The #1 Problem with Combat

The #1 Problem with Combat is Latency. In my opinion, there's no use playing PVP or testing this system further until the latency problem is fixed.

Here's why:


Or, if the above video is too long, here's a much shorter reenactment:



I don't propose to be a PVP master. But I know nonsense when I see it. I'm sure whoever "this guy" is that I'm "fighting" against is a great person and a fine individual in real life. But standing around on the "Brave Coast" all day swinging your two-handed axe while wearing full plate armor is not what I'd call the byproduct of a robust and sophisticated combat system.

Oh, but maybe it's my poor computer?

User Specs:
i7-4820k 370 GHZ 370 GHZ
32 GB RAM (changed for Sir Cabrius)
Dual GTX 770's
Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit

Now that we that out of the way...

I fought against "this guy" earlier and regardless of roots or stuns I couldn't get enough distance to even think about hitting him with any type of damage. It also didn't help calling him names.

We could debate all day that spells should do more damage. Afterall, he's hitting me for 15 to sometimes 72 points of damage and my spells were only doing an average of 17. (not shown in this video, but trust me) I would argue however that tweaking damage or movement or cool downs isn't going to help reduce latency one bit. It's time to think about a new plan of action.

But maybe it's my level? I'm 35th level. I asked him what level he was earlier but he wasn't interested in having that conversation. I'm guessing he was over 30 and under 50. But that doesn't really matter so much, he could have done that at level 1. Latency has no levels.

Still how anyone can spend more than 30 seconds playing PVP right now is beyond me. It's not fun and it's not competitive. PVE in this system is fun and it is competitive, it really just needs balanced. But PVP is a different animal, and it requires a very STRICT set of rules to balance correctly.

The first rule is that everyone playing the game (of PVP) needs to be on same playing field. You can't have one person playing chess while the other person is playing checkers and jumping the queen with a pawn and saying King Me King Me! That's what is happening here. You have people that are going to min/max the game to death which forces best builds and creates a system where success is based on the lowest common denominator.

The #1 problem with combat is indeed latency. Until we get that fixed (and it's not a technical solution, it's a design solution) we shouldn't even worry about the other 100 problems with the combat system.

Turn-based combat would solve this problem. But turn-based is slower and not as "fun" as being killed by people that min/max the system so that you have to fight the same way they do to have a chance of winning. Think about that for a moment.

I rest my case.

 

There is no "fair" pvp unless everyone is the same level with the same gear, the same skills and the same internet connection. Then it comes down to reflexes. OH wait. What I said will never happen anyway. Expecting fair and balanced PvP in any game is a pipe dream. Granted, latency does play a role, and if you are correct, then it's severely broken in this game. This is why I do not pvp in MMORPGs or MMORTSs or whatever SotA is.

 

The internet wasn't designed for "reflexes". People that use the "reflexes = skill" argument are wrong. The internet instead rewards "best builds" and predetermined combos. Fire Ball, Fire Ball, Fire Arrow, Flame Fist...over and over and over again (made up example). That has nothing to do with reflexes.

The only way to balance the playing field is to make the game MORE turn-based. That doesn't mean that if has to be a game of Poker. It just means that players have to take a reasonable amount of time to select their next move. It means that there can't be any twitch mechanics.

Look, I'm a reasonably athletic person, and I would dominate 95% of all people playing this game if somehow my real life basketball skills translated into mouse clicks. But since that's not likely to happen, I think we should make a game that rewards people's minds, since we all have one of those and I dare say that for the most part they're "relatively" equal.

It's not a pipe dream to ask for competitive pvp. It just requires developers that aren't going to make PVP for the handful of people out on the "brave" coast.

 

Can't help but to agree... Latency is always a big issue. I haven't done PVP still in this release (i've been busier than i thought i'd be) but i experienced something similar one of the days in the previous release; the other day everything went just fine, and i could hit people and being hit from reasonable distance, even with my old PC and my arguably decent connection. Anyway, what you showed on that video is not normal, and should be carefully looked at.

Latency is a problem in every game, but it's a difficult factor to reduce because of the many variables involved. In my opinion, the system should address latency by taking it in consideration; for example, what annoys me the most while playing melee is the skill failure by distance (when you use a skill, the skill is released and then combat logs says you failed because you were out of range). That is hugely affected by latency and, as i previously suggested, it should be removed.

On a side topic...

I tested magic for like 20 minutes yesterday, and i only tested it for 20 minutes because at my current level (12, if i recall correctly) it's not as competitive as melee. I played yesterday with my girlfriend, she being full plated sword and shield full locked and i with two handed mace in similar fashion i went in R10. I decided to try another build (magic) so i can support from the distance, and our net performance plummeted down. How come a two handed mace swing (cost insignificant) have peaks of 60 damage (even when sometimes they hit for just 1...) and lightning bolt (cost 60 gold atm because of the 3 regs involved) never went over 17? I swapped from magic to archery with great relief.

I'll try to gather more data if (as i expect) i manage to play through tomorrow, but i got derailed because i think latency is something tricky, that should be taken in consideration while designing the combat. Damage calculations and resource management is something that should be addressed as soon as possible. Bear Tavern Brawl will be a good place to see some action, and also to see the builds chosen by the PVPrs.

 

I believe it's because magic doesn't crit or give bonus for hitting people in the back. (Thanks for Isaiah, for bringing this up).

I fought a few random people in duels. They were not the "brave coast" lot and so they didn't know the "best build". But what I found was that the moment someone got up on me I was taking 30+ points of crit damage from melee weapons. Which is fine with me, that part seems fair. I've always said that if a player is going to get close to a mage they should cut them in half.

The problem as I see it is that mages should then be able to do the same crit damage at range because once someone is on you you're going to have your spells interrupted and you're not going to be able to get away.

But this goes directly to the point of why the system is designed wrong to begin with. The assumption this system makes is that a melee fighter is going to take X damage trying to close the gap between themselves and the mage. So let's say that I can somehow hit the melee fighter at range twice doing 15 points of damage. Now when the melee fighter reaches me they hit me once for 30 points of damage. Yay, we're even! But what doesn't get counted into the balance is that the melee guy probably has more hitpoints, and they don't want to run away. Now I'm trying to get away taking sword hits in my back. It's just not a fair fight.

All of that is meaningless though because latency creates situations where you think you're out of range and you're not. So now you're taking double damage in the back while trying to cast a spell that will eventually be interrupted by the enormous damage you just took.

It's time for a new plan.

 

32 MB RAM? This sounds really poor

 

hehe - changed OP

 

I can understand this. As one of the elderly here in the forum I remember when I bought my first computer, which was very simple in comparison of today PCs. It was a kit with a 6502 CPU, a hex display and 1 KB (yes KB!) RAM. This was in the seventies. Time flies! Nowadays 1 KB is nothings and 32 MB are poor. But sometimes one fall back in old patterns and it's hard to avoid the old units

 

Let me try again. Internet PvP. Everyone has different physical abilities and latency. I simply do not have the inclination, desire, and possibly even the skill to compete when it comes to being able to rapidly move and coordinate attacks. Turn based would be a better match to my abilities physically, but that's going to turn off a whole bunch of people. Maybe even most. I'm not going to pull some random percentage out of my bum since we all know 98% of statistics are made up.

I think Warhammer Online had pretty good pvp. DAoC arguably had the best. I am playing Archeage right now, and the PvP there is horrible. It's a zergfest where he who uses the crowd control build wins most of the time. Want to be a ranger? You're screwed in 1 versus 1 because the hardcore pvpers will argue that you must have Auramancy to compete. I play the build I like for PvE. It's rarely good at PvP. PvE is my preference, and it's frustrating in games that force PvP. Hopefully this game will have a good mix of both, because I don't anticipate good PvP. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised.

 

I tend to agree, its a bad game design that leads one to enjoy a PVE build and then have it be dysfunctional or useless in PVP. I disagree about DAOC's PVP though. As an early melee player I crowd control spamming in that game felt awful. Warhammer was fun at first, I agree. SWTOR is actually the best game for me where whatever spec I use feels diverse enough and has a niche good enough for PVP if played for its strengths well.

SOTA combat feels about '50%' right now. Outside of the deck system, it still feels 1990s to me. I see the latency issue. A few other things would help to: animation smoothness/integration, giving a feeling of real impact ummmph to the blows (through better visual and sound integration), better UI helping the player understand that a skill is actually doing something. Good progress every release though, I agree!

 

And I think there in lies the rub. Who are we turning off by making PVP more accessible to people that end up playing PVE because PVP is not fun for them? I don't believe for a second that there are more people interested in playing PVP the way it works now then the way it might work if it were more structured and less twitch.

The mythical market of PVP players that want a style of bunny hopping and fast motion is relatively small compared to the masses of people that would say exactly what you just did. To paraphrase, "I'd like to play PVP but it forces me to build a type of character that I'm not interested in playing".

What we're doing right now is assuming that because we (and I mean a few players and the devs) can bounce around and fight quickly, it's somehow fun for more people. That's beyond not true. How many people are in the PVP arenas? How many people are on the Brave Coast? The answer is closer to Zero than it is 20.

 

I agree I been playing games since Atari, so I'm old. I also design combat, and program this stuff for real in Unity as well, not saying I'm an expert here, but I have my BA in Game production so I know enough and work on this stuff daily anyways. . SOTA has room for improvement, I have said this before, and everyone said wait for the deck system, I knew better when I seen the combat in early development that it would be similar to what we see and it would feel like its 1990 combat. I hated Aion because of the slow combat, I love SOTA because of the crafting, I like the deck system but the combat still sucks, its slow as hell, its boring as hell, its going to be more about gear and how much the player lags, zzzzzz...

So again, as I said 9 months or so ago, the combat needs to be atleast something like ESO, which is soft lock.. Which is like tab target, but a little twitch as well. This will bring a little skill to the table but also make it not so boring and hard for those that can't do skill based if that makes sense.

I said this a long time back...

If this game was turn back I would quit and never come back, I hate FF because of that, I hate any game that has slow combat. I love to PVE, I like PVP, but I like more action base combat, I also feel we have the ability to make more interesting and intuitive combat now a days, I know I program, it all the time, so this bothers me when I see a company as experience as this , give us this kinda of combat.

To those that told me to wait and see, well I did, and I guessed correct, its not much better than I said before... SOTA is a gold mine of a game but games with crappy combat will make people leave in Troves, please fix it... Make it more enjoyable I don't care how, in its current state, you are going to bore the heck out of most players. I SEE a lot complaining now and I knew that would, we are in an age were as I said, we are ready for better combat!!!!

So for the love of God please fix it, take your time, and fix it, leave the deck system I do like it. But make the combat better heck even AOC did a great job with the combo system, so tab target can still be fun if its done correctly... But its 2014, not 1990...cmon ...

 

recon0303, I can't tell if you want the combat to be more like Planetside or more like WoW.

I don't know how we can have fast combat and not be impacted by latency the way we are here. If you're saying that people should die faster, I'd agree with that. I think a single fireball should wipe out people in one hit. I'd just like to see a more tactical and strategic application of that spell.

I think combat should be a dance that ends suddenly. What we have right now is a repetitive motion that ends sporadically.

 

This is exactly my issue with combat. I am killed by my opponent missing me all the time For me the latency is the most important thing in any PvP that is not turn based (which makes playing with people from other continents hard or impossible).


It is really big issue in assymetrical combat (melee vs ranged) it is really hard to keep the distance if your opponent is not where you see him.

 

To me it looks like an issue with the polearm reach skill, instead of lag. As in, a wrong value added somewhere making the reach unnaturally long.

 

I agree with this thread. It's a big issue that needs dealing with if there is to be any meaningful PvP.

 

Sure, we can pin point the reach skill. That's a problem that needs fixed. But watch the video again, there are times when I'm getting hit in the back while looking at my opponent. There's another time when my opponent teleports off the screen and I don't know where he is anymore - then I get hit.

This is the point I'm making. We can't balance anything if that kind of thing is going on. There are like 100 things that I could probably come up with off the top of my head that need balanced, but when you have an environment where you don't know what angle you're being attacked from, and what angle you're actually attacking your opponent from, those 100 things really don't matter.

 

I agree that there are some lag issues that should be dealt with. I haven't personally felt like it has been *that* bad though.

 

From an overall world stability perspective, the game has been AMAZING from the first release and every release there after.

But from a PVP standpoint, it's not playable competitively. Sure, if the only thing you care about in this game is PVP for the sake of PVP (see Brave Coast), then it's fine. It's "to be expected" it's "on par with the way these games are". But if you're thinking about it from a competitive or fair point of view, it's nonsense. It's time for PVP to grow up and be designed in a way that doesn't allow people to take advantage of the internet by min/maxing "whatever works".

I watched the Bear Tavern Brawl today and the commentator said that it looked like an elaborate "dance" between to combatants. But to my eyes, I knew better. It was just two people attacking where they thought the other person was, and the game mimicking the position of those two players. It was two players rushing towards one another, and then the game saying "yeah you're swinging at something that's 'close enough' so we'll give you credit for the hit".