The 4 Principles of Balanced Combat: And my thoughts on PVP R8

If you ever played Dark Age of Camelot then you would remember the phrase "Stungard". If you ever played Star Wars: The Old Republic and participated in the WarZones then you were familiar with "StunLocks".

Roots/stuns/mezmerize are an absolute necessity for crowd control. However, there are mechanics ( for example: diminishing returns ) that shorten the length of followup crowd-control skills that can be used to prevent complete immobilization of a target.

No one should ever be completely dominated because of the inability to control your character due to crowd control effects. You should be able to gain resilience against these spells within a short time period.

These are the types of things Portalarium should be looking at right now.

 

Let's not make root useless in the process though.

Sent from my Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk.

 

I like the idea but each class needs some specialization or the game will end up being pretty bland and heavy armor guys PvE speaking get hit with the most CCs so it makes sense for them to have more CC breaking abilities then other skill lines.
The system needs work but they already have skills that directly counter effects like stun so I guess the point I'm trying to get across is that they know they are needed and will more then likely end up putting in more.

Also I would like to know why the fact that jumping can break a root is not a direct counter to root. I mean when you jump it expends focus( like a skill) and you can only use it so often (kind of like a cooldown) seems like a skill that's a direct counter to root to me that everyone has. It's just not on your skill bar. Pressing any skill or button is a reaction.

 

problem for me is that the melee combos are boring if you are more a fighter and cant aim your swings its a nice thing to have to press 123qe in random combinations . a true melee should be also valuable in plate.

second thing what i noticed is that plate melee fighters have no chance against fire magic why? a plate armor should get less dmg from fire magic and more dmg from lightning , and light lether armor should take more dmg from fire maybe a dot for burning after it and less dmg from lightning

 

Fire can heat up metal dealing damage over time.... just like they have it in the system.

I don't think they should increase anything on lighting. We haven't seen that full skill tree yet anyways. Imagine when you can put skill points into increase stun chance with lighting attacks? What kind of combos will lightning have?

So there might be no need to increase or decrease damage.

 

Slightly off topic with what you said but you made me think of a cool counter spell to lightning spells like a earth spell called lightning rod and it should summon a iron rod that is stationary and all ranged lightning attacks that cast or go through the immediate area of the rod hit the rod dealing damage to it until it is destroyed. That would be a good way to temporarily get away from those pesky stuns at the trade off of making you stay still which will make you easier to hit with fireball and future spells that work like that.

 

That would be good if there was a bit of timing involved with it. Let it be insta cast, and last a second or just a bit less. Then you would have to have to learn the timing to use this counter.

 

yeah dealing with it my way by not being much interested , and at least 30 guys i know too, as long melle combat not get improved in the next 2 releases or so (away from an auto attacking system) i never liked the mage but played him because in most games fighters had random attacks except in age of conan and chivalery and mount and blade and mortal they made the fighting systzem unique enogh to love the fighter

thats why i think important changes need to be made , even if the system with card combat woudnt be changed what i personally not like because its randomness,

i still think improved, more advanced melee combat attacks are the goal for a good combat system

was this release more focused on mage only ??? and melee system will come next ??


mmo instance based

mmo instance based better description of combat system more advanced

instanced fps game

mmo open world with housing 1 mega server with 5 differnet hitboxes and it work

mmo open world with housing 1 mega server with 5 differnet hitboxes and it work

in mortal i liked that there is a left swing, right swing, steb and overhead (steb and overhead have to be blocked mid, and left attack with left block and right attack with right block

you have to block in the right direction and if you wait over 2 seconds in block mode you only block and have to reblock to get a parry which make your next attack faster , which then have to be reactional blocked instead of watching the animations because its fast
charged left and right swings do more dmg when they are fully charged what takes some time (the time for the enemy with lag to carefully watch if he charge his swing from right or left side)



u see someone with skill can even fight 4 noobs !!!!!!!


not tell me melee combat is not better solved in those 3 games

 

As hard as that was to read, I will once again try and reiterate what I have said to you before.

The card system will be getting combos as they progress the system, that is a known plan at this point. So fighters, will be getting the ability with their skills to have those abilities. Now, another thing we do know is that combat has yet to be fleshed out. As it is now, the skill decks are not complete at all for the majority of melee skills, so just by that logic they won't seem very good, this is a pretty easy concept to grasp.

As things get fleshed out I would expect say a sword fighter to be able to load in a lot of sword moves(or whatever they will be called) cueing up what he feels best suits his style....I would think everyone will have their own feel for what they like. Now, hopefully they will have more interesting skills then just extra damage, but also status effects such as armor weakening, slowing movement etc for specail moves.

Back to the card system, technically they could really come up with some great combos depending on how the cards play out and the player plays them. High reward moves that take some skill to master.

A lot of people keep saying that the system is completely random when in reality it is quite possible to skew the results to what you want just in the way you have your skills and deck.

 

hope so i loved ultima and i might buy the game even if its not the combat system out of my dreams , question is how long it will be interesting in end game pvp . will it a game for years ?? where you have the feeling even after 500 h i fell my self improving my combat skills

can u get good enough to beat 3 noobs with same equip or will they put you in auto target , atm you cant hide behind a bush and they spam you to death . will there be counters you see in the mortal vid the guy always blocked in the right direction to prevent dmg .
hope that will be possible in sota too , or you cant even beat 2 guys if you are the best in pvp.

but what i really would find innovative when they change the servers depending on the time
in prime european time you play on european servers and to prime american time there will be a server down and you play on american servers which get updated with the savings from european server

or mayabe make a megaserver in finnland or somewhere on half way from europe to america

i prefer everyone having a ping of 80 instead european have 20 ping and americans 200 ping

this is excactly the decission which would make a more advanced combat possible and there should be a vote for it

 

So, you haven't tried the system yet since you haven't bought the game? I'm confused.

This isn't a game about end game....there is going to be 5 episodes to continue the main story arc...as for what pvp options there will be...I'm not sure yet. They did say there would be guild warfare and castle seiges but beyond that and the pvp zones who knows yet? I think the potential for a world that keeps going will be here what that would be for each player will be different I think.

 

here another vid that shows instanced minigames whuch we need in sota too



i think pvp should be open world and not resticted much to small areas !!!



so you can decide full loot pvp with a bit cheep easy to get gear so you wont cry if you loose

or instanced 0 lag pvp in an instanced minigame with high end pvp gear out of the rarest materials which take month to get it together, but you wont loose it

good for new players who want to learn fighting without first wasting 100 armors before they learned it

 

didnt bought it yet just watched several streams of the pvp and chatting with the players about combat system

but after being a gamer since i had my commodore 64 and as a guy who love and played most melee combat games in a high lvl i could make my point and can give some recommendations.

maybe i dont know perfectly about balacing issiue, but how the system work and what problems it would have i know well

 

maybe its not a game for endgame ??? but why it should be a game for ultima online fans with a good endgame aswell not only for ultima single player fans . damn people waited so long for another sandbox.

and the fact that poletarium is a small company i expect we not get animations on a lvl like this where everybody would say .

damn thats hunting por n i dont care pvp i want to hunt all day the animals





so endgame pvp is a must XD

 

and didnt made poletarium minigames for casinos or smth ???




these casino mechanics or some kind of gambling in this vid would make townlife betetr , maybe interest other kind of gamers gamblers who would play on pokerstars XD

dont say it must also be possible to gamble for real life money ingame gold would be enough

 

we dont need animations for every workbach in my opinion i would rather see money for animations go in animals and monsters . maybe add wind directions to make animal hunting smth funny or animals like deers run away if they smell you


for me an ultimate rpg means it should be a simulator of everything a lot of minigames

hunting animals

fishing

housing simulator

casinogames

pvp

trading shops being a buisness man, player driven economy being a real estate broker

but good melee combat should always count over all these other features

 

Still reading the thread but I wanted to comment on this. I agree. And you now what a solution is? (And this comes from someone very fond of archery/ranged combat)

Simple, play with other people.

You want to shoot at people/things from a distance but get all squirrelly and afraid when someone charges you and closes the distance? Either draw your sword or simply play with others that will hold the line and keep them at bay while you pick them off and offer assistance.

You're not going to be robin hood or merlin and expect to never go toe to toe with someone ticked off about you flinging missiles their way.

 

Why should a player who enjoys ranged combat need to play with other players while a warrior can go around solo? No playstyle shouldn't be put at a disavantage over another playstyle. Skills like charge are usually instaneous and give the charger a big advantage compared to what the other player can do to counter it. If there is a way to counter the charge by a teleport spell or making it a speed run spell to a spot where teh players was last standing and that the other player can run out of the way, similar to what they did with fireball, then it might be balancable, putting neither player at a disadvantage.

 

Light armor skills can give the archer a sprint skill, and two passive stealth skills. If an archer is able to hide well they can get the jump on a warrior. Archery also comes with a pierce armor skill. So some of the arrows shot can actually hit the opponent ignoring armor completely. Then the rapid fire skill could finish a person off... this is all without counting combos.

 

I completely disagree with the people saying root is OP, I found that I was able to get out of it or avoid it in a reasonable amount of time and with decent frequency and it was literally the only thing keeping mages alive and competitive.

For some reason it seems like warriors think they should be able to kill mages 100% of the time...umm Mage vs. Warrior is really a question of range...

People are claiming mages are OP right now and that every 1 on 1 tournament being dominated by mages is proof, this hardly proof.

Every 1 on 1 tournament that I watched the mage was allowed to start at the EXTREME edge of their range, this is hardly fair scenario...

Lets face it all things being "equal" mages are SUPPOSED to beat warriors almost 100% of the time given maximum distance, 50% of the time at medium distance and they should be at severe disadvantage (loosing most of the time when starting at 0 distance).

I PVP'ed a lot during R8 as a mage (mainly because someone said they were not viable during the early Dev+ test, think it was Isaiah) and I think I did pretty well, but the range thing definitely held true, mages were successful against warriors based primarily on starting range (and Alpha Strike)...Amazing how quickly that opinion changed when R8 opened up to everyone suddenly, the tune was now "Mages and root are OP, burn them at the stake, kill on sight " How quickly opinions change

For a fair mage vs. warrior PVP 1 on 1 match it would have to be something like best of 7, with matches occurring, zero distance, medium distance, and far distance then repeat...

There's a reason the gun won the arms race...range.

In R8 I beat and lost to ALL types builds, I personally don't think any were that "overpowered", there were always other factors...

But since people like taking about powerful builds (myself included)
IMHO the most powerful builds of R8: (in no particular order)

• Bow\Mages....they were fricken deadly...but the cost was SOOOO high I think I went through 300+ arrows in 1 hour of PVP testing this setup. (why is everyone saying bow is gimped?!?, I was unstoppable as a Bow\Mage)
• Full sword spec warriors....there must be a bug, some of the damage was unreal..
• Staff\Wand\Eley Mage...D.O.T Death...I fell into this play style after trial and error, allowed me solo most of the time...
• The furious S&M lumberjack, Leather Clad 2-Handed Axe warriors...no slugs, stuns and death...TIMBER! your dead

So before we go "nerfing" skills (besides sword ) lets get some more skills in (and counter skills)and if reagent usage is anything like arrow usage, mages will have an expensive time...true balance is coming ...wait for it

Edit: Armor seems useless at this point...