Starr Long Discusses Chaotic Aspects of SOTA Combat

That's how I want combat to work. I shouldn't have to look at my wheel or pedals. Once I know how to drive. Let me watch the road.

 

Exactly. Except here, the steering wheel may be in the same spot, but this combat frame, it not for steering, its for acceleration. And the brake pedal now opens your trunk.

Next frame, steering now changes the radio station, and the accelerator steers left.

So, instead of watching the road, you are checking the controls to see what they now DO.

 

Yeah, as I've said....i love the cards if they work for you. Like a good macro system.
So I still turn, but have power steering, I still break but I have ABS. I can still move but I have automatic transmission and cruise control.

But I need enough basic stuff to move (not just an autoattack) and I can't have randomized intent. And trying to hit 6-10 is like trying to hit pedals on the wrong side of the car. Stick to 3-5 keys.

 

Making comparisons of dissimilar things is not helpful.

Those are tuned controls that require sensory input of varying degrees and split second reaction times.

 

Try this out. Take a deck of cards, get distinctive looking cards, say 4 aces, 4 face cards, 4 10s. and shuffle them, assign a skill to each, damage, healing, debuff. deal them out 1 every 2-3 seconds and say what they are and what button you'll push to execute it. (in a 1-= pattern) have another deck on stand by and continue doing this.. It isn't about what a button does. It isn't a guessing game of I don't know what this button is going to do this time. It's about recognizing and reacting to what you get. I'd also equate a challenge like this to a game of "speed" or "spit", except instead of being able to move as fast as you possibly can you are limited by how fast the abilities come up, so you have a 2-3 seconds between abilities to decide what you'll do.

If you can't remember 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, -, =... I dunno what to tell you.

If you are going to compare something, use something that is similar. Driving a Car in real life is not like any combat system in an RPG or MMO i've ever played. I wouldn't support this system for a racing game.

 

I don't need to leave the combat. Invisibility is a way for people to lose track of you especially if you have allies distracting your opponents. Then you jump back into the fight (having never left the combat instance) and kill somebody who wasn't expecting it.

 

And why do you even mention PvM when were discussing PvP? We discuss and compare UO PvP with the one coming to SotA.

I have all experience needed to compare UO magic system with any other afterwards and there have been none even close when it comes to needed playerskills. You can play all games casually and that way never experience how hard a game actually was when you played it on hardest level.

I have to ask what your knowledge in UO magic system are and on what level of skills did you play on? Why i ask is cause you lack almost every aspect in what made UO magic system that great. You claim it to be a PvP system with tricks and traps when it was actually about extreme timing and tactics, outsmarting your opponent. And understand i am talking about the magic system here, not melee, even though melee took alot of skills in UO:R since you needed to use magic even as a dexer, pots and para boxes was far from all you needed, if that is what you did in then i understand your lack of knowledge. Best players in UO:R was a two-handed macer with magic. He needed alot of skills to perform well.

Spellcasting was very playerskill demanding since the standard scenario with explosion and e-bolt never worked if it wasnt in a huge teamfight. You had often to lower stats or raise stats to get more damage done with mindblast and poison were often used to "lock" players and it was done with fast spells like harm but the one poisoned could get out of it by disturbing the one that was casting harm and he did it by casting a even faster spell and disturb his harm lock, that way he could remove his poison with cure. That took alot of practise and timing and could be stressful to the one with little practice. UO combat was never about button smashing as some believe. It was timing and tactics at a higher level then any other MMO afterwards. And healing in a teamfight needed incredibly good timing since many explosion + e-bolt did sometimes more then twice the health you had as a player. Getting those greater heals in took long, long practice, years.

Noone managed to kill anyone with repeating e-bolt sincee you could easily get in a greater heal btw the e-bolts. Fast spells were used to remove reflect or disturb or finish someone with little to none hp off. Noone killed a experienced player with exposion + flamestrike since it was very easily disturbed.

It was the fast pace and needed timing that made UO magic system that hard to master. To keep your cool was also a big +. The best mages in UO played at a level of artists and they had many years of experience before getting to that level.

My point is that i want to see a system that take alot of playerskills as the one we saw in UO so we can develop our skills and not have a game deciding what to do next.

To me you sound like someone that never experienced the combat system on any higher level.

 

Yeah the skills you get to use from game is random, you cant use all your skills at every given moment.

 

It may have been lacking when it came to PvM, but it is easily one of the best PvP combat mechanics in existence. No, what made it interesting was that players had the ability to fast cast and manipulate stats so they could set up devastating combos (mindblast comes to mind). There were also combos with explosion and poison, the victor was whoever had top knotch timing and the ability to interrupt other spell casters. We may have played very different games, especially if you started playing post AoS.

The combat mechanics for melee fighters was lacking indeed. However, the magic combat is some the best I have seen since. Most people never used explosion + ebolt, there were several lower circle spells that were much more efficient.

 

I scared off many PKs with the following (and killed a few):

Cast explosion, swap to a poisoned (or otherwise magic halberd), ready Harm, charge in.

This was insta-death for some. ^_^

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Looks like you inadvertently stated a major problem

Unless every ai encounter and pvp battle happens the exact same way everytime your sequence will never be optimal unless you want to retool your abilties after every fight

They need to take baby steps instead they are trying to hard to revolutionize by taking unprecedented leaps. The wider gaming communty will not pay for an unproven new combat system sight unseen so hopefully theres a demo or else housing allocation will be the least of their worries. Nobody runsbefore they can walk

 

The buttons you press are in sequence, the abilities you use are not. you aren't just doing fireball fireball heal fireball fireball heal.. it's all random what you'll get so you build it so you get what you want most of the time. I imagine most PVPers will be making use of locked skills for the guarantee they feel they need. Atleast for some healing abilities. In which case people do get the This ability is this button and I can use it at these times situations.

 

Then if the buttons i use are in sequence how is that not as boring as having abilities in sequence and just using them at different times? Its basically the same thing. In other mmos i have all my abilities on set hotkeys but in no way do i just use the same buttons over and over again. Sometimes the mob stuns or intwrrupts and i have to react and use different abilities than just stepping thru a sequence. It seems like the proposed system is no better than what i mentioned if anything its worse cause all the encounters would have to be scripted exactly the same

Unless they want to frustrate ppl by giving mobs cc and then you not have a cc breaker pop in and you die. This system just makes less and less sense the more i argue about it

 

This combat system are like having a keyboard system for your skills and all of a sudden some of them stop working cause that's how the combat were designed. Skills and spells are random and don't work all the time, they only work when the game have allowed them to work. Just amazing.

 

I would call that a cheap shot and should not be easy to do if at all, but I guess that says a lot about both of us.

 

You're making less and less sense the more you argue...

Everyone who isn't totally against this idea has been providing you with concrete reasoning to support their positions (which aren't totally for this syetm, rather that we should at least give it a try).

You counter with situational evidence that suits your need and has little standing within the scope of gameplay.

Also, as a rogue, hunter, tank and healer on WoW, my situational reasoning is this:

Every encounter was fundamentally the same. There were only a few sequences that I needed to switch between. CC was the only thing to rend this monotony -- and that was typically squelched with the use of one skill. After that, it's back to the same sequence.

Gee, how exciting.

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No. What i am doing is providing specific scenarios where this system breaks down instead of making grand sweeping statements attacking peoples viewpoint. Your problem is you are comparing it to wow which a cookie cutter gutter game. Perhaps all your grand wisdom acquired playing wow can see somethig i dont but as the system is not out all i can do is speculate about what we know. If you cant provide an argument how these scenarios will function then dont hurl stones. Nobody has given me concrete reasons why it will work. All we know is very little of how it will work. You dont have to play something to know you dont like it

 

Nobody benefits from our conversation continuing.

For now, let's agree that play-testing and tweaking will pass or fail this system.

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@Umbrae, except that IN D&D, I know what my healing effects are, I know when they'll be available to me, and while they may not work exactly as I like, or roll as well as I want, if I decide to run over to my buddy and cast Heal, I KNOW that I can run to my buddy, and that when I get there I'll be able to cast Heal. Maybe there is a trap in the floor, in which case I fall in and die. Maybe my buddy has a healing inversion curse on him, or spell ward vs Heal, or he's an illusion. But each of those has a specific cause and I take a specific consequence. Having the random deal system NOT GIVE ME MY HEAL SPELL is more like the DM saying "I dunno, he's all the way on the other side of the room, it looks risky, are you sure you want to try?" and not taking 'yes' for an answer. I neither need nor want a nanny. If my choice of actions would bring me to a bad end, then *I* say, "Pull the trigger, you spineless coward, let's get this train rolling." Let come what may.

The proposed system will not have an easy time with that. The idea of the system representing my success or failure at the plethora of actions I might have wanted to attempt handles it even more poorly.

 

Wait, you are saying it's totally UNLIKE combat because the finely tuned controls require sensory input and split second reaction times? So...combat...uses broad poorly defined controls...and no sensory input...and I have all the time I could want to make each decision...?