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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Combat rythms vs Combat HUD .
Would you prefer the sound of a heartbeat that gets louder towards death and speeds up with energy use ?
Would you prefer a health and stamina meter ?
One of the things that ails me in combat is having to take your eyes off the combat to look at a UI meter or some other real world contraption.
If you arent looking at the enemy, watching for exploitable moments, you arent really in the combat IMHO.
What are your thoughts ?
How would you make the feeling of combat more engrossing within the gameworld ?
Would you prefer a health and stamina meter ?
One of the things that ails me in combat is having to take your eyes off the combat to look at a UI meter or some other real world contraption.
If you arent looking at the enemy, watching for exploitable moments, you arent really in the combat IMHO.
What are your thoughts ?
How would you make the feeling of combat more engrossing within the gameworld ?
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Comments
Gonna root for rythm on this one;rythm is life and I'll be a bard.
We've been used to these health/stamina/mana meter for ages in MMO's ,but actually I believe it takes away from the thrill of combat;because its a certainty combat is over when health reaches 0
While its uncertainty that makes combat more exciting:consider that a chopped off snakehead can still bite in real life.
There is nothing scary nor exciting when health is represented with a meter.When it reaches 0 you know combat is over and its because of that certainty that it gives that it makes combat less exciting.
If they want to illicit an emotional respons that feels like real combat I believe they'll have to mimic the illusion of reality for combat & leave the healthmeters and such behind.(just as is mentioned in the latest news for the game environment,exciting :D)
Stages(like good,wounded,unconscious,dead) might make it more natural.
I think guildwars 2 had a good attempt to make it more natural with the downed system,although it wasn't perfect by a long shot.
In one of the games I used to play in the 90's,your character's health could fall below 0.Endurance decided how far it could fall below 0 before you died.
What has disappeared over the years are the variety of conditions and ailments which your character can be striken with.
If you allowed your character to be afflicted with an ailment for too long,you were no longer powerful enough to deal with it with do-it-yourself healing.(some ailments became worse over time and with a skill mastery sytsem in place,the ailment could become worse than what you were able to cure)
"Afraid" made you less accurate,"cursed" made your attacks fail for x procent of the time,"disease" would do a bad blow to your stats,"poisoned" stopped you from healing and becoming well again
"Eradicated" would mean your character was destroyed to ashes and the only option was to respawn at town."Insane "would cause friendly fire while your character laughed manically with foam at the mouth
"Paralyzed" and "stoned" incapacitated your character
"Weak" was a condition would cause your character to only do half the damage they normally do,sleep deprivation could cause your character to become insane.
"Zombie state" would put your intelligence at 1 and it affected your charisma,there was also a penalty for buying/selling as zombie i believe.
I so miss the 90's ,games were challenging and had so much depth.
I personally much prefer a neat and tidy HUD/UI that has an ingame option to customize it (scale the size of different UI elements, disable elements, move elements, etc.) For me it's never really been the UI that's disengaged me from the combat or intensity of said combat, but rather the impact and pace of it. While I'm on the topic of moving UI elements I'd also like to see the game take the "No Addons" path that Guild Wars 2 did as long as the game has the aforementioned UI options.
I'd rather have real-time information on what ailments and debuffs I'm suffering from, what hit me and for how much, etc as opposed to just guessing.
With all of that being said, what Tipsytoo brought up intrigues me as they seem like real ailments that can be a pain in the ass as opposed to what we see in most MMOs currently. Ya'know... the generic "You're taking X shadow damage every 3 seconds for 20 seconds" or "Your resistances are reduced by X for 45 seconds" with those pretty much being the extent of "debuffs" in modern MMOs.
According to me ,combat lacks the impact because character health is molded/presented with a healthbar.Because of this it will always lack the impact combat so desperately needs to feel real.(and thrilling/exciting)
Imagine there would be a disgusting giant spider in your room you charged at wildly,and smacked it good.Then,you can only hope to find its corpse "is it dead?" is the only thing you think
while you are almost scared to touch the corpse even if its there;because you are not sure if it is dead & fear it will still crawl behind your desk.
That feeling/emotional response can never be brought to games if we continue having health from 100 procent to 0:because the healthbar all have come to love tells you "its over,no need to worry when hp is 0"
Thats why it lacks impact,it lacks a sense of danger,it is just not daring because there is certainty,while uncertainty brings thrill to combat(not sure if the little spidertale makes that clear :/)
Same goes for the example you gave of “You’re taking X shadow damage every 3 seconds for 20 seconds” :it lacks impact..,
I'd really love to see the old ailment system return with harsh punishment.Not these typical mmo stuff of "shadow damage" that has nearly no impact & which effects are often nullified on the spot.
Its not UI that is the problem ,its how character health & combat have been given form for years that is the problem.
I do like it clean when it comes to UI;the fewer elements the happier i'll be
An example I can use to illustrate where I think Ashes should be based on the attention payed to the UI or combat in other games.
WoW: I feel like I payed 60-65% of my time paying attention to the UI in this game in pvp. Probably 90% of the time in pve unless I had my rotation fully memorized in which case I'm just pressing buttons with finger memory and day dreaming.
GW2: There are legitimately periods of time where the only reason I look at the UI is to briefly glance at cooldowns. And then there are also times where a class passively adds things to themselves constantly and to play optimally you have to be looking at it a lot because the game does not have a good visual representation on the character so you are limited to looking at the buff bar.
I think ashes should aim for what GW2 has going on minus the part where you have to stare at the bar because of constantly re-applied passive buffs that can't be seen on a characters model. Make things show on character models so we don't have to look at buff bars! This can be really hard to accomplish if the game has a lot going on and works well for GW2 because its very minimal and shares a lot of effects between every class.
A problem GW2 encountered at one point and still continues to suffer from though is the screen being filled with effects. Because they want almost everything to be seen in combat rather than having to look at buff bars to see it sometimes there are so many effects happening you don't get to know whats going on at all. I think that's inevitable in large enough fights though in any system.
Its a question of how can we shift the concentration back to the ingame moment we are in,same goes for combat.
A few weeks back in wildstar I was so caught up in the fight I was actually ignoring my healthbar..can't say that ended well though.
Even if it takes a milisecond to check a healthbar to see how you are doing in fight,you are disengaged from the actual fight you are in
Therefor I wonder if there is no way to reinvent how character health is represented, so a healthbar does not distract in the heat of the moment.
Game after game people say "comba sucks" and they might be right;it has no impact to it
As @Tremonti mentions,real-time information on health and ailments is important.But thats perhaps the reason why bars are bad and we need a more ingame visual representation of character health .
One thing I loved in Dragon age Inquisition was the moment after a town called Haven was destroyed and you needed to make your way through a snowstorm.
Even though it was scripted it might make for a perfect immersive representation of character status/health
<a href="https://youtu.be/dvKSdiNvlfI?t=1186">Snowstorm</a>
So lets say there is a snowstorm players have wandered in unprepared.
Then there are stages where you character can walk normally,when your character becomes undercooled it starts to walk/behave differently.
If you wanderer too long in the snowstorm you'll fall to your knees and eventually succumb & freeze.
The visual stages I mentioned in the first post I made here applied to character health
If environment and ailments can affect your character ;it is actually the situation you are in (sometimes together)that would matter the most.
Not some healthbar reaching 0 or some meaningless damage done..
You would actually end up in situations where you're happy to see another player.Or ofcourse a reason to be really scared when an enemy shows up.
There might be mobs that have a hit and run strategy to wear you down too
We have identified further issues too which put us in a bit of a quandary.
1. HUDs break immersion by forcing you to look at the screen rather than the game world. You can only focus on one thing at once.
2. Moving info from HUD to in game visual effects works, but creates information overload and difficult easy identification.
3. Simplifying the information in visual effects could work, but that narrows down the possibilities for varied status effects.
4. Using unique audio patterns rather than sight, frees up some of this information overload and can share with the identification of status effects.
So I think sharing the status information load between in-game visual and audio could alleviate the identification problems and allow more information to be transferred.
But we are still left with an information overload problem if we want to enable a wide variety of status effects.
Solutions ? I sthis simply the best we can do without the ingame sense of smell, heat and pressure ?
Like some games fade out the edge of the screen more and more as you black out ?
Some make the screen a heavier tint of red to imply blood loss.
As for impact, I mean how do abilities generally feel in the game? When you hurl a rock at somebody's face does it feel like a good hit? Can you hear the crunch as the rock shatters their skull? A perfect example of this would be the abilities "Obsidian Shard" and "Igneous Shield" in Elder Scrolls Online.
A poor example of combat impact would be Guild Wars 2, where abilities (and movement) don't feel like they connect with the world, rather everything feels kind of... "float-y", like I'm fighting on the moon or something.
As for what @tipsytoo is describing, I'd word that as "combat depth", which is just as important (if not more important) as impact and pace. I genuinely liked what you described with the spider - there should be something more to combat rather than just the generic "100% to 0% RIP." However, in terms of balance this worries me (see: large scale PvP.)
In regards to visual representation on health and ailments, perhaps we could have a simplistic (and moveable) UI so that it's not all over the place and doesn't distract the player. Coupled that with a system that gives visual representation of how damaged a player is so you don't feel the need to constantly look at your UI, eg:
A player below half health or is inflicted with a movement impairment ailment could start limping. In fact, Guild Wars 2 does this quite well - the moment my character starts limping I know whats wrong without having to look at the UI. The only time I look at the UI is to see how many debuffs my character is suffering from as debuffs of the same kind in that game stack.
When a player is cursed, perhaps they'll be able to hear their character reciting verses in a demonic voice while having the occasional body spasm. A player poisoned may turn green, occasionally vomit and perform actions slower, etc.
@Rune_Relic I personally can't say I've ever really had my immersion broken by a UI, in fact what has always broken my immersion, or rather focus on the game, are screen effects such as bleeding on the edge or a screen slowly darkening - whenever a game has those features I immediately disable them.
Another thing that has broken my focus on the game is having no UI elements for certain things (such as buffs) with poor visual effects. Nothing's worse than buffing myself without having comprehensible visibility of the buff or a UI element to track the buff, so every time I get in combat I have to think "Shit wait do I still have my buff? I can't really see it but I think I can see it every now and then? Do I waste resources and re-buff in the middle of combat to be safe?" *cough* Elder Scrolls Online's UI *cough*
The screen edge change is distracting comment. I guess its a pseudo realm somewhere between gameworld and HUD.
Marmite perhaps. lol.
Hey ...whats happening to my screen.....oh ....Im dead now.
The idea was you dont actually have to focus on the screen to know a change is happening.
But I guess it could be just as distracting making you aware of the screen instead of the action within it..
Rather than the impact combat has on the players;how they are immersed in the fight and what emotional responses it triggers.
In both cases is impact important ,"Combat depth" might be a better word indeed @Tremonti..
[quote quote=2367] there should be something more to combat rather than just the generic “100% to 0% RIP.” However, in terms of balance this worries me (see: large scale PvP.) [/quote]
Talking about impact in a sense that abilities/movement would connect more with the world ;
I think few things would be more satisfying than to see your enemies squirm like worms after a well planted catapult hit on enemy group.
Those that survived figting for their lives, struggling to get out of the radius,while you eagerly reload the catapult for the next hit.
The ones squirming like worms in turn probably think something along the lines of "omg I'm in a real bad situation, but maybe I can still survive this..oh please let it be true" while they attempt to crawl out of radius.
It keeps players on the tip of their seat.Day and night difference when they wouldn't know what hit them (like with my recent wildstar experience that I was so caught up in a fight I forgot to look at my healthbar)
then they'd be like "wait wha...ok guess i'll have to respawn.This large scale pvp is too chaotic for my taste"
Both impact of abilities & emotional impact on players caught up in the fight..win-win
Shifting towards a visual representation of how damaged a player is ,is exactly what I meant.The movement impairment ,cursed & poisoned examples are exactly how I have it in mind,Tremonti.
The ones that have to do the animations would have lots of fun/work too :D It would totally be worth it though.
This visual representation could differ for player & how it is visually represented outwards to other players?
Not sure.Its all hard to tell
If they would add synergie and <a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/group-abilitys/#post-1979">group abilities</a>,it probably would also completely alter the dynamics for large scale PVP;and combat in general (link to that topic included)
On that note,when there is a slaughterfield and players squirming like worms in an attempt to survive, there might still be some way to connect to the other player,help those in need next to them in some way?Players brought together in time of need :D
This is a very simple example, but if I have 100 HP and two potions, one that heals me 20hp and one that heals me 50hp, I'm not going to know which one is the right one to use if I have to base it on how quickly a heart is beating in my ears or how red the screen has gotten.
When you are driving at a 30mph limit in a town....
...do you keep looking at the speedo or listen to the tone of the engine rpm ?
I can normally judge bang on what speed I am doing by engine note.
I guess it depends on what you are used to.
Then there is the not insubstantial problem of losing 25%+ of your health with one hit and such.
So only be accurate to +-5% seems rather irrelevant.
Each to their own I guess.
…do you keep looking at the speedo or listen to the tone of the engine rpm ?
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i think driving a car and being in a raid are two totally different things that can not be fairly be compared to each other.
in a raid, with all the sound effects going off such as peoples/npc attacks and people talking in voip etc etc, you need a health bar other wise if your waiting for a sound effect you may miss it in the heat of battle.
This is a very simple example, but if I have 100 HP and two potions, one that heals me 20hp and one that heals me 50hp, I’m not going to know which one is the right one to use if I have to base it on how quickly a heart is beating in my ears or how red the screen has gotten.
[/quote]
I think that's one of the downsides of how we've been conditioned by certain MMORPGs... the "RPG" has come to mean meticulous statistical information and complexity more than story-driven "role" based play!
For example, I'd be perfectly fine with items and stats that were not numerically represented, but narratively.
"This item will make you quicker" vs. +13 AGI
"This item will make you much stronger vs. +25 STA
And then though the course of play and experimentation, let the players make the call based on their perceived effectiveness instead of measuring the highest numbers.
Again, I understand that can be a fun game to play can be very satisfying to have numbers to rely on as guidance to improving our characters... I'd like to get back to more interpretive means of judging how/if I'm better off than I was before.
Just my .02!
lol.
I wish there could be some happy medium.
Guess the on/off button will have to do.
At least then we all have a choice.
and those that want to enjoy the content & be immersed in that online world;those are the players that feel uncomfortable skipping in dungeons and such just for sake of time/reward
"Top proficiency" is valued more by min/maxers.I don't want a right "rotation" of skills .I would like it to depend more on using them at the right time
Not "you have to use skills in this order(this build) or you are not proficient enough to join our group". I'm so tired of that.
Maybe survival games are right for me because I want environment,position and timing to have real impact.
If its just checking on cooldowns to find out which rotation does most damage,it is plain boring in my opinion.
These ability rotations have nothing to do with "best choice in a fight" its just applying same order of skills over & over,as you enter/exit combat.
Moving towards an ingame visual language would require you to make actual choices in combat situations,not just following a rotation because it works over & over.
In my opinion presenting it in a HUD format actually is the option that gives less choice in fighting.Min/maxers however do want "control" ,especially over the builds of other players :D
MMorpgs are losing the sense of being about a virtual world & the players are becoming so concerned about gameplay mechanics that we are losing immersion and socialness
I'd prefer combat to be more like <a href="https://youtu.be/6gyoGLJDxN8?t=61">this combat</a>
Some players say "to hell with positioning, the healer just has to carry me through."
There might be other ways to implement healing without HUD, where each player is still responsible for their own mistakes.
Its not fun for healers that they are expected to fix mistakes for others.
So there could be healers with differnt kinds of mechanics,like one that can drop kits/ healingseeds of creation.
Then each player remains responsible for their own mistakes & they just have to be skilled enough to know when to grab for the dropped healingseed.And the healer has to be tactful for where to place those healing seeds.
I do like to take support role.
But its not fair that one player can be immersed in the fight ,ignoring mistakes& red circles
while straining the healer in such a manner the Hud game is the only thing to remember for them after the fight
So healers without HUD,it is possible .And then finally healers are not to blame anymore for the lack of skill from other players
And they can enjoy the game content themselves for once,not being forced to carry players by playing the HUD game
When I was working on my own game I had energy by colour.
Green = Earth/land = body (Physical damage/armour)
Blue = Water/Sea = Spirit (Magical damage/armour)
Red = Air/dawn/dusk = Mind (EGO or RNG damage/armour..aka accuracy/efficiency)
White = Fire = Soul (Conscience or RNG%...aka chance/timing through telepathy/foresight)
The concept was that the one existed before all thing on a universe of extreme heat where gas/liquid/solid could not exist.
Cooling the universe enabled the one to split into gas forms and become many minds, linked together via the soul or conscience.
Thus the souls came into being as orbs of gas and individual thought.
On further cooling, the universe enabled liquid form, and the soul became spirit that could shift shapes.
Finally, the universe enabled solid form, and the spirit could gain rigidity or permanence.
Thus from white light came red (gas/air), blue (liquid/water), and green (solid/earth) primary colours.
Anyway, if people had full energy of all 4 types, no auras needed to show.
But if they lacked physical, spritual, mental energy the aura would grow and change colour to reflect that.
Is that a kind of health bar without the numbers ?
Could such an aura system enable accurate enough visual representation of the people that need healing or buffing ?
When I was working on my own game I had energy by colour.
Green = Earth/land = body (Physical damage/armour)
Blue = Water/Sea = Spirit (Magical damage/armour)
Red = Air/dawn/dusk = Mind (EGO or RNG damage/armour..aka accuracy/efficiency)
White = Fire = Soul (Conscience or RNG%…aka chance/timing through telepathy/foresight)
The concept was that the one existed before all thing on a universe of extreme heat where gas/liquid/solid could not exist.
Cooling the universe enabled the one to split into gas forms and become many minds, linked together via the soul or conscience.
Thus the souls came into being as orbs of gas and individual thought.
On further cooling, the universe enabled liquid form, and the soul became spirit that could shift shapes.
Finally, the universe enabled solid form, and the spirit could gain rigidity or permanence.
Thus from white light came red (gas/air), blue (liquid/water), and green (solid/earth) primary colours.
Anyway, if people had full energy of all 4 types, no auras needed to show.
But if they lacked physical, spritual, mental energy the aura would grow and change colour to reflect that.
Is that a kind of health bar without the numbers ?
Could such an aura system enable accurate enough visual representation of the people that need healing or buffing ?
[/quote]
having a aura glow is not the same as a health bar, a health bar shows the exact percent value of health you are currently at. where the auras would only show at a specific % that would not really tell the player anything, especially if they are in a fight with alot of other visual animations going on.
If we have long cool downs, I prefer to have numbers showing the remaining time on my skills. If there are raid mechanics that require tank health to be above 30%, health bars would be really awesome (don't want to waste mana and keep spamming to top someone off).
I think a good solution would be having lots of customization for our UI. I prefer a simple UI so I can actually see whats going on during the fight and not just my bars. I used to raid lead as a healer so I looked at health bars and made sure people were not standing in the wrong places.
Also it will all depend on if they allow addons/mods.
Then it becomes about finding THE top proficient rotation formula that works over and over and over.
Player choice is no longer a thing ,because you just won't be accepted if you don't have the top proficient build for your role.
Hence why I said players are becoming so concerned with gameplay mechanics that we are losing the socialness of the game.
So the only way to make combat scenarios less repetitive and more realistic is if we overhaul combat in mmo's and take away the focus on the HUD,rotations,skill lines
Instead focus more on a visual representation where timing ,situation and <a href="https://youtu.be/_D89tGxHx0c?t=98">environments(;positioning)</a> matters.
This way player can't really discriminate other players for build choice and rotation:All choices become viable in this setting and other players can no longer demand you change rotations to be more proficient.Because it becomes about the combat scenario you are in and that changes each time .
Can't really remember an mmo that actually had challenging combat,sure pvp sometimes adds a moment where you feel the thrill when someone jumps you..Still;combat itself lacks impact
If timing position(environment) would be taken to the forefront for combat,it would make combat scenarios less repetitive & more about using the tools at your disposal at that moment.
meaning different situations could happen at different times;no longer would it be about rotations
It would be about timed blocking,aiming (the turnrate; direction you swing a twohanded as you cant just turn 180 while doing it)sure.But not rotations.
Maybe Conan exiles is the first multiplayer about to implement this overhauled,more thrilling version of combat.
Think the injury stages would be best for combat,where injuries affect you ;it becomes easier to stagger a badly wounded player
Or when you hit their arm its easier to dismantle them if they are in a poor shape.
This approach would demand a lot of the animation team though
as they would have to make a crippled animation ,an animation where a character fights for life(crawling with moments of collapsing) And hundreds more,while molded in a HUD combat it does not require those efforts at all.Its easier to make a debuff/buff icon,for example