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A Dev Discussion and maybe poll for "Floaty" combat vs "Motion lock" combat
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack
Watching the monthly dev update rn and Steven talked about the early combat motion and the current, floaty vs restrictive.
I think it's an important topic and we should give focused feedback on this.
I think it's an important topic and we should give focused feedback on this.
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We must let the developers' point of view mature, they have to find their exact point between fluidity, speed, beauty and capacity.
I don't think damage ranged classes should have an absolute range advantage in all situations. I think it makes sense to force them to pay a mobility cost to do more damage sometimes. It leaves some room open so there can be that one good kiting class with little mobility penalty.
There is always a degree between restrictive or free. It's never the right answer to do either one too much. However, there is a chance that there are classes that may have ridiculous control limitations or Absolute free control classes. It's important to leave weaknesses in classes so you can counter them when it is your time to do so.
It's why everyone hates rogues in WoW. There is little to no restriction for that class at all, and they can go invisible forever leaving them to always engage in their favor. The class should realistically have control locks to leave them open so you can actually hit them, but the game does not. WoW in general has poor control balance. The fact there is no downside to moving behind people constantly like an asshole proves that there are flaws in the system.
I don't think it would be a bad thing to at least lock everyone in place when they are doing attacks. If they aren't locked then by natural law it should do less damage. Not including class unique traits, but they should always be referenced when making classes like that as well.
U.S. East
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1038169979?t=01h45m25s
Now that they've tried both ways, I'm really interested to see their second-take at split body animation!
If they can find a way to coordinate it without combat feeling floaty, we're in a good place.
I think this concern applies particularly to heavy weapons.
Kinda weird if you can walk in circles while swinging a greataxe without movement penalty.
Idea off the top of my head comes from Overwatch. Where some hero’s move slower when firing.
Would make sense if when your basic attacking you move at a reduced speed.
Would cause issues in keeping up with fleeing enemies though, so it’s hard to find the right solution.
Difficulty keeping up with fleeing enemies makes sense though - most games call it kiting.
maybe they can add passive skills that reduce your movement penalty while casting/firing.
I don't like having resistance while fighting an opponent and then pushing forward uncontrollably once the opponent is downed.
Anyway I have a question about mobility. Can the weapon attack be done while moving? Because if not there is no much sense in pvp. It should be possible to do it while you move around.
The weapon skill moves you forward through the functions. It is quite a bad mechanic because if you do not press against the foe, you will move beyond the foe and have to realign. It is not the same as physically moving your toon because there is a distinct lack of control.
In my opinion, BDO combat is floaty. I understand people say BDO combat is the pinnacle of Action Combat but the mobs are trivial, the PvP is about iFrames and the classes are designed to be hyper mobile. I dislike BDO combat and I hope we do not have BDO styled combat in Ashes.
If you immersion guys got your way we would be stuck in first person stumbling around like a toddler who just found out they could use a broom like a spear.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I'd like to have a combat system that feels fluid, dynamic, and fun. MMORPGs where animations stuck you and don't allow you to move freely end up feeling clunky.
Every attack has the same vfx styles and a lack of sensory impact.
Somehow, it feels more immersive to me to see the full body of my character, but that's because I want it to feel like a movie or TV show...and those are rarely in first person.
Also, I like to know that there is a mountain lion clawing me in the back while I'm fighting the mob in front of me.
I'm wondering if you're going to be able to weave together spells in fun rotations or if its more LoL style where its more about spaced out uses of a smaller variety of abilities
We start with Judgment...which has a fairly quick cooldown - I think even quicker than before on Thursday.
We also have a heal surge. Just realized I'm not even sure what it's called.
After we put 10 points into those, I think that opened up...
Castigation - slower cooldown but also has a small heal over time in addition to damage.
And heal that is a HoT. I don't know the name of that one either.
I like to start with Castigation, Judgement when I can, then Q spam until Judgment is free, Judgment, then Q spam until Castigation is free...and start over.
I'll hit the heal surge if I need it, but typically I don't need it.
Combat isn't really balanced right now, so kind of hard to gauge, but, yeah...there are some slower cooldowns.
We only have a small amount of abilities right now.
Raids we are boosted to level 15. I had 9 abilities at Level 15, but I stood on the periphery while we fought the Fire Dragon and fairly leisurely chose abilities based on whether I felt like doing damage or it seemed like an AoE heal was needed.
At that point, I mostly just cycled between Divine Censure and Holy Ground.
if you had to estimate the global cooldown what would you guess? (.5s, 1s, 1.5s?)
do you feel like you are waiting for abilities to come off cd often?
Judgment was pretty quick...maybe 3 seconds?
Castigation might be 10 seconds?
But, I'm not a DPS person. And seconds didn't really matter in terms of killing stuff.
Prior to Thursday, I was waiting a tiny bit for a second Judgment.
Castigation, Judgment, Q Spam a bit, Judgment, Q Spam a bit. Typically the mob would be dead before a second Castigation.
So, waiting for a second Castigation, but it's really kinda overkill.
Thursday kinda seemed maybe there was no cooldown on Judgment. It seemed to be available whenever I wanted to use it.
If so, I can't understand why they did it. Why can't it be like a normal hit without that weird mechanic?
I'm going to be super honest. BDO combat at first looks impressive, and they certainly have some of the best animators in the world, but the actual combat interaction is not that good.
I don't know if english have a similar expression to "feed the eyes", "eye candy" perhaps?
If you see beyond the shallow beautiful animations and a thousand particle effects is not that engaging experience.
People think is good because THEY look good.
Animations are so good, even the worst pvper looks good.
Psychology trick:
Humans have this ilogical natural tendency to jump and correlate something that make them look with good quality.
Not meant to direspect or say it's invalid anyone enjoying BDO, just inviting a further exploration of gameplay behind the beauty of over-the-top animations and particle effects.
Personally, gameplay > pretty animations
They made the change because people claimed Apoc Combat was too 'floaty' so they added 'weight' and 'motion lock' into the dynamic combat to make it feel more 'weighty' except they crossed a barrier which is don't make static, clunky combat. Apoc combat was good, what sucked in Apoc was the classless, low health, armour buff approach rather than building a toon for the combat.
Slayer
Berserker
2011 game combat.
Fluid but not floaty.
Animations are very over the top and what that means is that they're distracting and too long. Animations from your spells should not distract you, you should be busy watching your opponents and making decisions on animation cancelling, your cooldowns etc, when you float up and get covered in flames for a spam-able spell, it is very distracting and takes up too much of the screen with movement and effects. You know you're casting fireball, you just pressed the damn button. The mage laser is a great example, the laser spell effect is huge on top of the mage who casts it and thins out... Instead it should be modest at the point the mage casts it, thin out as it goes farther and show a mini explosion on hit targets every 0.5s to show you are doing damage to the target. In general spell effects should be maximal at the location where the spell takes effect, not where it is cast from. Animations will be less of a problem in general the more you get used to it but for players seeing this for the first hundred times (aka everyone at the moment) it's way too much.
The usual counter-argument is that your opponents need to see what you cast in a recognizable way to respond to it. Yes that's true and other MMOs solve it with cast bars that you can read and clear animations. But clear does not need to be theatrical. Clear color cues, audio, and subtle visual effects are sufficient. Yes clarity is important but a part of playing any game is getting better and mastery and learning subtle animations and what spells they correspond to is a part of that.
Cast times seem good honestly but with the animations they feel really long and over the top. Having more subtlety in the animations and having them be more stable/stationary will help with how combat feels. Casting a fireball in WoW has the same animation for the duration of the cast, a focused arrow shot doesn't require a backflip and floating with green fairies doing cartwheels around you, it requires a maintained notched arrow. The god damn kamehameha is stationary. I think being able to predict when the impact of your spell occurs with some stable build up "feels good". When people listen to music, they want to predict the crescendo to head bang to. Players want to say BOOM as their big spell hits and see a big number pop up. A stable animation build up will make cast times feel better.
Summary: reduce visual clutter by A. reducing your character's movement and spell effects on top of your character B. make animations more subtle (use color and audio well) and trust players will learn them through play. Make cast animations stable (same animation for the duration of the cast) and give players a cast bar (opponents don't need to see it) to make the impact predictable and allow for decisions about cancelling your cast.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I have had this question since 2019, why they change it?!
And now I have the answer.
"Floaty" and "weight" are super vague terms.