Starr Long Discusses Chaotic Aspects of SOTA Combat

+1.

One of the things that occurred to me when I listened to Starr's quote at the start of this thread was, no matter what happens, there will be an army of people who will like it. I've seen game after game where a change was introduced, a BAD change, and there were more posts than I could count talking about how great it was, and how we should have faith in the game dev's. After said changes had tanked the systems, the communities were nixed, and the games were going belly up, those same armies of posters were nowhere to be found, they'd found another game to follow.

No matter what the quality of this decision is, there will be many voices crying for it to be given a chance, and then another chance, and then another. Because fans tend to really like the devs. Hell, Starr could literally roll his face on the keyboard for a post, and it WOULD get 5 or more likes. I might be one of them.

 

Yep, I lost all faith in basic reason when people were defending the Xbone's policies. No matter how dumb an idea SOMEONE will try to defend it.

 

What's it hurt if people get worked up over something they are passionate about? I don't understand the "let's just wait and see" mentality. If this discussion forum isn't for discussing, then what's it for?

I believe every one should have the opportunity to voice their opinion, even if it's it's "worked up". That's not to say that some people don't cross the line by posting the same thing over and over again, or yelling at anyone that has a different opinion than they do. I don't support that type of "passion", but just being upset or concerned, or even angry...that should really be welcomed here. Otherwise, how on earth would the devs even know they needed to fix something?

 

Upset, concerned, or even angry about something they haven't even seen? Not for me, thanks.
Beat yourself up all you want.
You don't really understand "wait and see"? Really?
I don't think we can say it's broken until we've seen it. After we see it, we can give feedback.
Doing it now is more or less wasting our time.

 

To not speak up now would be wasting time. Listen, I don't agree with 80% of the dumb ideas and stupid comments made on these forums. Most of the time I can't believe the people typing them are serious. But I always try to respect their right to say what they feel, and to give their honest feedback.

If someone thinks a system is broken, great! They should be telling us right now. Otherwise the devs may be wasting a ton of time coding for nothing. Of course, the devs don't have to stop production everytime some random forum guy is upset. There has to be a balance though, you can't just tell people to STFU until the game is finish...that would be like watching a contractor install the windows to your home backwards while just waiting patiently until they were finished before saying "oh, and about those windows, I have a concern."

I actually really like the idea of the new combat system, and I give it 100% support. But just in case there's something I might be missing, I'm glad there are people second guessing it. Remember, when everyone is thinking the same way, no one is really thinking.

 

@Sir Frank You've repeatedly stated that you don't want to express an opinion until you've seen a finished product. I applaud your stating of your position. I DO want to state an opinion, and hear everyone else's. I'd appreciate it if you didn't take issue with my expressing my opinion.

 

What's happening here is people are complaining about the windows without seeing how they are being installed.

 

I don't have any issue with you expressing your opinion.
I was just trying to point out that people are getting angry about a combat system they haven't seen.

 

I would say that people are expressing their opinion about how windows should be installed, and how important they feel that is, and I haven't seen anyone really ANGRY here. Mind you, I haven't read every single post, maybe you found someone making terrorist threats, I dunno. I know that I certainly am not ANGRY about the system or the proposals.

 

Good lord guys, all that and more after the creator of this game asked us to simmer down in this very thread...

Lord British: "I would hope and ask that people who have concerns refrain from angry rampages, and instead give us some credit for trying to both present detail and listen here in these forums for appropriate concerns and ideas to help us make it better for all of us. As a project, we have goals and strategies to meet them. Goals are usually more "set" but still can change, but strategies to meet those goals will be changed if the implimentation does not meet the objective. So, try and pose your questions and comments accordingly.​

"

 

I think this bears repeating. What you describe here is almost the way I think the system will work.

The difference is, I think they're going to make the second set of special spells/skills random. Maybe a stack of 20 runes flowing into and out of 5 slots.
And if I understand you correctly, you would like for those special spells/skills to be set by the player, rather than pop up randomly.

 

Either the former or both.

 

And let's just suppose, during combat, you see those runes flowing from slot 1 to slot 5, and then disappearing, so you have this ticker of special skills scrolling. So you see Super Heal 5 come up, and you think you'd like to have that, so when it get's to slot 5, you can pull it back to slot 1 and keep it in play. Then Flame Blast from Hell comes up, so you start shuffling that one too. So while you're fighting with your normal spells mostly, you're also spinning these plates for when you need them. Divides your attention, yes. Maybe not ideal. But might work.

 

Meh. If my gameplay consisted of "spinning plates" to keep my important skills que'd up, I'd consider that a fail. Seriously, I've encountered systems that tried this before, my response is to build my playstyle without them. If I had to use this kind of thing, I wouldn't spin the plates, I'd make them non-essential, and then move on.

For someone who is just looking to do burst damage, a system like this is fine. I myself am a career tank player. There is NO ROOM in that kind of playstyle for randomization. If I have room for that, I'm too powerful, and can smash the world. This necessitates nerfing. If I don't have room for it and have to deal with it, I'm too weak, and cannot do my job. This mandates buffs. The two SOUND like they shouldn't co-exist, but in fact I've seen game scenarios in which they did. Simultaneously too powerful and too weak, unable to do the job but powerful enough to solo group dungeons and imbalance PvP. It wasn't cool.

 

You seek understanding?!
YOU FOOL!!

This is all about pew-pew. Quite a few will be focusing on who pew-pews first, but the key is to be the one who pew-pews last! However, in the end, nobody gets out alive.
Truthfully though, it's about equal opportunities in PvP with real time action where the outcome is determined by an individual's skill and dexterity and not by a random generator. Where luck is the result of an opponent's poor judgement or making a misstep. Consciously or subconsciously, a PvPer's toon is a projection of himself, and wants as little as possible between himself and the control of his toon.

Discussions on PvP are best conducted in an echo chamber, although some prefer to conduct them in a paperbag.

 

The only thing that concerns me and the Sun Tzu point of view is, yes, that holds true in large-scale scenarios i.e. large battles/sieges, PvE raids etc... but in small encounters i.e. a few people PvPing against each other, one to two mobs in PvE encounters, etc... then that element of chaos is close to zero.
I certainly hope the devs focus on the latter and not lose sight of it in regards to the former.

 

@Smack: Thanks for transcribing the video in your first post!

 

When I think of the system they are describing, "someone who is just looking to do burst damage" is just one of many builds I can think of that people could use. I think our inherit assumptions of how this is going to play out can skew our perception too much. You view the system negatively, so there are few if any positive things you see about it. I view it positively, so I see it as an innovative approach that people can't just macro buttons for.

But in reality, neither of us knows how it will really look, so the best thing to do would be to wait and see. I don't see why that's such a horrible thing to some people when a game hasn't even released an alpha version yet.

I will say again, when you guys compare what is described to games where you had set rotations and skills with no other mechanics, then you don't like it. But other games always provided some chance to make it more challenging. I used the D&D reference of rolling for initiative, then hit, then what part of the body do I hit, and then based on special rolls (like doubles) do we get a special ability. That wasn't less fun, I assure you, at least to me.

Now I think several people, some on both sides of this discussion said they would ok with a hybrid system of set spells/abilities on hot keys with a built deck mechanic of several special abilities or combos that come up during combat. A best of both worlds...perhaps? We will see.

 

It's not differing opinions that aren't welcome, it's the way they're expressed. Anger can be expressed in all sorts of ways, but I guarantee using words like "stupid" or "idiot" are never going to work no matter what your opinions. One of my posts got removed because I said to Grumpy, "I know you like to live up to your name." He said so himself, and it sounded pretty soft to me, but admittedly I didn't need to say it for the discussion.

It's a real issue becuase whether it's the proponents of hardcore PvP or the ones who don't like this proposed new system, there's a lot of ranting that tends to undermine the expression of the opinions.

And then comes the irony that when you react just as strongly against their opinions, "you better be able to duck quick to miss the swing of the hammer." A general rule would be that if you don't want the mods to do it to you, don't do it to other people or the devs in posts.

 

How about they ad a option for us to decide how fast the random is with the ability to decide with how many slots i play.

So if i decide to play my skills on 8 slots the speed of the random intervall between the skills will be half the speed as playing with 4 slots.
Or even with 12 slots having a intervall of the randomness of skills beeing 3 times slower then with 4 slots.

Hope some can follow what i am trying to give. Aditional option on playstlye. Whatever amount of playable slots you decide , you decide how much you depend on luck or reaction.
Hope i got my thinking correct.