The Combat System....

So myself and my community were EXTREMELY excited for this game. However the combat system has not improved much at all. It's slow, lack luster, and unresponsive. For a game trying to attract new players...it's using a seriously outdated combat format. As a matter of fact....most of our community really doesn't like the combat. It's not skill based and....it's kinda...bad. No offense. I love everything else about the game...The combat system just isn't doing it for me...at all.

How do others feel?

 

We know the combat system is rubbish. Try telling the devs though.

Regards,

 

Rubbish is a strong word. In need of improvement... well intentioned... a good initial effort at being different from the WOW hot bar clones is where I would put it. Compared to me, the developers are gaming Einstein's and war veterans.

 

For christs sake its cooldowns, timers, autoattack, flip a deck, hotbar and on and on. It is abysmal and frankly i find it offensive. But its fine to feel differently. Gaming einsteins? Errrr not even close

Regards.

 

Well, I just disagree with you. I like it.

 

As do i.

 

It's pretty bad. I appreciate the theory behind it, and it if was any other game, it'd be cool. As I've said, it feels very much like En Garde! the card game, which is one of my favorite little games to play with friends. But in a game that's supposed to be about immersion and interaction and role-playing, based on a very generic MMO style of adventuring, it simply doesn't help what's expected, and in many cases hurts it.

They could have taken the basic hotbar and improved it, and could do a lot better with the system now. There are options to fix it, something a little more "standard" to appeal to those who would pay and support the game, but the devs need to actively pursue it now, not in a few months (if ever), and therein lies the problem.

 

Agreed, "therein lies the problem". By the time they get around to improving it, it might be too late.

 

In all honesty, I don't understand why perfecting combat is not THE #1 priority by now. There are already enough complaints; you'd think it would be getting constant revamps and graphical updates for EVERY RELEASE - instead of new add-on store widget functionality, or even new adventure zones (there are already enough for a PRE-ALPHA, right)? After all, if it's not THE most important thing, combat, at the very least, is an activity most players will be doing A LOT. It had better be fun, awesome, immersive, and have competitive mechanics industry-wise, or many new players probably won't stick around too long. I don't understand the team's priorities at all.

LOL YES I know there are crafters who won't be doing any combat, or maybe minimal combat - those are NOT "most" players.

C'mon all y'all quantitative research geniuses, let's hear those rebuttals!

 

Sadly its to late, the problems were obvious at the start and this whole thing is an exercise in "innovation for innovation sake". "We can't do anything like WOW", never mind the fact that its a "traditional" system because it works, its intuitive, just like using the left analogue stick for movement and the right for camera in a console game. Thankfully we don't have devs (MOSTLY) saying "oh everyone else uses the sticks that way, we can't possibly do that, lets make the shoulder buttons control the camera and the D pad move the character".

If anything will sink this game, this will but pride means we are stuck with it now.

So much for having an unobtrusive HUD

 

So the people who like it are wrong and you guys are right?

Come on, just because you don't like it doesn't mean they should redo it.

 

Of course we want them to change what we dont like, particularly if we think it will hinder the games chances of success.

Nobody said you are wrong for liking something.

 

I see two consequences to the current combat system. I don't forsee those consequences changing, or being averted.

One, a bunch of backers will bail at or before official release, because while we are willing to support SotA, this current combat system is boring, frustrating, insulting or just flat out not fun FOR US (note that if you like the system, no amount of you liking it will influence my liking of it).

Two, a very large portion of potential new gamers will be thrown off by it on initial contact.

Since there are now a wealth of other games to play, other UI styles, very few of those who are driven away by the combat system will return to the game. It's fix now or forever have low server pop. Which will kill PvP and RP community, and seriously impair guild and group PvE play.

 

I agree that the lackluster combat system is likely to relegate this game to niche status. It's basically squandering all its potential by trying to fix something that wasn't broken.

Most people who are sick of WoW & Co. are sick of it because they are tired of grinding through content to get gear and levels that aren't used for anything other than getting the next set of gear and levels. What people want is a game that gives your struggles in an online world meaning. Nobody needed this game to reinvent combat, what people asked for is the ability to have diverse and meaningful goals in a world they can shape with their own goals and desires, inhabit and care about

It's not that MMO combat couldn't use a paradigm shift, but not in how you activate abilities. That's completely irrelevant to the greater issues, like combat that scales poorly in games that scale massively.

 

Hopefully something good can come from all this.

 

there were some really good ideas for skills early on, things like individual spells\skills having specific uses but that all had to be thrown out because what's the chances of randomly getting a fire ball spell when you happen to be in a claustrophobic environment and another spell in a different environment etc so now what's the point? its just another list of generic spells which no one cares about because you just have to use whatever the game gods decide to give you. If I am not the one playing the game and instead the RNG is, then what's the point? I might as well go play Baldur's gate, at least there I chose what to use

 

Like what? nothings going to change

 

Yes I know. But I'm hoping for a miracle.

 

Maybe they have some alternative on one of their private internal servers, and they're just waiting for the right moment to show it off?

 

I like to frame most MMOs as a hostile reaction to Greenpeace and PETA. "Live in peace with nature and in harmony with animal? HA, no, now I'm off to make a game where you will be encouraged to wipe out entire species in an orgy of capitalism". I kind of hope that SOTA allows players to place signs or drop notes in scenes, if only so I can litter some areas with "Respect the animals" propaganda.