Why "card deck" combat will be skill based

No matter how smart you are at stacking the perfect deck if you dont get the right ability at the right time it doesnt matter even if you could predict the order since all fights go differently you would still get wrog skills at wrong time. Just bcuz you can stack your deck in the most beneficial order doesnt mean thats how your luck will go with card drop ins

 

Well, if you're 100% against luck being a factor, you're not going to like it either way. But with some practice, people are going to discover what to expect from their decks and fine tune them. In the end, your results will be more and more consistent depending on your skill. If you can live with a little randomness, I hope you might enjoy it.

Of course, this is unless they fail to implement this system and fall back on their backup plan: A regular, fixed skill bar.

 

So what is a wrong ability? is damage ever wrong? too many debuffs/buffs? any of those are a result of how many of each skill you put in.

So lets take the best example of necessary timing: Heals.

First, we have to make a lot of assumptions about how timing is paced in this game, our normal attacks are supposed to be able to finish off most or "normal" encounters we can just sit back and auto-attack. Once we reach a tough fight we need to actually pay attention to our skills and use them smartly. This could be pvp, or just a tough monster.

So, lets say you have a perfect deck, well balanced, no situational use abilities. and you have 5 healing potions along with a healing spell that you put 5 points into... for 10 total, and you have 20 other abilities/slugs in there. on average you'll get 1 heal ever 3 abilities, last pacing we saw thats a heal every 6 seconds. Obviously, you aren't playing a healing role, you are dps or tank or hybrid. worst case scenario 40 seconds pass with no healing ability. 40 seconds in combat with a tough fight would be a long time.. you may actually have to retreat or use defensive abilities or debuffs/buffs to stay alive. That is the absolutely worst possible case, and that's assuming we have no ability to heal outside of the combat deck system. Now for the next 20 seconds you'll get nothing but healing. The odds of this happening are incredibly rare, you'd be shocked if this ever happened. normally you'll be looking at 3-12 second windows between heals, you can use slugs to save your heals, you can discard unnecessary abilities, you can speed up how fast you draw your next ability. to bring that down from 40 seconds to 30 seconds worst case scenario.

And then, depending on your build you might want more/less heals, more defensive bonuses with fewer heals.. if you are wearing cloth you might want a lot of heals, in plate much fewer.. it all comes down to number crunching and figuring out what is best... if you don't like that I'm sure there will be hundreds of guides on how to achieve what you want, and you could always lock a skill.


None of that even matters if you just had 1 locked heal ability and 1 locked escape ability, and there are multiples to choose from.

 

Personally, I would be happy with every aspect of combat being random, except the UI.

In my opinion, it's a real shame they didn't try randomizing all other aspects of combat FIRST, before trying a random UI. It would seem to be a more efficient and logical path towards innovation.

 

Depends I guess on whether your opponent has a resistance to a certain element. So, you *really* want to roll a "Fire ball" entry, but keep rolling "Ice Fist", and fail to do enough damage before the fiery beast consumes you.

Now the question is : Should that user have stacked their "deck" differently prior to entering an area where such creatures exist ? That is where true skill comes into play.

 

"Random UI" is such a misnomer intended to breed discontent of the system.

1 2 3 4 5 6 it appears in order, you always know what button activates which ability in your hot bar. You'll be able to re-bind the keys to what you want. They appear consistently, ever 2 seconds(subject to change/focus skills) its a beat you'll learn to follow. You aren't "guessing" what button will I hit to activate this ability? 1 appeared as a slug, 2 seconds later 2 appeared as fireball 2 seconds later 3 appeared as a heal 2 seconds later 4 appeared as a slug, 2 seconds later 5 appeared as fireball. There is no speculation of what number you'd have to hit to activate the next ability the comes up. Is it that hard to remember 2 and 5 have fireballs and can now be combined to make a firestorm because you have 10 seconds before 1 disappears? especially when I'd expect the slug to be a dark gray, fireball red, heal blue or green... you can see those without even thinking or focusing on them... peripheral.

 

We can have multiple decks, and at this time we can switch them out during combat, so preparedness will be part of the game, making multiples so you can be ready for that.

So yes, I'd expect to have a general purpose and several specialized decks to switch into.

 

The system does have a few requisites for success. It will need skill images/buttons/whatever that are very easily identifiable when they appear randomly. The system will not be fun if it's hard to decide what the skills are - that should take very little time.

There are some points I wonder about that I can't remember having read about anywhere:
- Will you use all your "cards" and then have the deck shuffled and start re-using them? Or will you never actually cycle through a deck, meaning each card taken is simply a % chance for that particular card to pop up?
- Skills are supposed to drain your focus (mana substitute). But that will probably mean that you won't just want to dish out every skill that pops up, rather saving your focus for those good combinations. How many skills will we be able to activate before we're out of focus?

 

If guy gets a card combo and u need to heal and you dont have one drop from ur deck and die next hit. Or if you get a big attack and he gets a parry etc etc.

 

They said they can do it either way depending on how random they want it, at this time I believe they said they are doing it so you use them all then it's shuffled again.

Good questions, I'm sure it depends on how powerful the ability is. Also, your focus is changed based on your Intelligence. so I'm guessing most spell schools will be high focus cost and the combat schools will be low focus cost.

It will be similar to UO I believe, where you'll want max int, max str and no dex for mages, and warriors can do different things, some dex some int, full dex no int, and other hyrbids will likely exist.
This will be mostly a question of balance that we'll likely all be working on suggestions during beta.

 

well keep in mind, this isn't like playing the card game WAR where its this card vs his card, pure luck and no strategy. It's not even as bad as poker.

This system allows you to save things, focus abilities can let you start with more abilities to start. you can use slugs to save abilities, so it's about the strategy of using your abilities for the right time, make him think he has you on the ropes and then use your heals you have been saving. If you have a big attack we can hope some combos wont be impacted by parry, maybe that will be part of the strategy, you are facing a swordsman and you know what combos can be parried and which ones can't so you use the right combos for the job.

 

But if you are saving abilities then thats one less slot you have rotating thru and if you dont start with it theres no guarantee youll get it unless u stack your deck. Whats the point of saving your card for the right time versus it just being there when u need it its basicially the same as just having a hotbar with cooldowns at that point only u reduce your slots and versatility to have it available and you may not even need it since ppl are unpredictable you cant count on neeeding it ever nor ever getting what you do need. To me its the worst of all worlds

 

Abilities disappear, the only way you can save an ability is by using your slugs to keep it, so you are freeing up slots to save an ability, you can also discard abilities you don't think you'll need. Abilities you wont need might be a debuff after you just used one, or a buff, otherwise most of your abilities are going to be useful and you'll either save for a combo or use right away.


But the there will likely be reasons to save them, like you could have a lot of debuffs so you'll wait and suddenly cripple your opponent with a bunch of debuffs and then launch into your attacks or something like that.. just speculating at this point.

 

Yeah, completely agreed. The random UI just has to go. As well as mapping too many, unhittable keys, and mouse drag and drop in the middle of real time combat.

As the analogy we've used many times before, when I drive the same pedal always mean speed up, the same one means slow down, and I never have to somehow hit pedals on the passenger side while driving.

I'm completely open to innovative solutions to: proc management, cooldown management, automation suggests "best available" skill (like auto-chains or the macro I would have written myself).

 

The duration seems to be random based on the skill used as quoted:

"The recycle time on this slot will vary depending on the skill used in it."

but the actual skill showing up in slot A over and over, is not true. It has been stated, THAT IS RANDOM. And the very reason for the locking mechanisms you mentioned.

And it is funny how people keep saying this yet its right in the design posted. They are not in a set order. Skill X does not always appear in Slot Y, it appears in a RANDOM SLOT and it is RANDOMLY DRAWN. Cheers.

Through the focus skill tree and leveling, players can gain the option to have 1 or more locked slots. These are slots that aren’t dynamically dealt out <-- meaning the rest of the skills are dynamically slotted like a slot machine.

"Locked Slot - By default skills are dealt out to the slots periodically, but by training in focus skills some slots can be locked and always contain a specific skill. Skills in locked slots are always noble and cannot be combined with other skills."

And that differs from a skill popping up in a slot, for a time, only to disappear again, how exactly? By being the inverse of cant use versus can use?

Except since the skills fall into random slots, you very well could get a skill combo chain that requires you to press 2,2,2,2,3 and then 2,2,2,2,3 again. Welcome to what we call diminished, local psuedorandom number generation.

 

It is called a sequence Sequences are not random by definition. So it is infact not random and you and everyone else claiming otherwise are WRONG.

 

They are not sequences. By all means point to the design statements that skills are chained to slots besides the aforementioned locking mechanisms in the very design doc they posted.

I assume you have never heard of a sequence of RANDOM EVENTS.

A sequence is simply an order. Order can still be random, like say, the order of skills in a deck of cards. The cards do not come out in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... but they sure as heck are a sequence.

Unless you are talking SET MATH, which is a discrete ordered list. I assume most are not using Venn Diagrams to prove how this system is still a random ordering of skills placed in random slots.

 

You can see it in the 6 month video, they appear in sequence, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc, and as they fade out, in the same order they come back 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Exceptions being if you use a skill then the next skill appears in that same slot, again not random, exactly where you would expect it to appear. And in the future as you discard or use a slug on a skill then they'll appear in your discarded slot, and your saved skill through the slug wont fade out just yet, but it will continue populating in a predictable sequenced order.

This clearly does not fit the description of Random.

 

I just want to play the dam thing - then I'll yell shenanigans if I have to

But I really hope that that the new combat system pans out ... I'm really looking for something different

 

Yeah, they're not sequences. The presentation of skills is random. That's a cornerstone of the system, as described. There is no order here. It's chaos.
There would be no need to lock slots if when or where a skill is going to show up is predictable, at all, in any way.

To re-iterate:

From here:
"
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Active Skills appear randomly during combat.
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Skills are dealt out in a random order.
...
"

From here:
"
...
Right now that's how it's working in the game. We have discussed ways for players to make skills appear more predictably but we want to test the full random first
...
"

From here:
"
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Skills will appear as icons in your shortcut bar.
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Skills appear from your equipped list which you can create multiple custom lists. If you don't have a list equip it just randomly chooses from all your skills.
...
"

And finally, this video, demonstrating how the random UI works in combat. The word sequence is not used in any of those developer posts above, nor has the word "sequence" ever been used to describe SotA combat, by a Portalarium developer, to date, on these forums.