This card system is for the birds

I had some serious reservations as well but its growing on me, it does still need some work though, mostly on targeting and locked glyphs. I have to disagree with the auto follow or auto keep in range as that takes away from those who's play style relies on the abilty to be good at that sort of thing, it takes some skill away from the game and I never tend to be fond of that as it currently is it just takes practice to to what your talking about, lag is the only real reason for such I would think..

 

Just to be clear, I have nothing against the deck system for what it does well. I'm a supporter of the deck system.

But there are some things that the deck system doesn't handle well, and latency is one of them. People that have slower connections have an advantage because they appear to be in range and are not, they're actually behind you stabbing you in the back. So while you get an "out of range message" you'll often find that you soon get a "critical hit" message as the guy you thought was in front of you is now behind you.

The deck system would work really well in a turn based game. But no one really wants that slow of a combat system. So I always suggest "turn based" elements, like forced delays and limitations on movement while in combat, as well as much more powerful attacks because once a player closes range, there's really no way to run away after that without taking damage in the back? What's the point of hitting someone 6 times with a fireball if the end result is going to be that you'll never have the opportunity to cast fireball a mandatory 7th and 8th time to kill someone?

The problem with the deck system is that it's being used in an FPS style combat scheme and there's no way to block damage, you simply have to take it.

If they would allow players to block damage, limit combat movement, and force delays between attacks, I think the deck system would be fine.

 

Since the "out of range" failure is greatly influenced by latency, the best way to reduce the impact it has on combat is just to remove it. If when i release a skill you're in range, i should hit you, and just miss if the internal hit roll deems your attack as a miss. Since we have a dodge mechanic, why not put it to use and change this "out of range" for "enemy dodged your strike"? I'm certain that way lot's of people will use it more.

Edited: Forgot to say i'm totally for the deck system! but currently it's just a brilliant display to the same dull abilities. Why not make some noise in a post that talks about it deeply?

 

For what it's worth, using the "/follow" console command does just that.

 

I know I've gotten a lot of mileage out of this video, but check out the dev response in the comments....



This is not a system where taking out the "out of range" message is going to help. If you are guessing if someone is or is not in range...then what's the point of using your eyes at all? Notice how the other person had ZERO problem hitting me.

I honestly don't believe there's a technical solution to the problem of latency. You have to design your combat system to make latency an immaterial risk to success.

 

Never opened it from Youtube, thanks for pointing the commentary out. Indeed, my suggestion doesn't address latency, only removes an element that favours it (edited for clarification).

I agree with you Drocis, there's no way to avoid latency, only to minimize its impact. Something needs to be considered is that a Fast paced combat system should be devised in a way Latency doesn't benefit the one that has it. If latency has to have some impact, better if it's negative. If it's the other way around it's a exploitfest.

 

being able to move through someone and run indefintely isn't really helping assess this issue either. I think if those two issues are address the latency issue will lessen, but until the affect is seen its just speculation on my part.

 

So I think it's a catch 22.

If you make the gap between "what's acceptable latency" wide like it is now, then you are more inclusive of players with poor internet connections. So it's completely understandable why it's like this right now (we want a lot of testers). Of course, we're testing combat out in a system that favors poor internet connections, so what's the point of testing that if we plan to change it later?

The flip side of this is that when we close that gap and it becomes less and less acceptable to have a poor internet connection, this tends to favor people with great internet connections. At least, that's been my experience. So there's never really a good base for competitive play. No one wants a hit in the back they never had a chance to defend against, that's not fun.

So when I talk about the "design" of the combat system, I'm not talking about the gap in latency, I'm talking about the whole reason latency matters in the first place, because the internet wasn't designed for real time gaming. So why are we trying to fake the funk on real time play where we use twitchy mechanics like this? It's really only fun if you don't care about your character, you don't care about dying, and you don't care about roleplaying. Well I care about all those things so this is no fun for me. Since it's a roleplaying game, I don't understand why we're doing this.

 

It's true real time gaming has its issues, but that doesn't deem them as "no fun" in a general sense, and also not as completely incompatible with the roleplaying aspect (not saying they're better than turn based mechanics either, just not bad enough to throw them out). There's also latency in real life, since our reactions are not instantaneous; there is a measurable amount of time since your eye catches the information and your muscles react considerably. For clumsy people (like me) that time is extended. Well managed Latency and Lag gives our characters a certain degree of "clumsyness" we dont have responsability for, but it's compensated with a fake degree of realism. It's fake, but it feels more realistic to people not used to turn based systems (i think that's why they're more popular).

From a combat point of view, lots of games managed latency pretty well; in World of Warcraft, with its system of casting times you could play in a reactive way by interrupting or deflecting your enemy abilities just as he casts them. From a global point of view, my connection is quite mediocre, and i managed to have quite good combats on World of Warcraft. On the other hand, I've seen duel videos between japaneses on japanese servers (almost no latency nor lag there between them) where skilled players do amazing things, like evading a spell about to hit them with an ability not exactly designed for it, and playing with ranges for both melee and ranged skills since position was accurate. I know World of Warcraft is the opposite of what we're trying to achieve here in most aspects, but oddly enough, current PVP in SotA is more a DPS race than in World of Warcraft.

I can't think of anybody in any RPG game (single or multi) who doesn't care about his character or about dying and talking about me personally, i care about roleplay... and this kind of systems are still fun for me, so i don't think your syllogism is true from a general perspective. From my point of view, roleplay is to adapt and to take the elements of a game from the perspective of the characters inside the game, regardless of it being turn based, real time, or a collectible card game. Having that said, from my point of view every game (virtual or real) is liable to roleplay; you can complain about a game not enforcing roleplaying, but not deem it as "not susceptible for roleplay", because you can roleplay everything.

As you already know, i'm totally for turn based elements to be introduced in the current combat system, but not because i desire a turn based combat system, but because "real time gaming" is just a turn based game where every turn happens at once, and turn based elements are proven to be a success in games with competitive real time gameplay. It's just the best approach to me.

 

Oh, cool. I didn't know about that, thanks! =D

 

I don't think the latency has anything to do with the deck system, you'd have the same problem with a traditional MMO ability bar too. Range requirements, front/back hits and all the other problems have been present in other MMOs.

I think the deck system is fine, needs some balance and UI work but it works well enough for alpha for me.

 

Ok, here's my thoughts on the combat system, as applies to the cards. I swear I'm giving it a shot but...

It's stopped me from playing.

I just find that I have better things to do than playtest SotA, and that list has grown to involve playing other games.

It's like I said, we aren't going to see a massive social media campaign to tear down those random decks, we'll just see increased player bleed.

At this point, I don't enjoy SotA combat, it's almost entirely because of the card system (including the locked decks with their extreme focus penalties) and that's really killing it for me.

 

Welcome to the club . I have also given SotA up because of this nonsense combat deal.

The combat system is absolutely awful. Also, why in heck are we limited to 'a few skills on a hotbar'. Why 'a few'? Why not have ALL learned skills available. Where's the spellbook? Etc.

 

Yeah, i wont be playing SotA either with the current deck system. I gave it another shot, but i just can't do it. No matter what anybody says, at the end of the day your game-play is dependent upon a random number generator. That just doesn't sit well with me.

 

Even when i love the card system (it's what made me pledge) i think i can understand you. As presented by the devs, RNG is used as a way of simulate combat flow, presenting the character "options" that appeared in the combat. I think it's a step on the right direction, but it has two big flaws; increasing the amount of skills in your deck is usually deemed as a "power decrease" (less chance of getting the powerful ones), and the forgetful factor (if i'm about to die, why my character does not find desperately a window of opportunity to use a healing skill/potion?).

A logical way of addressing both could be to associate glyphs with combat situations (much like AI was handled in U7); linking every skill with at least one combat situation will increase progressively the chance of the skills associated to appear in a certain situation, while decreasing the others. If skills are more likely to show just in certain situations, it gives Let's put this four categories and the triggers that makes the game conside you're in that situation.

• Close combat (distance to targeted enemy is between melee and 5 meters)
• Initiation (first hand dealt)
• Ranged combat (distance to targeted enemy is higher than 10 meters)
• Resourceless (Focus or health below 30%)

Depending on the position and status of the character, everytime a skill is drawn, this factors are pondered to modify the chance of the skill appearing. For example, If i'm an archer i could put all my attacks associated to ranged combat, that way when i'm far from 10 meters my attacks are more likely to show up (and more likely to appear the further i am). I could associate my pinning/stunning attacks and sprints to close combat, so i can flee when the enemy clears distance between us (chance of this abilities to show up will increase if my enemy is even closer). If the enemy is in the strip between 5 a 10 meters the system doesn't prioritize any skill, both became equiprobable (in the archer's example, you can decide to either attack or increase distance). If i have both healing skills (touch and ray) i could link healing touch to resourceless & close combat for a fast heal and healing ray to resourceless & ranged combat for a bigger but interruptible heal.

Roughly speaking, that's the idea. I think it adds another interesting layer of strategy to combat and could fix the issues previously mentioned; for the ones who don't want to use it, every skill should be linked by default to one or more situations so caring about this layer is not a must.

I think the deck system can be a success if things are done properly. Nonetheless, they already made full locked deck an option, so Devs should care about making it not only viable, but competitive. My girlfriend played with a full locked deck and i deemed it viable, but it's also true she ran out of focus often, while i can always keep going since i reduced my focus cost through combining abilities, so maybe it's not really competitive. I thought the focus penalty reduction through skill raising was a good step in the right direction, and i hope they'll continue doing it.

In my opinion, if the focus tree were only focused into deck management and placed in the level it belongs, more options could be included to make a full locked character competitive. Why a character can't focus its training into being disciplined and focused into a certain number of skills, having absolute control about them? I think it's not as easy as it sounds, hence the cost... but that doesn't mean is something unreachable. They allowed it, so it's a considered playstyle, and it should be competitive.

 

Id like to share some personal thougts about this "innovative" combat system.

Anyone thinking that random system is going to stop scripters is just wrong.
As long term UO player I have to say that random number generator was extremely frustrating.
So yes, you might fairly well end up with 5 healing glyphs in a row more frequently than you can imagine.
This system encourages Keyboard grinding more than other combat system I have ever seen. ( slugs, combo management ) (hope this gets fixed)
No combos for locked deck users, the most fun part of the game is negated to locked deck users just in regards of "balance". ( hope dev team rethinks this tbh)
So basically we will end up with an autohit/autofollow target /random skill popup combat system. (I wouldn't say that is so innovative at all)
Anyway as most people mentioned we are in pre-alpha so lets see what lies ahead.

 

I have to agree with this, whilst I have not played much since pledging, I have tried to come to terms with the "deck" system and apart from using your skill in putting a tree together (no difference to many other games where you choose a character build), the actual deck combat just seems to take any skill away from the player at all. Its a random roll of cards with no skill deployed (unless I am completely missing something).

I always get the impression that the devs sat around a white board and brain stormed. The result? Lets try to do something that is different, yes they have done that but that does not at present make it innovative in any way, shape or form.

But as said above, we are still in pre-alpha. May be things will change.

 

I don't disagree with you, Resurrected. I think the deck system needs to be rethought some and, in my opinion, simplified. I'm not sure I really enjoy the randomness of it all. That said, the skill here that differentiates players is in deck planning, and deck management while in combat. Did you decrease your slug count? Increase your deck size? How about the rate the glyphs are dealt, and discarded; did you tweak that? Did you invest points in Mind Wipe so you can instantly be dealt a new hand? Don't forget to build multiple decks you can switch between during mid-combat, depending on your opponent's abilities. Now that you're done with planning, and you're in combat, remember to note the current location, keys 1-9, assigned to the glyph you want to use. Don't let the glyph escape; it's gone in a matter of seconds. Don't forget to remove slugs as they pop up, as you'll want the chance for a glyph to pop up in its place. And, finally, while in mid-combat keep track of glyphs that can be made into combos; then make the combo and use it before its gone. I hope that glyph doesn't fizzle for you; better go back to planning and invest in that Focus skill as well.

 

I simply lock my deck and beef up my focus so i wont eat up too much mana.

I dont come on here and ask for it to go away because I have the option to lock my runes.

Also I do not have a mana problem at all while in PVE. I am using sword and board with plate though so I dont have to heal much.

 

I've been left with a bit of quandry myself over the deck system after having run it through the ringer on r11. I've been all over the place with my builds but what I find interesting is that the build I keep going back to has 6 glyphs and 40 slugs.