Proposal for "radical" change to combat system

Works fine, but it could be a tad more elegant ?

 

If it's not the time now, in pre-alpha, to re-design core systems so they're more tactical, fun, challenging, rewarding, and attractive, what time would be better?

It's not going to be easier, later.

 

What about the less is more approach. Maybe going the rout of many skills like wow they do fewer skills but more useful. They can have each skill with a few different animations and such, or have skills grow when they reach different levels and look different. I think instead of adding more and more skills to the clutter maybe refine and have more powerful skills instead would be a better approach.

Have the trees work along this route.
All combat skills have splash dmg and inherent bonus to attacks.

Power attack - main skill for dealing dmg to a single target.
Aoe attack - less powerfull but aoe.
Debuff attacks - one debuff attack.​

that would be 3 forms of attack that are all useful, saves some hotbar space. There would be passive skills also along with this.
Magic would follow the same build, with 3 attack types but all would be range and have some splash.
Inherent bonus to the attacks would be along the following. The bonus attack would be a chance on hit.

Blades - bleed
Bludgeon - stun
Polearm - knockdown
Range - piercing
Fire - burn
Air - stun
Earth - knockdown
Water - slow
Death - drain life​

​

 

WoW has been running for over 10 years... I don't blame it for losing players. Personally, I left my 7-year adventure because WoW mutated into something I disliked. The mechanics themselves stayed the same and are solid.

What WoW is lacking right now is meaningful content and character progression. Blizzard is currently trying to cut down on production of dungeons because "the players go through it faster that we can make 'em" yet it's Blizzard themselves that make it so that anyone can breeze through that content blindfolded.

It doesn't help that most of their armour sets look terrible either. I mean, you could already see a decline in their art design as early as the 2nd expansion.

Rest assured that there are plenty of people trying to figure out how SotA works... not necessarily for the best, mind you.

 

Taking this idea further, to a logical conclusion, I've read on these very forums proposals to permit complete customization of all combat skills. Every aspect, every feature, damage type, range, targets, recast, all of it with appropriate caps, limits, and trade-offs.

The idea was completely ignored, even back before R1. It's a shame. I wholeheartedly support the idea, though, Nubelite.
IMHO, It's one of the next steps that designers are going to have to let go of for the next generation of games to be great, but I don't see it happening with this game without a significant change in attitude from Portalarium.

 

I don't think it's the "designers" who need to change, it's the players who need to change because they won't buy a game they don't like to play... You can "claim" all you want to that it's "fun" and all that, but it boils down to a matter of "opinion" if it's fun and all that... It's my opinion that "auto attack" is Great, the computer reacts faster than I could ever, to put a "manual" attack system in is pointless, IMO... and not worth the time and effort if it looses sales... After all, the point of designing a game IS to make money...

If the game isn't popular, no one will buy it...

 

The context of my response is that currently, designers are unwilling to allow so much flexibility & customization of skills into the hands of players.

Once that changes, real innovation can occur (again, in my opinion).

 

As I was writting this a mini tornado came and took my old "grandpa" a 50 year old pine tree that grew in my yard, the wind took only him and with such force that the trunk gave way... it didn't unroot it just snapped.

Call me crazy but I beleive in signs, and if this isn't one then call me gringo.

Move aside old man :'( you were loved...

 

I also used to sit in that tree much like spiderman in the picture I posted right after...

Crazy... :S

 

By showing the actual deck like in the screenshot Port could offer additional card backs for money like Blizzard does with Hearthstone!

 

Something interesting to read on this subject:
https://www.revivalgame.com/features/skill_based_combat

"At it’s heart, hotbar combat isn’t really combat at all, it’s more a puzzle game akin to rhythm or beat matching games."

"It's about being the hero, not building the hero!"

 

From that Revival article/site:

The problem, as Chris highlighted yesterday, is that the potential problem with making reaction time your one trick pony is that latency is a cruel mistress.
Using the USA as an example, you have three players. One is in Alaska, one in Florida, and the last in Hawaii. The server they're playing on is in let's say.. Seattle. Latency to/from each of those is going to exceed 50ms. To Alaska and Hawaii, probably it'll be >100ms. Human reaction time is about 250ms (best case). Add that to the geographical latency, and you're looking at 300-350ms as your BASELINE for reactions. That means if your target demographic is somewhere in the 18-28 year old range, good gamers will be able to respond in around a third of a second, up to half a second worst case.

Unfortunately, that presumes everything is perfect, all the time, which it never is. If any of those players are playing on WIFI, that adds another 25-50ms of latency, depending on a bunch of factors. Some of those may be on a shared gateway in a college, or multi-tenent dwelling (like an apartment building), which can add a few more dozen ms of latency.

Add all that up, and it's a shaky foundation on which to build challenge, fun, and paid-for entertainment. Also, it's been tried before, and failed spectacularly outside of south korea. You know why? Because south korea is less than 250km across and less than 700km north to south, on average. Latency there is guaranteed to be sub 30ms, no matter where you live. Every game with both clients and servers in South Korea is like playing FPS games in north america in the same city.

Also, when this is the only trick in the arsenal, designers are constantly running the knife edge of latency & reaction time to create difficulty. When the player from Alaska is trying to react to a boss tell that requires 275ms of reaction time, and the best he could possibly do is 300ms due to geography, what we have is guaranteed failure.

Finally, mitigations for latency have been tried before, and failed before. Mortal Online? Their grand solution was to trust the client with things like hit detection and collision detection, to treat the client as authoritative for these things, rather than the server. What could go wrong, right!? Yeah, uncounted hacks and exploits in every game, MO included, that has ever trusted the client with anything.

tl;dr? Latency precludes using reaction time, positioning, and aiming as "THE" carrot mechanic any persistent multiplayer online game, outside south korea. Any trusting of the client to address or mitigate latency will be exploited.

 

But it seems many try to do it and some even rather successful like TERA or Vindictus.
Yes there are problems with this system but on the other hand there are problems with a system like we have now, too:
1. It is not a system that is very interesting for the single player mode.
2. It is a system that is simply not much fun. It is not much fun as it is no real combat system. It is a watch-the-puppet-carry-out-commands-system. You are watching. You are not swining your sword or blocking a blow. You are watching. And this is not combat.

So it sums up to this:
Either we have an uinteresting and boring "watch"-system or an interesting and thrilling combat-system that may have problems due to latency.

 

Other threads related to combat:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/meaningful-combat.35679/

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/must-haves-for-sota-combat.38776/

We need deeper specialization options in addition to combat reactions and skills that play off of that.

-Padre

 

I didn't see this thread. The best thing is 1-2-3 is easy to use when you're using with WASD and a mouse. Using the 1-0 number keys feels less manageable and it dissuades you from actively using your skills during battle. I'm assuming you would still use R to make combos but with only the 3 slots. Some people are saying this is complicated; I think its fairly simple. Btw, the thing I hate about ESO combat is not the mechanics in particular but the skill trees.

One thing though: what are your thoughts on how this would work for mages that don't have any weapons equipped ? I think staves should be use-able as polearms, but some mages won't rely on any weapon. Do you think the 3 slots are enough ? Should a mage be able to be able to equip spells for attack and defense that automatically activate?

I posted my own thread in the General Forums last night without reading this. Some of the concerns are similar : I want to be able to easily use special attacks even with WASD and I want active blocking,
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-blocking-handedness-toggle-combo-slot.38782/

So it mainly is concerned with switching between an attack and defense mode, which I suggested using TAB. With a shield this would shift to a block attack, though it could also be a sword guard, like you have in Witcher 3. The other idea was to switch the number keys between the first half and the second half with TAB, so they would be easier to use.

Not as elegant as what you're suggesting though it fits more with the current system and has some advantages too.

 

As long as designers set the absolute minimum reaction to one half second (500ms) and NEVER go below that, reactive/interrupt/dynamic combat is viable, imho. That should cover most of the target demographic and geography.

The consequence of such a guideline, though, is that for some players, this will be too slow, thus reducing or eliminating (depending on the player) the feeling of "action".

 

Another alternative might be to do it exactly the same as you suggested, but instead of random draw, have a key that allows you to assign a new card, through some UI, to your set of 3. It could bring up a 1-0, and allow you to select from there, or be some other type of interface.

 

I would prefer ditching the hotbar and letting the player assign key combos to their skills. while using the free attack and the bar is progressing they hit the key combo using keys 1-3 and then the bar changes to green or so when the cast time is done. They could then continue to power the attack up or not. As for cool down in rapid spell use when you recast the same spell to quickly it adds cast time to the next cast.

example:
earth fist 1 1 1
fire fist 1 1 2
heal 3 3 3

 

This current card system is so basic those involved did not put enough creativity, time and thought into the development of the system.
Components:
1. Lots of buttons on a keyboard
2. Too many Skills and Magic spells
3. Random Card system that throws Skills/Spells at you

 

I am looking forward to move combat chats with Chris. However, after going back and watching the latest Hangout for the second time. I can only help but be disappointed that this game just might not be for me. There seems to be a much larger emphasis being placed on housing and items... which wouldn't really matter if the combat and advancement systems are lackluster. /shrug I know I sound like I'm beating a dead horse but I'm not quite sure what else to do. At least there's a new tree coming with Subterfuge; step in the right direction.