Starr Long Discusses Chaotic Aspects of SOTA Combat

Wait until you get your hands on the system, it will not disappoint.

You're fears of not being able to get the spells you want off when you want them will be a skill that you add
to you're setup and will plan out. After some time you will be good enough to predict when a spell will go off and time it perfectly.

This is a rewarding system of fighting as I played it ages ago and remember just getting a taste of it's potential for fun when the game
using it failed. It will be a learning curve up front and it has been awhile since the fans have been introduced to something new, so
expect some gnashing of teeth at first, but it will reap rewards. Combo's have really exciting potentials, and with the unprecented
access the fans have to what goes into this game, I hope we can give it a fair shake.

 

Going to be pedantic here. You playing/played it already?

Otherwise, .... How do you know anything?

If you are referring to Spellborn, and its seemingly "similar" setup, its not. Spellborn had no RNG attached to it.

You preloaded your barrels, predictably. It was not a random roll/shuffle/etc... with weighted chances.

THAT system had a lot of synergy because of the chains you could establish, as *cough* someone already pointed out:

https://shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/lets-talk-about-combat.4094/page-4#post-77612

Which absolutely makes ZERO sense. Go tell an actual boxer, soldier, swordsman, oh, btw, you are experienced, but, yeah, you just aren't going to know your moves before they are right in front of you. Forget all those years of pattern/combination fighting (because it works); you just don't know what you are talking about, roll the dice.

Yeah...ok.

The only redeeming thing I have seen is that experience will help to establish a LESS random fight --- eventually. That is ok, but the verdict is still out on how much input is going to be required to be an actual master fighter/mage etc... based on how much I have to sink into counter agents to dispel, and/or appease, the RNG Gods.

 

Which game was that?

 

You will know your moves, you just won't be able to always use them. Just like a boxer won't ALWAYS be able to throw jabs when he desires to. Often during real combat things happen that render training and muscle memory obsolete, due to uncontrollable forces. A boxer who suddenly breaks a hand may no longer be able to use a skill or tactic that he often relies on in that moment, due to an injury, or other factors contributed to by his opponent. So contrary to your statement, it makes a lot of sense....

 

You are using stamina as an indicator of exhaustion, where I never even brought that into the discussion. Are they adding in stamina to counteract the use of a skill over and over? First I heard of it.

But of course doing the exact same thing over and over is stupid. It's called telegraphing.

Those who use the same combo over and over, doomed to get a whuppin. And from personal experience I can attest to that in all manner of games from Street fighter to Call of Duty; get someone running the same pattern, or chasing the same camp spots, easy peasy kills for me. Cheers.

Do unforeseen things happen, of course.

Are they de facto standards that happen for novices, journeyman, expert, artisan, and master level performers? obviously chance favors the prepared mind, so a lessening effect over the experience curve.

But combos exist for a reason: boxing, warfare, is not a completely random event, even though it may seem as such at the tactical level, strategy still exists. And this system bemoans complexity of strategy hidden behind a RNG, with opportunities to lessen said RNG as experience is gained.

Which is why I said: until we have this system and can tell how much of a grind fest i.e. time sink, it requires to alleviate the RNG centric nature of it, no one knows how it will perform, but holding it up to the light, in its current "worded" design, it is a mess, partially admitted, because of all the mechanisms having to be put in to combat the very random nature of it in the first place.

 

Not neccesarily if they designed the skills correctly. Some are reactive youd have to pay attention. You cant predict reactive abilities that are well designed and id much rather have a reactive ability than a useless one for a situation im not in. They can easily design abilities to have multiple alternate functions so that it isnt predictable. Besides if u play against a human they are usually not predictable

And if i had to choose between the two id still choose predictable over randomly getting borked by chance. Oh too bad im overlevelled to kill this rat but my ability didnt pop

 

Aye, very good point. I would still choose the random over predictable.

 

Joviex - You can be pedantic all day till next week, but it's really futile to argue this until we are in Release 4

I know it's a hard thing to put your mind around as far as how this will play out, it was for me when I first tried understanding, but it will be good.

I've been taking in as much as I can over this latest R2 and believe me, I've and seen A LOT of what is being said by the DEVs and it sounds eerily similar to Spellborn

I'm not trying to prove anything by pointing this out, I just remember playing a very very similar system as what is being described and I understand the
confusion everyone is having, as this also happened back then and everyone balked, but the DEVs went with it and I think they had something, it just wasn't to be.

I'm excited to see what it will look like so I just have a positive view on it, and wanted to try and open some minds that this is not as SCARY as ya'll are making it in your minds.
This system looked promising and in the correct hands, which I believe it is, it's an exciting time! I can't wait.

 

this x's 1000.

 

Bubonic

Chronicles of Spellborn: Anatomy of a Failure

 

I'm pretty sure from this that if you ever boxed, you were bad at it. I can ALWAYS throw a jab. It may very well be the worst possible moment to do so, it might get my face broken, or my arm, or my hand, depending on who I'm fighting; but that's MY CHOICE TO MAKE. This system will be making that choice FOR me, and I think it's reasonable to dislike that. As long as the access to my abilities is random, it will be totally unlike any known form of real combat, and there is no point in trying to compare it to such.

 

Definitely got some problems if Penny Arcade burns it.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/4/24/

 

Indeed:
"
...
Combat was tactical on many levels. You could not access all your abilities whenever you liked; not only were most of them on cooldowns, but you could only choose from the abilities that were showing on a scrolling deck wheel that would shift whenever you used an ability.
...
Aimed directly for hardcore players, Spellborn had very little to recommend it for casual players, and this was probably its biggest mistake. By basing its combat on an intricate combat mechanic that demanded the player’s full attention, Spellborn shut out the 90% of casual players that are absolutely necessary to populate the world. Without the casual players, even the hardcore players noticed the world was fairly empty. The PvP clique soon moved on to other games; the hardcore players leveled to the end game and then, with nothing left to do, departed; and the few casual players had already gone.
...
"
Almost like "The Anatomy of a Failure" might be hinting at why the game failed.

Spoiler: hint

It's for all the reasons SotA combat is being described as a success. There is a lesson to be learned here.

 

@vjek,

The difference is that was setup to fail by the failing support of its publisher who made the game inaccessible. I do not think the SOTA version of combat will be difficult and is more likely to take casual players in mind. If Spellborn was allowed to be patched and fixed for the market it might have been a different story, but it sounds like it biggest problem was how complicated they made getting into the game in general: let alone play it.

 

Umbrae,

This, as I'm sure you can appreciate ..
"
By basing its combat on an intricate combat mechanic that demanded the player’s full attention, Spellborn shut out the 90% of casual players that are absolutely necessary to populate the world.
"
.. has nothing to do with a publisher making the game inaccessible.

By adding more of what made Spellborn's combat UI "bad" ( according to the author [Tipa] of that article ) it seems extremely unlikely such a system will be made better, more accessible, or easier for casual audiences, in SotA.

 

I would hate to have any system in the game which was a deterrent to the casual player. Make the game accessible to 100 million people...from their smartphones. It's just somewhere the last 10, 5, 1% of the content ends up gated in some fashion. There's simply no reason to deliberately make the game hard...it becomes hard when there are some aspects of the game that get zero sum.

 

Vjek, you'll have to read more about what happened with Spellborn's code and Acclaim to understand what Umbrae is speaking to

 

No offense, but isn't the entirety of the combat system speculative at this point, and thereby worth neither our approval nor our condemnation, but rather a purely positive & constructive attitude?

When we see the results of what's implemented, we THEN decide what comes next.

I don't think that a systen like this (which sounds fundamentally awesome to me) is automatically bad. Being as it's unreleased, it can still be tuned. As backers, it's our shared responsibility to tune it with the development team by offering ideas & criticism.

Decrying this a failure before it's even tested is a waste of time. If you damn it before it's even introduced ("adding 'more' of what made it bad" -- what?!), then I guess that your mind is already made up.

Sent from my EVA Unit-01 using Tapatalk

 

I presume he's referring to...

Spoiler: this

From the same article I've been quoting...
...
So, what happened?
Though the Spellborn devs had a long relationship with Frogster to publish the game in Asia and in parts of Europe, they had no American publisher. When they eventually made a handshake agreement with one, they were barred from revealing it for months, while they did some retooling on the game. After months of no news, the publisher was revealed to be Acclaim, a publisher most noted for its free to play games.
The game then went into further hiatus for five more months.
Eventually, in February of 2009, Spellborn went live in the US and the rest of the world. Instead of a standard subscription plan, players needed to by Acclaim’s cash shop currency, and then redeem that for play time. It was fairly complicated, and since people would be spending different amounts to play the game depending on the deals they got for the cash shop currency, it was hard for people to figure out just how much the game cost, and whether or not they were getting a decent deal.
..
Acclaim promised heavy support for the game, but when it became clear Spellborn was not a hit, such support dried up. In just a few months, rumors arose that the developers, Spellborn N.V., had all left to find other work, and that the game would be moving to a F2P model with an item shop (for a game without a focus on items!) and other such paraphernalia. The game was to be relaunched to begin again as a MMO like most of the others in Acclaim’s stable, but instead, was just set to be free and left alone, patchless, until the decision came to close the game down.
Spellborn Lead Developer El Drijver has posted a complete (and more correct!) timeline on the Acclaim Spellborn forums.
Even aside from Spellborn’s issues with its publisher and the game’s lack of heavy promotion, the game itself may have taken too many chances.
...

 

See "Shutdown" heading

"The game download, patcher and game client itself ceased to work, causing players to use third party downloads. In addition, a bug appeared that required all players above level nine to change passwords every day or be unable to enter the game"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Spellborn