What if auto attack was removed alltogether?

Discussion in 'Skills and Combat' started by Aetrion, Nov 28, 2014.

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  1. Aetrion

    Aetrion Avatar

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    I've been contemplating how to balance martial combat vs. magic, and feel like the really big thing that the balance gets hung up on is auto attacking.

    Currently your auto attacks are such a huge chunk of your damage as a fighter that it's simply not possible to play a meaningful character that doesn't have some kind of auto-attack, but if the devs ever buffed magic to be viable without auto attacks it would be really overpowered the second you put it on a hybrid character.

    So, what if auto attacks were simply removed from the game? Weapon damage etc. serve as the baseline damage for all abilities that draw their damage from that weapon, but you have to activate an ability in order to deal damage.

    I think it would be significantly easier to balance melee vs. magic at that point without running into an issue with hybrid characters. Whether your basic attack is stabbing someone with your sword or slugging them with a stone fist or throwing a flaming arrow at them becomes a matter of preference.
     
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  2. tcjennings

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    So you're just standing there getting whaled on and waiting for an attack to draw into your hand? Is "basic attack" now a glyph that we have to account for in the deck?

    This is not a good idea.
     
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  3. Aetrion

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    Basic attack wouldn't be a glyph you have to throw in your deck, you would simply use the existing abilities to deal damage. It's not difficult to build a deck that has attacks available at all times, what you don't get to do is just stand there and somehow win the fight.
     
  4. tcjennings

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    No thanks.
     
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  5. MalakBrightpalm

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    No, depending on glyph draw alone when added to the random deck system and or crossed with the locked deck focus penalty would be very bad.

    Combat already feels very slow and rather boring, running out of glyphs and focus, the last thing we need is to get even more slowdowns. Having to waste global cooldowns and glyph space and focus and button clicks on regaining auto-attack... I am not yet a fan.

    I think that working on auto-attack DOES have potential, but just removing it altogether won't work.
     
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  6. TEK

    TEK Legend of the Hearth

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    In general I would say get rid of auto attack. However, I am fine with melee having auto attack as long as melee fighting remains the easiest and cheapest form of combat, while magic should require management and farming/purchase of regeants for all spells, no auto attacks, and be rewarded with great power.
     
  7. Wandering_Healer

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    I think getting rid of auto attack would be great. You would have to lower the downtime on skills across the board, and adjust the speed in which monsters attack (Or get rid of their auto attack all together).

    It would make the deck system feel more strategic.
     
  8. Aetrion

    Aetrion Avatar

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    "It's really expensive but really powerful" is pretty much the opposite of balanced. That would just end up with everyone who doesn't mind the extra grind playing a mage and everyone who doesn't have the time leaving.
     
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  9. jiirc

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    Mage's have an auto attack as well. Put a wand or staff in your hand. Boom auto attack. However the numbers have never added up to what you could do with melee weapons. But that's a balance problem that the dev's have never dealt with. They've never, but keep saying the will or they should, improve the wand's and staff's damage to be similar to one handed melee weapons, give them crits, and have them scale with your int values. Then they would be on par with melee weapons.
     
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  10. Aetrion

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    Staves and wands really suck though, they eat your focus and do only about a third of the damage of any regular weapon.
     
  11. TEK

    TEK Legend of the Hearth

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    Those wands/staffs will have charges. I do agree that using the the wands should be an action, not auto attack.
     
  12. TEK

    TEK Legend of the Hearth

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    Yes, I am for a mage being something special rather than a boring balanced version of archery or melee. I know that thought process is losing out more and more but I would love to see the game give mages a chance to be rare and powerful.
     
  13. Aetrion

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    There is simply no system you can possibly implement that makes a certain type of character rare and powerful that isn't going to utterly turn off a vast number of players. SWGs Jedi system was an unmitigated disaster that shouldn't be forgotten in that regard.

    Personally I think that the magic system the way it is currently implemented is a bit lame, I would find it much more entertaining if instead of having strictly defined spells you would have magic cards like "Fire" "Water" "Burst" "Time" "Projectile" "Protection" and then you'd combo together your spells from cards. Like, if you combo fire with time it would produce a burn, or ice with time would produce a slow, and then it's a touch attack unless you throw in a projectile card, and if you throw in an area card it would explode. Sort of like Words of Power or Logos. The Card system would finally make that interesting.

    Making the magic system something that you actually have to think about, something that genuinely challenges the intelligence of the player, would in my opinion produce a game where being a mage is a satisfying experience that really feels different from playing a more straight forward combat character. If being a good mage is a genuine challenge you can be rare and powerful through your own merits without having to implement a system that excludes anyone.


    Not sure if charges will make them any more desirable, that just seems like yet another penalty on ranged combat that the game simply doesn't need.
     
  14. TEK

    TEK Legend of the Hearth

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    I wasn't talking about SWG Jedis but I will agree to disagree in that I did like the way Jedis were rare initially with SWG. SWG had problems due to some serious game breaking bugs, not the Jedi system...on that it was quite successful. I hope that mages are more along those lines rather than line of the entitlement MMO mentality.

    On that I completely agree with you. In fact perhaps my opinion should probably be revised in that there should be a Potential of being powerful by the actual skill and knowledge of the player coupled with the ability to acquire rare resources.
     
  15. Aetrion

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    How was the Jedi system successful? Sure, in the beginning there were a few Jedi who had no idea how they unlocked their powers, and people had a lot of different ideas on how to become one. But once the cat was out of the bag it whipped half the population into a grinding frenzy to unlock their own Jedi slot. Right around this time SOE must have panicked and realized that they were headed to a point where every other account was going to have a Jedi slot, and the whole idea of the secret class had transformed from something that was supposed to be rare and mysterious to the primary motivation of most of their players.
    Their devs must have realized that they were in a pickle where they would lose players no matter what they do. They were going to lose all the people who wanted Jedi to be rare unless they made getting a Jedi even harder. They were going to lose all the people who were half way to their Jedi slot if they would make it harder. They were going lose all the people who didn't want to grind to become a Jedi once the premium class became common.
    They gradually lowered the difficulty of becoming a Jedi until finally creating NGE to at least reatain the people who didn't want to grind, since retaining the people who wanted Jedi to be rare was already impossible at that point.
    The Jedi system is directly responsible for NGE and what happened to SWG as a result. It was one of the worst ideas ever in MMO design.
     
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  16. mikeaw1101

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  17. Aetrion

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    I think the tree system would still exist, it would just look a bit differently. Like, you might be able to unlock more than just 5 basic element glyphs from a magic tree, and then the magic trees would contain the various other glyphs to shape spells, and more passives that influence how strong the spells you shape are.

    For example, the fire tree might have a skill that does something like "Increases the size of any area fire spells by 10%" as an innate, so learning that skill makes you better at casting any spells that combo fire and area glpyhs. Every effect you can produce through glyph combos would simply have its own passive tree to build up maybe.
     
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  18. mikeaw1101

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    Just something I forgot to add on that last post: if your skill points could be put into the magic 'schools' (earth, chaos, etc.), and instead of unlocking individual spells at each tier, you would unlock a new "circle" (and maybe some associated focus/power up skills for that school with it); these circles would then allow you to scribe spells from that circle (or spell level if you prefer) - this would also be more like the Ultima games of old it seems. Also, it seems like this would allow more flexibility for the Devs in adding new spells in the future too... Does anyone think this is doable? Or is it a crap idea...
     
  19. mikeaw1101

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    I like your train of thought. The magic system definitely needs something to spice it up so it stands out from other skill-tree type games.
     
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  20. Heavy Smoker

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    bad idea.
     
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