Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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 - the most important feature of any MMORPG. It HAS to be done right. Solutions to problems.
ArchivedUser
Guest
Hello, recently AoC has some hype building around it in YouTube so I decided to check whatsup. I was initially very skeptical about this project and from the newest trailers we've seen I still am because of how the combat looks and feels, and not just on the surface, but on deeply mechanical level. However hearing more about Steven and his actions, and how the team is getting bigger nowadays, I can't help but get somewhat interested in the game due to the respect I have for the guys. This is going to be a long thread so I'll start by saying I play MMORPGs since I was less than 10 years old, and in 100% of my playtime the single most important drive I had was hardcore PvP. Nothing is more fun than that for me. I have been called server best in plenty of games. So I think I know what I'm talking about when it comes to combat systems.
And in the case of AoC, to put it bluntly - the combat sux. Obviously this is very early in development and it IS very impressive what they done in such a short spam, no doubt it will be better, but I'm more worried about the general core approach you guys at Intrepid are starting to implement.
So as it stands, I will try to point out a few glaring major mistakes in AoC's combat and offer solutions to them in this thread, starting with the most obvious ones and then diving into the deeper mechanical stuff. Hopefully you guys take some of what I say into consideration.
1. Tab target VS Action.
First off the, there has not been a single MMORPG that is successful due to having Action and Tab-Target systems at once. Trying to blend both worlds to cater to all players will always end up in combat that is inferior in both systems. Focusing on making an extremely good tab OR action system will always yield better results than sinking in the nightmare of balancing action vs tab target, so keep that in consideration while reading forward.
1.2 Tab target VS action - benefits and downsides
From the looks of it you guys are going for an Action system and want to add tab just to cater to the older players who live off nostalgia. And this is wrong IMO as I stated earlier. Action is a lot harder to develop, but ultimately more fun for all players. Action provides a LOT better and active PvE experience in practically any game of any genre over tab target. However action combat does not really work in mass scale or even group PvP. Haven't you guys noticed that the best action combat games currently all have something in common and that is shallow mass scale content?
Blade and Soul - very complex reaction based combat with amazing combos in 1v1, however their open world? Complete garbage - you end up being CC'd forever untill you die in anything above 1v1.
Black Desert? Mass PvP ends up being a clusterjerk of effects that kill your performance and block your view for one, and it is also a dash fest of everyone dashing around at kek speed trying to flank and 100-0 combo you. Not fun.
The only game with good group content with action combat system imo is Tera online. It is slow enough for tactics and strategy to take place, but fast enough to be just as fun and challenging mechanically as PvE. CCs are short, however punishing mistakes with combos can still happen, yet harder than just killing people in few seconds like in BDO.
*Tab target on the other hand works a LOOOT better in group content and massive zerg vs zerg sieges. Since it is easier to focus one target from the herd of sheeple, shot calling and strategy can take place, resulting in much more fun clashes. It makes up for the lack of player input (aiming, active dodging) by focusing more on strategy, tactics and reflexes. Actually, if done right IMO tab target combat can be a lot more fun than action. Since you don't have to aim, you can allow players to run at very high speeds which narrows the reaction times and requires of players to achieve higher APM in order to perform better. If you add in mechanics such as jumpshotting, animation canceling, active kiting and so on It can end up being a lot faster paced than action combat. Archeage, AION, Lineage, WoW, GW2 etc. - all of them have an extremely well done tab targeting combat systems. Hence why my bias towards them kinda shows here, although I love me some action combat
Now with that out of the way, focusing more on AoC.
2. Skill animations, character stances and motions.
This is the eye candy part of the combat. In AoC it is very unimpressive and lacking in impact.
If done poorly this can absolutely kill your game, even with deep tactical gameplay, most viewers will judge you based on how 'c00l' your combat looks, as they don't really know which skill does what at first glance.
2.1 First off the character's running motions. Very stiff and unimpressive. Reminds me of a game made back in 2005. By that I mean when your char runs, his back is still standing straight up as if he is taking a light jog, not fighting for his live. He stands stiff like a tree basically. Every human on earth, when running seriously, has his torso bent forwards to counter the wind resistence. The BEST example of running motions done right (including smooth transition from running to attacking) IMO is Nier:Automata (not mmorpg, but works for example). Just look at this video's intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf6uLzj3-po // watch from 2:00 till 2:25.
Notice how her torso is ALWAYS bent a bit forward while running? And when changing directions they don't snap change, but instead she slightly turns while bending left or right. Combine that with good looking dodge animations and you have a perfect setup for good looking character motions. However in AoC all of this cannot happen right now due to the fact that it's stuck in 2004's outdated circlejerk known as "tank movement" as I call it. Which leads to next point.
2.2 RESTRICTIVE MOVEMENT!
Making animations executable on the move doesn't mean your system is less restrictive. Locked in place or on-move animations actually have nothing to do with that. Instead.
Basically.. pressing A/D/S (or Q/E/S however it is) makes your character do this awkward and stiff "sideways" running motion while his torso is stuck looking at whatever your camera points at. Hence why "tank movement" - torso is the turret spinning around, and legs have mind of their own. This is the most terrible looking combat system design ever. If a person walked sideways while trying to fire a weapon in another direction he would have more success twisting his spine than landing that shot. For the combat to look good, you guys should completely remove those animations, and instead allow the character to have only one running motion and that is FORWARD. Aka you press S? Your char runs forward in that direction. Press W few secs after? Character does a QUICK, yet smooth stop and then transition into moving in said key's direction. Just like the Nier:Automata video illustrated. This is the key to the kingdom. Your combat will be a lot more fluent, smooth and less restrictive this way.
2.3 Skill ANIMATIONS!
Right now looking very unimpressive. And by that I'm not saying, lets put giant black holes of effects everywhere like in BDO, no. Some of the best skill animations in games have the least flashy FX to them. Instead, what makes a good skill animation is the character itself, not the effect that comes after. In AoC the skill "animations" ESPECIALLY while on the move consist of: character doing a quick boring swing with his hammer and hitting the air, not even your enemy but damage still registers.. Meanwhile legs are busy running in another direction, lawl. Does that look good in your opinion? Which martial arts did you take inspiration from? My dad's night thief pan whacking school? Cause everyone can pull that off. Haha. Combat animations need to have the entire body of your character executing them, not just the arms. There are hundreds of fighting styles that exist that you can take inspiration from. It doesn't need to be realistic - just c00l looking, yet not nonsensical. I realize that making this has a giant problem that comes with it - animations while moving. It is easy to make them look cool while you stand still, but extremely hard to blend it while char is on the move, ESPECIALLY for melee classes. There are multiple ways to overcome this however. For example (And I'm sorry that I keep using this, but its just that good..) your character makes a few steps forward with every hit it makes. This needs to be at lower movement speed than your usual running ofc. If you make it too fast - your character will appear to be "sliding" on the ground which will look bad, however if you make it too slow it will break the smoothness and transition from running to attacking. A perfect balance needs to be reached. The other massive downside of this is the things you hit. Do they get staggered and make a few steps backwards as you move forward, which will look natural and good but basically CC lock them OR have them stop you in your tracks as soon as your hit makes contact, which will make your character look unnaturally sliding in place. All of those are hard problems to deal with. Having the melee classes rely on CC-ing first and then dealing their damage is one way. Another quite cool looking and intuitive way could be with jump hits. Animation while standing still: cool sword slash. Animation while moving: cool jump+slash in air, smoothly transitioning from and to running. Same skill, different animations depending on your character. It's a mixture of all of these!
However... none of these things will mean crap If you mess up the......
3. SOUND DESIGN
Right now in AoC, there is legit literally basically ultimately NO SOUND.
Do you guys notice in the trailer? When your hits contact, damage numbers show, but you either hear no sound or very short and weak slash/hit? Or straight up bad/unnatural sound of arrow/magic hitting something... not human.
Examples in the AoC trailer (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ih84Xh5E8) - 0:37 / 0:47 / 0:51 / 1:48 - is that a fork fight? lmfao. You get my point.
I realize these are placeholders, however many games don't change much from their alpha footage so I have to mention it...
How a flawless animation should have it's sound:
Example shooting a fire ball from a book/tome as a mage:::
1. Sound of tome pages skipping and turning as your character does a cool hand animation WHILE chanting some cool phrase when stopping on correct page
2. Sound of your char summoning or "extracting" fire magic that starts to manifest and burn in char's hand quietly until it reaches full size, increasing the sound of burning bolt as char holds it
3. You aim and shoot -> firebolt blends the sounds of cutting through the air resistance as it flies towards your enemy while still hearing sounds of its burn
4. Bolt actually hits target, making you hear the initial impact of his armor/body shredding in an explosion. Like a burning rock hitting something metal, or leather depending on enemy.
5. Sound of your burn effect debuff (possibly) that keeps burning your target untill it quiets down.
And all of these 5 points are happening in the span of 2-3 seconds. Might sound overkill to make good quality sounds for such short animations, but it is what makes the world of difference and polish becomes apparent when done right. Right now most of the actions happening on screen in AoC have no sound at all, making combat lack any impact at all.
4. Some deeper mechanics
Right now AoC looks like an Arcade battle royale of the likes of Fortnite than a serious MMORPG. Everything is focused towards action combat's input (player aiming and dodging) and zero emphasis on combos, CC, tactics and strategy. It just looks like people whacking each other with pans and sticks until one drops dead. I didn't see any stuns? Any combos? Where are the sleeps? Fears? Knockbacks/downs? Silence? Bound? Slow? Root? Where is the outplay potential? All you have to do is "Aim better". At least thats how it seems like from whats shown. And when people see that, they react bad, or worse.. don't care for the game at all. Having more CC lock will make the game more strategical AND make your job modelling attack animations easier (As if someone is CC'd you don't need to move to attack him so you dont reach the move-while-attack problem). Of course, that doesn't mean go apesht 10 second 100-0 locks.. A decent amount of "trinkets", gap closures and openers, resist/dodge skills, shields, damage redirection/reduction/reflection need to exist to counter the CC lock that your opponent might put you in. Why not add situational skills based on your current state (stunned/knocked/bound.. like in blade and soul with their bars changing) It's one way to make the game more strategic. There are hundreds of ways to do this. Don't dumb down MMORPG combat to cater to the majority of people. The most successful MMOs are/were complex and hardcore af, yet easy to get into. Hard to do, but doable. Tera is a good example.
There are many many more things that can be done to make the combat smoother/intuitive/fast paced/strategic, like perhaps parkour or deeper mechanics such as animation canceling or "weaving", jumping while shooting "jumpshotting". Or straight up specific awesome looking animations for each weapon. But I can't possibly write everything I have in mind here, so I'll end this by asking... do you guys agree with what I say? Or am I full of sht? Do you have a better solutions for the problems AoC's combat faces right now? Or maybe you think there aren't any problems at all? Write down so we can discuss about it. Hopefully devs pick something up and take it into consideration!
I'm actually a designer/artist by education but gamer at heart, so I'll make another thread about armor and world design in the other section as I enjoy theorycrafting a lot. Hopefully some likeminded textwall warrior here will indulge me haha.
And in the case of AoC, to put it bluntly - the combat sux. Obviously this is very early in development and it IS very impressive what they done in such a short spam, no doubt it will be better, but I'm more worried about the general core approach you guys at Intrepid are starting to implement.
So as it stands, I will try to point out a few glaring major mistakes in AoC's combat and offer solutions to them in this thread, starting with the most obvious ones and then diving into the deeper mechanical stuff. Hopefully you guys take some of what I say into consideration.
1. Tab target VS Action.
First off the, there has not been a single MMORPG that is successful due to having Action and Tab-Target systems at once. Trying to blend both worlds to cater to all players will always end up in combat that is inferior in both systems. Focusing on making an extremely good tab OR action system will always yield better results than sinking in the nightmare of balancing action vs tab target, so keep that in consideration while reading forward.
1.2 Tab target VS action - benefits and downsides
From the looks of it you guys are going for an Action system and want to add tab just to cater to the older players who live off nostalgia. And this is wrong IMO as I stated earlier. Action is a lot harder to develop, but ultimately more fun for all players. Action provides a LOT better and active PvE experience in practically any game of any genre over tab target. However action combat does not really work in mass scale or even group PvP. Haven't you guys noticed that the best action combat games currently all have something in common and that is shallow mass scale content?
Blade and Soul - very complex reaction based combat with amazing combos in 1v1, however their open world? Complete garbage - you end up being CC'd forever untill you die in anything above 1v1.
Black Desert? Mass PvP ends up being a clusterjerk of effects that kill your performance and block your view for one, and it is also a dash fest of everyone dashing around at kek speed trying to flank and 100-0 combo you. Not fun.
The only game with good group content with action combat system imo is Tera online. It is slow enough for tactics and strategy to take place, but fast enough to be just as fun and challenging mechanically as PvE. CCs are short, however punishing mistakes with combos can still happen, yet harder than just killing people in few seconds like in BDO.
*Tab target on the other hand works a LOOOT better in group content and massive zerg vs zerg sieges. Since it is easier to focus one target from the herd of sheeple, shot calling and strategy can take place, resulting in much more fun clashes. It makes up for the lack of player input (aiming, active dodging) by focusing more on strategy, tactics and reflexes. Actually, if done right IMO tab target combat can be a lot more fun than action. Since you don't have to aim, you can allow players to run at very high speeds which narrows the reaction times and requires of players to achieve higher APM in order to perform better. If you add in mechanics such as jumpshotting, animation canceling, active kiting and so on It can end up being a lot faster paced than action combat. Archeage, AION, Lineage, WoW, GW2 etc. - all of them have an extremely well done tab targeting combat systems. Hence why my bias towards them kinda shows here, although I love me some action combat
Now with that out of the way, focusing more on AoC.
2. Skill animations, character stances and motions.
This is the eye candy part of the combat. In AoC it is very unimpressive and lacking in impact.
If done poorly this can absolutely kill your game, even with deep tactical gameplay, most viewers will judge you based on how 'c00l' your combat looks, as they don't really know which skill does what at first glance.
2.1 First off the character's running motions. Very stiff and unimpressive. Reminds me of a game made back in 2005. By that I mean when your char runs, his back is still standing straight up as if he is taking a light jog, not fighting for his live. He stands stiff like a tree basically. Every human on earth, when running seriously, has his torso bent forwards to counter the wind resistence. The BEST example of running motions done right (including smooth transition from running to attacking) IMO is Nier:Automata (not mmorpg, but works for example). Just look at this video's intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf6uLzj3-po // watch from 2:00 till 2:25.Notice how her torso is ALWAYS bent a bit forward while running? And when changing directions they don't snap change, but instead she slightly turns while bending left or right. Combine that with good looking dodge animations and you have a perfect setup for good looking character motions. However in AoC all of this cannot happen right now due to the fact that it's stuck in 2004's outdated circlejerk known as "tank movement" as I call it. Which leads to next point.
2.2 RESTRICTIVE MOVEMENT!
Making animations executable on the move doesn't mean your system is less restrictive. Locked in place or on-move animations actually have nothing to do with that. Instead.
Basically.. pressing A/D/S (or Q/E/S however it is) makes your character do this awkward and stiff "sideways" running motion while his torso is stuck looking at whatever your camera points at. Hence why "tank movement" - torso is the turret spinning around, and legs have mind of their own. This is the most terrible looking combat system design ever. If a person walked sideways while trying to fire a weapon in another direction he would have more success twisting his spine than landing that shot. For the combat to look good, you guys should completely remove those animations, and instead allow the character to have only one running motion and that is FORWARD. Aka you press S? Your char runs forward in that direction. Press W few secs after? Character does a QUICK, yet smooth stop and then transition into moving in said key's direction. Just like the Nier:Automata video illustrated. This is the key to the kingdom. Your combat will be a lot more fluent, smooth and less restrictive this way.
2.3 Skill ANIMATIONS!
Right now looking very unimpressive. And by that I'm not saying, lets put giant black holes of effects everywhere like in BDO, no. Some of the best skill animations in games have the least flashy FX to them. Instead, what makes a good skill animation is the character itself, not the effect that comes after. In AoC the skill "animations" ESPECIALLY while on the move consist of: character doing a quick boring swing with his hammer and hitting the air, not even your enemy but damage still registers.. Meanwhile legs are busy running in another direction, lawl. Does that look good in your opinion? Which martial arts did you take inspiration from? My dad's night thief pan whacking school? Cause everyone can pull that off. Haha. Combat animations need to have the entire body of your character executing them, not just the arms. There are hundreds of fighting styles that exist that you can take inspiration from. It doesn't need to be realistic - just c00l looking, yet not nonsensical. I realize that making this has a giant problem that comes with it - animations while moving. It is easy to make them look cool while you stand still, but extremely hard to blend it while char is on the move, ESPECIALLY for melee classes. There are multiple ways to overcome this however. For example (And I'm sorry that I keep using this, but its just that good..) your character makes a few steps forward with every hit it makes. This needs to be at lower movement speed than your usual running ofc. If you make it too fast - your character will appear to be "sliding" on the ground which will look bad, however if you make it too slow it will break the smoothness and transition from running to attacking. A perfect balance needs to be reached. The other massive downside of this is the things you hit. Do they get staggered and make a few steps backwards as you move forward, which will look natural and good but basically CC lock them OR have them stop you in your tracks as soon as your hit makes contact, which will make your character look unnaturally sliding in place. All of those are hard problems to deal with. Having the melee classes rely on CC-ing first and then dealing their damage is one way. Another quite cool looking and intuitive way could be with jump hits. Animation while standing still: cool sword slash. Animation while moving: cool jump+slash in air, smoothly transitioning from and to running. Same skill, different animations depending on your character. It's a mixture of all of these!
However... none of these things will mean crap If you mess up the......
3. SOUND DESIGN
Right now in AoC, there is legit literally basically ultimately NO SOUND.
Do you guys notice in the trailer? When your hits contact, damage numbers show, but you either hear no sound or very short and weak slash/hit? Or straight up bad/unnatural sound of arrow/magic hitting something... not human.
Examples in the AoC trailer (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ih84Xh5E8) - 0:37 / 0:47 / 0:51 / 1:48 - is that a fork fight? lmfao. You get my point.I realize these are placeholders, however many games don't change much from their alpha footage so I have to mention it...
How a flawless animation should have it's sound:
Example shooting a fire ball from a book/tome as a mage:::
1. Sound of tome pages skipping and turning as your character does a cool hand animation WHILE chanting some cool phrase when stopping on correct page
2. Sound of your char summoning or "extracting" fire magic that starts to manifest and burn in char's hand quietly until it reaches full size, increasing the sound of burning bolt as char holds it
3. You aim and shoot -> firebolt blends the sounds of cutting through the air resistance as it flies towards your enemy while still hearing sounds of its burn
4. Bolt actually hits target, making you hear the initial impact of his armor/body shredding in an explosion. Like a burning rock hitting something metal, or leather depending on enemy.
5. Sound of your burn effect debuff (possibly) that keeps burning your target untill it quiets down.
And all of these 5 points are happening in the span of 2-3 seconds. Might sound overkill to make good quality sounds for such short animations, but it is what makes the world of difference and polish becomes apparent when done right. Right now most of the actions happening on screen in AoC have no sound at all, making combat lack any impact at all.
4. Some deeper mechanics
Right now AoC looks like an Arcade battle royale of the likes of Fortnite than a serious MMORPG. Everything is focused towards action combat's input (player aiming and dodging) and zero emphasis on combos, CC, tactics and strategy. It just looks like people whacking each other with pans and sticks until one drops dead. I didn't see any stuns? Any combos? Where are the sleeps? Fears? Knockbacks/downs? Silence? Bound? Slow? Root? Where is the outplay potential? All you have to do is "Aim better". At least thats how it seems like from whats shown. And when people see that, they react bad, or worse.. don't care for the game at all. Having more CC lock will make the game more strategical AND make your job modelling attack animations easier (As if someone is CC'd you don't need to move to attack him so you dont reach the move-while-attack problem). Of course, that doesn't mean go apesht 10 second 100-0 locks.. A decent amount of "trinkets", gap closures and openers, resist/dodge skills, shields, damage redirection/reduction/reflection need to exist to counter the CC lock that your opponent might put you in. Why not add situational skills based on your current state (stunned/knocked/bound.. like in blade and soul with their bars changing) It's one way to make the game more strategic. There are hundreds of ways to do this. Don't dumb down MMORPG combat to cater to the majority of people. The most successful MMOs are/were complex and hardcore af, yet easy to get into. Hard to do, but doable. Tera is a good example.
There are many many more things that can be done to make the combat smoother/intuitive/fast paced/strategic, like perhaps parkour or deeper mechanics such as animation canceling or "weaving", jumping while shooting "jumpshotting". Or straight up specific awesome looking animations for each weapon. But I can't possibly write everything I have in mind here, so I'll end this by asking... do you guys agree with what I say? Or am I full of sht? Do you have a better solutions for the problems AoC's combat faces right now? Or maybe you think there aren't any problems at all? Write down so we can discuss about it. Hopefully devs pick something up and take it into consideration!
I'm actually a designer/artist by education but gamer at heart, so I'll make another thread about armor and world design in the other section as I enjoy theorycrafting a lot. Hopefully some likeminded textwall warrior here will indulge me haha.
0
Comments
As for art and sound, I'm sure it will be acceptable by launch so I'm not worried about that.
I'm not saying your wrong, but it goes both ways.
Also, the skill animations look cool but I am very worried about how all those particle effects will work performance wise on 100+ vs 100+ battlefields.
Anyhow ur topic is on point and its better to voice opinions before its too late.
Your points are valid and I truly hope they are aware of all this.
I want to strip one line from your speech and replay it back to you.
"First off the, there has not been a single MMORPG that is successful due to having Action and Tab-Target systems at once. Trying to blend both worlds to cater to all players will always end up in combat that is inferior in both systems."
Just because something hasn't been successful before, doesn't mean it won't be successful in the future. Your hard-line stance of "this is impossible" is a defeatist attitude, one which I don't share, and I imagine Intrepid doesn't share with you.
Cheers.
As displayed before, Intrepid is just experimenting with Action-Combat ; not conditioning / restricting themselves for now , seeing what they can do. Then they'll
re-evaluate + listen to player-feedback for the next steps.
Your general outlook of the whole thing is kinda narrow-minded ( not insulting you ) - I'd suggest being more Open-Minded. Everything you mentioned comes from Polish - there is no point for polishing ... if its not finalized yet
Because tbh ... I was actually expecting Intrepid 1st iteration of Combat to be wilder than what was showcased* tbh - more so than even BDO ... but not* hack-&-slash
As for the action+tab system being a flop in the entirety of It's history. I'm not saying it won't work just because it has been tried and failed so many times. I'm saying that it won't work because It won't work - It's just too hard and becomes a mess to balance and polish everything into two systems at once that collide with each other already on their core game play levels. Even if we end up with a somewhat decent system, It could have been made so much better if the focus was only on one.
PS: You guys need to stop responding to the "most important feature" title. Obviously this is completely subjective and I wrote it to garner attention, lol.
E.g. you choose tab for charged arrow and will do 50% of an aimed arrows damage but apply a slow.
I think it makes some sense but overall Id prefer full action.
I wouldnt even mind if there was a full tab and full action. People could go full tab if they wanted to but tab being autoaim so it would always have weaker performance at higher levels as it takes more skill to aim ur skills and tab would be aimed for beginners.
I would really like to hear what kind of deeper combat mechanics @GMSteven has in his vision.
Not about tab vs action because it will surely alter a lot during alphas, but animation cancels, weaving, blocks and details in op.
Edit: And I think Meztli is right, these things need to be discussed now because they are the foundation of combat. If the foundations are bad the pretty blocks built on top of them will crack.
Yes polish will be added. However even with that I feel as if the combat still won't be good in comparison to other current live MMORPGs simply because they are trying to cater to everyone and follow the current trends (as the game looks more like a battle royale than an MMORPG...). If the focus is put on making a flawless action OR tab target combat the results will be much better. You can't be everything. I know MMORPGs are all about that, but it doesn't work for combat. Avoiding the past tries by saying "but that doesn't mean it can't be done" is foolish. They are there so you can learn from them not repeat them. I can list many games that had BETTER combat during their early development stages. It isn't even early. Isn't the game like one and a half year from releasing? How much do you think they can change in the core combat for one and a half year? Most of that time should be reserved for polish not base changes. As polish is the initial grabber, but core gameplay is the thing that makes you stay. Right now the core gameplay is not that good. Hence why suggestions must be given, not shut down with the naive "It's too early It'll be fine #trustme" argument..
Also, Guild Wars 2 is kind of HYBRID and works very well. I mean, you select a target but your spell are affected by others on the way, and some of them are just thrown in front of you, without consideration for who you are targeting.
@Dyrits No, Blade and Soul isn't tab targeting. At least not in the typical sense. You do lock on and fire off abilities, however once you press the skill it doesn't mean the damage is done, It can be avoided if the enemy dodges the projectile or counters it with a skill. In tab target you select something, you press an attack, attack lands whatever movement enemy does - projectile doesn't care, its unavoidable.
GW2 is tab-targeting with an i-frame rolls and aoe skills cmon..
The only TRUE action combat MMORPGs currently are: Tera and Black Desert, if you wanna count in dead games then Vindictus has the best combat from all the titles mentioned in this thread, lol.
lol indeed
Then we also need visual and auditory feedback when hitting enemies. Make them flinch, maybe even flash, give us a clearer sound of us hitting them. Or something.
1. No this is not an action oriented combat with tab target tagged on to please nostalgia players. (there is so much wrong with this nostalgia quip, but I know it's a losing battle when people don't even understand the difference between free aim and action combat)