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.
Comments
Who does not like it when a game designer pulls off what they plan and execute it well. My exp is not irrelevant as most action hybrid games dont play well, like GW2. I cant wait to see the masses playing this game so I can judge better. As for not speaking my mind, I have and yet here we are. Action combat people vs tab targeting players on either side. Much like the OPs asking us not too. This is on IS to sell us what they are making. Here's hoping!
I feel like you ignored my whole argument and focused on a scenario you experienced in a tab game but haven't in an action one.
I don't know how positioning is any less important in an action game. Just because dodging is an option, doesn't mean you should be out in the opening. Positioning is a huge part of a lot of fps games. It's not like an action system means you can dodge everything with 100% accuracy.
Please, whatever tab targeting system you are thinking of, change all skills so they have to be aimed. Why would your positioning matter less in the action system than the tab one? If you still think it would, tell please tell me the tab game you are thinking of so i can go through it with you.
if you are talking about iframes then those aren't necessary for action or never can be included in tab.
So you are saying that when you say you don't like action combat, the designers are supposed to assume that you don't like the aspects you mentioned?
Are the things you mentioned, the only thing that makes a game an action combat game?
You do realize i'm not disagreeing with you, i just think you need to be more specific? As i have said, i also don't like dodging and skill spam. I just don't think saying you don't like action combat is too generic and doesn't help this conversation.
Im saying the things I listed are what I dislike in action combat. Its the crutch that action games seem to land on. Im also saying of my 23 odd years of MMOing. Hybrid combat systems rarely work out, thats what Ashes is heading for. They fail for more reason then I have listed. Hybrid combat systems end up feeling flaky. Of the MMOs I have played, pure tab targeting MMOs have been my favorite. Its why I am always on the look out for a new tab targeting MMO. Lastly, Im almost 50 and action style combat is hard on the wrist. So my play times end up being shorter on that style of game. You wanted specific, there is more. I could write a wall of text on this subject but it will matter little. IS is already running in a direction. Hybrid Action MMO. Hope they pull off the landing.
None of them are wrong and none of them are right and everyone has a very opinionated opinion about them.
Ok, you were right about people on here calling the hybrid combats of GW2 and ESO action combat I concede that point Mr. "Adult".
If you think GW2 is all about spamming cooldowns you haven't really played much of it even though you say you have. It's a gross oversimplification. Maybe in PvE that is the case in the majority of the more lax content. In PvP half your skills are used in reaction and you save them for specific scenarios and such. Of course there are a select few classes (much like any game has) that do spam abilities so I'll get that out there before you rail on me for that.
I could just as easily as you say Vindictus is just spamming your abilities to keep enemies in hitstun.
And Vindictus does not have large-scale battles. People keep bringing up examples of action combat in games that do not do Massively Multiplayer. The biggest issue (not a unsolveable one mind you) with Action combat is getting it to work in a "more than 10-person battle" setting. I personally think Action combat in a Massively Multiplayer Online game CAN work if done well, but it requires a very good system and the rest of the game needs to also suit it.
Uhm, no I *chose* to list one in particular. Another is Black Desert which pulled it off arguably better than Vindictus. Just unfortunately was a shallow game. Certainly on the fence but PSO2 as well. See, what you’re not understanding is the reason MMOs are still to this day trying to go tab target is because they’re expensive to make and so they usually just copy WoW because it was, without question, the most popular MMO of all time. If I recall, there hasn’t been another MMO with actual action combat besides Vindictus, BDO, and Revelation online (maybe, I don’t really remember much from my time playing it). I’ve never seen another MMO with the style of combat outside of those I’ve just listed for you. Everything else is Tab or Tab-lite (what you guys call hybrid). And again, the OG plan was always a hybrid system, not tab. Idk when you backed but I’ve been a backer since the first days of Kickstarter and that’s one of the selling points that got me to back. And to clarify, when I backed, I was under the impression that a “hybrid” system would yield good action combat as well as tab combat, so all players could be happy. It’s only been over the past year or so that I’ve become worried that Steven’s definition of hybrid is essentially Guild Wars 2. Which can’t even accurately be called hybrid because the only aspect of “action” is the ability to dodge. All skills auto target or are AOE templates on the ground. And furthermore all skills are on your hotbar, nothing is combo’d.
My other example I like to use is Black Desert Online. Which does in fact have true action combat in a “Massively Multiplayer” setting. Hundreds of players can and do participate at once in large battles. The place where BDO falls short is everything else besides combat. There’s not really a PvE experience outside of mob grinding, and the life skills are bland to say the least. It’s a shallow game. But it can’t be argued that the combat system is anything but excellent. All I’m wanting is for AoC to give a tab style of combat for the tab crowd and give us action players actual action combat. That’s what I backed for and that was the interpretation I think a lot of others also had when they backed.
Splitting up combat in an attempt to please both parties will only end in failure. It's either lean in one direction, or make them hybrid target. Having some TT and some Action Target abilities will be confusing and unintuitive.
Because we're forced to have at least 25% of either, we're essentially going to be forced to switch back and forth between action camera mode and tab target camera. I'm sure you can see how that's not ideal.
Those are some pretty bold statements, almost a dismissal of the hybrid combat as a whole, especially when we don't have the finished product for proper measure or possible comparison to other hybrids like GW2 which did their combat very well.
Aren't we all sinners?
I don't think this is how it will pan out at all.
I don't even see how someone could think this is how it will turn out.
Because they've shown in the dev streams that they even have a hotkey for swapping between action cam and regular MMO cam. Also because they said that you will be forced to have at least 25% of tab target or action on your skill bar, and action combat skills require an action camera to aim (unless we're considering ground-traveling projectiles or ground-target AoE's as action skills, which they usually aren't considered as such)
Tbh I'M surprised people think you won't have to do that.
GW2 ESO and Wildstar had true hybrid combat, everything Intrepid has shown so far has hinted that they are having two separate systems you swap between.
Yea but that was just once and he's not the combat dev team. He also at that time said it in a way that implied that he thought ground target aoe's were the pinnacle of MMO action combat, though that could have been me misreading him.
Player A wins the vast majority of fights against Player B in an action combat game.
Player B has mastered the tactical aspects of combat and skills of his class in a tab target game. Player A is average skill in the tactical aspects of skill rotation, timing etc.
Player B wins the vast majority of fights against Player A in a tab target game.
It's two different skillsets. In general I'd say action takes "more" skill. Consistently aiming good is hard. The drawback of aim/action based games is that the game becomes 90% about aim. With the bottleneck of having to aim removed though, the game becomes more of a thinking man's game. You can't just out aim someone to death. However, in an action game with 2 players with equal and godly aim going up against each other, the difference between them then becomes how good they are at playing that thinking man's game. So the pendulum swings back.
Both types take a lot of skill. There is a lot of skill gap in both types as well. Action may take a bit more skill. But they're both very valid skillsets. Just depends on what type of game the developer wants to make. I just hope Intrepid doesn't make the mistake of trying to please both but pleasing neither. But I'm confident they'll nail it eventually, whatever path they go with.
He may not be on the combat development team, but he is telling the combat development team what to develop.
A point to keep in mind - Ashes of Creation is Stevens game. The rest of us are just here for the ride.
You're right of course, but he's not creating the entire game himself. He oversees everything and makes the final decisions yes, but he's one man.
Like Jeff Kaplan, he is the spokesperson and a main lead, but he doesn't know or control everything about his game either.
He has written a several thousand page design document for the game.
While he may not control every single aspect, things like what is considered an action combat ability are right up there in the realm of things he will have control of.
In terms of risk vs reward, I understand AC has more risk, but, if you gimp TT skills too much then those who do TT will be put off.
The original post was on the subject of whether hitting lots of buttons quickly counts as skill, if I have summarized correctly.
I understand that the feel of the combat is vitality important and everyone has their own preferences, but the AC vs TT debate is focused on individuals. It is not even the full skillset required for combat in an MMO. Working as a team, being a team player, managing a team with varied personalities. Those are the skills that will determine group success in combat. But then, it's not even as simple as that as combat "success" ties in with other MMORPG elements.
Outside of combat you also need to acknowledge the skills required to run a guild to make sure that resources are efficiently manipulated so that the guild is wealthy and guild members have good gear.
Outside of the game you also need to acknowledge guild level negotiations in Discord (or similar).
Guild A with 80% efficient button pushers will rule over Guild B with 100% efficient button pushers, simply because Guild A was more skillful at negotiating in Discord such that Guild B is beset on all sides by enemies.
Guild B might be awesome in battle, but they will lose the strategic war and all it took was skillful communication.
So, I've added nothing to the AC vs. TT debate, but I hope that I have highlighted that there are skills that some may have overlooked.
You're right, we have been going off-topic with the AC vs TT debate (myself included)
My OP wasn't supposed to be about AC vs TT, but instead about the intensity and tempo of the combat. So, let's look at the following example:
You have 2 classes, a Ranger and a Mage. Both classes deal the same dps, have the exact same stats and are both fully Tab Target. The Ranger needs to do 1 button press every second, whereas the Mage needs to do 1 button press every 2 seconds.
Does the Ranger require more skill to play than the Mage just because you have to press a button twice as much? I would argue no, neither one is harder than the other, they are just different playstyles.
That's my point here. You can offer a playstyle that requires less button clicks without "dumbing down" the gameplay.
Yes you can switch camera modes, but you are incorrectly assuming you will have to switch back and forth depending on the ability you’re casting. Sure, some projectile action skills will be far easier to aim in reticle mode, but that’s not every action skill. A tab player can stay in tab mode, an action player can stay in action mode. Both can use every skill. If you’re hardcore tab, you probably won’t take any projectile action skills for your 25% action. You’ll likely take some melee skills which don’t require aim, or some wide effect skills or even skills that don’t require aiming (think of the mage blink or the tank lockdown or whatever it’s called where he becomes next to invincible).