{Updated}-A1-First Look Combat Discussion. Promising

ArchivedUser

**UPDATE **

https://youtu.be/59ih84Xh5E8

Here is the New full Alpha one Video Siege warfare released by Intrepid, and With this update I can now FIRMLY say Ashes of Creation without a doubt will be a legitimate world stage name on the MMO genre. 

I am blown away by this taste of combat video, the UI looks clean and simple. I feel ready to just hop in the action! I cant wait to start playtesting this now with everyone, I'm certain we will run into bugs and FPS issues along the way, but I am also certain that Ashes of Creation is no longer a far off dream, and it's now coming to full realization from Intrepid studios, Steven you and your team deserve the biggest KUDOS!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Hey Ashes community! Was reviewing some of the recent combat first impression videos and Q&A's and wanted to discuss it!

Here is DeathsProxy first impression Q&A combat video below
https://youtu.be/WaNlRMaNZzg

And here is the full Actual Combat video released by Intrepid Studios link below
https://youtu.be/TRK61F5RJdE


Based on the videos shown there is active action combat meaning active roll dodge function, player collision system (so no zerg ball groups) And a fairly nice simulation of both the ability effects and type of pvp we can expect to see from range to melee abilities. 


Personally I like this showcase quite alot. Almost like a cross between Warframe or Destiny, and Elder Scrolls online (that blink tho) ESO's combat system took years to get decent. This system in place doesnt look to far off from some current iterations of MMO's on the market.


Honestly, I didnt think they would have progressed to this level this fast in the time since kickstarter last year when all we had were concept artwork. With little to critisize from me for this, at the early stage they are in. 

Cant wait to test it out first hand and see how the UI functions. I know alpha one testing will be combat specific testing and limited in area and classes and their respective abilities. Very excited for the road ahead 👍😁

What are your thoughts?

ArchivedUser

Tbh the melee part needs a lot of work but that is what these next 7 months are for, other than that it looks pretty solid and I'm sure it will be awesome once they refine all the animations and put the remaining spell effects!

ArchivedUser

Rageskylar said:

Tbh the melee part needs a lot of work but that is what these next 7 months are for, other than that it looks pretty solid and I'm sure it will be awesome once they refine all the animations and put the remaining spell effects!

Yup agreed


I was wondering if the melee attacks had a sort
of short conal AoE effect for its swing area and beyond. 

The stealth gameplay looked really advanced though for a early showcase. I'm glad its not a total invisibility function though. As I'm not a fan of random instant total invisibility in MMO's myself. 

Mage abilities looked solid tho, if a bit flashy for big PvP battles which they did say they havent finished the cleanup on the flashy animations

ArchivedUser

Either way, I'm quite estatic they have gotten to where they are. 

Really want phase two to come early though as the real meat of the game will be in that testing phase

ArchivedUser

Nerf sorc
Netf nb

ArchivedUser

gb1990gaming said:

Nerf sorc
Netf nb

xD a little early for these my dude

Wait for Alpha

ArchivedUser

I already liked the way they were going before the updated Combat, though once i saw the trailer for it i was mind blown about the progress they did there.

The preview of the new action combat trailer made me wanna join the battle in an instant. I literally cant wait for the testing phases to come. 

I didnt expect a change like that to happen, and im almost certain that the pvp is gonna be tons of fun - even with so many other important elements missing on the first weeks. 

ArchivedUser

I definitely liked the combat a lot in the video. 

My thoughts are it does still need work. As far as I can tell the abilities don't seem to have a whole lot of weight behind them and it seemed more like there wasn't a whole lot of thought behind the abilities being used. 

I would like to see more weight behind the abilities, really feel the impact. I noticed that most of the animations only started at the waist and above meaning you can move with all the abilities they showed. I think they need to add in some animation lock to keep the combat from being spam central. Put forward moving animations on the swings of weapons so there is still a lot of movement in combat but limit the range of movement a bit. It reminds me more of Darkfall than anything else and that games combat was not all that great. 

Animation lock really puts a lot of people off. But some animation lock can really make the combat flow and be a lot more fluid. BDO and TERA are good examples of two games that use animation lock to add flow and fluidity to the combat system while still allowing a large range of movement.  

ArchivedUser

@Vunak good points.
I would love to see combat lock with a few useful moving combat abilities. 

There has to be indivudual ability CoolDowns in order to achieve a sense of balance between the classes.

ArchivedUser

Vunak said:

I definitely liked the combat a lot in the video. 

My thoughts are it does still need work. As far as I can tell the abilities don't seem to have a whole lot of weight behind them and it seemed more like there wasn't a whole lot of thought behind the abilities being used. 

I would like to see more weight behind the abilities, really feel the impact. I noticed that most of the animations only started at the waist and above meaning you can move with all the abilities they showed. I think they need to add in some animation lock to keep the combat from being spam central. Put forward moving animations on the swings of weapons so there is still a lot of movement in combat but limit the range of movement a bit. It reminds me more of Darkfall than anything else and that games combat was not all that great. 

Animation lock really puts a lot of people off. But some animation lock can really make the combat flow and be a lot more fluid. BDO and TERA are good examples of two games that use animation lock to add flow and fluidity to the combat system while still allowing a large range of movement.  

I think we will begin to see more of this in Alpha two or late Alpha one. As it does last for 7 months


Remember steven said he wanted the Ashes community to be a part of the actual building process. So what we are seeing will be really raw, even if it actually doesnt look like it at first. The UI system will have a customizable Point of View simillar to Elder Scrolls Online from one of stevens comments. 


But yes, definitely room for improvment from the animation side of things which we will be lucky enough to actually be a part of the process first hand in how developers implement it. Quite the interesting opprotunity


The part I'm most interested in is how the resources work and what pools from where and how the damage is calculated. 


I really hope they dont add in randomly high numbers as part of the system just to look cool. I never understood that particular phenomena where developers are obssesed with making things have "Bigger numbers for everything" It really has no difference if the health pools and resource pools and ability costs all match the numbers difference. Why create more strain for the servers to calculate higher? 🤷🏻‍♂️

ArchivedUser

Id like to add something.

Id prefer to see meaningful stats.
P atk
P def
M atk.
M def
Hp
Mp
Stamina
Crit chance
Debuff resistance
Status effect resistance
Speed                                  as opposed to:
Physical atk
Atk done%
Penetration
Dot Bonus%
Resource dmg(eso)
Element dmg(poison as opposed to P atk instead of adding on top)
Direct atk%
Channeling atk%
AoE atk%

I'd prefer the game to focus on active abilities, action/reaction, situational use of abilities from the ones slotted depenting on the enemy class, or role in group 
rather than having to crunch numbers in every update. 
Do I stack P. Atk?
Do I stack Penetration?
Do I stack Direct% ?
WhAt iS tHE meta?? Ok... change stats, same mindless rotation.

And again Id like to see abilities register effect/ dmg output at the end of the animation.

Animation cancelling eliminates the plethora of skills in a game and favours short casting abilities that can be cancelled fast within the GCD. Meta.
Slow two handed ability. 
Channeling twin blade ability.
Fuck it. Ima slot Sword Shield. Do normal atk cancel it with quick ability cancel it with bash atk. Who needs two handed? Who needs twin blades?

AC = meta.

The rotation that bursts an enemy or turtles from an enemy in the smoothest fashion is the only one that wins. Unslot every other ability.

ArchivedUser

gb1990gaming said:

Id like to add something.

Id prefer to see meaningful stats.
P atk
P def
M atk.
M def
Hp
Mp
Stamina
Crit chance
Debuff resistance
Status effect resistance
Speed                                  as opposed to:
Physical atk
Atk done%
Penetration
Dot Bonus%
Resource dmg(eso)
Element dmg(poison as opposed to P atk instead of adding on top)
Direct atk%
Channeling atk%
AoE atk%

I'd prefer the game to focus on active abilities, action/reaction, situational use of abilities from the ones slotted depenting on the enemy class, or role in group 
rather than having to crunch numbers in every update. 
Do I stack P. Atk?
Do I stack Penetration?
Do I stack Direct% ?
WhAt iS tHE meta?? Ok... change stats, same mindless rotation.

And again Id like to see abilities register effect/ dmg output at the end of the animation.

Animation cancelling eliminates the plethora of skills in a game and favours short casting abilities that can be cancelled fast within the GCD. Meta.
Slow two handed ability. 
Channeling twin blade ability.
Fuck it. Ima slot Sword Shield. Do normal atk cancel it with quick ability cancel it with bash atk. Who needs two handed? Who needs twin blades?

AC = meta.

The rotation that bursts an enemy or turtles from an enemy in the smoothest fashion is the only one that wins. Unslot every other ability.

You seem thoroughly familiar with ESO damages.

I think its a bit to early to tell how all this will work until we actually get into Alpha 1 to see what Intrepid has in mind behind the damage modifiers and such

But there will be active/reactive component gameplay that much is certain. The interesting part will be to see how the system meshes with tab targeting thrown in as well

ArchivedUser

Pooka can't really judge too much until both combat aspects are mashed together.  With this being a hybrid system, it'll be interesting to see how the targeted aspect of the combat will work alongside this action combat.

ArchivedUser

Pooka said:

Pooka can't really judge too much until both combat aspects are mashed together.  With this being a hybrid system, it'll be interesting to see how the targeted aspect of the combat will work alongside this action combat.

My sentiments exactly. 


We honestly probably wont see how its all really going to flow until around alpha two or Beta. 


My guess is that their UI is still relatively unfinished and the combat modifiers still being discussed. We are really really early in on the testing cycles right now for the combat action

ArchivedUser

So far it's good we will see how testing goes and then if there are any necessary changes needed to be made

ArchivedUser

I just hope they polish up the character animations for actions and attacks.. Like 10x by release.. 

ArchivedUser

AutumnLeaf said:

So far it's good we will see how testing goes and then if there are any necessary changes needed to be made

And I'm sure there will be.


With a game this nice looking for an MMO here are the top 3 things we will likely run into during our testing for just this combat specific test cycle in my opinion.


1. Animation Desyncs - (Happens with every MMO but will be prominent here since we are in a really early cycle)

2.Hit Box registering - (Since Intrepid has a 3 part system for Hitboxes head, chest, legs) I forsee this as an issue in both long term and short term for server/client side calculations. If possible I would rather have the entire character be just a single hitbox as doing otherwise may just cause attacks to miss for no reason. Just my opinion!

3. Animation lag - Just the name of the game with MMO's 😂 Again it will probably be more prominent in our testing depending on server stability

ArchivedUser

Pooka said:

Pooka can't really judge too much until both combat aspects are mashed together.  With this being a hybrid system, it'll be interesting to see how the targeted aspect of the combat will work alongside this action combat.

Pretty much this, lets see the combat system meshed together first, before heaping too much praise.

ArchivedUser

Though i agree to certain points of the discussion i feel more and more confused, because people dont seem to know/understand what an Alpha Test ist standing for and that its not meant to be anywhere near a polished Game. 

So yes, obviously the Combat is still far from being done, including missing systems, skills, augments etc.
But as far as i can tell from my experiece as Alpha/Beta Tester of other Games, its at a very good state of development already at this Point. 

Once we are able to Play during the testing phases, we can start discussions, using facts, about whats missing or not. 

ArchivedUser

reaccon said:

Though i agree to certain points of the discussion i feel more and more confused, because people dont seem to know/understand what an Alpha Test ist standing for and that its not meant to be anywhere near a polished Game. 

So yes, obviously the Combat is still far from being done, including missing systems, skills, augments etc.
But as far as i can tell from my experiece as Alpha/Beta Tester of other Games, its at a very good state of development already at this Point. 

Once we are able to Play during the testing phases, we can start discussions, using facts, about whats missing or not. 

Very true. I understand that its an Alpha and many people may not understand what that means.

Alpha is literally the getting everything to work together phase. Beta is the phase where bug testing is the main focus for content and systems


So for an alpha phase this is actually really impressive work from the date they actually started everything in May last year!

ArchivedUser

reaccon said:

Though i agree to certain points of the discussion i feel more and more confused, because people dont seem to know/understand what an Alpha Test ist standing for and that its not meant to be anywhere near a polished Game. 

So yes, obviously the Combat is still far from being done, including missing systems, skills, augments etc.
But as far as i can tell from my experiece as Alpha/Beta Tester of other Games, its at a very good state of development already at this Point. 

Once we are able to Play during the testing phases, we can start discussions, using facts, about whats missing or not. 

I don't think it really matters what phase of testing it's in. It could be in alpha beta or near release. Issues people see now are things people should give their opinion on early so Intrepid sees it early. 

I've been in enough alpha testing and played enough action combat systems in MMOs at the very top end to know what can cause a myriad of issues in games that adopt that style of combat. 

My main concern right now, like I said  is the animations and not having any real fluidity to them. Animating only the top portion of the character so the character can still move reduces impact of the skills use and leads to bunny hopping/floaty combat like in ESO or Darkfall. Which looks and feels ridiculous. TERA tackled that issue well by knocking people down when they  jumped if they got hit by an attack. BDO uses stamina and punishes you by leaving you completely open to counter play (can't use skills while jumping, except certain skills that make sense). Wildstar didn't allow you to use skills in the air except certain movement/teleport skills, like the Stalkers pounce ability. 

As they update combat then I will update my feedback. But as it stands right now. That is what I see as issues. 

I do agree however that people should refrain from giving feedback on numbers or stability to much when this early in the testing since that ties into other systems and not the combat individually. 

ArchivedUser

Yeah I absolutely agree to you, my only concern was that people start to discuss things that aren't based on facts since most of them practically can't be proven yet - since there wasn't a live test yet, so it kinda makes theese arguments invalid

However I'm also pretty bad expressing my thoughts properly in English

ArchivedUser

Very true that all testing phases are important.


Which is why Im very happy that Intrepid is being so open and including the entire player base basically from the ground up in the earliest stages of all development cycles.


I've been in other games alpha's before so this was impressive to me on their full disclosure side and systems progress already. Normally the alpha phase took 3 years to get to where Intrepid is currently at in its phase. Intrepid basically has it in 1, and then some.

I may be a bit overoptimistic, but not without cause 😁👍🏻 the designers seem to be able to get alot more done without an overbearing corporate side to it, and a company owner who has as much passion for the project like @GMSteven is great for development team and us the players!

ArchivedUser

Although we'll get way better views of everything during Alpha 1's 6 month phase

ArchivedUser

cant wait for the livestream tomorrow, i hope ill be able to watch it in time

ArchivedUser

Gameplay looked amazing I have to agree, little bit floaty but such is to be expected from in dev build. My only really question is how are they going to integrate "tab targeting"  since it looked purely action combat to my eyes. ("Players have a choice to be geared more towards tab targeting or action orientated combat" I guess you could interpret this as its action combat but you can have build which is more like tab targeting)

Welp what ever the case is I have great faith they will manage to make good combat system be it action, tab targetting or hybrid of both just based on the leap of quality from the earliest combat we saw to where we are now.

ArchivedUser

Maybe you can tab to an enemy which makes you lock your target on them, and you’ll face them and stay facing them, then you use the mouse and keyboard to aim and manually attack parts of their body.  Like tab-assisted action combat.

ArchivedUser

Atama said:

Maybe you can tab to an enemy which makes you lock your target on them, and you’ll face them and stay facing them, then you use the mouse and keyboard to aim and manually attack parts of their body.  Like tab-assisted action combat.

This is what I would assume it will be. And probably a "follow up" function to it as well where if you kill your target it auto-targets the nearest NPC or player if its within a certain range. 

However I would PREFER it be limited. As having a tab target auto-face (orient) towards your opponent would be enough of a tab target function, at least for me it would. I dont want pvp or pve to be a mindless (click, click....click) type of meta with no thought to reactive movement. 

Tab target should just be an additional "augment" to active combat that makes it a convenience tool but still inferior in pvp to a player who is fully controlling and reactive. But allows for convenience in a large scale fight where it may he harder to focus where you want such as dungeons, trials or even a large Siege against players.

Thats how I envision the hybrid system at least

Perhaps @GMSteven could address how they envision the Hybrid combat system actually functioning.

That or we will have to wait for the Alpha to drop

ArchivedUser

Maybe if we all tag @GMSteven he may come out of his hole and share with us?

ArchivedUser

whitedude31 said:

Maybe if we all tag @GMSteven he may come out of his hole and share with us?

He was posting yesterday, so if he’s in a hole it’s neither deep not far away.

ArchivedUser

I have found that the easiest and most childish way to call on people, @GMSteven
 is to just keep mentioning their names behind their backs