Thoughts on deck combat

I found that when I was wearing leather armor I usually only had to glance down at my bar briefly to instantly find a useful ablity. When wearing plate though I find myself having to stare at my hotbar a lot more often to search for ablities that I want to use among the slugs or frantically clicking the slugs away. I do have my deck fully filled out and points in the heavy armor tree that are supposed to reduce heavy armor penalities but the amount of slugs still seems extremely high. I think maybe I will try chain mail next to see if it is any better then plate.

 

Yes I do have chain on at the moment Kaisa also. I have a couple of slugs but they don't bother me too much since I have my deck moving a little faster. I still have plenty of time to find something to do and since I have my fire arrow locked it is there and has a dot to use. It is definitely a learning curve but really cool and exciting to me. I am not taking it too serious just playing around with it. I know much will change as we go along.

 

I don't know if this is because melee combat is not as developed as magery, but as a heavy armor bludgeon wielder, just making a fixed hot bar with 10 attack slots makes the card system unnecessary.

 

I might try spending a lot of points in focus to have a lot of locked slots and going more that route for plate next time maybe.

 

Well, with bludgeon, I have two melee attack slots, two shield attack slots, 3 heavy armor abilities, a purge spell to remove fire dots (favored spell o the week, it seems), a combat heal, and a root spell.

That's 10, and so far that has proved to be very effective for use in small group tactics.

 

Every time a new card is dealt you have to glance at the bar to see what slot it is in so you can hit the appropriate key.
I would rather keep my attention on the combat action and know for certain what skill will fire when I press '4' for instance.
The ability to lock skills to slots makes this possible so at least players have the choice to do this if desired.

 

I think I know why this is...you see the following features as problems. Where as I see them as wonderful improvements to MMO combat design.

The whole point of the combat deck system is so you have to pay attention, so you can't key bind and commit your skills to muscle memory, and so that you're not always going to have "the best" combo available which means you'll have to be more than a one trick pony to win as often as you may like.

I loved the deck system as a first draft, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they improve it by adding active defenses and counters.

 

I am loving the deck system. I'm getting good at kiting and fighting multiple mobs at a time. I have the spells I need at all times because my deck speed is fast enough.

Great system!

 

But every non trivial physical skill ever devised relies on muscle memory. Particularly if melee combat becomes more sophisticated and involves combinations of attacks and counters, offense and defense, if you can't take advantage of muscle memory, then the game will have strayed too far from what is being simulated.

 

I realize that a lot of this is subjective. We just prefer different control mechanics.
Although after spending more time playing around with things was able to get it into something I can work with.
I lock my most often used skills in the first few slots and then build the deck to cycle other skills in the remaining slots.
This works pretty well. Its not perfect but its not terrible either.
I'm looking forward to refinements to the system going forward.

 

I didn't see a need to put the summon skill in the deck. I was able to drag the fire elemental summon to my non combat toolbar and use it before even entering combat.

 

I think many players found after using it for awhile get to the point where they find a comfortable way to use the system. I agree, more refinement, more skills, more balance work and it will start shining.. That is my hope anyway, I think we all hope that this combat system can prove to be a fun unique experience. I'm already having more fun with it than the traditional wow style.

 

Bleh I made a suit of chain armor and was meaning to test it but then ran out of time. I thought the server would still be up today when I got home from work. Looking at what it said on the armor though and comparing it to what it said on plate armor *like how many slugs it gives you* it does seem chain will be better then plate. So next release I guess.

 

My only concern is that with do much focus on, well... Focus that we are going to end up with a bunch of leather and cloth wearing Mages with bows. I know there are a lot of good melee weapons, but the metal armor definitely needs some love....

I know it's early on, which makes this a good time to start bringing it up.

I'd also like to see some effective closing skills. A good charge or leap to get in quick.

 

Yeah I want to see a good closing skill though they will need to be careful to make sure it does not become overpowered especially combined with stuns and the like. I definitely agree about metal armor too, well mainly plate since I didn't get to test chainmail just yet. At least in pvm though platemail was a bit of a pain. Sure it was nice to take less damage then I was in leather armor but the amount of slugs was just insane. I know I could have played in Dallas mode but I think that gives you just a 4 button hotbar which is just a bit too little for me. Or I could have spent a ton of points in the focus tree in order to lock a bunch of slots that way then offset the focus cost. But I felt like my points could be put to more effective use then that. Not to mention once combos come in I don't want to miss out on oppurtunities for good combos because most of my bar is locked!

 

That's pretty much how UO was, bunch of studded leather mages, rare to find anyone wearing plate.

I agree that some work needs to be done so plate + melee is a more viable option.

 

Actually, it gives you 10 hotbar slots.

 

It gives 2 slugs I think. I used it together with good leather to test the medium armour skills but was rather disappointed with them.

 

Oh I could have sworn I only saw 4 on the deck building screen when I clicked the lock all buttons option. I admit though I never actually tested it further then that. Guess I should have heh.