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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 and Mechanics -- Make/Break
ArchivedUser
Guest
First of all, I want to write a disclaimer:
I know little to nothing about this game and just recently bought the Alpha 1 package because I tend to play new games competitively in order to break them down and teach others. This post probably belongs in Alpha 2 or late Alpha 1, but I decided to post my pre-thoughts, then reiterate later with a much more firm grasp on the game and it's direction.
This post is really just to stir-up a conversation on combat mechanics and where we, as players want to see it go.
About Me:
-Through my experience, I have participated in world tournaments, local tourneys, player driven ladders for prize pots, and server vs. server fights.
-I play MOBAs, FPSs, and MMOs; basically wherever the hype is, I'm there.
-I used to stream all of these fights and teach PvP (shameless pug), but I haven't been active for months due to my job (I currently work as an IT Supervisor).
-My biggest love has always been for teaching the mechanics of a game and writing full class guides, once I've reached the top of the ladder; here are just a few guides I've made:
One thing I teach is fine mechanics and how to use/abuse them to your advantage (things like iframes/Invincibility-Frames that are granted on dodge, animation times, cancels, latency, etc.).
My Views (unbiased, simply my opinion):
I want to first state that I am a complete advocate for these highly-mechanical systems as it makes combat complex and allows for guides like mine to exist. Some of my favorite moments are looking back at an old PvP video and then watching one of my newer videos, clearly seeing the difference in skill and improvement (knowing that I have come a long ways and still have a long way to go).
My Philosophies:
What keeps us playing an MMO?
Progression. Improvement. Accomplishment. The Feeling of Victory.
Skill should be able to overpower gear, at least until a certain point.
PvE keeps players playing until they have all the items and power attainable for that patch -- providing a solid influx of people with each update (i.e. WoW, PoE, etc.).
PvP keeps players playing until they are the best; which means indefinitely or until their competitive spirit dies out.
So, with all that said, let's actually get into the meat of this post.
First, there are three main combat types (of course there are many others, but for the sake of this post, I want to mention three):
Attack-Canceling
This is where you can auto-attack and then use a skill afterwards. The damage from the auto attack would still register, even though the skill canceled out the animation (for veterans of the art, this is called, "weaving".).
Games like Aion share this mechanic. Something specific that took full advantage of this was the Sorcerer's Tome Weapon. Let's say the Sorcerer was fighting an Assassin that used the Aethertwisting buff (10s duration, that granted the resistance of 2 spells). The Sorcerer could auto-attack, then use an instant-skill (0s cast time, small animation time) like Erosion to effectively "burn" both of those spell-resistances on Aethertwisting in less than a second (the auto-attack from a Tome counted as 1 spell hit, Erosion as the 2nd).
Skill-Centric
This is best seen in games like Guild Wars 2, where combat did feel very good (at least before HoT, kidding) and had very little animation canceling/the inability to auto-attack cancel. It's combat was primarily based on the different things you could do with skills alone (i.e. as a thief, I could put down a smoke screen, then use my dash to go out, use it again to go back in, and it would give me "X" seconds of Stealth for entering the smoke; I could repeat this process to stack the duration of Stealth.). Blade & Soul is also a great example of this.
Animation-Canceling
The first game that comes to mind, when I think of fluidity and integration by the developers of Ani-Canceling, is Black Desert Online. Almost all the classes in this game had specific skills that could only be activated by canceling out another (look at flow-skill, or if you prefer the more traditional style of animation canceling, simply look up combo guide for Ranger/Sorcerer/Ninja).
There are a myriad of things that I really haven't mentioned. Mechanics like Jumpcasting, Ghostcasting, Jump Canceling, Dodge Canceling, etc. because I'd love to talk about these in the comments. Like I said at the start, this post is all about creating discussion.
As an experienced player, what do you want to see in the combat/mechanic system from Ashes of Creation?
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Comments
oooohhh boy ...
Combat is intended to be a Hybrid of Tab-target & Action-Combat. August 17th Livestream is going to be solely action-combat ... so i think. There's still in the experimenting phases. And i personally think they are approaching it well so far imo
I actually already made my suggestion in another thread in two posts
- ( at the top and then the next post after it )
- https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/35644/ashes-of-creation-dear-intrepid-lets-talk-about-your-combat-system
In short ... a rough-generalization imo would be ...- Combat should be relatively easy to understand at the 1st 3-5 LvLs ... but after that, the rest of the Levels should have a noticably, yet " sporadic " hard/ tough learning curve.
- The Action-combat should be tamed. And i think the best way to do that is to ... is to maintain the " Fundamentals/ Basics of Combat " ... via ... "it" having a strong sense-of-presence throughout the Battle. via ... such as having Weak Attacks still maintaining some sort of importance. ( Such as countering/ negating along side collision ... but at this point it turns into heavy-speculation, so I'll stop there )
- EDIT: About this 2nd note above ... i think it'll mostly come with polish. Not in Alphas Stages ... or so i think
- I believe Action-Combat should be more prevalent than Tab-target but not by alot.
ideally, anywhere in between this60% : 40% ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 70% : 30%
55% : 45% as a last resort
In regards to the 64 Archetypes ... i still believe that this image that i made should also be a neat little generalization to that imo
The whole point in this image is ...
" in order to gain something, you must lose something "
( referring to Primary-Archetype & Secondary-Archetype )
EDIT: my definition of " Versatility " is meant to be very broad in definition. Whereas "Consistency" is somewhat self-explanatory
I mentioned this one because .. well Combat has alot of things to consider
You probably wanted a more " technical answer " via suggestions on mechanics .. but thats alot of guess work. Especially since Action Combat have not been seen yet.
Despite that, the link would probably be the closest thing to it
- when the target is hit, the target's Action is temporarily nullified/ negated. This is commonly seen in BDO NPCs Opponents. This is when the NPC is stuck in an infinite-loop of unable to do anything because ... the player is attacking fast (each hit having a flinching mechanic) + Dumb NPC A.I. meaning they take even longer to initiate & resolve their first hit + the NPC never having a chance to hit even IF the Player's Gear as at the same level of the NPC Opponent
The only skill in BDO is the initiation ... via ... how to begin/ how to approach/ finding any openings/ baiting/ etc ... but after that, the flinching mechanics kicks in and thus causing player to " unloads/ bombards " all of the attacks on the opponent ... which is not skill. I will note that the Player-Flinching is not as severe as the NPC-Flinching ... but it makes a differenceEven if you had the best gear you were no match for a top player if u didnt practise swapping and combos enough.
Better gear helped but it required at least a little skill if u wanted to get the killing blow before the opponent got away.
Action combat mechanics I would take from BDO.
Animation cancel, positive and accelerated flows are awesome.
The damage was spread through the animation, so if u cancelled in the middle of animation some of the abilitys damage wouldnt be applied.
They bring so many choices to fights depending on ur playstyle. The variation of possible combos and reactions to altering situations is insane.
Too bad it all went to waste in that game...
I would also like to see you requiring to aim as a ranged class. It feels a little like a waste having aim cursor that only decides the general direction ull be shooting at. Dealing more damage when aiming at the head when swinging a sword at ur opponent sounds very appealing to me but theres no experience about this in mmos so cant know if it would feel good in actual gameplay.
I can also see the appeal in tab target, especially if theres a focus option like in wow. I anyhow hope they will be bringing out action style as primary.
For cc and cc breaks I feel like I lack vision of a perfect system.
I think that having ccs and ability to free from them(like in wow) are okay and more skill based. But I believe there must be an option that makes u think "it shouldve been like this from the beginning".
I really hope to see more views on this one. Please post
Theyre going with diminishing cc time on chains to rule out endless cc and its ok.
You might see me flattening some of my views but its just because I need more facts and views to be able to have a rational stand for them.
Out of Skill vs Gear vs Level ...
- Skill should be #1 Priority ... it should be noticeable enough, but not too far of a gap
- Level & Gear being of near-equal importance ... but Level being sightly better due to Racial-Stat-Progression
But not promoting and/or emphasizing Fast Level-Progression. Instead, Slow-Level-ProgressionI like ur idea that when u get to leveling youre encouraged to read the skill descriptions.
Game without useless skills in the book also encourages that.
Your negative view on bdos cc mechanics is something I also agree with.
If you think it is skilled or that players need your guides to learn how to weave and animation cancel you have a high opinion about yourself and your audience are casual players that wanna have a go at competitive combat.
Everybody can learn those shortcuts by playing a game with such shit input output registration within half an hour.
I hope AoC enables skills to register damage/effect at the end of animation.
If you chose to block damage or evade damage your ability should cut short and register no output. Reactive combat at it's finest.
Your playstyle is a mindless rotation, no matter what kind of enemy you hqve in front of you (tank, roque, healer, nuker) plus the addition to cleaverly using LOS. Zero might. Zero brains. Just a half an hour practise of a rotation.
Not gonna hide that you annoy me.
The classes with normal atks that are easier to weave or abilities that have short duration and can be animation cancelled dominate. It's all about turtling turtling turtling fast and smooth and then nuke nuke nuke fast and smooth.
Take Elder Sorc and Nightblades for example.
Im games in which developers have put time to understand side effects of bad combat systems you observe that not one class can beat every type of enemy:
Tank
Warrior
Roque
Archer
Nuker
Summoner
Bard
Healer
Darknight Paladin Guardian
Warlord Gladiator Berserker
Hunter Assassin
Archer..
Dark mage Fire mage Ice mage
Necromancer Druid Elemental summoner
Blade dancer Sword singer Bard
Priest Enchanter.
That's the game I want. Diverse combat with real judgment of which abilities to use depending on the enemy. Not a rotation.
Animation cancelling should force canceletion of input output. You wanna block? Block on time. You dont get to deal dmg too.
Weaving, AC is not skillful combat. It takes 30min practice.
Everything you talk about really leverages flaws in the combat system, so the simple answer is that I hope Ashes designs a combat system where you don't do action cancelling, animation cancelling, etc. I hope what they make is solid and fluid so that it becomes more about tactics than about rolling my face across the keyboard.
From ur post I got the image that when u press a button and start casting a rain of arrows you can take a sip of ur drink before able to do anything?
The Default-Attacking-Speed ( in combat ) will dictate in how frequent the potential Flinching-Mehcanics could occur
- i.e. BDO is very fast paced-combat + plus has flinching-mechanics
- But most of the NPC Opponents in BDO is unable to fight at that same speed - thus NPCs being in an infinite loop until it dies. Thus having snooze-fest PvE Content ... if any PvE at all
I want my PvE to be unfathomably hard in Ashes of Creation - even at the Beginning of the Game & Lower-LvLs + throughout the entire experience. And i certainly don't want players whining how PvE is too hard and wanting everything to be faster & easier ...( ~~looks at SWTOR, WoW ... and maybe others~~ ) ...
The difficulty has not yet been defined as of yet . Plus, the term " difficultly " is defined differently by other MMORPGs.
So far, the current pacing that was displayed in their 1st Pass / 1st iteration of Action-Combat was definitely well-placed - not too fast, but not too slow. However, not having any Flinching-Mechanics is still perfectly fine - they're other ways to convey that a hit landed on its target.
i.e. The goal is to make hits be more impactful, but you don't need Flinching-Mechanics to do so - there are other methods in achieving that goal . Flinching-Mechanics are too gimpy ~ almost gaming/ cheating ~ and doesn't fit tbh
but I don't mind the challenge ... well ... uhhhh , its not really a challenge when it practically becomes one-sided of ... " who can unload/ bombard all of their skills 1st " ... but the initiation/ approach does have some sort of skill ... but there's no skill afterwards
So no, Flinching-Mechanics are not good at all imho
Animation cancelling seems quite necessary for realistic feel or flow of skills.
Give me valid arguments why combat would be better if its slow.
Im saying its less realistic.
Less skill dependant as reaction time is devalued.
Less prone to fitting ur playstyle as u cant decide ur pace.
Normal attacks should deal dmg/effect at the end of their animation.
Abilities should deal dmg/effect at the end of their animation.
Block, dodge, leap, counter attack are mechanisms that are in place to make combat REACTIVE.
These mechanisms should completelly cancel the animation, dmg/effect of the ability the player was using before changing their mind and decided to REACT to danger.
Again, complete CANCELATION of animation and DAMAGE/EFFECT.
Why do you thing that this will make combat slow?
As if you casted the rain of arrows but at halfway thought that hes gna catch me if I dont move now.
So you cancel rest of the animation and rest of the skills damage is cancelled.
If u fired a burst of arrows already it only makes sense that the once fired will cause damage.
You will waste ur cooldown but ull get the freedom of choice.
What we disagree with are minor adjustments on acancels.
What I completely disagree with is not having them at all.
The original argument by Jahlon which Void agreed with was against animation cancelling completely.
Fighter wielding a 2h sword does a skill that has 3 hits. You can acancel it after first is hit. Is it a channel?
Channeling doesnt really have an accurate definition. Thats why I prefer to avoid the word.
How I see combat being is when u press the button to swing ur sword and at the same opponent presses leap. Ur character wont be left behind swinging his sword like a moron but is able to charge after as long as the movement follows inertia to some degree.
I'm definitely a fan of complexity in combat, but not if it means adding gimmicks like animation-cancelling. Mobility, aim, line-of-sight, and timing are already elements of skill we saw in the demo. Taken together, they create a foundation for skill-based play in which players who manage these elements best can truimph over their lesser skilled opponents.
We can add to that with certain skill combinations and the inclusion of situational/conditional skills that reward players that can better track when certain skills would be advantageous to use.
Good luck ani cancelling Flurry Eso.
Animation cancel kills all non instant abilities. That is why I would hate to see AoC with a combat in which ani cancel creeps it's way in.
In bdo you could cancel big attacks with a faster skill with other properties.
IE: Cancel rest of a long cd skills damage to block a stun.
What Im trying to say is having skill animation times affecting damage instead of gcd and instant skills with animation only for visual.
Having skill damage dependant on time used for a skill and not getting animation locked to actions.
Think everyone seen the melee swinging his wep at air in AoCs vids.
My preference would be that instead of being locked you could leave the sword swing to 1 hit, damage from the coming 2 wouldnt register and you could chain it to a better skill or protection.
This rewards quick reactions to surroundings.
His post in this conversation was quite rude; he came in stating,
Your opinion is also flawed, but more-so due to lack of knowledge rather than misinterpretation. In that sense, I can't really reprimand you.
My original post did reference things like Animation Canceling and Weaving, these mechanics were actually built into the games that I mentioned and balanced around them.
Looking back at my original post, I would have definitely written it differently due to the amount of misinterpretations it's caused. Let me be completely clear about something, I do not approve of people using game mechanics in a way that breaks the game; though, I do approve of creativity in the use of game mechanics, those that the developers endorse. The wording on my original post was also misleading as I used terms like exploit which has a negative social derivative -- the real definition being, "to make full use of...".