Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
It may not be inevitable slow, but fast paced pushing the same few buttons over and over again isnt much better than slow combat.
You say wildstar is fine with 8 skills but you really just spam 1 maybe 2 buttons while moving out of aoe.
For me it has one of the worst combat systems in recent mmos ive seen. Not to mention the out of place overpainting for aoe effects.
The inner cd is intentional, because they dont want animation canceling. Its basicaly just an global cd as i understand? The UI which shows the skill as ready to use (while its not) will be changed for sure.
The combat looks slow because charging attacks look slow and it doesnt help much that the combo system is basicaly a charging attack+the most used one.
A charged attack has delayed input which feels kinda disconcerting/disconnecting by default, especialy when you have to focus on a moving bar to hit the red spot instead of noticing the instant starting charge animation of your character which would reverse the disconnect to some degree.
With a way greater amount of skills, the charging combo wouldnt dominate the overall combat and they could implement more instant skills.
Also with my popup idea, skills wouldnt necessarily need to be charge attacks.++
@Dygz
you prefer to stare at a black/red line instead of beautiful attack animations, environment and player actions? ur weird
I agree with removing the cooldown on ultimates however, whats the point in repeated perfect combos if you need to wait for the cooldown anyway.
@endahlol
glisten will be very challenging to notice within 0.3 sec during combat with many effects going on
Maybe some short class colored beam in shape of the eqipped weapon? nvm im no artist.
Lets say that we incorporated the precision bar* premise into a full attack animation sequence with audio visual highlights at the optimal points. As the attack winds/ramps up the attack animation slows down to an almost pause, the character makes a grunt* and the weapon glints or gleams [eg]. Now i as the player can see and tell when to respond to optimal circumstance, but just as importantly my opponent can deny and counter (block/parry/dodge/evade etc)...whereby the opponent if successful in mitigating the Precision* attack will generate or absorb the focus* resource likewise.
I personally find this counter mechanic far more engaging and skill* based than having a better periphery vision playing single player QTE that are not mandatory but whats the point then.....
I would like to believe that Focus generation can be effected by strategic counter play.
remembering that this is primarily the (1) skill and the precision system is focus* generation.
Each weapon can be associated with its own attack animation precision sequence.
The glints and gleams could be toggled on or off, much like the (action Bar) UI element, which should be viewed as an assistance measure and not the primary mechanic/focus and also toggled in options.
Merely Suggestions.
"Lets say that we incorporated the precision bar* premise into a full attack animation sequence with audio visual highlights at the optimal points. As the attack winds/ramps up the attack animation slows down to an almost pause, the character makes a grunt* and the weapon glints or gleams [eg]. Now i as the player can see and tell when to respond to optimal circumstance, but just as importantly my opponent can deny and counter (block/parry/dodge/evade etc)...whereby the opponent if successful in mitigating the Precision* attack will generate or absorb the focus* resource likewise."
love this idea! One step further: Add a counter counter attack that steals the stolen focus back if timed correctly right after the first counter but if used accidentaly (the enemy didnt counter) you loose some focus instead
But there shouldnt be a possibility to toggle on the UI bar, it would set people who decide to turn it off in a disadvantage and thus require everyone to use it..
(i really hate that bar...
For rest I still didn't see enough to really comment yet, I like what I see and I'm sure when 2 classes are combined in main role with sub class, it will get even more interesting.
Increase the aviable skill number to >20 and have a exact twice as big skillpool to choose from.
Remove the combo bar and replace it with detailed animation(/popup symbol).
Add a counter attack that could turn the enemys combo to harm himself if used during his combo animation and before the enemy pushed the combo button.
Add iframe skills, active dodging/parry/block.
Remove random based dodging/parry/block/miss.
They could implement a 'kick' system like wow, but to stop combos if you can time it when they have the window to combo? Does that make sense?
That is not the final UI.
And even with the final UI, the devs want the UI to be highly customizable by the players.
Highly unlikely that the final UI is going to be a black/red line.
Even if we are staring at a weapon glisten or some other telegraph, that's going to distract us from the beautiful environments. The timing is random. we're going to have to focus in on the precision timing rather than the environment regardless of the UI design.
We aren't going to want to see the combo timers for all the other players - not in arena PvP and especially not during a siege. That would be way too distracting.
All we really need is to recognize the tells for their weapon ability chains and attempt to disrupt those. We don't need to know what their timing actually is.
hmm
If player 2 has time to counter after player 1 has clicked the combo within the sweet spot, its likely that high skilled players wont use the comboattack at all because they expect the enemy to counter anyway.
So its better to let them combo and counter simultaneously so the one whos the better player will get his spells through.
@Dygz
the charging bar could be drawn by van gogh and would still be just a shite bar thats distracting from the actual game. Transparency or more prominent position wouldnt change that fact. A pop up or showy animation is way easier to detect from peripheral vision because it doesnt need to provide extra information beside its appearance. The bar would need more attention because you need attention to perceive the charging speed and the sweet spot, both for a greater amount of time.
I'd say:
We want to see as much as possible from our enemy's actions and possibilities to react to them. Thats the point of pvp after all??
Also its not intended to counter everyones combo all by yourself during a siege lmao.
Its not distracting either exept you think that enemy animations are distracting?
You wouldnt see the enemys charge bar/pop up, just animation.
Where is the pleasure of combat engagement..? where is the multiplayer skill dynamic..?
in such a system.
looking for windows of opportunity and denial of momentum is meaningful combat and an art form.
The opponent doesnt know whether or not you timed your (1 key press) during the animation window.
only that the animation tells the type of base attack you are attempting. this allows the oponent to disrupt* the animation sequence or counter* its efficacy denying you resource accumulation.
Disruption and denial is far more skill based on organic human nature than hitting a random/precision meter specific to the UI and is more akin to a phone app game then any meaningful art of combat.
As such I would like timing indicator removed as a bar, and implemented visually on the character itself in some way.
For me the best way would be some glow (for example glowing arms) changing color from light yellowish maybe then to orange and when its red it's time to click your skill.
Or anything nicelly visually implemented in similar way so I get to look at characters and a world, instead at UI bars.
The devs have already confirmed giving players control over the transparency and positioning of the UI elements as part of player customization - especially with regard to the "charging bar".
We want to see as much of combatants actions as possible, yes, but Focus isn't really a combatant action.
What we really need is to recognize the actions of the combatants as they move through their combos - once we know the animations for the weapon abilities, we will recognize that we want to disrupt the combo - we don't need to be aware of the random timing other combatants are trying to hit...and all those tells going off during a siege would be way, way, way more distracting than the current charging bar.
We won't want an animation for the combo timers (the "sweet spots") for other combatants, we just need to learn to recognize the animations for the abilities in the combo so we know that we want to disrupt that flow.
Seems to me that you are trying to say what I've been saying - you just don't realize it yet.
I look at it with another mentality, just saying everything is awesome because it will be changed in a (design) discussion forum is useless to me. Instead i provide my opinion to steer to actual improvements.
Its not the time to hype additional customers into the game, they cant even buy it atm and will forget about the game and whats been said within 2 years.
Since the combo attack is intended to have no real cooldown and weak dmg compared to other skills, you wouldnt want to waste your 1-2 true cc's that are given to you and use them to stop the enemys ulti/stunlock the healer.
Which leaves half of the combat without greater pvp interacion.
Thats the reason a counter attack thats exclusive to counter combo's would shine imo.
To make it easy to recognize the charge bar or some other charging construct from pheripheral vision it would be nessecary to have high contrast, no transparency.
You could place the bar right on top of your character with high transparency, but why would you prefer that over actual character animation?
@Gothix
I doubt color changing glowing is the way to go. Imagine the field of color changing yellow, orange, red glowing players during a siege :') Might be awesome to look at while standing on the castle walls during nighttime haha.
Some short showy movement paired with a really short flash in general class color at the users hands would be enough information with my previous idea.
- Make combos visually readable.
- Make combo hitbox quite wide, so its easy to get hit..
- ..but the efficiency scales how center you manage to hit.
- Make combos deal just slightly more damage or raise a little effectiveness, but not make it a mandatory to get succesful hit.
Better?point 2 and 3 assume its a action combat attack? but its a tab target ability till now..
And imo tab target actualy suits this particular mechanic better because it would be too hard to simultaneously aim properly? Not to mention the counter idea.
Also it would change the whole qte mechanic because until now the dmg is done after a fixed amount of time and not when you successfully complete the combo.
It could be changed but that leads to new problems, since the combo sweet spot is random based, the total attack cast time would vary alot. People would want to animation cancel if the sweet spot is too far behind.. And devs said no to animation cancels.
Skill based variation in efficiency can be done by increasing its effect the sooner you hit the sweet spot aswell.
Effectiveness should be discussed in a more refined state of the game, but why bother to implement and learn complex mechanics if they change the dmg outcome by ~4% only?
The combos are not intended to have weak damage as far as I know.
At PAX, we only had one weapon attack, but the design calls for multiple abilities in the combo chain - not just one "weak" ability. Plus, successfully completing the combo chain is what builds up to the ultimate ability.
There is a mini-cool down/rest period if you miss the mark on the QTE.
You don't have to cc your opponent to stop them from completing the chain - you just have to distract them / disrupt their focus as they try to hit their marks.
Players will be able to control the transparency and contrast of the UI as they see fit.
Character animation for Focus doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
I havn't seen them talking about specific ideas to improve the combo system, if they really implement some of my ideas thats great i guess.
" but the design calls for multiple abilities in the combo chain - not just one "weak" ability."
could you explain that further?
Ya it would still be better to disrupt the ultimate instead of the combo attack. You cant los your enemy every time he uses the combo attack and if you stun him he could just keep spamming the combo after that, you just have cooldown on cc at that time so its even better for your enemy.
I didnt miss the cooldown, i did just note that people would potentialy want to get rid of the cooldown to make better use of the mechanic. As game developer you should usualy avoid to make people want something they cannot have imo.
How to constantly distract a player without any kind of cc?
You also cant just start to burst all the time they use the most comonly used combo skill?
Maybe yelling funny jokes is the way to go?
I havnt been talking about animations for focus, neither did anyone else?
Its been about the animation to display the sweetspot 'now is the time to use your combo/counter button asap'.
The focus itself would be displayed as number/mana bar/not at all/w\e.
Weapons will come with multiple abilities that will be accessed by completing the combo chain.
Some abilities will be added to the weapon when it's crafted, some will be racial abilities and some will be chosen by the player.
Successfully hitting the "sweet spot" during the QTE brings you to the next ability in the combo chain of your weapon.
The whole concept of the QTE is that you are focusing on precision timing with your weapon attacks - as you successfully hit the mark and progress through the combo chains, you build up Focus... eventually building enough Focus to allow you to trigger your ultimate weapon ability.
Disrupting the combo chain is not only disrupting the ultimate ability - although that is also a major result. Disrupting the combo chain causes a slight delay/rest period for the weapon attack...successfully hitting the mark allows you to use your weapon attack about twice as fast.
So, if you cause them to miss the "sweet spot" in the QTE, you also significantly slow down the pace of their weapon attacks.
You don't need to stun your enemy, you just need to cause them to miss the "sweet spot" during the QTE.
You can't spam the combo - you really can't even spam the weapon attack.
The basic weapon attack takes a few seconds for the QTE to complete.
You can spam all you want during the QTE and it will still take the same length of time to complete the attack. One attack.
If you successfully hit the "sweet spot"...once that attack is complete, you will immediately have another opportunity to hit the mark for the next QTE in the combo chain.
If you miss the "sweet spot"... once the attack is complete, you'll have to wait a few seconds to initiate the combo chain again.
Spamming does not make any of that go faster. Only thing that makes that go faster is hitting the "sweet spot" successfully, thereby causing the next QTE to trigger immediately after the previous attack.
No clue what you mean by "you just have cooldown on cc at the time".
That is not a part of Ashes combat design as far as I know.
Dunno what you mean by "I did not miss the cooldown".
The devs will tweak the combat, but, games have rules/mechanics that don't just give players whatever they want.
I would like to be able to move when I want during Simon Says or travel without dribbling in basketball or catch the soccer ball with my hands when I'm not the goalie.
Players don't get to do everything they want to do in a game.
Currently, the Ashes game design includes a small rest period between weapon attacks which can be avoided by successfully hitting the "sweet spot" during the QTE.
If a player is defending themselves from attacks, they can't focus enough to successfully hit the "sweet spot" during the QTE. It's pretty easy to be distracted from successfully hitting the "sweet spot" while you're trying to avoid attacks - especially AoEs.
Unless you're being healed, or you're sure you can soak any damage until you finish your combo.
Your concept of "commonly used combo skill" doesn't make any sense since the position of the "sweet spot" is always random. You don't need to "burst" to distract someone enough that they miss that "sweet spot".
Players have to focus in order to successfully hit the "sweet spot" because the placement of the sweet spot is random every time a QTE is triggered. And successfully hitting the sweet spot increases Focus... maxing Focus allows you to be able to trigger your ultimate (though you still have to wait if the ultimate is also on cooldown).
So, in essence, the "sweet spot" is all about focus - both with a small f and a capital F.
Character animation to indicate the sweet spot the QTE makes no sense whatsoever and weapon animations, like a glimmer, would be way too distracting if we could see that for all players rather than only seeing the glimmer on our own weapon.
Having a glimmer QTE on our own weapon might be OK for a staff or longsword - but would be highly impractical for a spell-book, dagger or bow...probably also for most Bard weapons.
Other changes I'd like to see...skills other than the weapon that give focus, and the potential to not have the weapon skill on your bar. Keep the limited action sets, those have good potential for build differentiation, but give us more skills to choose from to add to the bar. Those skills should be a mix of types, let people choose how much damage or utility they bring. Really unlikely, remove tab targetting and give all attacks (both players and mobs) a telegraph, even if they only hit the first hostile encountered.
@Dygz I read just the last bit of your last post - but the glimmer is simply an idea. I like the idea of the combo system as a whole, however, we're discussing how to improve its integration. I like the idea of audio Qs, sorta (a lot less technical) and visual Qs now. But the glimmer could be something like, ONLY on your target. So it isnt distracting in large-scale combat. We've gotta flesh out the ideas for every approach, cant just shoot it down because it doesnt make sense immediately.
Okay ill be back, good shit boys/girls
hmmm honestly, i hope this wont make it into the game that way. Rewarding the player with feedback is a incredible task within such a system, because your basicaly pushing 1 all the time while focusing on the bar and get punished if you look away for a second.
My popup idea would still work smh but i wouldnt be too happy about it myself. Maybe add some variation in which button to push? like 1 for first combo attack, if successful push 2 for the second, 3 for the third and so on.. with customizable keys ofc.
My biggest concern is, that theres no rotation allowed. Why not just be able to start at any of the chains attacks and provide a massive ~one second attack speed buff to use with whatever attack you want to use next (if hit within the sweetspot)?
by "you just have cooldown on cc at the time" i ment the following situation:
player a uses combo.
player b uses cc attack.
player a is stunned.
player a is no more stunned.
player a uses combo.
player b has cooldown on cc attack.
player a casts combo happily.
by "I did not miss the cooldown" i ment:
I noticed that combo attack has a (very short) cooldown. Bad wording, i apologize (english isnt my native language and back in school ive never been good in english classes).
After all the initial sentence was directed to ferryman's idea of turning the attack into an action combat mechanic.
We prob truly mean the same thing regarding this part.
Maybe im biased by the many years of playing pvp, but i dont feel distracted through plain incoming dmg and thought most other competitive people wouldnt either.
"commonly used combo skill" makes alot of sense. Just diffrent from what you thought. I mean: what will you use if your other 10 situational skills are on cooldown/not useful atm? The combo attack. What will you use after using the combo attack independently of its successful chain? Combo attack. Ofc you will use the other skills too, but combo attack is easily the skill you use the most often.
"So, in essence the "sweet spot" is all about focus" your mixing up logical connections of my arguments here. "Character animation to indicate the sweet spot" are ment to replace the (actualy displayed in red) part of the charging bar. That makes alot of sense, wether you like the idea or not.
Again, why would a player character that stands x meter away from you distract you if his hands turn green for 0,3 seconds every now and then. Unless you want to counter him at that time, you can easily ignore it as you can ignore the fact the player wears gloves or moves his feets alternately while walking...
Ofc there are at least 10000 ways to display this animation. And none of them has to fill the whole screen, neither 1% of it. And it doesnt have to be shiny, as example for a mage with spellbook: he could simply rise his arm. The particular rising arm idea is shite, i am aware of that, but the possibilitys are huge and there are some good animators who have nice ideas for sure.
I also agree that displaying a glow at the characters hands isnt necessarily the best choice if the animation is designed in a way that the player couldnt see the hands in standard camera position.
a) prebuild a combo chain to use with one key but without possibility to change the rotation during combat.
b) allow total rotation freedom but require to use another button for each ability. And still require to immediately (within ~0.3 sec?) use the next skill to keep up the combo benefit.
That way players can decide if they want to play with a huge or slim skill bar!
You don't get penalized for missing the sweet spot - rather you don't rewarded if you miss the sweet spot.
Rotation occurs from the other abilities on the hotbar.
The weapon combos cycle rather than rotate, moving from basic to more advanced if you successfully hit the sweet spots.
So, there should be plenty of variety. Especially given all the augments available.
"No clue what you mean by 'you just have cooldown on cc at the time'.
That is not a part of Ashes combat design as far as I know."
The last sentence of my quote is the key sentence - the situation you describe is not part of the Ashes game design. You don't need any of that to disrupt the combo.
You just need to cause your opponent to miss the sweet spot.
Ashes is not going to be like other MMORPGs. That's the whole point.
Your English is perfectly fine. I understand your English.
I don't understand your concept of "getting rid of the cool down to make the mechanic better." It doesn't make any sense to me due to the purpose of the mechanic.
The whole point is that there is a slight rest period between weapon attacks and players who successfully hit the sweet spot are able to attack with their weapon more frequently - to avoid people simply spamming the key.
You actually have to focus instead of face-rolling, if you want to maximize your potential number of attacks.
I don't feel distracted by incoming damage in tab-target games like EQ and WoW - especially since I don't have to complete QTEs to trigger combos or rotations.
I do feel distracted by incoming damage in action combat games, like Wildstar and NWO (and probably when trying to complete Heroic Opportunities in EQ2) - especially from AoEs.
I commonly Roll or Dodge to avoid attacks... or to run from adds. Or to better position myself on the battlefield.
In the PAX PvP demo, hiding behind a pylon seemed to interfere with the enemy Mage's ability to keep me targeted - she consistently followed me around the pylon to attack me rather than standing still and bombarding me.
In Ashes, if you have to move to avoid incoming damage, you won't be able to finish a combo due to the QTE. Causing your opponent to move in order to avoid damage is all the distraction one needs to disrupt a combo - stunning isn't necessary.
Your concept of using "burst all the time they use the most commonly used combo skill" doesn't make any sense because it's completely unnecessary.
If you're opponents' non-weapon abilities are all on cool down, they may attempt to initiate a combo chain, but you don't need bursts to disrupt the chain, you just need to distract them enough that they miss the "sweet spot". Basic attack can achieve that if it causes them to avoid the attack - and likely yours won't be the only attack they're trying to avoid. Especially true once we have Block and Dodge and Roll as options.
Because it's not about the commonly used combo skill, rather it's about having enough focus that you successfully hit the sweet spot.
You have to focus rather than spam the most commonly used key. That is the whole point of the mechanic.
I'm not mixing up logic.
I'm stating that using character animations to replace the sweet spot is inherently illogical and impractical.
The reason that other characters' hands turning green would be a distraction is that it's a random QTE. You have to be even more focused on that signal in order to attempt to counter their timing than you would on your own QTE.
Glimmers going off all over the place attracts attention more than simple body movement because simple body movement happens all the time - while glimmers will indicate imminent danger.
To answer endahlol's suggestion of having the glimmer only visible on your targeted opponent, that's going to be mostly meaningless in a group fight when you are likely to be attacked by several opponents rather than just one.
Glimmer for opponents' combo QTEs is way too detailed.
All you need to do is pay attention to the animations for your opponents' weapon attacks - rather than glimmers blinking all over the place. The animations will telegraph that our proponents are prepping specific attacks - and that we should work on disrupting their ability to hit their sweet spots in their QTEs. We don't need to know the timing for their sweet spots - all we need to do is recognize which animations are associated with weapon combos.
The devs have already stated that players will be able to customize the UI - that includes size and placement, so, you're right - the QTE bar will not have to fill the entire screen if the individual player doesn't want it to.
Again, character animations to indicate the sweet spot timing for the QTE is patently absurd.
I don't agree that there is any reasonable way to use character animations for this mechanic.
So, it seems we will just have to agree to disagree.
Missing the sweet spot means you wont be abel to do the faster attack. Thats a clear disadvantage = penalized.
Also rotation and cycle mean exactly the same thing in this case.
Basicaly all skills they have shown so far are situational. You would want to use them to escape, stun, heal, burst, cc, etc., but you wouldnt use them to do basic dps.
So people are forced to use them situational and are pinched into the combo cycle.
No variety. Due to the low number of skills, you cant just augment your situational skills into basic attacks either, because these situational skills are necessary. You couldnt throw away your burst skill, neither the position skill or dmg mitigation etc.. So augments isnt the answer to this particular problem.
Im really not convinced by causing the opponent to miss by simply attacking him. I stay completly calm and focused in games like wow as well as tera/bdo.... i think its just a question of how much you play the game. You may be distracted during the first weeks but not after endless hours of pvp fights.
Idk why we keep talking about this particular topic.. I never wanted to get rid of any cooldowns, in fact i prefer significant cooldowns. When i mentioned players would want the cooldown removed, its because they would want to animation cancel in the action combat design that would have been required by ferrymans idea. Its a impossible design, we shouldnt waste our time to keep discussing about insignificant stuff within that.
Btw, for me spamming a key means pushing the key 15 times a sec as well as pushing the button once every time it has any proper use.
I wouldn't avoid attacks that do less dmg than the attack you are doing within the same period of time. Unless theres no healer and no healing skills in a large scale fight.
The actual system cries for los abuse imo, start a combo, run behind a wall while doing the combo mechanic and come back when the skill is complete, repeat. Thats a good thing actualy, but doesnt make up for the limited amount of skills you could use to attack. Especialy if you map the combo key to a mouse button, you could easily walk during combos.
I agree that its a very challenging task to notice the enemys combo animation and react with a counter attack, however the combo mechanic isnt meant to be comonly countered. Its a mechanic to provide high skilled players more depth to the combat system. Average players could easily ignore the whole counter skill. I wouldnt mind it to have a cooldown of 10-20 seconds and be just one of the optional skills to prevent skilled players to be overpowered. I dont really care if its a movement or glimmer, just wanted to provide a solution that you may like aswell, because i thought a shiny glimmer would be distracting to you in a way of 'oh shiny glimmer! ..what did i want to do again?' :') guess that was wrong.
Im not a fan of displaying diffrent things to various players.. if i walk across a street or do a attack, i want everyone to see the same animation that i can see. Independent of the players target. Unless its stealth, i dont want people to see me in that case...
I dont think its too detailed, every mechanic should have a animation about whats going on, especialy if its used on a regular basis.
If theres no counter attack the sweet spot animation wouldnt be required, but i'd truly think the combat would be missing some pvp micro interactions.. Do you have another idea that provides some neat pvp micro?
Mage uses Fireball+windbased spell and it turns into a pyroblast basically (Using WoW as an example)
For a summoner it could be like certain summons would work well together. One with high dodge, and the other with an accuracy debuff like a sand attack.
Or for a Rogue/warrior, if you use say a Viscious slash. After the end of the animation (GCD) you get a few other abilities highlighted that would combo well with the attack. Like finishing off with a shield bash or whatever.
Natural combo's rather than QTE.
What do you guys think?
This is essentially how I hope and envision combat to be.
Power shots that are visually 'wound up' so that not only can the attacker determine optimum release....but the opponent can also determine it.
The only remaining problem is if that is simply an on off power attack....then its relatively easy to block it and makes the skill....pointless. Unless the opponent is AFK.
This is why I suggested staged power shots. The opponent can see the various stages, but they dont know which stage the attacker will release at. If you compress the window of opportunity for high power stages together, you stand more chance of blocking them.
To counter that, you need blocks to have a costs/s. So if you stand there with the shield raised all the time you wont have any energy to fight with. And the block will drop automatically when the energy runs out. Making you a sitting duck.
Make low power attacks slower and easier to block (defender timing wise). Make high power attacks faster and harder to block...or penetrate more.
Missing the sweet spot means that you won't be rewarded with an extra attack.
That's not "being penalized".
Penalized means that you gain a negative.
You don't gain a negative for missing the sweet spot.
You aren't penalized for missing the basket in basketball. You aren't penalized for missing the goal in football or soccer. You simply aren't rewarded if you miss.
The objective of your opponent is to cause you to miss, while they succeed.
Are you at a disadvantage if you miss more than your opponents miss? Sure.
But, not because you're being penalized for missing.
Skill are always situational. You use the skill best suited for the situation - sometimes that's going to be a basic skill. In the case of Ashes game design, one of the situations for using a basic weapon attack will be when you wish to start combo chain. Doesn't mean you will always want to start a combo chain when you use your basic weapon attack.
PAX had a very limited number of skills. We had one weapon skill per weapon when we know the game design calls for at least up to five weapon skills available in the combo chain. So, yeah, "no variety"... at PAX.
PAX had no augments available yet - when we know there will be a large variety of augments available, according to the game design.
We got a very, very small taste of combat at PAX.
Rotation and cycle do not mean exactly the same thing.
Rotation refers to a set of abilities a player chooses to use - I get to choose the rotation of abilities I want to use from the hotbar - any order I like.
Cycle means I have to move through abilities in a specific order to get to the one I want.
Rotation means I can choose for my typical order of abilities to be 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 4, 1, 3, 5, 7. Repeat.
Cycle means I always have to move through 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 - in that specific order.
In Ashes, we have open rotation for the hotbar - somewhat limited by cooldowns. But, we will have to cycle through weapon abilities via combos. A primary strategy is for players to cause their opponents to miss their combos. Effectively moving them back to the line of scrimmage for failing completion/missing the "sweet spot".
Augments are a major answer to variety of abilities.
A Tank/Cleric might augment their Shield Might with a self-heal version of Righteous Blessing - which automatically triggers along with Shield Might.
A Fighter/Mage might augment their Rush with After Image - which automatically triggers along with Rush.
A Mage/Rogue might choose to augment their Mage's Escape with Invisibility - which automatically triggers along with Mage's Escape.
Even the basic weapon attack can have augments.
An advanced weapon will have several weapon abilities that cycle through leading up to its ultimate. You can choose to skip the combo and just do basic weapon attacks if you wish.
We had a very limited number of skills at PAX - we don't know how many non-weapon skills will be "basic attacks".
I don't know what you mean by situational skills being necessary - you use the situational skills when you want to. At PAX, I never used Power Shot, Mark Arrow or Fleeting Shot... because they weren't necessary. I rarely used Snare because I rarely wanted to use it.
If I want to try to make my opponent miss their "sweet spot", I'm probably going to be trying to use my weapon combo to attack as quickly as possible as I build up damage and Focus along the chain - and decide when I want break my combo chains to pepper in "bursts" or other non-weapon abilities. I'm probably not going to be trying to rely on multiple basic weapon attacks since the basic weapon attack will do the least damage in the combo chain - and i won't be able to attack as quickly if I'm not hitting the "sweet spot".
So, you think that you are going to be able to successfully hit the random "sweet spots" while you're trying to run behind a wall and avoid attacks???
That's some crazy talk right there.
Video or it didn't happen.
We will be fairly easily distracted from successfully hitting the "sweet spots" because the placement of the "sweet spots" are random and you have to devote some focus to hitting with precision timing.
It's like saying you will always make a basket or make a goal as your running down the court/field, regardless of how your opponents try to block you - simply because you play a lot.
Mapping the "combo key" is irrelevant because hitting the weapon key doesn't trigger the combo - hitting the random sweet spot successfully triggers the combo. You can't macro that.
WoW does not have action combat. Nor does it have a QTE with a random sweet spot you have to hit to pull off a combo chain. I have no clue why you keep referencing WoW. It has no bearing whatsoever on Ashes combat.
Do Tera and BDO have a combat QTE with a random sweet spot that must be hit successfully in order to pull off a combo chain??
If so, you shouldn't have any trouble coming up with an alternative to the Ashes UI for that mechanic - just say, "Ashes should use the BDO UI for that mechanic - they display that mechanic much better than the PAX demo."
The combo mechanic is meant to be commonly countered.
Primary combat strategy in Ashes is to reduce the frequency with which your opponents attack, prevent their weapon from cycling through more powerful abilities prevent them from building enough Focus to trigger their Ultimate.
It's not really about highly skilled players - average players are still going to want to build enough Focus to pull off their Ultimate - which means successfully hitting the sweet spot several times during combat.
Anyone can choose not to combo if they wish, sure - but it will be common for people to attempt to chain their weapon attacks because hitting the sweet spot also increases the frequency of the weapon attack.
Cooldown of 10-20 seconds is kinda crazy.
There is a small delay between your basic weapon attack.
If you focus enough to successfully hit the sweet spot during the QTE, you are reward with halving that delay and cycling through to the next ability in your weapon's combo chain. You're also rewarded with an increase of Focus - which when maxed will allow you to trigger your ultimate.
A delay of 10-20 seconds would make combat considerably slower than vanilla EQ.
A key aspect of the focus mechanic is that it prevents spamming the weapon ability.
Spamming means pushing keys as fast as possible to make them trigger as fast as possible. It does not mean pushing a button every time it's ready. Those are practically opposite concepts.
Spamming the weapon key does more harm than good.
Spamming the weapon key -pushing it as quickly as possible" does not make the weapon attack more frequently - in fact, it will most likely result in missing the "sweet spot" which will cause you to attack less frequently than focusing on hitting the "sweet spot".
Spamming the weapon key makes it more likely that you will be stuck just landing the basic weapon attack, rather than cycling through the weapon's other abilities.
Spamming the weapon key means you will be less likely to build up Focus for your ultimate.
"Shiny glimmer" or not isn't about what I want - it's about what works as a mechanic.
Shiny glimmer to indicate the sweet spot for the QTE is simply not practical - at all.
It might be workable for large weapons - it would not be workable for small or even medium weapons.
Shiny glimmer on our gloves also isn't practical. Shiny glimmer on everyone's gloves would be way too distracting - especially in large battles.
Character animation to indicate the random sweet spot timing during your weapon attack makes no sense whatsoever - especially not raising a hand...especially not for those wielding two-handed weapons or duel-wielding.
In addition, the glimmer is completely unnecessary for our opponents.
We don't need to know when their random sweet spot triggers.
We just need to recognize the animations associated with their weapon attacks and attempt to distract them enough to miss the random sweet spots, thereby disrupting their combo.
Saying that everyone should see what you see is like saying everyone should be able to see your ability bar and everyone should be able to see your inventory.
The QTE is about your personal ability to focus.
The QTE represents personal thought process ability. Other people should not be able to see that - unless they have some mind-reading ability that allows for that
Everyone will be able to see the results of your focus or lack of focus via your combat animations: you successfully move through your combos or you fail to attack as frequently and only complete the basic weapon attack.
There are many mechanics that are personal to the character that other characters should not be able to see - like your general hunger or thirst - other people don't need to see your hunger and health meters.
Likewise, other players don't need to see the details of your character's focus moving through advanced weapon attacks - all they need to see is that you are initiating a weapon attack that could move through a powerful combo if they don't disrupt your focus.
Even without a counter-attack, the sweet spot still has purpose:
- It prevents spamming of the weapon attack.
- If you miss the timing of the sweet spot, you won't be rewarded with an extra attack.
If there is no counter-attack you will be less likely to lose focus - literally. Sure.But, typically, if you're using a weapon attack, you're going to be in combat with something that is attacking you back.
I dunno what you mean by "PvP micro".