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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
Exactly.
As big a part of my life as old school RPGs and Table-Top gaming has been. I might not play any computerized RPGs anymore if the genre did not move forward.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I'm also not trying to anything against your thread/feedback. If it came off that way, i'm sorry. My first comment was just trying to add an idea to the conversation. If this is about the comment regarding action camera mode (z) then i can amend that to say that i currently don't think there should be a benefit to using it beyond being able to aim your free aim skills.
No worries, it didn't come across that way at all.
My goal is slightly different so I totally get it. The other Combat Discussion thread, for example, many of the original posters that the framework came from never actually came back to it, and there are other people who only visit occasionally, and I wouldn't want that 'missed out'.
I guess they'd show up much more when the Visual NDA lifts, but since the full Alpha-1 was pushed back, it just ended up getting squirrely and possibly they might miss it. Anyway...
The idea of 'the highest rank of a (pinpoint) skill making it into an Action Target skill and also adding the final extra damage and effect' came to mind, but I'm not sure that's what you were actually saying?
From what i've seen I agree with previous comments I think it's going to be like GW2 combat in some respects, mostly tab with some actions style parts to it, and action for tab abilities if you want it. But there's a strange expectation that I'll go full action and roll everyone with my superior skills but it just won't play out like that, tab will still be just as relevant.
Also people thinking this tab style doesn't have skills, havent played GW2 arena, some of the high level players will roll you everytime, it's just not an FPS skills but you still need to use your dodges, skills, movement effectively.
I already blew my top in an old thread to point out that Action Targetting is inherently more difficult than tab targetting by an entire dimension (or axis, or degree of freedom, or whatever you want to call it) and I believe higher risk deserves compensation. This is inherently obvious in the way that Javelin works in tab vs action.
What confuses me is: I was under the impression that action combat skills would be distinct from tab target skills?
So currently javelin is pretty clunky to use in Action Combat - and I just assumed this was because it isn't designed to be used in action combat, right? Otherwise there is enormous disadvantage to using action combat.
We know Jeff said AC would be compensated by reduced RNG - that's ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways: my interpretation was that AC is being given advantage here.
To pick a number from the Original Post, I pick 4.
It feels cheap to me to give straight stats/bonus effects just because someone is playing AC.
As I said, I thought the AC skills would be distinct to the TT ones, so there would be no "direct" comparison to make.
Another alternative is to integrate repositioning into AC skills - because AC players are inherently more attuned to positioning than TT because it matters a lot more for an AC player. This also doesn't really change how a TT player plays because TT targetting follows you no matter where you move.
This debate is really similar to Manual vs Automatic cars.
- automatics have 2 pedals, a [P] mode and super smooth gear changes (most)
- manuals have a clutch + gearbox that gives you greater control - allowing you to drift, do weird acceleration stuff, etc. but also means you can stall, burn out your clutch, over-rev etc.
In the case of the Javelin, its a super hard cc ability with range, imo this is to strong to be TT. The opponent dsnt have enough option to play around and its garanteed that he will lose control over his character. But a skillshot Javelin is more fair to the target and more hype to the user when hits.
An ability with TT, i think has to have some drawback. A TT hard cc should be mele range, so the user has to get close to the target, this creates an intresting game between the user and the target, and feels rewarding and fair to cc some1 cuz i successfully won the gap closing game.
And then u can choose what will u put on the bar: the high risk high reward AC skill (when u hit its hot, but u can miss), or the more reliable TT with other kind of drawback.
There will be RNG and character stat comparison, so someone with high Evade will still have a chance to Evade.
Skillshot gives more control to the players.
Tab target is also "fair" - the player skills are just different:
Character building skills vs player twitch skills.
The "hype" for either can be high, but player twitch skills are more physically immersive and help players physically "feel" their characters more than pure computational calculation.
I'd moreso expect it to be something like:
Rank 1 Tab Target Javelin with no real CC
Rank 2 Action Combat Javelin with some CC
Rank 3 back to Tab Target Javelin with some weaker but similar CC.
If it went the other way, with the Action Combat version coming in at Rank 3, even if you made it so that the Evasion stat was factored much less, this still seems like a 'punishment'. You pay more Skill Points (which, btw, are quite precious right now as of current build) to get a skill that misses because of you instead of because of stats, but this creates a gap between 'good' PvE builds and 'good' PvP builds.
Alternately it could cause a ripple effect in 'how mobs are designed', and I've actually seen that in quite a few games. Mobs are dumbed down or worse, less affected by CC or skills, purely so that PvP abilities make more sense. I don't expect Ashes to take this route, but it's because I don't expect this, that I'm worried for the Action Combat fans.
I think we all, also, have some 'interest' in the team not spending massive amounts of time overhauling small bits with 'cascading complaints', which is what I hope we can come together and 'help them skip'.
Development time is actually one of the most precious resources they have, even if we as a community, have the majority opinion of 'take your time, make it great', if even a single 'majority' or even 'consensus' can save them a 'test' of an unwanted medium-sided idea, this saves literally weeks of man hours.
I say this as someone whose primary job for years was 'estimating and assigning development time for tasks and QA of the result'. We are talking massive time savings here.
You want to go back to QA only when your implementation isn't doing exactly what is described, not because it causes another problem somewhere else. And you want to go back to the drawing board as little as possible.
The only way you're avoiding anything is if you manually dodge it, there is no 'evade' skill. You can't grind your dodge chance in the corner of the map and become invincible. All of your posts are delusional. I recommend you go away, play some games that require more than increasing numbers to be an effective combatant. But if you're so cemented in your beliefs of these RNG combat systems, go and play a game that requires them to give a false sense of depth, such as Runescape.
My Cleric still Evades attacks in the Alpha One Preview while I'm standing still in the midst of combat.
That is most likely coming from my DEXTERITY stat - which can be increased with skill points and likely with gear: Physical Evasion Bonus
I haven't said anything about being invincible.
"The question was will there be RNG elements to combat relating towards specific stats such as critical hits, evasion, blocking chance... and the answer to that is: Yes. There will be those elements available in the game."
---Steven
Also:
"RNG is always going to play a role in Ashes of Creation whether that be in PvP or PvE, but one way to mitigate that is through the action system. The action system is going to be far less sort of dependent on those you know dice rolls and there'll be far more in your own hands. They won't ever completely eliminate that but it's a way for us to sort of reward skilled play versus sort of tactical strategies type play.
---Jeffrey
And Larian is trying to make us return to those dark boring times. I'm glad bioware saved us from that calamity and I hope Owlcat will save us this time around xD
What is worst is that the term RPG has no set definition when it comes to video games. People trying to box game designers in with their personal arbitrary definitions of "RPG" is not good for anyone. Especially not people who want the games they buy to be good.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I hear ya.
What annoys me even more than that, though, is that the term 'good' has no set definition when it comes to video games. People trying to box game designers in with their personal arbitrary definitions of 'good' is not good for anyone. Especially not people who want the games they buy to be RPGs.
Please elaborate.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
EDIT: Even New World, which is action combat, had to implement a type of tab targeting to healing because it just couldn't work well in an MMO setting without it. It's a pipe dream to think that you can have every skill be a choice between action and tab and have things be balanced. The decision needs to be made for each skill by the developers, and players will just gravitate to the class/skill combos that feel comfortable to them.
TERA has some spells that are tab target, and those spells are appropriate to be tab target, but I would prefer action combat take precedence over tab.
Role Playing:
The first requirement here is that a role can be defined, and it implies choice. Paladins and Overwatch are game in which I play different roles depending on the map, but we do not consider these RPGs.
In Paladins we can make choices of 'passives' and slots. They look like the current Ashes ones. Technically Paladins has more passives than Ashes right now, and they're better tuned. This is still not 'an RPG'.
Persistence is the first part. The second part is 'being able to choose how to play your role'. There is some benefit to your role being somewhat divorced from your physical skill at something, for these. This is debatable in terms of if it 'makes a game less of an RPG', but there is a benefit. I've seen arguments in this thread that the 'game shouldn't be catered to players who can't all be good'. This is obvious, but misleading. A 'Ten Word Answer. You can't just 'make things so hard that only 1% of people can do them', either. Or rather, if you do, expect a strange world.
The overall difference between Paladins and Ashes is that Paladins can entirely gate your ability to fulfill your role behind mechanical skill that is directly opposed by the mechanical skill of your opponent, and RPGs as they have been generally defined until now, do not require this. You can decide 'that definition is not suitable', but the thing is that we have other 'names' for those games. MOBA, Fighting Game, Space Combat Simulator, Action (Hunting), etc.
Ashes is foremost a Fantasy MMORPG.
The games that have generally made the player's role dependent on their mechanical skill and minimized the effects of stats, have reduced the 'role' aspect heavily to the point where some people might be tempted to say 'enough is enough, draw the line, stop calling these games MMORPGs to trick me into buying them'. (I don't have a better way of wording this, if you nitpick on this I will ignore it as a bad faith argument).
The player still plays a role, but because everyone else's choices directly impact their ability to fulfill that role (unlike a single Player RPG), and the choice made can entirely 'gate' the choices the player makes into uselessness, your 'role' can be outright deleted. This is why metas in MMOs exist. This is why builds, even decent ones, get sidelined. Other players have decided, either through direct opposition, or ostracism, that 'you are not allowed to fulfill that role' or 'you are not allowed to fulfill that role in that way'. Single player RPGs can do this much less.
I consider Paladins good. I consider Elite Dangerous good. I consider Guilty Gear games good, I consider Monster Hunter games good. I love all these games, the challenge, the skill of maneuvering, etc.
And I don't consider any of these games RPGs. And I definitely don't consider any of them to be good as RPGs.
But right now (in this stage of development specifically, not saying anything about the design concept) they are all unfortunately better RPGs than Ashes, if we open up that definition.
I can 'choose my build', choose my stats, choose how I will focus on interacting with my opponent and my teammates, and then apply mechanical skill against my opponents, and with the exception of Guilty Gear (yet sorta not, which is dependent on grinding out combos, the equivalent of 'gear') I can do all this better than I can in Ashes because the main RPG systems aren't in yet.
If Ashes builds such that Action Combat can bypass 'build stats' or pigeonhole people into specific enough builds, then those games, particularly Paladins, will continue to be 'better RPGs than Ashes', if you reject the above definition. Because the persistence aspect will mean that not only are the less practiced players relegated mostly the 'role' of 'serf fodder to amuse the warlords', they will end up persistently so.
Where you have a pool of skills per class and you can choose do entirely AC or TAB or Mixed. Normally AC skills have more range, more dps, if is a cc or dbuff stay for a longer time... If is tab can´t dodge but have less range, less dps , obvious that you have some exception but is balanced that way, i mean hope every class have alot of skills to build something more ac oriented or tab oriented and make everyone happy
I don't think so. That's the point of the question. I think technically that means your answer is '3'.
Fun. A different way to activate skills. That's it.
Maybe a bit faster because you don't need to acquire a target first, but having to aim counter that in a way.
Let individual players decide what they prefer. No need to force either ways of activating skills. No need to balance a skill because it can only be used one way. Some skills or situations may make tab targeting more logical to use, and sometime the same skills will be better applied by action combat.
"1. Sideways and forward animations for the Q/LMB to add variety and evasion ability, along with chase options, while either neutral Q/LMB or S+Q/LMB prevents any forward movement while attacking.
2. A Brace option that reduces damage and blocks CC unless the enemy has 'Overwhelm' on their ability. Some stamina cost here.
3. Possibly a small stamina cost for some versions of those directional Q abilities so we can have movement but not eternally.
4. Gated strings with different attack animations (we already have a combo attack like this, but some posters have asked for more variety)
5. Limitations on the usability of certain skills when the enemy is out of its attack cone, regardless of your Tab Target.
6. 'Sticky reticle' behaviour to enhance targeting, possibly assisting with the Tab Targeting itself, but not requiring it, to make the transitions between Tab and Action easier
7. Ability to dodge twice before Dodge Cooldown fully triggers (Dodge retains a stamina cost). E.g. Dodge once and it 'recharges your first dodge' but you have another you can always use. Dodge twice and now you can't dodge again until recharged.
8. Some telegraphs of the attack vector or cone of abilities (especially those that can be varied through augments)
9. A stamina cost tied to jumping (perhaps only when weapons drawn). Note, not universal, this has a dissenter in this thread, and others that don't want it without some equivalent of #1.
Unrelatedly, is it just me or does Q seem like an odd Keybind for this? Why is Interact, a thing one hits in non dangerous situations, on E, but attack on Q? I know other games do this and I've never understood it.
It's pretty irrelevant if they open up keybind edits soon, but it may be hard to get unbiased data this way...
Anyways, let me know how this one is. Reasonings aren't included today."
I'm going to be honest, tracking what's in your head is a bit difficult because how indepth you're thinking so I'll try my best.
1) The best form of evade is that dodge roll is an iFrame, however it needs to be drawn from resource pool imo. I think that if they tie that resource pool to active block and parry it'll be fine. Directionals are always a plus.
2) This ties into the first one, I think active block should eat away the resource and every blow an extra bit of resource. Tied into dodge roll and or parry. Block for sword and board, parry for other weapons.
3) Eh, maybe on the sprint feature, put the sprint on a separate resource pool.
4) I'm not sure what gated strings mean, I see a gate with a bunch of yarn behind it.
5) I'll touch back on this at the bottom of my post.
6) " "
7) Make dodging expensive.
8) Visceral effects, is what we call this in psychology as it related to your eyeballs being able to track movement.
9) Yes.
When I relate Conqueror's Blade, Darkfall, and TERA being the best three to pull from, it's' important to understand that using a reticle to lock on targets is still tab target, it's simply just mouse-over.
I do not think Ashes of Creation will stand to benefit from traditional tab target, however I think it'll stand to benefit from "Tab Tracking" by being able to highlight the object of a players attacks. Whether it be another player, a boss, etc. This would make the action combat and mouse-over tabbing a lot easier to do.
Conqueror's Blade has really good combo systems if pulled off right, which can be used as an influence for keeping weapons separate from classes. It also has some skills that breaks things like block, for instance a spear user can kick their spear into a blocking player and it'll disable block for some short amount of time.
Darkfall also has an ability like this where block is disabled and put on a timer. Though more so tied into class skills rather than weapon ability.
As far as cost goes, there is a limit to how much a player can dodge and block in Conq Blade, Darkfall, and TERA. It's not infinite as it should be here, but I much prefer seeing an active parry on non sword and board users rather than a block to make it more skill based.
There would be retaliatory effects after a successful parry or dodge roll depending on the weapon. Just a thought.
TERA used the Unreal engine, so I know for a fact that mouse-over tab mechanics work extremely well, this would be more beneficial to Ashes of Creation rather than traditional tab and it would force players to use more intelligent movement.
Darkfall uses line, cone, and AoE heals there are no mouse-over lock ons, which I do not think Ashes would benefit from, I do think that tab heals so as much as they are mouse over are going to be a requirement for certain abilities.
Conq Blade players get their own form of heal via a bandage mechanic, which Ashes would stand to benefit from bandages being in the game. Simply make the action of using a bandage take away from the same resource pool that other defensive reactive abilities would use.
That being said, I do not feel weapon abilities should get their own button, I do agree that weapons need to be movement + action, rather than just a one button press ability.
To give examples, using a shield after blocking could be a step forward followed by a button press for a shield bash, concussing the target.
A spear could parry followed by a lunge to hit the target and cause a bleed effect or a gore effect which makes bleeds hit harder.
ESO and GW2 did a bunch right and a bunch wrong, but I want to highlight something ESO did that I absolutely despise.
Snipe, as soon as you hit snipe the skill would follow people like a homing missile; I do not feel like that should be the case here. I think the gameplay should feel more rewarding for landing an actual snipe.
Anyway, I hope they lean heavy on the action combat side and free aiming abilities and mouse over for tab with tab tracking.
This game will benefit more from not being a generic tab target.