This is exactly what SOTA combat should NOT be like

The following youtube video of Archeage is EXACTLY what SOTA combat should NOT be like.

It's all about damage per second and cool downs. I'm not sure at what point games started doing this, but I'm fairly certain it's the same time I stopped playing a lot of them.

Play at 5:00 for best example:


If you watch the above video from about 5:00 to 6:30, you'll notice that the player is literally spamming the same combination of spells. If that doesn't make you want to throw your PC through a window nothing will.

SOTA combat (both PVE and PVP) should be a chess match where the player has the ability to counter EVERY skill and EVERY spell during combat. In my opinion, defense should be easier than offense, and I'm looking forward to seeing how close we are in R8 to making this a reality.

My first question for R8 will be...what's the counter to a fireball spell? Not, what's good armor against it? Not, what's a magical resistant spell that will lower the DPS? Not, how do I do more damage to my opponent than he can do to me using the fireball? But what's the COUNTER, how do I BLOCK a fireball spell (or any other single attack) outright?

Because if I can't do that, if I can't completely negate an attack, then we're really just spamming skills and spell at each other trying to max out on DPS...and frankly, I can do that in ANY game that's been made in the last 25 years. There's a reason I'm not playing Archeage, and this video is it.

 

Hahaha , that was the most ridiculous video I have ever seen ...Its like a Saturday night live skit LOL

 

I blame raiding.
Although I had heaps of fun raiding in AoC and Rift, I don't ever want to do again. Min-maxing gives me allergies these days. I just want to live a second life on-line, not play a spreadsheet.

 

I agree with the sentiment but honestly it will take a long ways to get to that good of combat IMO, even if it's viewed as repetitive (and in a PvE situation it certainly is)...
However there could be more at work going on behind the scenes because I don't play that game and a judgement of 1 combat encounter is not really that great a way to show what is "not good".
What I see as not good here is
#1 the lack of reaction to abilities - all abilities look mostly as damage (no return damage factor), healing is not a factor or things like interrupts....
#2 poor AI

I would love to have a higher form of combat than this, but I don't know what that is..

 

I am very interested on this subject. Lets see.

About the video, i like how the information about spells are presented. I think that spell rotation is not necessarily the problem (the random card system would prevent that, anyway). The player creates a tactic allowed by the game (pull, cast a specific combination of spells, win the fight), and that is ok. The point is that that NPCS shows a very poor AI. It should not be possible to pull NPCS like that in SOTA.

About specific ways to counter spells, there should be common ways to achieve that (common language along spells):
Magic immunity. Prevent any magic damage.
Magic Resistance. Reduce a % of the magic damage
Stun. Prevent movement, use of items or spells
Silence. Prevent use of spells and items, you can move and make physical attacks.
Disarm. You can not make physical attacks.
Other spell/item specific effect. Item example: "Linken´s sphere: Blocks most targeted spells once every 17 seconds"

Another important thing is to get decent casting times for powerful spells.

More thoughts about this subject: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...cs-stats-and-resistances-some-thoughts.11361/

 

Hm, wouldn't these ways make also one side invulnerable or create a predefined environment, in which only this side can win?
You know in UO I hate getting stunned (by an attacker) with no choice than to watch me dieing, while usually two or three reds casted attack spells on me.

But well - a good hide and run talent helps.

 

This is one of RG's frustrations he has talked about with modern MMOs and I hope he can pull off a good system.

What I hated most about that video (and in all MMOs), was not the 'perfect combo' of spells, but rather the enemy NPCs that just stood there completely oblivious to a giant horse running through the library.
If you are in line of sight from an NPC it should be constantly building up aggro to the point where they start coming after you. If you cast a spell, well that should send them all running at you instantly.

 

Blocks, dispels and the like should be important. A perfectly matched duel should have two opponents poking at each others defenses for a while without doing much damage ;-)

 

What i noticed the most from that video, was the instant teleportation-pull that the character was able to do. The reason i left Rift was the warrior ability to physically instant pull an enemy towards the warrior, or the combat teleportation to just show up right in front of the warriors target. That really breaks the reality illusion for me and destroys the combat experience.

 

Very WoWish. I must admit that I played WoW and I found it even funny, when the game was young and before you must to concentrate in the dps and the correct skill cicle and all that. Well, in the last expasions they made the game more easy, but anyway was about the same. Not funny annymore.

But at the same point I also found the UO system terrible when It was only about macros and installed programs and hacks and all that. So at least SotA is trying to do something different.

 

UO Renaissance that was the best time of UO PvP with its skill demanding and balanced PvP had nothing with macros to do and UO assist was a third party program that was allowed and developers recommended PvP players to use it. You placed spells on your keyboard and used those buttons to cast 1 spell. There was no programmed spell sequences.

Easy UO though was a illegal third party program program that got you banned same as speedhack and other cheats. Cheats are in any game today and they are alot more frequent then they were during for example UO Renaissance time.

The card game SotA seem to introduce will not allow a player to use whatever skill he want at any time and that is not a combat system that give you the possibility to counter your opposition the way you want since you might not have the prefered skill available. That is a luck based combat system. Get the right card and you raise your chance to win.

To OP - this is a combat system that worked just fine during UO Renaissance and i see no reason to develop a card combat system that is random and luck based instead -

A interesting and fun combat system need to promote practising your performance in PvP and that way develop your skills. Random cards and luck is as i see it taking a huge step backwards. Why invent the wheel again?

 

The card system "concept" is one that should help prevent some scripting. It also makes the use of combinations something that can't be completely relied upon. So if you have a few moves you like the best, you're not always going to have instant access to them. That's not a bad thing as it will happen with your opponents as well. But I concede your point that "random" is not a great substitute for skill. This is where we can help the devs come up with something better.

I would argue that UO's combat system, while a favorite of many early MMO gamers, is far from perfect or balanced. I played some UO during the first few months after launch, I wasn't a fan. I also remember hearing about the reflect spell, and on paper it sounds like an awesome spell. But what's the counter to that? The counter shouldn't be that you have to cast low level damage spells EVERYTIME you get into a fight with a player, otherwise you're dead. That's a good example of a poorly designed combat system.

If you're trying to make a game that resembles the game of Chess in terms of balance (and I would hope that everyone would recognize Chess as a near perfectly balanced game and something SOTA should strive to emulate), then you really need to have an equally viable defense for every attack. Because the internet works in a way that people who are attacked don't have time to really defend "in real time", the combat system must support predetermined counters "like reflect" but for specific skills and spells and not "every spell".

 

You're asking a very good question.

In my opinion the best way to make the combat system would be to start with ONLY allowing sword and shield in combat. Once you have that balanced, you add another weapon type. Once you have all the weapons balanced, you add in a few magic spells, etc... It's probably too much to ask, but I think the devs are putting magic and melee both into R8, which I believe will over complicate balancing, but it's not so big an issue that it will ruin anything, it's probably just an efficiency thing.

To your specific question though, I want to discuss this by only talking about fireballs (as it's simpler for the sake of discussion). The answer is YES, if you only use resistance and interrupts as the other poster described, you're just making a more defensive game of DPS. It's not really allowing you to match other people's moves, it's encouraging you to attempt to create the environment where you can win.

That's why no one should ever be invulnerable. COUNTERS would also need COUNTERS, though not specific skills or spells. What I'd propose is that when we look at the fireball spell, you might have several ways of COUNTERING it. Perhaps every elemental spell school can BLOCK it by using a spell (I'm making these up) like Mud Field, Fire Wall, Gust of Protection, and WallFall. So now the question becomes, how does someone that knows primarily fire magic and is BLOCKED by one of these spells, COUNTER the defense of the other caster? With another spell, a combination of spells, or some manipulation of the original fireball spell.

Again, keeping in mind the way the internet works...we're not going to have the luxury of BLOCKING anything in real time unless the combat system allows us to predetermine what are defenses are. (Making the act of attacking someone an action of first probing their defenses)

 

Well, I know a lot of people that used that program (ar other ones) without problem. And I remember the macros even in the Second Age.

 

I "think" but I'm not certain that the "library" in Archeage is supposed to be a special testing ground. But it's combat is consistent with what I've see in many other videos. My point is that I don't know that all the monsters standing around in "the library" is not a part of the design of that specific area. I'm not sure though, all the combat looks the same to me - spammy and bad.

As for NPC's, I would hope that the AI was as unpredictable as possible, that's really the only way to ensure that you surprise players. Once they figure out the pattern it's all over.

 

I hate combat in which you have to click and wait like it is the case in so many MMORPGs... Waiting for cooldowns, clicking etc. It is boring whereas combat should be exciting, fun, fast and dangerous. All of those aspects as lacking from a WoW like combat, so I am hoping for something fundamentally different for SotA.

 

Agreed. I understand it was just a test area but a lot of MMOs are just like that with NPCs standing around like brainwashed idiots waiting for you to shove a fireball down their throats.

They just need something to DO. Like walk around, or a basic set of tasks, it would at least give them a sense of being alive rather than a cardboard cutout with a big red target painted on their heads.

 

Well, any interest I had in ArcheAge just went out the window. No thanks.

 

Eriador, regarding your point about macros in UO, there were some macros, but most things couldn't be effectively macroed. I knew mages that would use one button for a two or three spell combo, but it put them at a disadvantage. They did get a skill crutch out of it, allowing them to not need to be able to time their combos perfectly, but the inability to react to your opponent until your macro is done is crippling, especially once your opponent figures your trick out. I saw a lot of Explosion + Flamestrike macros, and once you caught on, all you had to do was interrupt the explosion with a slightly quicker spell, and then interrupt the flamestrike with explosion or energy bolt.

The healing skill was pretty exploitable with macros though (for non-casters). Even through razor you could set up a primitive if/then healing macro based on how much health you had.

 

Making a combat system that is random and based on luck just to prevent scripting dont make sense. A combat system need to be fun and based on the players skills - not getting a lucky card that the game have choosen for you. All learned skills should of course be available all the time and not just when the game allow me to use it.

UO had 64 spells and there were many hundreds of combinations when using them and it was not button smashing but timing that was needed, timing and alot of tactic. The best player usually won cause he was the most experienced. Took months if not years to master UO Renaissance.

UO before trammel (pre UO Renaissance) was a very unbalanced PvP game. What i was describing was UO Renaissance PvP (after trammel) which was different compared to the unbalanced PvP at release. It was one of the most balanced PvP games i ever played, almost as good as Blizzards star craft games.

Removing magic reflect was easy and made alot of sense cause if i had reflect on of course the opponent needed to remove that defense by casting spells on me. Was very easy and every combat usually started with removing reflect on your opponent by casting a couple of fireballs. Also had a tactical meaning since reflect could be recast during a fight and that forced my opponent again to remove it with some low damage spells.

SotA card combat is very far from chess, random skills or spells popping up on my screen and it is not i that decide but some built in game mechanism is not chess. Then it is the game that do the chess part and not me. UO Renaissance combat system was more like chess since i decided my self what to do.