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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Combat System
Cklio
Member
Hi ! I've been following all of peon's videos and stuff, and i've been browsing the forums and have been pretty surprised to find that Combat isn't like, an extremely present discussion among the forums.
I think i speak for all players when i say that combat is extremely important. like fundamentally it decides the level of satisfaction i feel for a game. I'm genuinely concerned that they're pursuing a "hybrid" based combat system. ashes of creation seems to be extremely ambitious, i personally think it's a mistake to try and represent this archaic form of combat style. it's world of warcraft-esk, and frustrating. the action combat also looks incredibly lacking. genuinely not trying to bash them by any means, but i think my concern is that they're not commiting to one combat system, and as a result, both are going to suffer. action combat won't really feel very great or the level of satisfaction that some of the Japan titles are putting out, because apparently as steven put it you can mitigate it to "75% of action combat" i think this is a huge mistake in developement. trying to appeal to both masses is of players that mmo's come to isn't going to work over well. cause neither system is going to exist without the presence of the other, meaning they're both gonna feel like s***. Let me know your thoughts on this, i just genuinely want to hear what other people think. My preference is Action combat as i'm sure you've guessed by now, i think action combat is the future. it's far more engaging and the difficult rotations in game in real time, using reaction speeds and iframing is far more immersive and fun. much more skill based, i prefer reaction speeds over which buttons to press in the right order.
To that degree the action combat looks incredibly lacking as i stated before, it looks skyrim-esk style like swinging blindly hoping something will hit. which is.... SUPER underwhelming. i think if i were to make references to action combat RPGS that have revolutionized the system or just perfected it, would be Blade and Soul or something alike vindictus. assisted targetting, with inuitive movement and appropriate skill usage given whichever circumstance you're in. i sincerely think, the classes in blade and soul had an amazing pool of skills where, there was enough skills to not be overwhelmed but not too little where combat felt super repetitive and shallow. Blade and soul had mostly classes with a bottom row of 4 skills, top row of 4 skills, and then some like essential skills like iframes would be placed conveniently on Q , E, or tab would be a special ability that plays a large roll in rotation or a standby skill used to change the pacing of the fight. players were incredible at mastering their rotations. skill wise, employing these skills in really interesting ways through pvp, and pve differently.
Some of these classes would have a secondary state where you could access a new "set" of skills. this was usually due to your change in approach for combat, for instance i played assassin. When i entered 'stealth' it was usually to regress from my opponent because i was losing, or to interrupt the overly confrontational type of combat that the other class excels better in. this allowed me to control the pacing of the fight and create opennings for myself without much danger due to my LACK of confrontational skills available to me.
I think if there are any moderators here of even devs, PLEASE if you are trying to innovate your combat system, take notes at these 2 games as even peon says "wow that feels REALLY good" in his vindictus video. just take notes and please, please do not make action combat into skyrim. it feels super empty and hollow feeling when i'm just swinging at nothing.
Blade and soul i realise is a meme. the devs and the kr company NCwest basically stopped giving a sh** about their players like a year after launch and just slowly started pushing the game downwards. but the initial product they created, the amazing combat system, boss mechanics, CC system felt cleaner and better than any game i've ever played, as much of a meme as it is, the initial product they created was not even comparable to any combat system i've ever played. Just a LOT of wasted potential by NCSOFT. no care in the world for optimization after years of pleading for it. people still play that game and suffer with the utterly pitiful optimized state it's in simply cause the combat, social systems and raids feel so satisfying and challenging in a good way.
Forgive my rant, i'm not trying to make Ashes of Creation into BNS, but i sincerely think the combat system needs more discussion! Let me know what you think! combat stands equally important, as every feature you guys are working on, if combat isn't done right the whole game i feel, really lags behind. Thank you! good luck, you guys are doing amazing. i'm being critical cause a lot of players have so much hope. but i figure it's important to voice the critical concerns.
I think i speak for all players when i say that combat is extremely important. like fundamentally it decides the level of satisfaction i feel for a game. I'm genuinely concerned that they're pursuing a "hybrid" based combat system. ashes of creation seems to be extremely ambitious, i personally think it's a mistake to try and represent this archaic form of combat style. it's world of warcraft-esk, and frustrating. the action combat also looks incredibly lacking. genuinely not trying to bash them by any means, but i think my concern is that they're not commiting to one combat system, and as a result, both are going to suffer. action combat won't really feel very great or the level of satisfaction that some of the Japan titles are putting out, because apparently as steven put it you can mitigate it to "75% of action combat" i think this is a huge mistake in developement. trying to appeal to both masses is of players that mmo's come to isn't going to work over well. cause neither system is going to exist without the presence of the other, meaning they're both gonna feel like s***. Let me know your thoughts on this, i just genuinely want to hear what other people think. My preference is Action combat as i'm sure you've guessed by now, i think action combat is the future. it's far more engaging and the difficult rotations in game in real time, using reaction speeds and iframing is far more immersive and fun. much more skill based, i prefer reaction speeds over which buttons to press in the right order.
To that degree the action combat looks incredibly lacking as i stated before, it looks skyrim-esk style like swinging blindly hoping something will hit. which is.... SUPER underwhelming. i think if i were to make references to action combat RPGS that have revolutionized the system or just perfected it, would be Blade and Soul or something alike vindictus. assisted targetting, with inuitive movement and appropriate skill usage given whichever circumstance you're in. i sincerely think, the classes in blade and soul had an amazing pool of skills where, there was enough skills to not be overwhelmed but not too little where combat felt super repetitive and shallow. Blade and soul had mostly classes with a bottom row of 4 skills, top row of 4 skills, and then some like essential skills like iframes would be placed conveniently on Q , E, or tab would be a special ability that plays a large roll in rotation or a standby skill used to change the pacing of the fight. players were incredible at mastering their rotations. skill wise, employing these skills in really interesting ways through pvp, and pve differently.
Some of these classes would have a secondary state where you could access a new "set" of skills. this was usually due to your change in approach for combat, for instance i played assassin. When i entered 'stealth' it was usually to regress from my opponent because i was losing, or to interrupt the overly confrontational type of combat that the other class excels better in. this allowed me to control the pacing of the fight and create opennings for myself without much danger due to my LACK of confrontational skills available to me.
I think if there are any moderators here of even devs, PLEASE if you are trying to innovate your combat system, take notes at these 2 games as even peon says "wow that feels REALLY good" in his vindictus video. just take notes and please, please do not make action combat into skyrim. it feels super empty and hollow feeling when i'm just swinging at nothing.
Blade and soul i realise is a meme. the devs and the kr company NCwest basically stopped giving a sh** about their players like a year after launch and just slowly started pushing the game downwards. but the initial product they created, the amazing combat system, boss mechanics, CC system felt cleaner and better than any game i've ever played, as much of a meme as it is, the initial product they created was not even comparable to any combat system i've ever played. Just a LOT of wasted potential by NCSOFT. no care in the world for optimization after years of pleading for it. people still play that game and suffer with the utterly pitiful optimized state it's in simply cause the combat, social systems and raids feel so satisfying and challenging in a good way.
Forgive my rant, i'm not trying to make Ashes of Creation into BNS, but i sincerely think the combat system needs more discussion! Let me know what you think! combat stands equally important, as every feature you guys are working on, if combat isn't done right the whole game i feel, really lags behind. Thank you! good luck, you guys are doing amazing. i'm being critical cause a lot of players have so much hope. but i figure it's important to voice the critical concerns.
1
Comments
I could complain about the combat but the combat is still a work in progress. Right now, there are too many cc spirals, too many static skills, too many flamboyant flares and no balance in existence. Balance won't come for months yet and the balance will be based on groups (How effective the balance will be remains to be seen, more often than not group fights are decided through 1vs1.)
Dang, i really think going in the direction of tab target is a huge mistake. i'm probably alone in that. but the one appeal these JP MMORPGS, is all in their combat, and how good it feels. i feel like going in the direction of tab combat is moreso like riding the wave of nostalgia. players loving WOW and stuff LOL i loved wow, but really it's not nearly as engaging, i personally find it super slow paced, and strategy is fine. but, having 100000 classes and 10000 skills with unique things is, makes for WAY too much maintenance and balancing issues. i feel like the combat should be intuitive. and feel good. and in your hands, less so studying 10 million builds and finding 20 meta's that everyone gravitates to.
yeah, i never liked WoW's combat particularly either, but the world building was really good. mount system and that scale of MMORPG just hadn't been achieved yet, they were the first, but i think that's the problem we're facing now is, everyone just uses it as a bench mark and it's like, please... as Peon said, most games are like a 5/10 we need to think bigger than just one system or the other that already exists.
Absolutely! i think it's just good to voice everything now. to make some of the concerns WELL known. there's tons of time to cover it, i'm just surprised there isn't like a completely dedicated thread to JUST combat.
Personally I believe true hybrid combat is the best combat for MMO's of this type. Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO other than Wildstar that I ACTUALLY enjoy the combat for. Other MMO's are enjoyable, but not ACTUALLY fun in their combat. In GW2 and Wildstar you are constantly engaged and have something to do in combat. I haven't played BDO but that's also a game where that seems to be the case, however BDO is entirely action combat.
I've also made the point that if they make a "split combat" (2 separate combat systems) instead of a "true hybrid combat" (like GW2) it's going to be very very bad. But again, we won't see until they show us.
The downside to pure Action combat is it's a much harder system to do massively multiplayer. Raids become much more difficult from a player and design perspective when you are playing what is essentially a single-player viewpoint.
I do agree that action combat is the way to go if they really want to be ambitious.
TERA did action combat great, I would probably say it was the most fun and engaging combat I've experienced and I would LOVE to play with such a system again.
Yeah we do, it entails giving feedback, it entails testing and giving feedback and it entails welcoming new faces to the forums.
Hey! thanks for you reply, just cause the game is in alpha is the exact reason and time to be subjecting it to criticism, don't you agree? i'm not saying you're wrong. i know what it entails, but... you should consider what it entails if you're dismissing valid criticism? LOL
Hey! thanks for your reply! thanks for telling me your opinion, it's mainly personal preference and i really can't say it's the right way to go nor the same degree of fun for everyone. but i think we've seen SOOO many tab systems employed inspired by other mmo's, and the few action combat systems that have been experienced, have been HUGELY dismissed or trashed on because of predatory JP companies gold digging everything their players are worth. it needs to be given valid recognition and chance in north america without the stigma tied to it. just my 2 cents.
Hey Dreoh! thanks for your reply. this is an interesting take and i can respect the perspective given on the design level. it's true ashes of creation design is kind of revolving around the "siege" themed type of world building, so large scale battles and what have you so the action combat would be difficult to implement. but i think all the more reason to maybe think of combat in a new way, or find a way to implement combat differently altogether. i've played plenty of BDO as well, and i think what they're missing is some assisted targetting and also just to be fair, a lack of meaningful enemies, 99% of that game is spent just mindlessly killing useless mobs with no significance at all. LOL
and to add on to your other point~ forgive me, i'm still kinda new to the forum and i actually was just watching the video of the stream they uploaded today which as you mentioned- they brought up the combat systems. i'm still getting the hang of navigating the website, there seems to be some generalizations, i just couldn't see any specific threads openned HERE, ABOUT combat, i understand that it's widely discussed within the community, but didn't see a significant hub of discussion for it on the forums. i was looking forward to reading peoples thoughts and couldn't find any discussion about the combat. so i started one!
i think for me i really like the feeling of being in control of my character, not looking at loading times on my skills, moreso that the abilities my character has become an extension of my reactions or my intuition of how to best react to an enemy trying to kill me, or maximizing my damage.
I enjoyed combat a lot when I used to play wow.
But that's 20 year old combat playstyle, I want better.
Fully action combat seems unlikely for the moment because is hard to script and manage advanced hitbox collisions in mass scales fights.
Massive and large scale fights put stress on the server by having to calculate positioning of players and they weapons all the times. Massive fights and action combat just make things super expensive and heavy. If i got this wrong please correct me.
I have heard Steven used to play GW2. I have never played GW2 myself but I have heard is a hybrid type of gameplay. And that's what I'm looking for.
I hope he continue with the innovative mentality and push hybrid combat to come to life.
All this beautiful piece of work, aesthetic value, node system, housing system but with a 20 year old combat system is a miss match.
Loving the tasteful sets, the ambient, the node systems, but I won't be here for appreciating if we settle for tab. Tab is old. Tab targeting is almost as old as some players, and older than some player's children.
Hey Taculeon! thanks for the reply. yeah my feelings are very much the same. however i can't really stay super closed-minded to the combat systems as steven's concerns are extremely real about the hitboxes and stuff. while i think the pursuit of the large scale combat is a definitely good direction to go into, if it means scalping any good combat system that can be put in place... it's tough to say. i'd far prefer they prioritize combat in the game through-out, rather than designing it just for the sake of a single feature. the game heavily emphasizes large scale combat, and while i think that's good, tab targetting as you said is so aged, and their approach to combat really shouldn't be like a "*shrugs* well we tried *insert tab target*"
As for combat threads, if you went through my comment history like 60% of it is on combat lol
When I first got on the forum there was tons of combat threads, but since they've started making it a point to show combat changes people have understood that they're working on it so those threads became less frequent.
Makes sense LOL
But although BDO's combat is so much fun I end up quitting after 2.5 years & the main reason for that was because the game aside from some PVP events it played like a single player game, the main culprit of that was the combat, you can't create challenging PVE content with that kind of combat, every raid in this game was a clusterfuck of hundreds of players zerging a boss down, absolute borefest...
So what I wanna say in the end is that although action non-target free-aiming combat with spectacular effects could be really fun, if you wanna build a game that will have challenging & engaging PVE content then this kind of combat is a no-go, so it's up to them to find the perfect balance of fun, engaging, impressive & also capable to offer to players a challenging PVE experience like raids or some grind spot with elite mobs designed specifically for party play, after all it's of the outmost importance for players to have fun & challenging things to do together, because we are talking for an MMO you know, if people can do anything by themselves without the need of anyone else then what's the point of even start playing an MMORPG?
Hey thanks for your reply! with respect, i heavily disagree with you. i think i mentioned i've played a sizable amount of BDO, upwards of 200 hrs or more, and i can say with certainty that this combat can be implemented EASILY in a raid environment, but moreso, instance-based. Which Ashes Of Creation intends to include. i said earlier that the main thing BDO was really lacking in, was meaningful enemies, and to that extent, i meant, there was literally 0 avenues created to USE their fun combat system for something that felt good, there was world bosses ? but as you said 1000's of players stormed it at the same time, and it was a shit show. that's just an example of poor management. i've seen action based combat systems alike BDO being implemented in 10 times smarter ways. BDO seems to think they don't need to like innovate or add any like... Enemies that involve employing their really good combat system to a challenging level. it just seems like they're okay with keeping their game grinding meaningless mobs, and not really many "bosses" which is basically just a big enemy with a big health bar that you spam your skills at anyways. BDO had wonderful effects, cool animations, etc.. but the company just fuckin dive bombed when it came to slightly deeper design. BDO is like arguably a Hack and slash game in my opinion. just feel good animations thrown at weak mobs with really simplistic attacks.
And to that degree, the endgame content of BDO seemed to be... not playing the game at all? or pvp. it's been memed at as "AFK online" cause most of endgame content is spent just auto piloting the game playing itself.
I'm also against action non-target free-aiming combat, i think assisted targetting is essential to the "feelgood" aspect. if you don't have it the hitbox of skills changes from one to the other and it's just a game of getting used to how big it is, and throwing it in the direction of the enemies which feels pretty cheap and... bdo did a good JOB of it, i still think something like bns had a very good balance. in pvp, once you approach the target it becomes a game of who's better at USING Their skills. not a game of if you can conveniently place your enemy in the hitbox of your attack? LOL BnS still had things like this which were; AOE skills! but there's nothing wrong with having both. having skills used for wave clearing mobs, and targetting a specific enemy effectively. but it's foolish to just include, single target abilities, OR AOE abilities, their should be the incorporation of BOTH.
I think what needs to change in MMO's is that bosses need to match this high-pace combat - because people are still thinking of bosses as hunks of meat - and I'd argue that Monster Hunter is pushing bosses in the right direction.
That's why action combat won't work with current PvE mindset. The boss needs to be equally mobile.
This. Absolutely. The Bosses and complex mechanics in BnS are what put it a cut above BDO in every way. the Short frame window for CC abilities to be used collectively by the raid, the reaction speeds to a boss. the need to quickly react and iframe the bosses' attack rotation. kept you on your toes EVERY second. one screw up puts you at risk of dying, so the on your toes combat was exhilerating in a raid setting. and satisfactory when that boss fell to the ground.
My favourite combat system was ArcheAge and that's pretty much full tab.
Hey thanks for your Reply, i guess it's a manner of preference, i just looked up gameplay and, archeage looks like an exact copy of WoW, just looked up a video and not even a minute in, the guy said "the combat is Really similar to World Of Warcraft" LMFAO, and again tab targetting, is... just not my preference. i think we've seen way too many games use this same recycled style of combat again, and again, and again.
Depends what you mean by "very similar". They're both tab combat, but the combat is definitely not similar.
Hey man! i musta been watching the wrong video, this gameplay is much better than what i was watching! this is definitely the type of combat i'm looking for in a video game. fast paced. i stand more or less corrected and i love seeing the tab target system being employed in this way, thank you for sharing! it increases my optimism towards the tab target. again this employment of the tab target still seems to emulate what i'm really talking about which is mainly; Having the combat be inuitive, fluid, and fast paced. being in control of your character is my number one priority and i loved seeing that in this video, gg shit man. i started this thread to discuss and be open minded so thanks!
/s
LOL hi merek, the input is appreciated but i encourage you to be constructive! offer your input without sounding too condescending LOL, in essence, offer what you think you would LIKE to see, instead of just offering what you WOULDN'T like to see... i mean i still laughed cuz, you have a damn good point but, positivity at the forefront!
Combat really isn't implemented. Were supposed to be seeing more of it in the next few testing phases as the combat team was only created in the last couple months or so. That being said, the improvements shown in the most recent official video were great improvements over the same things shown previously and showed that IS is clearly listening and reacting to the threads about combat. I have high hopes for the future
As someone mentioned already there is gonna be a dev discussion around that topic soon. I‘d suggest you to prepare some references to the mechanics you are talking about and posting them there. Like in form of short gifs and some write up, that’s what im planning to do at least.
This thread centered the topic of action combat and agency a lot, that‘s why i want briefly mention that tab target/ rotation based combat hosts huge advantages as well.
I highly prefer action combat as well, because i mainly played PvP games in the last years.
But there is no way to deny that action target games completely failed at making proper PvE the encounters (except BnS). The reason for this is that designing bosses is much easier for rotation based combat in the context of bigger scales like dungeons and raids.
Rotation based combat has more of a strategic and timing component, by applying status effects on bosses, rather than just dodging some attacks to get back to faceroll the encounter.
This allows for coordination between players, high interdependencies because you need to fullfill your strategic role and deep boss mechanics that need to be studied by the raid before they can properly lay out their approach on how to navigate through the boss mechanics.
There is nothing paralleled to the encounter design of WoW, they understood to use the strategy component very good and i hope ashes hybrid combat can host that as well.