and tedious very very fast!

 

I did play ESO but the combat there is not a problem for me, I actually like it. It's the hotbar system that is tedious and not fun - at least for me. It was interesting when it was introduced a decade or more ago. But now it is dead and should not be revived anymore. The genre should go forward and try something new, something interesting and exciting.

 

Oh the combat was great in ESO, but the overall gameplay was.... well i was bored after 1 month. It was way too easy.

I like a more slowpaced/turnbased combat system like in Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2. It's a lot more tactical.

Having a fast paced combat system, full with action like it is in ESO, makes it boring for me in the long run.
Pretty much all mobs in ESO were just meaningless, no challenge at all, just run into them and smash and kill everything arround you.
The bosses in ESO also were just LOL, oversimplefied, no challenge, boring.
It was an AOE kill everything arround me gameplay easy mode game experience for me.

 

I didn't care for the combat system in ESO early on, but it did grow on me and I did enjoy it while I played that game. I'm not sure I want to see that in SoTA though. I wouldn't mind seeing the hotbar go away as well, but I'm not sure we ever will as it just works. I can't think of another way that we would be able to combo the skills like we can without it.

 

There are two different systems at work here.
1) The UI
2) Combat

The UI should not get in the way of combat, but it does right now, because of the nature of the random placement of skills, by default, the current hotbar is the focus of combat, rather than combat itself.

Solving that problem, partially, is being able to lock skills into slots. So, currently, if you lock all your skills, you can ignore the UI entirely, and focus on combat.

The problem to solve then turns into how to make combat more interesting. A simple answer to that is make it reactive. In the past, some developers have tried making it so the player must be in constant motion during combat, which is as much of a gimmick as any other half-baked solution. Once you know the 'trick' then there's nothing more to learn. And forcing the player to be in constant motion only rewards one play style and/or demographic. Not ideal.

One solution that's been repeatedly offered on these forums (I searched back a few years) is to have the player respond to the actions/context of the enemy. I'll use a spider as an example. If, prior to casting web or poison, a spider had a brief animation, icon, particle effect, or some other indicator of what they were about to do, and the player could react to that to their benefit, and/or the spiders detriment, now combat is interactive and more interesting.

Similarly, if a player passively or actively could assess certain things about an enemy, such as resistances, immunities, vulnerabilities, str, dex, int, relative to their own, or absolute values, prior to or during combat, this makes combat more interesting, and lets the player use their brain to reduce time-to-kill. How?
Passively, a player could gain lore/knowledge about a creature type as they fought them. To increase this, they could sacrifice a combat round to use a lore skill or have a 'lore' stance via which they would accrue knowledge about a creature type. After a few fights with this stance, or using this skill, then they automatically see visual indicators on the creature either on demand or automatically during combat that show the creature's strong and weak points.
It could be something like spiders are vulnerable to crushing and fire, but resist piercing and are immune to poison. They have low str/int, but high dex. Now, armed with that knowledge, the player can either use combos that produce those damage types, or magic, potions, or similar to change the outcome. Specifically, they could use a dex debuff, fiery potion (on the ground or their weapon), or use a combo that produces crushing damage or magic that's appropriate.

This could be expanded upon to offer stances to the player that while they would certainly have strengths/bonuses to damage types based on their current gear, stances could either add additional damage types or take advantage of vulnerabilities in the target, with some cost or bonus to the player. Things like adding 1 point of a particular damage type to a weapon, initially, with fire/cold/poison stance, which would permit a player to take advantage of a creatures vulnerability, after assessing it.
Now, sure, you could ignore that, and the fights will take longer, but if you use your brain, plan tactically, and invest the time in knowledge, overall, it's far more rewarding. This could especially be true if a player wanted to take the time to learn about their enemy, rather than just blindly charging in and fighting.
Using the spider example again, if the player could alter their stance in such a way so that if they knew the target was vulnerable to fire, or crushing, they could choose a stance that offered that as a damage bonus, or combos that would produce that damage type, and time to kill is reduced.

In this way, selection of a 'deck' is meaningful in that you could select your stance and combo's ahead of time, which all become bonuses, specials, or additions rather than base functionality that detracts from combat, as it is now.

A simple solution some games have tried is to simply offer an interrupt option to players, so that when a creature is "winding up" or preparing for a big strike, players can interrupt that preparation to avoid a large damage attack, or AE, or similar.
This is a good mechanic, but care has to be exercised that it doesn't become the only thing designers use. In particular, if this is the only "reactive" mechanic in play, then difficulty becomes a race condition between creature tells, latency, and the re-cast timer on the interrupt ability. Put another way, when the creature only has one special card to play, that's the only card they play, and again, combat becomes predictable, even if reactive. Randomization of timers is essential here, and race conditions for interrupts need to be avoided at all costs. The way this can be done is that the interrupt ability only appears based on what the creature is doing, with no cooldown, nor GCD. That way, the player is truly reacting, rather than watching cooldown timers.
In other words, if you're going to add in the mechanic to allow the player to pay attention, reward them for that attention. Don't bait and switch them into thinking they can play tactically, and then hamstring them with GCD's and cooldown timers.

Further to that point, all successful reactive actions should be rewarded. They should either heal, buff, strengthen or otherwise provide a benefit to the player/allies AND they should also provide a detriment to the target/enemies, either in damage, damage output, attack speed, or some other extremely noticeable impact.
If the player is giving up a damage round to perform a reactive, it should -always- be better than the damage round alone. If it's not, players will parse it out of the log, it will be pronounced pointless, and never used.
Also, if a player uses consumables, and those consumables exploit vulnerabilities in the target, you need to make those effects rewarding. That player is expending significant resources, and they should see a tangible impact. For example, if a fire potion used on the ground normally does x points of damage to a creature without a fire vulnerability, it should do double or more damage to a spider with a significant fire vulnerability. Not just +1 extra damage.

Last mechanic is creature specific bonus attacks or combo's. As an additional feature of the above system, specializing in killing particular creature types should be rewarded. If I kill 1000 spiders, I should be -really- good at fighting spiders. A simple implementation would be for every 100 of a creature type killed, an additional combo is unlocked that is specific to that creature type, and is massively effective in killing them. And don't put it on a super long cooldown, or anything like that, reward that player for specialization. Give them, instead, a free combo or extra attack that doesn't trigger the GCD, something extraordinary so they actually seek out those creature types or their eyes gleam when a boss fight is a spider.
One option here would be to provide attacks that are, in general, very effective in exploiting vulnerabilities for these creature types. An example would be, the extra/free/combo attacks rewarded for each 100 spiders could offer crushing, fire, and dex debuff attacks, for example. Allowing the player to choose attack style, between pbAE, gtAE, ranged, melee, etc, (when out of combat) for these extra attacks would be very rewarding indeed.

Problems: If AI scripting isn't sufficiently randomized, then combat becomes just as predictable. For example, if the creature does the equivalent of PathFindToTarget(); UseAttackSkill(); and then just repeats that, adding all the reactives in the world will just be a waste of time.

Similarly, if the resistances, immunities, vulnerabilities, and similar attributes are also not sufficiently randomized, then again, there is no value in having assessment skills in play, because it's faster to simply dps than to think tactically.

Time to kill, and resource acquisition rates also have to be considered. A time to kill of greater than 20-30 seconds per easy/average fight has serious perception consequences for casual players, who tend to make up the bulk of the player base. The point of such a system should be to reward the player with reduced time to kill by paying attention, not increase combat time with bait and switch.

Last potential problem is latency issues. Human reaction time plus round-trip-time to/from the server needs to be considered. If you drive the "difficulty" into the sub 250ms range, you'll run into problems whereby players in Alaska, Hawaii, Florida, or outside North America will have serious problems reacting in time. This is not the area for designers to drive difficulty. That should be in the time investment, and preparation prior to the fight, to know their enemy, not fighting the razors edge of packet delay.

Hopefully that provides some value regarding ideas for a reactive combat system, even when using a locked bar.

 

Yup, agra above me explained it well.
There are many many valid points that would make combat a lot more interesting!

As it is currently in SotA, it's just a spam of auto attacks, using skills in combat is not really rewarding, most are useless :/.
Combat in general is just auto attack :/.
There is no reaction required, i can just spam my auto attacks.

I hope they spend a month or two again to change/adjust combat.

The current system won't make many happy.

 

With the recent introduction of the use base skill system and the delay that caused overall in the games impending release, I can't see the Devs totally revamping the combat system at this point. I think agra made some fantastic points and made wonderful examples of what would make a combat system fun while requiring you to think/plan/react. But implementing some of those ideas might require them to redo the system and/or add a great deal of coding to account for the monster specialized features being suggested.

But I think some things can/will easily be added that will improve combat.

1. They already announced adding LOS requirements into combat. That has been delayed to add other stuff, but that one feature alone will bring a whole new dynamic to combat. Being able to duck behind a big rock or wall to avoid being hit will drastically make combat more active/reactive for us.

2. For me, the biggest downfall of combat is the single hotbar and the randomness of having the appropriate spell/skill available when I need it. Just about every game I've played has either given me the option to have multiple hotbars out at once (6 at a time is not uncommon in other games) or at least given me the opportunity to scroll through pre-made hotbars using ALT+# to select the hotbar I wanted. But SOTA gives me 1 hotbar and an "Alternate" deck setup that takes time/focus to switch over and removes the entire first deck.

So, in order to utilize all of the skills/spells/consumables I have access to and have a chance that what I need is available... I need to stack them up on a rotating wheel that randomly picks between them during combat. Sure, you can lock certain ones to avoid the randomness factor, but that only limits how many of the others you have at your disposal because there are a limited number of slots and the more you add to each random slot, the less likely you will have the one you really want/need pop up.

I think a way to improve these limitations would be to add a 2nd combat bar... but limit one bar to offensive stuff and the other to defensive stuff. Maybe even limit each bar to locking only 3 or 4 slots and making the rest randoms? But at least you could set one up for all of your favorite attacks and combos, and the other you could set up for your buffs/heals/foods/drinks/potions/etc. This would allow us to have a few more tools available at all times so we could actively/reactively use certain things that are commonly helpful.

For example, if you're in a mine scene filled with undead and looking to collect a bunch of ore, you might want to always have a light spell, strength buff, pet summon, some heals, and maybe a purify (if there are zombies) or tap soul to recover focus. That's 5 or 6 tools right there and would be half of a hot bar. That would leave only 4 or 5 for the offensive skills. It's hard to pack in all of your melee moves with magic spells for those last few slots and thus limits which attacks you can use, not to mention the combo opportunity chance greatly reduces. So if I want to have banish undead, fire arrow and death ray (for fiery decay combo), a root (to stop pesky archers from running you all over), that leaves like 1 or 2 other spots for random melee weapon attacks and other spells.

I think having 2 bars (one limited to attacks, other limited to buffs/heals/consumables) would make things a lot better. But stacking 8 different skills/spells in each slot makes it difficult to be able to use something at opportune moments. I find myself just spamming whatever pops up regardless of what it is.

3. I think another major improvement would be to make all the UI elements moveable and scaleable/re-sizeable. Having the health bar under names in the center of the screen does help somewhat to keep your eyes focused on your target(s), but buffs and debuffs are only shown on the player and target reticles in the upper left of the screen. It would be nice to be able to at least center your own info and target's info on the screen and slightly above what you are looking at so it's easier to notice when you have a debuff on you or when a buff fades. Also, I prefer to keep anything mouse clickable (hotbars) on the right side of my screen and be compact so that the mouse movement is minimal and it doesn't take up too much screen space to cloud my view. We can currently move the hot bar, but it's so large that moving it isn't much help. I would also like to have other things up like maybe inventory window or character stats during combat... but they take up too much space on the screen and hinder combat when opened.

I often find myself wishing that some of the buffs lasted a bit longer too. If you filled a hotbar full of buff spells, by the time you finished casting all of them, chances are the first one is already about to expire. So if you had 1 deck setup strictly as locked buffs, casted them all in succession, then switched to a normal deck before engaging a mob... chances are the first few will be gone before you even get an attack off and the rest will fade within the first couple hits. I think spells such as Enlightenment, Strength of Earth, Air's Embrace, Earth's Embrace, etc... should all last at least 2-3 minutes each. Long enough to at least last a whole fight anyway. These short term buffs are almost not worth the effort because you don't see much return out of them right now.

Anyway, I doubt those things will be a miracle fix for combat, but I believe they are all easy to implement without adding substantial coding time to the Devs and they shouldn't be too far off their "vision" for what they want the combat system to include.

 

Daxe Diggler, what you write for me sounds like pushing the combat even more into the direction of a standard MMORPG.
For me, MMORPGs have become a burden with all of the windows, bars, buff indicators, multiple hotbars etc. It seems those games are more about management and calculations and no longer about the adventure and immersion.

A simple, active combat system that is fast and full of action would be like breathing some fresh air in a game that becomes more and more overburdened with MMO elements that not only stand in the way of the single player experience but also stand in the way of simply enjoying the game.

 

This is how I choose to interpret the randomness of the deck system: Sometimes you can't reach your potion belt in time. Sometimes the cork is stuck in the bottle. Sometimes you say the wrong spell, or your mind blanks and you can't think of the words. This amount of randomness only becomes more engaging when fighting a battle against the odds, the randomness of the deck system is to simulate those errors. Doesn't mean you can't disagree with it as system and prefer not to use it, but I for one love it because of the randomness Let's say, for example, my damn healing spell just doesn't come up as quickly as I need to achieve victory for this battle, I would be forced to retreat, and look or call for help, that part of my engagement would not have happened if I just had an unlimited locked bar of skills that I always knew would work out exactly as I planned every time... that's not how it should work and that's why I like the deck system over the traditional predictable combat of yore, and I hope they enhance it somehow, rather than simplify it even more. :-/ (removing of focus skills, etc. even though I think I understand why they removed them)

 

I understand that sir but to me, it sounds like you are looking for something more like a first person shooter than an MMO. With so many abilities available to us, it would be near impossible to perform them all without a combat bar. No offense, and to be honest, I see what you mean. It would be awesome to just make the game a virtual reality project where your avatar would just do what you think or say... but sadly we're not there yet with regards to technology.

My post was mainly a response to agra's and not necessarily yours. I do however think that my suggestion to move and resize the UI windows would be an improvement for you. At least it would help you focus your view more towards the battle than the UI windows themselves.

@Lord Ravnos I'm not against having some randomness. In fact, I enjoy it too. But I think 1 hotbar is just too much randomness for all the abilities we have available. And this is with the skills system as it stands now. What happens down the road when they add more skills to the trees or perhaps even more entire trees with upcoming Episodes, etc.? It's going to get even more dilluted and even worse.

 

Great idea, Daxxe. I would further add to that idea by saying I would love to see combo's, reactives, interrupts, and target-specific-defensives appear above in the second bar in player-defined locations. Allowing the player to bind these keys to whatever they want, or shift-1, shift-2 by default, would be pretty easy and intuitive.

Regarding the amount of dev time for combat innovation, every day in production makes it more difficult to justify big changes, financially. The time is now for any big changes, in pre-alpha. Doing it in alpha, beta, or after launch will be even more difficult, but I've seen games in beta make massive changes both to the combat system and the UI, so it is possible.
As far as the details for assessment, that's already in place, it would just require exposing it to players and adding the UI widgets. None of what I outlined hasn't been done in other games in some form or fashion, visually, so there's no huge precedents being set. The effects, icons, and so on are already in place in SOTA. Even the buffs, debuffs, and stances already exist in the basic form, in game today.

Also, on the topic of randomness, I love it. I want more of it. I want randomness everywhere, anywhere, all the time, EXCEPT in my UI.

 

Actually I am trying to make it more of an RPG. I fear that the SP part of the game is pushed to the background and will suffer from too many MMO elements - and from an MMO combat system. I thought that the single player part would be just as important to the game as the MMO part is. Therefore I thought of a combat system that would be interesting for the single player part of SotA, too...

 

There will definitely be a lot of people interested in the single player mode of SOTA and I think they will strive to make it live up to the reputation of all the other Ultimas. But let's be honest about it. They aren't going to make separate combat systems for each player mode. They will use the same for both modes simply because it will be easier to support.

I don't mean to sound like I'm against your ideas here. I'm just thinking in terms of reality and what can/will reasonably be done about it.

If they made it so you could only have 1 weapon skills tree, 1 healing spell, and maybe a block and that's it... then perhaps they could figure out a way to eliminate a hot bar and come up with an original way to pick combat moves. But since we have so many options and skills/spells to use without any limits on what we can pick from... you almost have to have a hot bar or something similar to make that system work. I mean, I suppose you could rely on a hotkey assignment for each skill/spell instead of having a button to click on... but asking people to remember all those hotkeys and not giving a clickable UI object would be like hoping a strainer will catch rain water for you in the desert. It's simply not going to happen.

I wish I could come up with an idea to help your case because I truly do see your point. I just can't see any other way to do it.

 

Sorry I will not read walls of texts but the simple adding a random draw takes away the locked system Where is the static deck or hybrid deck, You cannot just discard it because you don't like the system sorry.

For those writing walls of texts Bullet points will get ALOT more traction, add explanations after them.

As of now OP ides is out, as you have taken to much away. Good thinking but :-(

 

I numbered mine, does that count the same as bullets?

 

LoL I read the first few words of each line still working on a more complex reply

 

What if they just make individual glyphs placeable wherever you want on the screen? I kinda wish they had that, so if I only want 4 skills available, they are always there, and "light up" when they're drawn... can still combo, but might be more fun with different configurations Also keep auto-hide as toggleable per glyph.