Took another stab at the game, combat stuff is still holding it back.

So, I tested this game a few releases back, I think it was 11 or 12, the one with the Pilgrim Hat, and decided that I should give it another look to see if any of the stuff I found lacking had been improved. Since it wasn't and in fact got worse in some regards I'm just going to go ahead and rant about that a bit, ok?

And yes, this post is written with a lot of hyperbole, because I'm not sitting here and typing for an hour without being allowed to have some fun with it.


1. Character building in this game has no real depth.

Even if we assume that in the final version of the game you can't move skillpoints around willy nilly the build system is still decidedly unsatisfying. Sure, you have a lot of skills to pick from, but the only choice you ever really get to make is what order you want to buy them in, since there doesn't seem to be a level cap. Even if there was, there are no real choices in how you build your character. because so much of it is just a no-brainer.

Why wouldn't you take 10% cost reduction to all glyphs? Why wouldn't you take 100% more carry capacity? You really make no commitments to get these kinds of abilities. Once you have your core abilities you end up with the most powerful character by just grazing off all the other skill trees for innate talents that you can pad your stats with.

"+10 strength and +5DR from dabbling a little into earth magic? yes please."
- Everyone

Compare that to a build system like The Secret World, where you can still theoretically unlock everything, but given that you can only use a certain number of passives at the same time at least there are hard choices in the deck building. If you're not agonizing about the choices you're making about your character then the game isn't doing character customization right. It's games like Fallout where you might be brooding over the Perk screen weighing options and trying to figure out what you want to go with that really make you value what you come up with.


2. The glyph system is not fun at all.

Sure, you have a few people here who keep insisting it's fun, but then you also have a few people here who gave you 11000 dollars because you whispered "Richard Garriott" into their ear. (No offense to whoever did that if $11000 is like 50 bucks to you, but if your tax bracket isn't an island nation and you paid that much you make bad choices)

The reality of the glyph system is however that it's just utterly unpalatable to just about anyone who enjoys RPGs and MMOs as they are. It's simply not an improvement in any way. Organizing your hotbar does NOT feel like mightily slaying a foe. Ok, since last time I played you added the ability to do it with hotkeys instead of your mouse, but that doesn't help anything, because it's not what I'm doing with my mouse that makes this system ruin the game, it's what I'm doing with my eyes. The system completely distracts you from what's actually going on. If you're going to make a little matching game the primary mechanic then it should be front and center, just make Puzzle Quest the MMO. Don't tease me with a world to explore and then confine my eyes to the bottom 5% of the screen.

One of the features of this game that I genuinely find innovative and a significant improvement on the MMO formula is the Ability-Icons that appear over the character when you activate any of your abilities. Having that kind of visual representation of exactly what the character is doing, dressed up as some kind of magical mantra that manifests over them is a really cool idea. Too bad you never see that stuff because you aren't ever looking at what's going on on your screen.

Every enemy feels pretty much exactly the same to fight. You really just can't tell a difference. Whether I'm bashing on an Elf Warrior or a Kobold Archer or a Polar Bear, I'm doing the exact same thing. The only time I'm even looking at the opponent is while I'm walking myself into auto attack range and when I loot them. There is just something fundamentally wrong with that picture.

Locked Glyphs don't solve this problem either, because they are simply not a valid alternative. Without the ability to get stacked glyphs and getting smacked with cooldowns on top of that you simply aren't even close to a draw deck in terms of raw potential.

The system also just has absolutely no depth. I could be half way convinced that there is some merit to the system if at least the way you combo up the various glpyhs mattered. Even the combos that do exist are usually just better versions of the things they are built from, so there is very little reason to not just always combo. If the glyphs simply stacked themselves in pre-selected slots you'd really have exactly the same result you get right now except without having to fiddle around with the damn quickbar the entire time.

I think it's honestly just time to kill your darlings here. This is a bad system. It's not innovative, it's not better than what currently exists, it's not even challenging or deep. Everyone who says they like this system because it's not just pressing the same buttons over and over like in other MMOs may be absolutely right in that sentiment, standard rotations are boring, but this isn't the answer! Give us enemies that shake up the "standard rotation", give us abilities that work with the terrain, give us an involved system for simple attacks.

The thing is, all of that had been done much better in Tabula Rasa. That was a game where you genuinely got to look your enemy in the eye. You were running, jumping, aiming, taking cover, and firing off abilities the entire time. Granted, that game's combat wasn't perfect, but it had a good feel to it. You felt like you were actually fighting enemies, aiming your guns, waiting for the right moment to set off an ability.

Tabula Rasa took a giant step forward with MMO combat systems. It moved away from the abstracted hotbar based combat in MMOs, put your weapons into your hands, gave you more control, more impact, more action, and it was great. A lot of newer MMOs are going that route. Elderscrolls Online uses a combat system that is basically a clone of the Tabula Rasa system. Weapon you manually aim with two fire modes, 5 abilities, 1 ultimate. That system was a genuine innovation, it carried forward in some form or another into dozens of newer MMOs. (And yea, I know ESO isn't perfect either, but boring combat isn't one of its problems)
Now SoTA comes along, tries to not just reverse the trend, but take us in the opposite direction that every game has been going, ramps the abstraction of combat up to 11, and makes "hotbar combat" into actually fighting your hotbar. It takes us back to the stone age, then slaps the caveman's flint-knife out of his hand and throws him in the ocean in the hopes he de-evolves into a fish.


3. Fizzle Chance is an awful way to balance magic.

A chance for your spells to randomly fail is as far as I'm concerned just a horrible way to balance magic. You currently can't even get a decent pair of sturdy adventuring boots without them hurting your chances of casting a spell. I guess magic is just very contingent on wearing girly slippers on the battlefield. I mean, can I at least have sandals? Maybe even sandals with socks for when my explorations of the transmundane have enlightened me beyond the need for female companionship.

Seriously though, when it comes to your abilities randomly failing any reasonable player is going to take an all or nothing approach. The games abilities are unreliable enough without throwing an RNG in there that tells you every so often that nothing happened.

It's just not a good way of balancing the system, because the extremes of the scale are the only reasonable places to be. Most of the people in the game either wear platemail or clothes. Fizzle chance simply doesn't present you with a scale of "How much magic can fit into this build?", since any and all magic is going to take the hit from it. You don't go "Ok, I'll have half combat and half magic abilities and wear Chainmail". Maybe the idea with the deck restriction was a better idea overall, just instead of slugs it would impose a limit on magic glyphs.

Balancing reagent use with Fizzle chance is just as rubbish. Balancing anything with reagent use is rubbish though, because counting ammo for anything is tedious and unelegant in a game like this. Which is kind of part of my fourth point.


4. Arrows, Reagents, Durability are all crap in a game like this.

I really love ammo and durability... ... in System Shock 2. Why in System Shock 2? Because in System Shock 2 there is a limited number of bullets and repair kits in the game. In a game like that every bullet matters, and you have to really think about whether you want use your maintenance kits to fix up that broken grenade launcher you found or keep your pistol in top condition. Gameplay like that warrants counting ammo and tracking durability, it adds to the game, because both are limited resources you have to manage intelligently, and finding them is a genuine reward for exploration because you know you wouldn't ever have gotten those 10 bullets if you hadn't looked where you found them.

I really hate ammo and durability in MMOs however, because MMOs work in a fundamentally different way: The only real resource in MMOs is time. The only limit to how many items and how much gold exist in an MMO world is how much time the players invest into gaining these items.
This means that any system that introduces a cost into the game doesn't introduce a challenge of handling different resources, but merely requires you to spend more time. To me there is simply nothing positive about a system that's purely designed to slow you down.

Even the idea of "item sinks" and "money sinks" is ultimately meaningless, because we all know that these systems don't actually reduce the number of items or the amount of gold in the game. As long as its at all possible people will always strive to produce more than they use. A surplus is inevitable, sinks are just speedbumps.

So when I look at this game and I see high priced reagents and arrows and armor that constantly needs gold injections to stay together it just kind of annoys me. That's not adding to the game, it's just stupid. It isn't even really driving an interesting player economy, because it just doesn't matter who you go to to get your arrows. You can buy them on the auction house completely anonymously, or yell in trade chat or ask a guild mate, but there will never be any kind of interesting rivalry between various bowyer's shops in town or anything that actually has story value. It will always just be convenience, availability, price, because the system is too concerned with simulating consumption and not at all with simulating sourcing.

I would really like it if that kind of stuff was made a little less obnoxious. There is just no need for it. Every time a system gets heavily into simulating consumption it tends to just be met with everyone creating vast stockpiles with the sole purpose of ignoring that system. I would much rather play a game where when I come to a new town I need to find a source for arrows there and develop some familiarity with the locals who make them and the qualities of their products than a game where I have 10000 generic arrows I got on the auction house in the bank and it dutifully counts every time I shoot. The first makes a story, the second is just numbers.



Well, that's my thoughts after giving this game another go. I'll probably try it again in a few months and see how it progresses. Hopefully at least some of this is getting through.

 

I strongly disagree with pretty much all of that except...
"+10 strength and +5DR from dabbling a little into earth magic? yes please."
- Everyone

 

How can you disagree with everything except an example of exactly what I'm talking about?

 

In total agreement with themo lock here. Can't say I read it all though but that's what you get for opening with "this is a rant"
Too me it just sounds you're looking for an entirely different game wich there are tons of...

 

"Why wouldn't you take 10% cost reduction to all glyphs? Why wouldn't you take 100% more carry capacity? You really make no commitments to get these kinds of abilities. Once you have your core abilities you end up with the most powerful character by just grazing off all the other skill trees for innate talents that you can pad your stats with."

10% cost reduction sure as a mage, but carry capacity i did not use until level 90. Far better choices available. I have tried quite allot of builds and they had very few similarities with each other with the exception that that all had healing touch, earth inates and light. All my builds have been very successful.

"Sure, you have a few people here who keep insisting it's fun, but then you also have a few people here who gave you 11000 dollars because you whispered "Richard Garriott" into their ear. (No offense to whoever did that if $11000 is like 50 bucks to you, but if your tax bracket isn't an island nation and you paid that much you make bad choices)"

?? that is actually offensive but moving past that.. It IS fun, and it is a lot more than "a few people" who think so.

"3. Fizzle Chance is an awful way to balance magic."
I actually found it to be the perfect balance for deciding to use reagent or not (since it was increased).

"4. Arrows, Reagents, Durability are all crap in a game like this."

VITAL to the health of the economy.


I don't just drop in every now and then and level to 30 on wolves, i spend INSANE amounts of time testing all aspects of the game and pushing the limits of what is possible and viable. I am not saying your feedback is invalid or wrong, i am just saying that i disagree.

 

How is fizzle chance a good balance to deciding whether to use reagents or not if even in armor with 0 fizzle chance all spells that use reagents will fail nearly half the time without them? For that matter, how does it make any sense in terms of game balance to make spellcasting more expensive for people who already wear more expensive gear? What you're basically saying is that a naked mage shouldn't need as many reagents as an armored mage, which then basically turns the entire balance equation into upkeep vs. protection. Shouldn't the upkeep be relatively similar for everyone?

Consumables are not vital to the "economy" in a game like this. There is no way to make a better product or a cheaper product or compete based on location or reputation. It's an economy without real competition that purely exists to meet artificial demand. There is simply no great economics simulation there. The only exception to that rule is some person I heard of that's making a name for themselves as a carpenter/interior decorator, who not only builds furniture, but also decorates your house. Having a creative aspect to the craft actually allows someone to meaningfully play a crafter in that case - and very specifically selling items that don't wear out.

I spend time playing a lot of games, and I spend my money where I have the most fun. From my perspective, the devs are missing out on tons of people who would have liked to see some kind of UO revival but simply aren't interested in absurd, regressive system designs or insistence on constant upkeep grind. It doesn't surprise me that you'd think this game is wonderful as it is if you spend all your time on it, but just understand that as potential customers are concerned you are an extreme minority. It's very well possible that the devs are going to say "We got enough money from the crowdfunding to pay our salaries, and we're just going to make exactly what the true believers ask for", and I'm cool with that. If they want the game to make more money at launch and make money for years to come however, they need to consider how they stack up in the eyes of people who are going to weigh this against all the alternatives before spending any money.

"You fight by constantly reorganizing your hotbar" just isn't a selling point in any way. The industry knows how this game works now, and you're not seeing anyone rushing to adapt the the new paradigm, the consensus is more of a resounding "meh", and the only place there is even any discussion about whether or not the glyph system is lame is right here in these forums where the few people who think it's the best thing ever hang out.

 

Well you really had an off the wall interpretation of what i typed and seem to be assuming that your own opinions are solid facts. You did point out what i believe the true core of your issues is though.. this is not Ultima Online and never will be.

 

I don't think that's the issue to be honest, because I'm perfectly fine with a lot of the ways in which it isn't Ultima Online. The parts of the game that bug me are the ones that just flat out refuse to acknowledge the last 15 years of progress in the MMO genre.

 

I'm not sure what you are looking for.

You don't like ammo and reagents being required because they slow you down....that's why they are there. There are things in games that have to slow you down, make money move, because it is good for the game. A bow with infinite arrows? Never breaks? why would you ever replace it. Your whole 3rd paragraph would cause stagnation on gear and money. That's an issue I see with a lot of posts on things in game.

Fizzle basically falls under the same thing to slow you down/control the game play.

Don't agree with your combat thoughts.

 

Hi Aetrion and I did just read through your post, which by the way is well written. I had never played Tabula Rasa so I watched a bit of it on youtube, it's always sad to see a game canceled. I was really sad about Vanguard Saga of Heroes, it was a tough game and huge world, but always buggy too.

So it seems that from reading what you are most concerned about is the combat system that has been designed for Shrouds, well and probably is still being designed as we speak. So I am not totally against what you are saying, I can probably live with the combat since I also like doing other
things too in the role play department, but I could wish for the combat to be a little bit more special feeling and fun too. For my part I don't say to totally scrap it at this time, but perhaps make it more fun in some way . I have watched a few videos of players who are really good with it and they are really
moving and shaking with it. Like Envy in his videos is such a bad a** always, well I like him but just sayin. I've also heard that Themo lock is really good with it. So thank you for taking all the time to critique the game, I enjoyed reading your thoughts. So just because, if you knew the combat is
here to stay, what could be done with it? I hear and see your points about always looking at the screen, I do agree that our vision could be directed out to the opponent/creature in some way. Do you have great suggestions for it? I have been pondering it for a while and looking up combat examples
to try to get a handle on what I can see to give an example, but I do not find it. I have been the most impressed by what I hear the Devs talking about in the game 'Sui Generis', you should check that out, not for the game sake, but to hear about the combat. Ok well I did just want to comment on
what you've said. Thanks **cheers**

 

I don't agree with the ammo/durability, but at this point, who cares - there are way bigger issues to contend with.

 

This! One thousand million billion times this.

It's a very, very, very poor UI decision to force the player attention on a tinyweeny line at the bottom of the screen. The randomness of card dealing means you have to look at what glyphs are available, and even if there are HIDs like the Razer Naga to alleviate the button mashing, having to focus on something that is not the core action is an HMI nightmare. It even punishes larger screens (hand/glyphs aren't freely scalable!), and encourages to play in ancient 800*600 matchboxes, where your flipflopping arsenal is directly below your 3D char.

Being at UI level, I dearly hope it will be somehow fixed/adjusted in future. Or moddable. Or both.

In the meanwhile, I opted for an all-fixed glyph deck. Which is another disaster in the making, forcing me to pick only 10 skills (I desert entire skill branches because they simply won't fit into my strip, or have ungodly cooldowns!), and giving me abilities so watered down and puny, that's not even funny.

Good idea and good implementation. Why not both?

 

To be fair, the most popular complaint on this forum about SOTA feature X is that it isn't UO feature X.

I'd just be happy if the combat was on par with 15-year old single player titles.

 

I have to admit, I was excited to run around the spectral mines. Then I was less excited when I realised the only time I was looking at the mines was when the enemies were dead.

When I killed my first ghost I had thought it was a skeleton because I never even looked up from the bar

 

I always feel like this when I go in with an off-hand weapon.

 

Now that is funny

 

lol

 

As I see it the fundamental difference between SotA and pretty much every other game that has pushed the RPG genre forward over the last two decades is that SotA has made the randomness internal to your character, while the trend in what people consider a combat system is clearly going toward having the enemies shake up what you're doing. Monsters wind up a big attack, you get out of the way. They hide behind their shield, you use an attack that can break through it. They throw powerful ranged attacks and you counter by staying mobile and taking them down with hit and run tactics. All of this is contingent on having as much control as possible of your character. This works the exact opposite way, monsters are 100% predictable, they never do anything that throws you off your game, and the whole challenge is in whether or not you can make your character do what you want.

It's just a really baffling reversal of what's proven to be fun in a combat system. What's most damning though is that it's not even stressing other challenges in the process. I can load up Puzzle Quest and even though it's a total abstraction of combat I can at least appreciate the challenge of it. Seeing possible matches, getting chain reactions, applying abilities to the board, trying to preempt the best moves your opponent could make - it adds up to a real game. Likewise if picking the right glyph for the right situation was essentially a multiple choice question that tests your knowledge of the world, enemies and forces that exist within it I'd be able to appreciate that to a much larger degree. But it just doesn't add up to anything like that.

 

All I can say is, if the system makes me look at the bar instead of the game, it's a bad system no matter how much I like the concept.

And I love the concept. But in a real-time combat game. It's bad.

People have made threads making suggestions on how to improve it. None solve the fundamental issue.

Is this the system we'll end up releasing with? Are we too far in to turn back and think "how can we make combat where the player looks at the screen?"

 

If I deconstruct the system and think about what makes it tick and what are the compelling parts in it it seems to me like the crux of it is the following:

The system attempts to make fights less solvable. By solvable I mean there is no ideal solution to a fight. When there is no clear solution the player gets to make choices, and making choices every second in a fight makes the game more engaging.

In order to make the player unable to solve the fight the system creates randomness and an information horizon for the player to deal with. That means, the player needs to build their strategy around the glyphs they have available, and the player has limited knowledge of what glyphs they are going to have on their hand next.

In theory this is a good system. In practice it breaks down in a few points.

What's good about it is how it introduces an information horizon to the fight system that isn't absolute. You can develop an intuition about what cards are likely to crop up next based on what you currently have on your hand. You can influence what's going to crop up and with what frequency by building your deck differently. This is a genuinely good element to this system because it's something that keeps your brain working while you play. You constantly estimate and manipulate odds.

Where the system currently fails is that while ability use is no longer solvable, glyph management is. It very quickly becomes obvious how stacking glyphs gives you the maximum number of draws vs. power in your hand, and how stacking glyphs you don't currently need rather than discarding them improves the chance to draw things you need. There are some instances here or there where firing off single glyphs immediately instead of stacking them has some benefits, but overall there are very few exceptions to how to manage them well. Since glyphs you have already stacked will eventually be automatically discarded you often end up using them just because it's better to use them and dump them back into the draw pile, than to just dump them back in without having used them. That ultimately means the system doesn't give you as much choice as it should. It's very obvious what to do with the glyphs, and it often even dictates to you when to use them.

On top of that the system simply clashes with what should be the core gameplay in a fantasy RPG, because of its aforementioned tendency to draw the eye of the user to a UI element instead of letting them focus on the action in the game. That's not a strict failing of the glyph system, but simply a way in which the glyph system fails to interact with the rest of the game in a good way.



So, how can this be improved?


If I was going to try and rebuild the glyph system in trying to keep with its essence I would do the following:

1. The hotbar works like a regular hotbar, every slot has an ability in it, the abilities don't go anywhere, and you don't actually put glyphs into these slots, you slot the ability itself, the glyphs go into the deck and activate the abilities when drawn.

2. Glyphs are still drawn, and then automatically stack up in the hotbar. When an ability has 0 glyphs stacked on it the ability isn't usable until a new glyph of that type is drawn.

3. Different abilities consume glyphs in different ways. A rapid fire spell/attack for example might consume 1 glyph from the stack and instantly be available again, a variable power spells might consume the whole stack for increased effect. Some abilities, like buffs, don't go on the hotbar at all, but simply activate every time a glyph of that type is drawn. (With no focus cost) The system might also allow you to put glyphs into your deck without having them on the hotbar, in which case they also become auto-activated. The hotbar is more like a container for you to store glyphs as you draw them than an absolute necessity for using them.

4. The element of choice is implemented by always drawing 2 glyphs and having being given a choice between them. Your current target displays 2 Glyphs as possible hit locations, and clicking one or the other gives you the effects of that glyph, and if the target is hostile strikes the target with your weapon. This also replaces auto-attack, you hit things by choosing glyphs, or choose glyphs by hitting things, depending on how you want to see it. If you have yourself or a friend targeted you still get the choices, but don't strike the target. The advantage to that being that you don't need to be in range, but you also don't deal any bonus damage while doing it that way. Having no target is counted as targeting yourself.
The glyph that is chosen has its effects activated (goes to the hotbar, or does whatever it does if it's an immediate effect glyph), the other is discarded.

5. The glyph system is expanded to include a variety of buff glyphs that don't go on the hotbar at all, they simply activate the moment the player chooses them. For example, the fire tree might contain a buff glyph that simply increases the damage of your next fire ability by 30%, so when it crops up and you activate it you can then make a choice which one of the hotbar abilities you have ready to go you want to use with it. Some special attacks could simply be executed the moment you click their respective glyph if it's coming up on an enemy.