Adding impact to combat

In recent videos, I noticed a huge part missing from responsive combat: enemy recoil (not knockdown)
I know we're still pre-alpha but is this something that's going to be considered?

The action is way visceral when slamming an axe into an orc pushes him a step back,
or swinging into a dragon's talons makes the axe bounce off and I realize this dragon ain't a walk in the park,
or returning to beginner island with friends to see who smack the level 1 critters the furthest in one hit.

I'm doing damage and I want to see the victim react to pain.

There are 2 types of recoil I really enjoy:
- knockback: when a hit does a significant portion of damage that physically pushes the enemy backwards (advantage to blunt and heavy weapons and shields)
- partial ragdoll: when hits to 3D models elastically dislodge their animations a bit (except when they're in attack animations)

knockback also doubles as a tool for crowd control to push mobs together so the mages can wombo combo - it's a legitimate mechanic.

I just think this is a major mechanic that I wouldn't want to be skipped over

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Xenotor

+1 i would love more impact.
It always feels immersive to hit your axe into an enemy and see them step back, fall back or even scream in pain.
The same for enemy attacks. When a monster launches a heavy attack, it should not be able to redirect it. But if it hits then you are on the ground.
Its not about damage but purely the weight of the attacks.

You swing a big two handed war hammer. Then your attacks are slow and mostly clumsy while hitting your opponents should always knock them on the ground or at least stagger them depending on their size.

On the other hands, attacks with a dagger are extremely quick but lack weight and so never knock someone down.

If a giant dragon hits me with its claws then i should be send flying.
serval tons of angry lizzard moves at X speed vs 150 killogram human.
Its not rocket science to see the outcome of that.

Or a fireball that blasts smaller monsters in all directions.

Adding weight to combat is one of the key stones to make combat feel good.

Fluid
Responsive
Weight dependent.

The 3 pillars of good combat.

Mommie

I support this

Karthos

To really judge the combat right now is like looking at cake mix in a bowl, before the eggs are mixed in and saying "this doesn't look like cake. Are they thinking about adding chocolate frosting?"

Most of what we are seeing are "first passes".

Based on the direction things are headed, I don't see it being to far of a stretch that they will include some sort of impact to attacks.

Grievousness

Karthos wrote: »

To really judge the combat right now is like looking at cake mix in a bowl, before the eggs are mixed in and saying "this doesn't look like cake. Are they thinking about adding chocolate frosting?"

Most of what we are seeing are "first passes".

So what?

Just this:

Xenotor wrote: »

Fluid
Responsive
Weight dependent.

The 3 pillars of good combat.

Basically make it feel like Black Desert.
Its combat feels freaking amazing.

Talents

Grievousness wrote: »

Karthos wrote: »

To really judge the combat right now is like looking at cake mix in a bowl, before the eggs are mixed in and saying "this doesn't look like cake. Are they thinking about adding chocolate frosting?"

Most of what we are seeing are "first passes".

So what?

Just this:

Xenotor wrote: »

Fluid
Responsive
Weight dependent.

The 3 pillars of good combat.

Basically make it feel like Black Desert.
Its combat feels freaking amazing.

I personally don't agree with that since I didn't actually enjoy BDO combat much. I didn't feel as if BDOs combat had weight or impact behind attacks.

So I hope that it doesn't feel like BDO combat.

Grievousness

@Talents
Can you give an example what would be better, or what exactly makes you feel that way?

Overpowered MC

It would be nice if it also didn't take 200 hits or spells to kill something. Most MMOs, the enemies are like damage sponges and that makes combat feel repetitive. Make the wounds and hits actually hurt, maybe if you hit a limb enough it comes off?

If anyone has played kingdom come: Deliverance, the combat in that is superb. The enemies when hit, react how you would thing a person would, WITH PAIN. This very basic feeling that every developer seems to forget about is what makes a difference. Make the characters react when hit, and not just be like hitting a tree.

Karthos

@Grievousness

To answer your question of "so what", it comes down to the problem of people inventing problems that just don't exist.

The OP states he say parts "missing from combat" and I was just reiterating that we haven't see the actual full combat yet.

Xenotor

Talents wrote: »

Grievousness wrote: »

Karthos wrote: »

To really judge the combat right now is like looking at cake mix in a bowl, before the eggs are mixed in and saying "this doesn't look like cake. Are they thinking about adding chocolate frosting?"

Most of what we are seeing are "first passes".

So what?

Just this:

Xenotor wrote: »

Fluid
Responsive
Weight dependent.

The 3 pillars of good combat.

Basically make it feel like Black Desert.
Its combat feels freaking amazing.

I personally don't agree with that since I didn't actually enjoy BDO combat much. I didn't feel as if BDOs combat had weight or impact behind attacks.

So I hope that it doesn't feel like BDO combat.

I have to agree on the weight part and BDO.
BDO just added stagger to the monsters. I mean the dagger attacks had the same amount of stagger as a great sword.
There was no real impact to the attacks. Just a set animation that would play when hit regardless of the type of attack.
So bdo had no weight. They faked it kinda. It still was one of the best action combat systems in the last years.
as the combat was both Fluid and responsive.
But not weight dependent

maouw

Karthos wrote: »

To really judge the combat right now is like looking at cake mix in a bowl, before the eggs are mixed in and saying "this doesn't look like cake. Are they thinking about adding chocolate frosting?"

Most of what we are seeing are "first passes".

Based on the direction things are headed, I don't see it being to far of a stretch that they will include some sort of impact to attacks.

Yeah - so I wasn't sure if this was gonna be part of their polish?

It just strikes me as a really important piece that you'd put in early on - even just a placeholder mechanic because it really helps to define the feel of the game and has its own 100 ways to be polished

Karthos

maouw wrote: »

Karthos wrote: »

To really judge the combat right now is like looking at cake mix in a bowl, before the eggs are mixed in and saying "this doesn't look like cake. Are they thinking about adding chocolate frosting?"

Most of what we are seeing are "first passes".

Based on the direction things are headed, I don't see it being to far of a stretch that they will include some sort of impact to attacks.

Yeah - so I wasn't sure if this was gonna be part of their polish?

It just strikes me as a really important piece that you'd put in early on - even just a placeholder mechanic because it really helps to define the feel of the game and has its own 100 ways to be polished

To put this into perspective ( and I agree with you fully, I'm just saying "lets not count our chickens yet"), we had a stream a few months ago where the characters looked like they were floating when they ran because the shadows weren't right yet. Since that time, it looks great.

The game is in flux right now, and growing/developing more. We've seen combat from 2 classes and just in a very limited amount.

maouw

Karthos wrote: »

maouw wrote: »

Karthos wrote: »

To really judge the combat right now is like looking at cake mix in a bowl, before the eggs are mixed in and saying "this doesn't look like cake. Are they thinking about adding chocolate frosting?"

Most of what we are seeing are "first passes".

Based on the direction things are headed, I don't see it being to far of a stretch that they will include some sort of impact to attacks.

Yeah - so I wasn't sure if this was gonna be part of their polish?

It just strikes me as a really important piece that you'd put in early on - even just a placeholder mechanic because it really helps to define the feel of the game and has its own 100 ways to be polished

To put this into perspective ( and I agree with you fully, I'm just saying "lets not count our chickens yet"), we had a stream a few months ago where the characters looked like they were floating when they ran because the shadows weren't right yet. Since that time, it looks great.

The game is in flux right now, and growing/developing more. We've seen combat from 2 classes and just in a very limited amount.

Right, yeah I see what you mean.
The skills are looking pretty clean this early - so I jumped the gun.

I'm just keenly aware that knockback is completely missing from games like Tera, Skyforge, Archeage, Wildstar (and ye olde mmo's, but they're old so I can't fault them for that)

Merek

I've been following the project for quite a few years and after having recently played the New World test, what Intrepid showed was disappointing. The combat in New World isn't a marvel of gameplay genius, but for an MMO they've nailed impact and weight and it made the combat, even with how tedious it was due to their unstable servers, the most engaging experience I've had in an MMO for a while. The repetitive "Kill ____, X amount of times." quests didn't feel boring, clearly they're an overused MMO quest concept but the combat distracted me from the repetitiveness. While watching Intrepid's latest video, however, I found the combat to be distracting for negative reasons. The effects when swinging your weapon made no sense, especially when no skill had been activated. The sounds when swinging your weapon, landing and taking hits were all just lacking along with the general effect of landing and receiving hits. A man in armor shouldn't sound like a wet sponge being stepped on when they're hit by someone, come on...

Now, when it comes to the combat system used in Ashes of Creation, you need to decide whether you're going to go tab-target or action combat. This "hybrid" system is just a gimmicky version of tab-targeting, very similar to what ESO has and it's honestly not needed. Sadly without the combat in Ashes of Creation being drastically improved, I really don't see it lasting long.

Xenotor

Merek wrote: »

I've been following the project for quite a few years and after having recently played the New World test, what Intrepid showed was disappointing. The combat in New World isn't a marvel of gameplay genius, but for an MMO they've nailed impact and weight and it made the combat, even with how tedious it was due to their unstable servers, the most engaging experience I've had in an MMO for a while. The repetitive "Kill ____, X amount of times." quests didn't feel boring, clearly they're an overused MMO quest concept but the combat distracted me from the repetitiveness. While watching Intrepid's latest video, however, I found the combat to be distracting for negative reasons. The effects when swinging your weapon made no sense, especially when no skill had been activated. The sounds when swinging your weapon, landing and taking hits were all just lacking along with the general effect of landing and receiving hits. A man in armor shouldn't sound like a wet sponge being stepped on when they're hit by someone, come on...

Now, when it comes to the combat system used in Ashes of Creation, you need to decide whether you're going to go tab-target or action combat. This "hybrid" system is just a gimmicky version of tab-targeting, very similar to what ESO has and it's honestly not needed. Sadly without the combat in Ashes of Creation being drastically improved, I really don't see it lasting long.

AoC is never going to be pure Action combat.
Steven said during the Hybrid combat show that if he had to decide, he leans more towards tab target.
That beeing said he is sure that they will nail the hybrid combat down.

I have to half agree to the new world impact combat.
They do have impact but not as much as they should have and in many cases they do the same thing as bdo.
The same Stagger animation on monsters regardless of actual weapon wheight.
If i hit a small wolf with a sledge hammer then that wolf should be flying.
On the other hand my attacks should be extremly slow and consume a lot of stamina.

Now some may say that this Topic is a long shot to do before Alpha 1, but Steven said to keep giving feedback and that they need feedback to nail all the systems down.
Including combat.

Grievousness

Karthos wrote: »

@Grievousness

To answer your question of "so what", it comes down to the problem of people inventing problems that just don't exist.

The OP states he say parts "missing from combat" and I was just reiterating that we haven't see the actual full combat yet.

I get what you mean but I don't think you actually know if they exist or not.
Why would you assume that the full combat will be better, if they don't get feedback?
Your argument seems to be based on the assumption that they can fix it down the line with polish,
or they already have the perfect concept at hand but didn't implement it yet.

Thing is that the "feeling" of combat heavily relies on the basic combat design philosophy.
For example Warframe or Blackdesert have extremely fluid and responsive combat because they want everyone to be extremely fast and mobile.
On the other hand games like dark souls or recently New World have mostly clunky combat to increase the feeling of "weight" from your attacks and promote more tactical gameplay.

I wouldn't say one is objectively better than the other but both are archieved as a result of the basic combat design philosophy, not polish.
Since this adresses the baseline of combat, it seems a lot more reasonable to talk about it now,
instead of waiting until they finalized it.

This is only a sidenote, but you should also consider that a "wait and see" mentality has already failed several times in the developement of other mmos.

I don't really see why Ashes of Creation is different, nobodies perfect, not even Steven.

neobpm

maouw wrote: »

In recent videos, I noticed a huge part missing from responsive combat: enemy recoil (not knockdown)
I know we're still pre-alpha but is this something that's going to be considered?

The action is way visceral when slamming an axe into an orc pushes him a step back,
or swinging into a dragon's talons makes the axe bounce off and I realize this dragon ain't a walk in the park,
or returning to beginner island with friends to see who smack the level 1 critters the furthest in one hit.

I'm doing damage and I want to see the victim react to pain.

There are 2 types of recoil I really enjoy:
- knockback: when a hit does a significant portion of damage that physically pushes the enemy backwards (advantage to blunt and heavy weapons and shields)
- partial ragdoll: when hits to 3D models elastically dislodge their animations a bit (except when they're in attack animations)

knockback also doubles as a tool for crowd control to push mobs together so the mages can wombo combo - it's a legitimate mechanic.

I just think this is a major mechanic that I wouldn't want to be skipped over

neuroguy

It may be silly but I think the audio and size of damage numbers plays a big part in how impactful it feels. I recall first playing wow and my eyes would get a tiny bit bigger if I landed a crit and saw larger numbers pop up with a more satisfying thump sound.

I also think something similar, and perhaps easier to implement, that would be nice to see is special spell effects to signify that effective or ineffective schools of magic are being used. So an extra sizzle if you hit a fire spell on something that takes more damage from it, or a little electric shimmer for lightning spells. While hitting something with an earth spell that is resistant to it may sound like a bunch of sand or pebbles just fell onto the floor.

I suggest this because it seems like there are already visual cues for information on the quality/tier of people's gear and their health via how the health bars etc look, so having more intuitive information provided by the impact of your spells sounds like a good idea to me, plus it would have practical gameplay use and would be immersive.

maouw

neuroguy wrote: »

It may be silly but I think the audio and size of damage numbers plays a big part in how impactful it feels. I recall first playing wow and my eyes would get a tiny bit bigger if I landed a crit and saw larger numbers pop up with a more satisfying thump sound.

I also think something similar, and perhaps easier to implement, that would be nice to see is special spell effects to signify that effective or ineffective schools of magic are being used. So an extra sizzle if you hit a fire spell on something that takes more damage from it, or a little electric shimmer for lightning spells. While hitting something with an earth spell that is resistant to it may sound like a bunch of sand or pebbles just fell onto the floor.

I suggest this because it seems like there are already visual cues for information on the quality/tier of people's gear and their health via how the health bars etc look, so having more intuitive information provided by the impact of your spells sounds like a good idea to me, plus it would have practical gameplay use and would be immersive.

It's not just you, I know others who've talked about this, but feedback sfx and the way damage lines pop I know is traditionally classified as polish. (Although Lee Perry recommends to "pizzazz" placeholder stuff early on)

edit: typo

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