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
Exactly, if you are performing an ability, the damage should be directed to the way your character is facing during the animation execution to some degree.
If you did not hit any target(s) in your focal point allowance in relation to hit boxes, then your ability did not connect with the target(s).
If your ability landed between two targets or pierced through targets like a spear lunge, then so be it.
In the example you had with throwing a spear, it should be where your character is facing at the point of the throw at the end of the animation within reason/allowance.
The only classes I see (based on my lack of knowledge in regards to healing mechanics intended) are the healers that may utilise the classic target for a focus point.
There may be situations where they would want to select their target versus an aoe heal ability, potential for ground targets, chain heals etc.
I think a majority of the mechanics in relation to melee and range should be free aim and ground target mechanics (if intended in design for arrow volleys and spells a-like).
TBH, I'm not entirely sure. I'm still waking up for the day, lol.
I'm only basing my opinions off the videos as I'm not in the tests (yet?
I think the pace at which the 2handed weapon showed had a lot more weight to it than what I have seen with the one handed variation which has been presented a lot more.
In regards to the size of the sword of the 2handed, it looked like it would be better suited for a 1 handed broad sword style.
I wonder if we will get a toggle option to use a majority of weapons as a 1 handed or 2 handed.
I think there's some problems that can be addressed with the weight. I'll use the sword as the prime example of the weight problems.
So I think that taking an emphasis off of really fast attack speed will help quite a bit, but let's examine a little bit of physics.
When a sword is swung, it starts out slower at the beginning of the swing, peaks in the middle and then (and this is the most important part) it slows down at the end. You are slowing down to put the sword away or change directions or you have an intermediatory movement to redirect the weight of the sword.
At the end of the day the energy has to be transferred somewhere and it's not going to stop instantaneously without another force directly acting upon the blade. (Such as hitting stone)
The back to back cutting animations with no intermediatory or precursor movements creates this very odd "floatiness" on top of the constant velocity from start to finish on the sword. It feels like it has no weight, because the sword swing literally defies the laws of physics.
Consider sword drill exercises:
This will be a great animation reference for swords in particular, but the same design philosophy can be applied to most weapons.
Another animation reference for direct animations that are an improvement upon what ashes has is this:
Notice the slow down before and after strikes as the character transfers their own energy into the sword.
I think that's enough confusion from my part for now. Hopefully that helps in some way.
Addon Developer
OG Backer
I strongly hope that free motion will be at least the dominant type of attack. There is justification for there being strong, rooted, slow skills available.
•Attacks that force you to move forward would require you to constantly stop attacking in order to backpedal so that you do not pass by your enemy that may also be lunging forward to attack.
•Immobility while waiting for casts without any amount of control is simply not as satisfying as having constant agency.
•Free movement allows for constant re-adjustment of your aim, which results in more reaction and a more intense and fast-paced fight.
•Being able to move/strafe to position yourself is a core part of combat, especially in PvP. Moving out of attacks and trying to get behind your enemy is crucial to skilled PvP.
Let us remain alert in combat, reacting to what is happening while factoring in positioning and quick strategy. You may be able to get prettier animations while rooted, but a combat system that feels and functions better is far superior than one that is slightly prettier. We must get combat right. Basic attacks and quick abilities should be in free motion.
We should probably expect to err on the side of breaking phyisics rather than trying to adhere to physics as much as possible.
Somewhere in-between Apoc combat and New World combat should be fine.
movement and melee swings all the way...
now the stuff might get interesting to increase the skill level and actually need to aim your swing to hit.. but i think that's overextending it for a mmorpg. besides the melee swings are all coned from what i understand..
happy that this team takes to much time to improve and discuss the combat..
so for me... from what ive seen melee and movement all the way... not locked into position or moving forward while swing.
Give melee attacks high quality, meaningful, distinct and noticeable sounds to give weight where there might not be any
I suppose this will actually make it more realistic in a way, since weapons with longer reach and bigger swing cones would see a corresponding increase in effectiveness relative to weapons with shorter reach.
I wonder if they'll implement any 'swings per unit time' (damage wise) to offset this, or movement speed to help short weapon users get out of the way of the big attack cones more easily.
I'm not sure how that would work given the contact cone spin during attacks, but I'm definitely looking forward to whatever Intrepid does to balance smaller weapons.
To me that weapon attack should be root motion like Dark Soul(or have separate animation like BDO), or should be free movement like GW2, depends on how monster and player character respond to attacks in Steven's design, if monster and player character don't respond to attacks like Dark Soul or you can say action games just don't go for rooted motion, because if monster and player character don't respond to attacks like those action games will make the impact and weight that root motion attack have don't feel right and become meaningless.
Just imagine your character holding a 2 handed Hammer swing heavy blows at a human like monster, and your attacks make it looks very painful and twitches a lot but it still can hit you regularly like nothing happened, or replace human like monster to another player character? I personally don't mind this if it's free movement weapon attack animation like GW2 because it how games look like in this genre no matter it's a MMO or not for a long time, but if a game have a combat system so heavily like action games, I will definitely expect the whole game should feel like an action game, if it don't feel like one, I will consider it's a failure.
Looking forward to testing this with everyone!
I want to have to commit to an attack, but I also want to control where I move with the attack.
If I hold down the A or D -Key while attacking I want to move left/right with my attack
If I hold down the W or S -Key while attacking I want to move forward/backwards with my attack.
And If I don't hold down the W-Key while attacking, I don't want to move forward while attacking.
I just want my Character to put the foot down while attacking and not move forward.
Being moved forward, when you don't want to move forward feels awful.
Little Concern about new split-body melee combat
The new split-body melee combat could be exploitable by a melee fighters running in circles around casters hitting them, and the caster won't be able to properly fight back, because when they try to cast a spell, the target isn't in front of them, so the spell fizzles.
The melee fighter could surely weave some abilities into this, for more damage, while the caster who's constantly spinning in circles trying to keep up could have trouble with that.
This game has always been about taking the best of all MMOs and putting into one giant Best MMO of all time. So I suggest apply that philosophy to the melee combat.
The free motion looks great! and looks like the player is actually in control of where the attacks land which is what you want.
I really enjoy the action combat and being able to steer the character any direction I want to face while still being able to hit the target.
I'll know more of how I feel when I try it out myself next week.
Great job Team! Keep it up!
member of Gray Sentinels
How do you know that you're in control? The attack cones weren't obvious in the clip they showed us...
To be honest, I didn't really expect the animation of a weapon would match your actual attack cone, but if what you say is true, that's pretty great news! Spears have a 360 degree attack at some point in the animation, so I don't have to worry, I can just hit people behind me. I hope they don't change that animation, 360 degree attack range is pretty sexy!
I feel both systems suffer from a weapon animation that lacks weight, could be swinging a balsa wood stick rather than a 2h sword.
For this I think a weapon class speed stat would be beneficial to help with the sense of weight (i.e. Daggers .5, 2H Sword 2.5).
I also feel that the non-rooted strafing speed while attacking should be lowered, perhaps by 20%. With that amount of physical exertion your body naturally draws up and you need to align for full power, and right now the strafing feels too easy going, too fast and free.
I really like all of this, and I think this could work, but I think free movement (with some slow when swinging weapon) would be better. I just think of a tank trying to position the boss or a group of mobs at an exact location so the DPS can do their thing efficiently. Or when you are in a huge PvP battle, trying to dodge the skillshots and aoe's while trying to face your character a certain way. I do hope they make it so you can't just swing your sword in a 360° arch by spinning your character with your mouse, but having it built into the weapon attack so that it has more of an air effect would be good.
If we reference New World here, other than it being bad, it tried to strive towards a more action oriented style of MMO. And I think it's pretty close to being decent, but Amazon won't let it cook long enough so it will probably die. Which is why, despite it being flawed, people are interested in it. However, If Ashes of Creation continues with the tab-target/action split, it will remain a shadow of ESO.
Wtf...
>. <
the split body animation feels floaty as hell, I don't see how anybody can see Steven circle around that crab while hitting him and think is a good impactful combat.
Sure I undestand wanting to have control during the fight, but I feel a good compromise can be achieved with rooted combat, maybe allowing to change direction mid combo, instead of a 3 hit combo moving foward you could have the option to press WASD between each hit and that changes the animation of the combo to allow people to react to enemy movement.
I think with a pure action combat system rooting fighting can work but with ashes being tab core it doesn't work. Therefore for me the base of fighting needs to be the split body animation but as people have said at the moment it is a bit too floaty. Therefore I think some kind of mini rooting needs to be added to it for best results. Not like before 1-2 seconds of lunging forward. However something like a 0.2 second slow or root kind animation, which is literally one foot step forward or sideways not a massive lunge when attacking will give it enough weight where it's not completely floaty whilst still being smooth and responsive.
Speed of fighting is important and players in general dont want animation locks lasting forever which is probably in and around the 1 second and longer category however small animation locks/slows in the 0.2s category I think can work well add add weight to your attacks. My numbers are just approximate I'd have to test what feels like long and short animations locks as I don't really know.
BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT THE FALSE DILEMMA FALLACY IN PLAY HERE.
The current state of root animation combat in Ashes of Creation does not feel good, but that doesn't mean that the only options are either the current implementation or the "new" super floating free-movement system!
I'll reiterate what I said long ago during Apoc's development: Root animation will give attacks the weight that was sorely missing in Apoc, however you must be able to cancel out of animations! Animation canceling is not a bad thing! On the contrary, it creates a more in-depth combat system that keeps players engaged. There's a reason why Super Smash Bros Melee has stayed as popular as it has throughout the years. There's a reason why Black Desert Online is rapidly growing in popularity in the west (and it's not because of their cash shop or half-baked content, lemme tell ya).
There is a balance that can be found between the intentions of what this new free-movement system is trying to accomplish and what a well-designed root motion combat system can deliver.
Tighten up the duration of the locked animation periods, reduce the distance a player is moved simply from auto attacking with lmb. Give players the freedom to move their characters during certain periods of the attack animations.
@Cicaeda Summarized it best (and bluntly) with:
Going over a opinion I have on the overall combat first then a review of the combat changes: smile:
I feel their needs to be a good balance between committed (lunges, weight movement) and non-committed attacks(swipes, quick jabs and normal attacks).
War frame is a great example of this, fights start off usually with a committed lunge then could disolve from their allowing for different techniques like a lunge - jump -lunge , lunge- attack x3 - jump back - shoot repeat, etc. Ashes won't and shouldn't have that kind of dynamic movement but having weight carry you forward into an attack and the right movement to continue it, change courses or leave and reinitiate seems crucial for ah ah an enjoyable system.
Now onto the combat changes:
Particles Effect
Personally I enjoyed the previous particles effects so the tune down wasn't meet with great joy but it wasn't a bad decisions especially for the sword. The change now looked like I was swinging a regular 10 pound sword instead of a 100 pound imbued with magic aura.
Movement Lock
Never liked how the player and their opponent interacted in a fight in the first place. I Understand the skills weren't used and the auto attacks Does look better without weight movement but it also feels wrong. I feel like the combat system was made to rework tab-targeting and action combat using that weight movement and removing it entirely is letting me down but it also feels wrong the way they fight. Now the fights look like a dancing beat down.
In the end I think the combat could've used a few lunges and weight movement in those lunges to initiate an attack. This I feel would have worked especially since their would be some more movement associated with attacks and that movement would be sparsely used.
And the free form would work better if you were only doing quick jabs and normal attacks around the target instead of heavy attacks which is fine but looks weird. Maybe it the lack of animation in the fights that makes It feels less like a battle and more of a beat down. I refer to the above opinion on my thoughts on any new combat ideas.
So far the movement changed from us flinging ourselves at the creatures to us beating them down like a nail.
Final Verdict for the free Form We Could Use a Lunge, Jump or Rush -> Attack.
It doesn't need to get to combat simulation level, but if you look at real people fighting with weapons (in a duel scenario) you'll see that they begin out of weapon reach of each other, one will initiate an attack by moving weapon and body at the same time to get close enough to hit the other but then he will usually retract to a guard position out of reach of his opponent. Fights in large melee are more chaotic than duels (and weapons used in formations change the dynamic, but that's another topic) and movement isn't ruled the same way.
Now, how can this be applied to the fighting system?
Chain opener skills can have movement embedded into them. Not as much as a "charge" skills but enough to show you're beginning something or changing target.
Chain finishing skills could also have a "rooting" element to them, but depending of the skill it could be in any direction. Stop you in place if your skill had a knockdown effect. A dash or roll to the side if it was sneaky in nature. If it was a defensive finisher it could be backward to disengage. They're just examples of possibilities.
All the skills that are in-between are left with no fixed movement components. They're not as flashy, they are your little jabs and snips, your manoeuvring to get in better position to execute your big chain finisher, your dancing in the chaos of the melee.
This would give the impression of weight to combat without it being an anchor.
But now you're talking about combos, and combo systems are even more divisive than simply 'Free Motion vs Rooting', particularly because they bring up the question of Animation Cancels..
Big chain finishers end up Telegraphed which has a lot of other effects on gameplay, even 'is this animation telegraphed enough relative to equivalent animations' would end up being part of combat style decisions for the above average players.
You said 'skill by skill', I assume you meant 'movement' or 'weapon'.
I find myself in the weird position where I constantly push against the thing I am used to and technically enjoy, but I'll say it again. If you push this way you turn Ashes into a fighting game, and 90% of people will not like the result of that.
Nothing force you to complete a "chain". You could make your opening skill and just use random skills afterwards. You can forgo the finishers... or use an opening ability mid-fight to help you switch to another target. I see it more as your skills/abilities rotation rather than a complex combat game combo system, only that some skills/abilities come with a short distance embedded. Use these when you see fit. It's only another factor to consider, as are cooldowns and mana cost.
But we're not talking about that. This is entirely about 'just holding or hitting Q or LMB for your weapon attacks'. So I'm not saying your idea is good or bad, it's just not directly relevant to the thing being discussed.
Two Handed Sword has a big swing with the sword that has nothing to do with a chosen skill, at the moment. It just happens somewhere in a basic chain. It has no mana cost, it has no cooldown, it just 'is'. The question is 'should you be able to do that while your legs move', or not.
So unless your suggestion is 'get rid of big weapon swings as normal attacks and put them all in activated skills', the question of 'one or the other' doesn't apply.
Useful when chasing someone? So...when you disengage from a player you run directly away from them? Cause that is all they are going to be able to do with the root animation is moving in a forward line with an arcing ability. The way the system is currently set up, I can just run INTO a tank, walk right behind them and then start killing. I'm only even talking about auto attacks here. When you start to add in my knockdowns, this combat feels like complete trash.
I definitely disagree with making your combo change by hitting WASD in between hits. I'm not here to play street fighter.
I would be perfectly fine with a tab target system with complete control over your character. Sure, I would feel the need for some weighted feel to the attacks but it wouldn't change my opinion on combat. On the flip side, current combat has honestly made me rethink if I will even play AoC at all. I'm playing a tank for my guild and if that means I dread the combat, why even waste the money? There definitely can be something found in between fluid movement and rooted movement but with the game being part action and part tab target I feel the direction of what Intrepid wants doesn't have a real focus.
Tab target and completely free combat work well together.
Action targeting and rooted combat work well together.
Where is the balance? Hopefully the balance is not me forced to attack forward and hold down LMB while having to release LMB in order to use an ability but also not be able to dodge out of an attack. At least with fluid motion, the game will function well and be engaging. Again, abilities can have weight to the attack. I see no reason why auto attack needs to. It's the same damn 3 or 4 swings on repeat.
The question is whether or not a lot of Action Combat fans will similarly argue against not having any combos or variation. We've already seen this opinion strongly presented in other, older threads, and most of those people were actually Mages so I can only imagine what heavy weapon fighters will say.
Basically, they don't want 'the same 3 or 4 swings on repeat', especially in Action Combat mode, because it 'doesn't feel like Action Combat'.
I feel weird saying it but someone mentioned sound playing a big role in the weight of an attack and I didn't agree at first. When I thought about it, hitting a headshot in Rust was overwhelmingly entertaining. the crunch of a critical hit makes a big difference than just a floating number. That number lighting up and having a special effect for a crit or hitting a weak point also makes a huge difference.