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You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Root Motion Heavy Attack With Proc Effects; A Compromise
Goalid
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I remember during the livestream, the root motion during combat vs free motion during combat got a poll in the Ashes subreddit, along with a couple posts. And some comments went into possible compromises, or how free motion is better, but I didn't see a post about a solution. So this is that.
I believe a compromise for this, is that heavy attacks that are either manually selected, or at the end of a combo (which is cancellable) should be rooted. This has a bit of realism to it, take boxing for example. Jabbing doesn't open you up as much as a straight does, but landing a straight on an opponent can be much more damaging. And therefore, the heavy attacks should cause you to sacrifice movement for extra damage.
Except, a little more extra damage probably isn't enough to justify the sacrifice in movement during PvP. So, the proposed proc effects that Steven has mentioned should be reserved for the heavy attacks generally. Bow light attacks will just do damage, but the ranger heavy attack will do some damage and apply a little slow. Light attacks with a mace will just do damage, but heavy attacks will cause physical damage mitigation to be lowered.
I think this is the best compromise. You want to have freedom of movement while playing, but you don't want to feel as though you're dealing huge damage to a mob / player with your weapon attacks while you're just flying around. Then it's too floaty.
This can also be paired with Ashes' combat targeting system. You can have tab targeting with the wand / tome atm, but having to actually aim to hit your target in action combat should deal more damage. More risk should equal more reward. When it takes more skill to play a game, you feel more engaged with it. It's like an actual skill you have to gain, and is therefore exciting.
Hope we can generate more discussion on this topic, this definitely shouldn't just be forgotten after the livestream since this is really our last opportunity to give the developers our opinion on this topic.
I believe a compromise for this, is that heavy attacks that are either manually selected, or at the end of a combo (which is cancellable) should be rooted. This has a bit of realism to it, take boxing for example. Jabbing doesn't open you up as much as a straight does, but landing a straight on an opponent can be much more damaging. And therefore, the heavy attacks should cause you to sacrifice movement for extra damage.
Except, a little more extra damage probably isn't enough to justify the sacrifice in movement during PvP. So, the proposed proc effects that Steven has mentioned should be reserved for the heavy attacks generally. Bow light attacks will just do damage, but the ranger heavy attack will do some damage and apply a little slow. Light attacks with a mace will just do damage, but heavy attacks will cause physical damage mitigation to be lowered.
I think this is the best compromise. You want to have freedom of movement while playing, but you don't want to feel as though you're dealing huge damage to a mob / player with your weapon attacks while you're just flying around. Then it's too floaty.
This can also be paired with Ashes' combat targeting system. You can have tab targeting with the wand / tome atm, but having to actually aim to hit your target in action combat should deal more damage. More risk should equal more reward. When it takes more skill to play a game, you feel more engaged with it. It's like an actual skill you have to gain, and is therefore exciting.
Hope we can generate more discussion on this topic, this definitely shouldn't just be forgotten after the livestream since this is really our last opportunity to give the developers our opinion on this topic.
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Comments
There is basically no concept of 'being opened up to counterattack' in a game with no hitstop, balanced around group PvP. Your goal will always be to do the biggest damage possible before the enemy backline takes you out, as a close range combatant. And the enemy backline generally does not care as much about the specifics of the combat system, they just care that you can't reach them before they kill you, ask nearly any Ranger.
Idea - What if as you specced into specific abilities, they also could change in "weight". Very rough example, level 1 weapon lob would feel heavier and take a little longer to go off, level 2 would be faster and level 3 would be a fluid motion able to be weaved into the auto attack combo. This would make customizing your abilities have even more meaning.
When I was watching the July dev update stream, the 2h sword combat motion (swinging a heavy 2H sword while strafing) felt really awkward to me - heavy weapon swings are supposed to require the strength of your whole body, which would inevitable root you in place for a short duration.
I'd also argue "complete free movement for all combat motions" is the more boring option here. In that scenario melee pvp would likely devolve into a simple "spam your heaviest attack while trying to position behind your enemy" game.
While dividing attacks into "light + mobile" & "heavy + rooted" classes would force a player to make tactical decisions - e.g. how to create openings and land heavy blows.
And disparity between weapons isn't a bad thing imo (unless they're extremely unbalanced), e.g. dagger users are supposed to have higher mobility (less rooting attacks, or shorter root time in general) than a 2H sword user (more rooting heavy attacks, and longer root time in general), and the 2H sword user supposedly should be able to hit harder. If all weapons have the same "feeling" (e.g. complete free movement, similar dps ...), that's what I'd call "boring" - Why bother with weapon types then? Why not just have "melee/ranged/magic stats stick" instead?
TL:DR;
It makes sense for some heavy attacks to root, but it doesn't make sense if all attacks root.
IMO the GW2 system serves as a good reference point - All weapons have a mobile, non-rooting autoattack chain, and a few heavy attack skills that deal high dmg but roots you in place (or forces you to move in certain direction)
My friends and I actually ended up concluding that the combat system was supposed to be much simpler that most modern MMOs, and perhaps that was how Steven wanted it, when you look back at Apoc.
This is somewhat reflected in the Skills, and even moreso in the fact that the Weapon Trees haven't been developed yet. Even considering that we are in Alpha, I'm specifically talking about the fact that the class skills were developed before the weapon skills.
Not saying that with any definitive indicators, and certainly not proof, it's just 'a way design stuff works generally'. All that is to say, we got into a weird situation where we're testing something that might not have all the 'background' to it. I hope it doesn't mess with their feedback too much, and that they are able to indicate to us, 'which weapons feel correct according to their vision' in the test, and which ones 'aren't there yet'.
The one thing I know for sure is I hate the auto move forward while swinging my weapon. It feels terrible. If I want to move forward while swinging I'm fully capable of pressing W on my own.
Are light and heavy attacks confirmed in Ashes? I would assume they're going to be in the game but I honestly can't even remember if they're currently in the game. I'm not sure what you mean by "heavy attacks that are manually selected, or at the end of a combo."
I like the idea of heavy attacks adding an extra effect. And I like the idea of heavy attacks either slowing your movement speed down or rooting you in place for the duration of the heavy attack. Heavies would be something you use on a CC'd or otherwise distracted target generally, so it makes sense, free heavy attack opportunity as a reward for getting your CC off on the target.
This was actually a part that confused me about a specific thing someone said in one of the threads on the matter. They didn't want to move while attacking, but both the WASD and the free motion solve this issue.
In WASD attack style, when you don't want to move, you just don't hold W, or if necessary, hold S. If you needed to close distance, you had to hold W either way.
The problem most people complained about isn't even inherent to 'directional rooted motion'. Free motion is just the ability to move around while swinging your actual weapon. You can even change camera direction in most games like that, and then the next motion happens relative to your new camera direction.
Heavy attacks aren't confirmed, as of now, there's no input schema for them.
I generally agree, after all we don't want our characters to just die and not resurrect, like we do in real life. But, some realism WHEN it has the added benefit of making the game more interesting is always nice.
I really can't speak to the claims you make in the first paragraph, for instance how does having heavy attacks cripple the effectiveness of Tanks? I'd like you to expand on some of these points you made. If I had to guess, you mean that having heavy attacks would make ranged dps too OP. But the devs can simply nerf the effects of ranged "heavy attacks" to where it's balanced, so I don't see the problem. I think the point of this discussion is that we want the combat to be immersive and feel good, not so much talking about class balance in group pvp. And I don't see how my proposed combat system breaks group pvp, or solves any trinity problems.
From your later comments, I agree Ashes "rooted" combat in Alpha One wasn't polished at all. Many people used the example of BDO as a MMO that made rooted combat / wasd attack style feel great. So I'd like them to utilize both, hence why I'd like a slower BDO combat in heavy attacks, and then a more Guild Wars 2 feeling when using light attacks. And in my opinion, I think they made the skills feel good. In Archeage, I could use fireball without being rooted. In the Ashes alpha, I could move, but I was slowed down while casting fireball. I enjoyed that, as it let me cast fireball while just barely dodging boss mechanics, made it feel as though I was playing my class properly.
Sure, just bear in mind that I'm not trying to go against your idea itself at all, and I am not saying 'there's no way to design it to avoid the problem', when it comes to what I'm about to say, it's just a lot of work and can introduce further problems (basically I was saying that it's not a compromise between the two things).
Let's assume that the Tank's main goal is to keep hate on themselves because the content in question requires it due to some positional issue, they can't afford to lose control of the enemy for too long, if at all.
For the Heavy attack to be worth doing... basically ever, it has to do significant damage relative to the lighter attacks, right? Or add a debuff that meaningfully affects the battle. Especially if it is locked at the end of a combo.
So if free motion had any purpose at all for a Tank, (i.e. it allowed them to dodge something, pretty much anything), now you have a class who 'needs to move while swinging to evade, but when their damage is compared to another class that doesn't have to move as much using Heavy attacks, it falls short'.
So the problems (and the obvious counters):
1. If you make Free Motion worth doing, in this system, the character whose job it is to hold attention and evade attacks, can't use Heavy attacks as often - Solution, make the mobs easier to judge and time abilities against, I guess.
2. If you make Heavy Attacks worth doing, the Character who has the largest limitation on Heavy Attacks (due to often using a one handed weapon and needing to make sure they rapidly react to enemy turning or moving) has a higher limitation on their damage relative to others - Solution, sort of built in 'Tank just generates more threat', but this was true for most content, in this case we're talking about content where the Tank 'needs' to use the Free Motion, so by comparison, they still have less damage
3. In a Raid or content where the Tank must at least consider dealing with a PvP threat, both the above are multiplied. Now they need to pay even more attention, and can risk using their Heavy Attack even less - Solution, make the Heavy Attack not quite so long in root/recovery frames so that they can afford to use it.
The overall solution space trends in the direction of 'Making content easier so that the tank can use the Heavy Attacks too', 'Making the Free Motion less required', or the one I would expect the most in the end...
"Making the Heavy Attack less rooted at the cost of damage."
At which point it's not a compromise.
I hope that made sense. the tl;dr would be 'if Heavy Attacks were actually heavy, either the content is so easy you probably don't even need Tanks, or the Tanks end up being the class most limited in terms of how they can use them'.
This is an enemy design issue moreso than a class design or combat design issue.
Unfortunately a lot of the 'problem' with choosing a combat system is going to be on the enemy design side. Since you've probably played BDO (it wasn't entirely clear) you may know what I mean, even if you don't personally agree that BDO's PvE content is terrible and they don't even have actual 'multiplayer PvE content'.
It's not easy to make BDO's PvE feel good, in my opinion, which is probably why you can theoretically get to level 60 in 4 hours, 3 of which are spent questing for XP...