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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
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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.
Comments
Hi Fury Bladeborne! thanks for your reply, love the name~ huge fan of the souls series. praise the sun.
and yeah i'm sorta aware this is a widely discussed topic i just kind of want to keep this topic continuously trending and pumping out ideas so intrepid can get some inspiration or draw reference to some of the games that are exceeding players expectations, with some of the concurrent systems that may be relevant to AOC. someone came on here and really blew me away with Archeages implementation of the tab target system (@ Talents)
i think if i were to ask anything, it would be how you feel about the recent showcase of combat? to me watching it from stevens POV, him being CC'd looked like it really felt like shit. the tank cc'd him and steven was basically permanently incapacitated. the animation of falling to the ground seemed super lengthy and i feel like would leave a really shitty taste in my mouth if i was an AOC player that experienced that type of CC. the animation of falling to the ground, and getting back up, and etc.. is WAAAY too long. if there's ways to animation cancel this with perhaps an iframe skill? or Blade and soul had what was called a "tab skill" a guaranteed escape from a CC. pvp largely revolved around recognizing this tab skill as a threat, and players got good at manipulating their opponents with scare tactics to flush them into using their tab skill too soon. reserving further CC skills until after the use of tab. i can probably find a gif/link as to what i'm talking about soon. but let me know your thoughts! Cheers~
Hey Arsnn, thanks for the reply!
some really good points you made. the tab target system you're right, likely fits the bill better for AOC as most of their aspirations of a game will be far less hassling if they choose the tab target avenue. again, Agency is mostly important to me as you mentioned. pacing as well. WoW was great! but i feel really suffers from Aging. like the combat is pretty slow paced, and some may disagree... but i'm comparing it to my personal experiences when up against a game like BNS, which is extremely fast paced. most of it, is your right, rotational, etc... but the mechanics had a lot to do with, positioning, order of attack, and use of mobility skills (which function as invincibility frame skills concurrently.) i think with innovations to technology over the last decade, CPU speeds being multiples faster than from that time. we should be able to crank up the combat. while i think AOC is having a lot of REALLY interesting features, and AMAZING ideas. these idea's should not sacrifice the foundational aspects that make a game fun. it's like the argument between realism, and fun, it's a video game, and some immersion can be really cool! but fully immersive is kinda dumb cuz, i'm on the game to play a game, not emulate reality.
Please continue to provide feedback!
I agree with you that Action combat is "the future", but it still is not optimized yet because of the exaggerated disparity that lower ping advantage can provide for some people and that tab target/hybrid mitigates, also it is important to understand that "assisted targetting" can still be considerated a form of hybrid that helps to mitigate the need of perfect precision that true action requires.
Aren't we all sinners?
Hopefully enough of us say something on the next Dev Discussion because the thought of such a promising game having such bland and boring combat is tragic. Both for the genre and my poor wallet that already invested far more than it should have. The idea that if the boring GW2-esque combat doesn’t work out they would instead go in the direction of an even more boring and dated system is a scary one!
Hi James! Thanks for the reply. Tbh i really like the way you have it articulated here. it speaks much to what i'm sort of learning as this thread continues, I'm realizing combat systems aren't statically going to be atrocious just cause it's one or the other. if it's done well then that's really the important part. you do raise a good point about how in the current state of development for combat... it's a little too early to tell or to show the developers true intentions of the pacing, design, and implementation of what they're creating. for me i'm just weary of the tab as... i think a lot of players want to see a solid change in the way combat is approached. action combat was a step in the right direction i figure but not the all out solution, so maybe hybrid is? i think i'm definitely warming up to the idea. i really hate the idea of clicking on my targets with my cursor, as that can be so infuriating and redundant feeling, and i feel that feature really makes everything about the combat system feel like crap if the first player who could get their cursor right really has an advantage (in a pvp setting)
you are right though, Steven has mentioned about how important combat is and stated it as a priority, however my worry does come with the footage i've seen as of yesterdays developement (again we're still a LONNNNNNG road from finished so really not that worried) but i really didn't like what i was seeing when steven was CC'd. the animation looked lengthy, chunky, and the combat was just all around extremely slow and worrisome to say the least. and i get it. it's still really early. but the foundational aspects on what i'm seeing developed for the combat right now, i already think they need to start over, or the very start of it i'm just really hating the look of. but i don't want them getting TOO comfortable with like "well we've already worked on this fire ball so much, don't want to scrap it" like i want them to LISTEN first, to the feedback so i think as players we need to really lay the ground work for them and come up with a clear directive for where we want to see the combat go, and that's partly why i wanted to discuss this here openly.
I loved your points, and your input about ping mitigation, and the assist target being malleable into the hybrid interface. Excellent points and obstacles that is really a problem that needs to be solved from a developer standpoint. What things would they need to sacrifice in order to incorporate the delicate aspects that the combat systems require? excited to see some of these things come to life, and to see these concerns eventually addressed. they're really doing an amazing job at Intrepid so godspeed to them.
Hey Cypher! thanks for the reply!
Definitely! Vindictus was a recent game i had the pleasure of coming across when i was kinda doing my homework on the differences between tab target and action target. this game was extremely ahead of it's time for it's amazing implementation of the action combat. i didn't play much but it was very reminiscent of my experience with blade and soul and i'm 99% sure NCsoft got a lot of their inspiration for their combat directly from vindictus. The combat felt intuitive, fluid and diverse. with a wide range of combo's and interesting ways to employ the skills and get different results with the same abilities. mobility skills and targetting skills, approach skills, all with a VERY well balanced target assist. where it doesn't hold your hand but really helps some of your skills have a meaningful impact and let's you combo without really thinking much of how to hit your target, moreso about interesting skill usage.
I mentioned about the cursor in the above reply to a comment but, i think it's fair to say that i got into MMORPG's to get away from aiming and skillshots. combat should really be about skill usage and reaction. as well as a fundamental understanding of your abilities and how to use them effectively to achieve different results. if you incorporate a cursor, i really feel like the combat system becomes a feature of just having good aim at clicking targets which, basically just makes me want to quit. LOL
My Sentiments exactly in regards to BDO and the concerns of the old combat systems. i really think AOC is really ambitious with these ideas, but if the foundational motor function, movement, and pacing on the system that basically is the catalyst for which players interact with the world and it's various features, Tragic indeed would be an understatement! However, they're listening to us, and that's something. i've rarely felt hope for an MMORPG in my time and AOC is almost the only exception in the last decade of... ANY game for me, aside from the souls series which really captivated me.
Positivity at the forefront and i'm gonna keep replying to as many possible one of these so i can really just keep circulating these ideas. Cheers~
You can use flying skills in a good combination through the air and still use very well timed skills. archeage just doesn't make sense when you're getting oneshoot.
I read that fighting should go 30sec to 1 minute. in the last video that we were shown it was about 5-10 seconds until one of them was dead on the floor. I hope that the developers can still change a lot and improve it more in the direction of archeage combat only with a longer fight.
My original post is a little conceded and over saturated with fumbling trying to describe my preference and the features i liked about the Action Combat system in the game i enjoyed the most in this genre, so thank you all for your input and yeah i'm getting more comfortable here in the forums and understanding that the developement process is well underway. addressing some of the concerns. it may come off as extremely impatient or... ignorant if i'm trying to slash some of the idea's early on, i'm just being overly critical as i really want to see this succeed and have faith in the Intrepid team to do this. i don't want the devs taking anything personally and their work is so valuable to us. (Talking to you old fireball animation, sorry whoever designed that, we just tryna help)
Keep this goin !! Cheers hope everyone is safe during this time~
Hey Patsoid! thanks for the reply!
interesting take on their being an optimal duration of fight. i guess it's true that drawn out fights can be a little exhausting, and too short can feel cheap or unfair/overpowered. Archeage did have some cool mobility mechanics that i really felt added such an element of fun to the tab target. been watching videos about it since yesterday, cool stuff!
BnS suffered from the same thing of just like, whales kinda scaling too hard in a pvp setting and just one shot you if you didn't swipe your credit card hard enough for a quarter of the gear some people had. pretty rediculous shit in the late game. top guild monopolized an entire event. one of the events that was supposed to generate enough gold and resources to flood the market and bring down prices of expensive upgrade materials. never happened due to the gear disparity brought about by pay to win. :^) Server wide level of materials got into the hands of a single guild and the game sure took a nose dive since then.
Hi Cklio, I know that the combat animations are not up to being a full game and personally, I am not worried about it yet. In the most recent livestream, Steven talked about their focus on getting higher player concurrencies and resolving networking issues. It seems apparent that the current focus is on making systems run with players on the server. Things that you can do in the game like combat will become more of a focus as the servers become able to run with live players. I am looking forward to seeing where they go with combat in the next few months though.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Talk:2021-02-26_Livestream
(Search concurrencies to find Steven's reference in the transcript)