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 is possible to take any one mechanic, and make a system around that one mechanic that is too hard for peoppe to be able to realistically come out on top.
Look at Guitar Hero. It is literally just a game that is about using the right ability at the right time, yet the only reason people are able to beat it on the hardest settings is via practice and muscle memory - if the songs had even a small amount of randomness to them, they would literally be impossible.
And that is using just one small mechanic.
It is possible to make a tab target based game that is too hard for people to come out on top. The same can be said for action combat, FPS, RTS, anything.
Thing is, game developers don't make games that are too hard for people to beat (usually), because they want people to beat them.
One of the early decisions made in any game development cycle is how hard the game should be. The answer is never "as hard as we can make it".
So sure, if you took a tab target game that is as hard as the game developer wants it to be, but then changed it to an aiming based system, you now have a game that is harder than intended. What developers then do is take some of the difficulty away, to bring it back down to the desired level.
In the line graph I described in the post you above, I specifically talked about the only line on that graph being the application of full cognitive function. There is still space above that line, but it is not space in which game developers want to explore if they want their games to be beaten. You can make a game at any point on that line or below it, but not above it if you want it to be beaten.
This isn't anything special for action combat either, you can take an action combat system that is exactly as hard as developers want it and then add elements usually associated with tab targeting to that system and it would be the same thing - we now have a game harder than the developers wanted.
lol, no.
TAB target system > Action Combat.
I already spent a shit ton of money on this game, if they randomly decided to drop tab target I'd demand a refund and would not want to play.
Action combat is way more prone to errors and spells not hitting as they are supposed to. I have had enough experiences with games where I'm 100% sure I landed an attack straight on the target and it didn't do shit. No thank you. Not to mention it requires you to stay focused all the time and makes it more like a competitive sweat game I would only play on weekends compared to a chill experience I can relax with after I come home. Some AC elements would be cool, that's why I'm fine with the duo system.
I’m action, things don’t hit because you missed, not because you were cheated.
I can’t imagine a game that doesn’t demand a majority of your focus to beat. That just seems like bad design, certainly not something a studio should be aiming for.
A good tab target game requires the majority of your focus to beat, the problem is, with most MMO's, most players don't try to beat them.
There is a single digit percentage in almost all MMO's of players that kill the hardest content while it is still the hardest content. Unless you are in that single digit percentage, you can't really make a claim as to what a tab target game requires.
that is a bit...entitled. Don't chat with people in highly contested zones - yes you need to focus, that's the point...... If you get killed by a boar in the forest, it has nothing to do with action\tab choice..This is probably one of the most stupid things I've ever read
This post makes no sense @noaani You didn't argue anything you just talked about difficulty of games ?
ontop of that you talked about guitar hero which no one plays and also has nothing to do with any modern genre except rhythm games . Your post has nothing that makes any sense, you're now adding something about developers having a limit to how hard their game is ? that wasn't what I said even the slightest. I said that if you just add action combat to a game, it will add another layer of skill and complexity. This is because anything you can do with a tab targeted system you can do with an action combat system except you will add another layer of mechanical skill.
I have no idea what this post is trying to prove, you made it super unclear because I wasn't talking about the difficulty of games. I don't know what you're trying to argue here, it just seems like nothing at all.
Action combat will not make the game too difficult, especially if it's a choice.
I think that's called missing lol and if you're preaching bad game design then thats a yikes from me. Why would you want a game thats so easy and boring that you don't even have to pay attention to it ? is this post even serious lol
If you die to a boar in a forest i think u need to just get good boy i don't think its that hard to aim at things, especially in mmorpgs where most things will be very large.
However, if the hybrid is not working properly, what then?
I do not mind to use tab or action -targeting, but nowadays I prefer more action. Tab is imo a lil bit old and boring system, even it is still working nicely and is at least a decent option for some games. Action combat in otherhand feels much more satisfying, and especially in a situation when you are succesfully landing a skillshot on the target. Furthermore, I like when the player skill is based more on aiming, timing and positioning. There is ofc also skill with tab system, but it is different and usually relys more on rotation.
If I remember right, devs have once said that if the hybrid is not working, they are going with tab (correct me if I am wrong). But now we have the Apoc with action based combat, so I would guess that there will be action over tab -targeting if only one system can be used. Simply because action is heavily tested at this point and it would feel odd to go with tab -targeting because of that.
It makes perfect sense, try reading it better.
I talked about Guitar Hero because it is the best example of a single mechanic game that is easily imagined to be too hard. It was used as an illustration that *any* mechanic or system can be deaigned to be too hard, if the develooers of the game wanted to.
Anyone with any intelligence can make the leap that if a singular simple mechanic like pressing the right button at the right time can be made that hard, then any system that incorporates pressing the right button at the right time (as tab target combat does) can also be made that hard.
The argument here us against your statement that action combat is inherently harder than tab target. If both can be made harder than is reasonable to expect players to be able to beat (as was demonstrated in the above with Guitar Hero), then it doesn't matter what happens if you switch between them. The reason it doesn't matter, as I stated clearly in the above post, is because what will always dictate difficulty is developer design.
Put as simply as I possibly can, there is no need to try and compare how hard two different systems can be, if both of those systems can be made harder than is reasonable to expect players to be able to handle.
From memory, the statement was that if they can not get action targeting working - which needs more development than tab targeting does - they will just go to tab targeting.
Apoc IS that development on action targeting.
It was never a case of balancing that made them say they may have to go with tab targeting only, it was literally a case of them not being 100% sure they could do action combat. The difficulty in balance is completely about the data you have. If you have all the data you need, balance in an MMO could be automated. The problem with quite literally every other MMO I've played is that they haven't had the data, and so have essentially relied on educated guessing.
Essentially, rather than being able to say that because of Apoc we should assume that if there is only going to be one system it will be tab targeting, we can now say that because of Apoc - assuming all is successful on Intrepid's side - we can now assume both will be in the game.
When I was testing Revelation Online beta, I remember there was this option to choose between action or tab -targeting (at least with some classes). Imo it was not working that good, because usually one system was simply more effective than other.
Bless online had pretty shit combat even there was some try to mix tab and action in some situations (e.g. berserker), but I guess their problems were more in optimization and combat design in general.
Situation will ofc be different in Ashes, but still mixing these two systems can cause balancing problems, first between abilities and then between classes.
I am actually interested is there games, which have mixed action and tab -targeting? And what has been the result?
From my experience, Tab Target is mostly about using some rotas and throwing some high cooldown abilities or debuffs into the mix at times. So often I end up using them at the beginning of a battle and then just use a macro and go AFK until the fight is over as nothing really happens while fighting bosses. Even their "special moves" behave like enhanced auto attacks
In fact some of the TabTarget games even had auto cast so I just ordered the skills in my skillslot appropriately to let auto cast use the abilities I need. Its like the game wanted me to go AFK. Watching a league streamer that plays WoW during que, most of his fighting is just bunny hopping and he even tabs out during champion selection and lets his char keep autoattacking the mob to death
Havent found an action combat based game that allowed me to do that, mostly because I have to time iFrames and blocks to dodge oneshots. Such things are usually just EQ checks in Tab Target games
I usually play offline RPGs and MOBAs, so theres a good chance that Im missing something or might have only played the "wrong" tab target games. So let me just ask: From a gameplay perspective, what exactly makes tab targeting superior to/more engaging than action combat?
If you even mention the notion of a rotation in a game like EQ2, you'd be laughed out of any pick up group - let alone trying to automate a rotation.
Judging a tab target MMO's combat system on solo or group content (or even on raid content other than what is designed as the hardest content) is kind of like judging a CoD game based on it's single player campaign. Sure, both exist (usually), but they are not where the developer has opted to fully showcase the combat in each game genre.
No.
"Other games" are the only real point of reference we have. To not compare Ashes to other games is to not talk about Ashes.
So yeah, no.
True.
Even developers will use their former experiences from other games to create something new. On top of that they will definitely follow and borrow ideas from other games on the market.
And if we should not use references at all then everything would be only opinions based on nothing and a lot of credibility will be lost. That is quite basic, that references are used to support comments and own opinions.
... You're making no sense. In what world did you see me talk about specifically how overtuned and hard games are ? You keep going on about this like it makes any sense.
What you're saying makes 0 sense at all, just adding action combat to a game won't make it impossibly hard. I don't think you even know what you're talking about anymore so I don't know if it's worth the time anymore.
You're arguing nothing about what we first talked about, and you're making up random parallels for no reason. You're acting as if adding action combat to a game would make it impossibly hard for everyone on earth. In REALITY having a tab target game means 90% of people of play games won't even touch it. Shown by every single most popular game being not even close to tab targeted.
(90% is a general statistic I didn't find from anywhere, but no popular games are tab targeted)
Hnmmm... Maybe you are talking about games in general, but if we look MMORPGs, how about WoW and FF14?
If so, your comparison is way off. You need to compare like to like. Please tell us how many MMORPG games are action only? I am sure that there are, but what are the subscription numbers of them?
And since this is a sub only game, we need to compare how many of the action only games are sub only. Not free to play, but something that will compare to this glorious game (i.e. people who will pay to play).
Once again I have no idea what you're trying to prove, I never said that this game would be action combat only. There's no possible way to fairly compare combat systems because the mmorpg genre is so small compared to other genres. The few mmorpgs that are popular are older than some of the people who are playing video games now.
My point in the beginning is appeasing the mmorpg veterans with having a tab targeted only game will not grow the genre as I've heard intrepid want to.
I was saying if you take a look at the most popular games, and genres none of them have anything close to tab targeting. This is because it's an ancient way of combat in games and some people may prefer it from using it for countless decades. On the other hand if you're trying to grow the mmorpg genre and release a game with only tab targeting it will never grow. That's show BY the most popular mmorpgs not bringing in any new people.
I'm not saying that I want an easy game, I've been posting everywhere on the forums that I want stupidly strong enemies and mechanics to be present. I find it boring to always have to be precise with movement and aim to kill even the weak enemies rather than focus on what I actually think is fun, the skills and combos. Dodging and stuff is good enough for tactical movement. Much more than that and the game might as well be first person.
I'll just stop posting here cause we already know tab target is going to be the standard and for good reason. It's easier to balance too. AC may restrict character appearances with hitbox sizes and so on.
You're literally just contradicting yourself so I think it's a good idea you stop posting too lol.
Tab target is the standard because the genre is so small no one else cares to join in on any new mmorpg launches except the 20 year mmorpg veterans. I'm willing to guess you yourself have played mmos for decades.
Your argument makes no sense, there's lag in every game. In tab targeting you can't even miss so of course that wouldn't matter. It takes so much skill away from anything that you literally CANNOT even miss if you're lagging or not. You say you want a hard game but then you're begging for tab targeting because it makes the game easier. You have no consistent argument and make no sense when with each post you contradict yourself over and over.
I can't really have a conversation with you if you are considering having to pay attention to a game and put effort into it is boring. Why do you play video games then ? It makes no sense to me if you'd want a tab target system and super hard mobs. Only to complain about action combat being super hard. Can you reply with something that even makes a little sense at all ? Are you wanting to game to be hard ? or easy ? because you're saying you preach for it to be hard yet you're saying action combat is too hard and too unreliable (Even though it isn't )
Tab targeting is the way to kill the mmorpg genre for good. Once the people who have been playing for decades stop, who's the audience then ? The MAIN mmorpg audience are people like steven, old enough to own companies at this point. Where do you see growth in a genre there ? If you aren't going to appeal to a younger generation, the genre will just simply fade away with it's players. If that's what you desire, fine it doesn't matter to me. It's just completely clear and there's no way you can miss that by every new mmorpg being released having no growth at all except for within the mmorpg genre already.
I can't imagine that you're so unable to multitask that you can't kill an AI that you probably completely outlevel with aoe abilities. You're in some weird place where you think that action combat means mobs will be the size of pebbles and you'll be having to aim and center on them like that. It will be incredibly easy to hit most things even with action combat, and if you miss or are lagging then you will not hit. I would suggest getting a better internet connection, practicing your aim and not preaching for old tab to be the only system. It takes so much less skill that it it literally impossible to miss. If you have a hybrid system, this conversation is pointless anyway and I know intrepid won't just do tab because their mmorpg will just be a new one to play for a few years then everyone will go back to WoW and it will die and have no new growth outside the genre at all.
At least, that’s how it was when I played. It has been years so they may have changed things since that.
So don’t get the idea that a game that has tab targeting is easy or slow or unengaging. That’s only the case with bad tab target combat. The good ones require skill and focus.
All that being said, there’s nothing in action combat that prevents you from having those same traits. Almost any feature in a tab target combat system can be implemented in action combat.
You're still missing the point. The reason they prefer Tab targeting is because it's the safest and least buggy forms of play. Action games suffer more during lag when hits don't connect with the target. During a lagspike, a Tab target will ensure the target is hit in unbalanced play, while aiming and executing an attack is likely to fail. Tab target isn't going to be an advantage in a balanced hybrid game.
Lag aside, tab targeting helps counter motion sickness and wrist pain. It certainly doesn't make gameplay easier. For posters who claim it's easy, I've noticed they reference others' gameplay (referencing top players on streams for crying out loud) but not their own -- they've never played other types of MMORPGS at the top endgame.