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Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
[Feedback] Action vs. Tab Target Combat
Sectes
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Hello,
I was just kind of curious what the vision is for the developers of having to choose between these two systems. When do they envision us to swap between the two?
Right now I can't see myself ever using Action combat. However, I love action combat and want to see it improved upon.
One of the big draws of action combat is using abilities and allowing them to miss. This sets the developers up for a plethora of balancing options when it comes to animations, spell speeds, and set ups.
Tab targeting will draw in overall more familiarity, but it feels unexciting, boring, and outdated.
Also one of the big draws of tab targeting is being able to keep situation awareness through strafe jumping/spinning the camera for information. (Lots of pvp players in wow do this for example). Which is kind of a big bonus over the static information you get from the camera in action combat.
Maybe this is feedback in its self, but I'm more interested in the overall vision in how this is going to work.
Respectfully,
Sectes.
I was just kind of curious what the vision is for the developers of having to choose between these two systems. When do they envision us to swap between the two?
Right now I can't see myself ever using Action combat. However, I love action combat and want to see it improved upon.
One of the big draws of action combat is using abilities and allowing them to miss. This sets the developers up for a plethora of balancing options when it comes to animations, spell speeds, and set ups.
Tab targeting will draw in overall more familiarity, but it feels unexciting, boring, and outdated.
Also one of the big draws of tab targeting is being able to keep situation awareness through strafe jumping/spinning the camera for information. (Lots of pvp players in wow do this for example). Which is kind of a big bonus over the static information you get from the camera in action combat.
Maybe this is feedback in its self, but I'm more interested in the overall vision in how this is going to work.
Respectfully,
Sectes.
1
Comments
If you're going to bother including action combat at all, we need to remove the targeting system and have skill connection actually based of attack animation vs enemy hitbox. Right now, melee combat can often be very annoying because your character will move towards the mob with each attack, making your reticle off target due to the camera angle and therefore can't follow up cleanly with your abilities: https://imgur.com/rHaYmCA
Your abilities being contingent an enemy being within your reticle will always feel bad, even if we remove the forward momentum from basic attacks. We should always be able to cast our skills, whether they will land or not. Lastly, just wanted to say that when spamming basic attack & skills, skills should take priority in the que for my next action. I noticed I had to intentionally pause my attacks to cast an ability which also doesn't feel good.
I agree that abilities should always be able to be used, even if you don't have a target or they are not in range.
I also agree on the last point, skills and basic attacks feel kind of clunky.
i move around th emob and hit him quiet well.
Sur ein PVE its hard to test because NPC always rotate perfektly with you.
in PVP you could outmove the enemy with the new system whitch will be realy cool.
Casting melee Skills whitchout hitting the enemy brings 1 problem at the moment.
Range fighter have it much easier then because if they tab targeted the enemy they will hit there fireball while your melee attacks goes into the air.
so 1 the system needs to be how it is now or range fighters needs to AIM 24/7 there attack like in NW what you mentioned.
the delay with auto attacks and skills is there. would be nice if you could cancel the auto attack and instant use a skill if needed or Realy. will be very important when you get skills to cancel special enemy attacks in the right moment.
Over all the new system is still 100000 times better than the old where you stand on a spot with a auto forward movement. especially when range fighters can move while hitting the auto attacks
It would improve the combat alot in action if the target would switch dynamically to the mob im over with the redical and can use my spells without pressing tab everytime first in action mode.
First attack - less damage, unhindermovement
Second attack - more damage, movement becomes a direction side step.
Third attack - most damage, rooted in place to put in most effort, perhaps a small stumble for enemy if connected
This is just a quick example. you could also change out more damage for crit chance or whatever slight benefit works the best.
Essentially this would give you the decision to just wack someone once and keep moving or bear down and leave yourself a little exposed. Adds more decision making within an encounter. The same principle could also be applied to ranged attacks. The ranger/mage hits will small stuff while moving but if stood inplace gets greater effect through crit, accuracy, damage, whatever.
First attack - less damage, unhindermovement
Second attack - more damage, movement becomes a direction side step.
Third attack - most damage, rooted in place to put in most effort, perhaps a small stumble for enemy if connected
This is just a quick example. you could also change out more damage for crit chance or whatever slight benefit works the best.
Essentially this would give you the decision to just wack someone once and keep moving or bear down and leave yourself a little exposed. Adds more decision making within an encounter. The same principle could also be applied to ranged attacks. The ranger/mage hits will small stuff while moving but if stood inplace gets greater effect through crit, accuracy, damage, whatever.
What about ranged attacks hitting? Do you like the guaranteed, tab target old school vibe? Or Do you like free flowing action based Aim on the hitbox style? The only issue with aiming on hitboxes is they probably can't do it due to racial size differences.
That being said i feel like this game would gain a lot from a more action combat type of deal.
I need to preface this with the point that i in no part want to disparage tab-targeting, it is as action combat a preference and no single way is inherently better then the other.
I do feel like as some people point out that tab targeting feels a bit outdated, it also has a tendency of creating very set rotations and metas around it since it is inherently more focused on the planning and mental part and not as much on the mechanical skill of the player.
You might argue that there is a bigger market for tab-targeting and that the biggest MMO's on the market are tab, but that argument realy doesnt work well, the giants have massive brand recognition (i.e. Warcraft, Final Fantasy) and have existed for 9+ years as is, and at the time tab targeting made a lot more sense because of technical limitations on the server/internet side, due to action combat needing a lot more calculations to be done, thus making it absurdly hard to run on regular hardware with regular internet speeds of that time.
I personally believe that it will be harder to balance and make all the different cool augmented archetypes etc. viable if in the end there is a tab focused combat system, i also realy want this game to not only succeed, but also truly push this genre forward into new territory, with fresh combat systems and new ideas to make this game not only great, but an absolute masterpiece for years and years to come.
For me action combat is truly more immersive and exciting since it is more to engage with mechanicly, and it keeps me on my toes, thus i would love to see this combat system succeed in a more active way then what it currently is, since most encounters are very static as of now (i have not been able to PvP or done any of the world bosses and as such cannot comment on those as of this time, it is also very early alpha and as such i can feel that you still have a very solid foundation to stand/iterate upon).
It felt like I had to be almost dead center of a mob to be able to cast an ability without tabbing onto it and it made me just go back to tab. Increase the area that lets you be able to cast an ability and it will flow/feel a bit better.
1) I would like to re-map dodge to double tap W,A,S,D. Hitting ctrl+W,A,S,D is just awkward for my hand.
2) Evasion could be an active skill. Still keep the one big dodge roll as is, on a cool-down, but add a much smaller position shift that has an increased RNG chance of happening based on your evasion skill level. You have a chance of nothing happening, but if the RNG gods are in your favor you could do a cool little one pace phase shift. Just enough to mess up your enemy's OODA loop.
3) I'd like to see active blocking/parrying instead of it just being a passive chance. Actually getting behind your shield, parrying with your sword, blocking with your pole-arm/staff, hold your book up and scream like a little.... you get the point.
4) I use tab targeting a lot, but it's pretty clunky IMHO. When you hit tab it doesn't intelligently cycle through targets. It should always jump to the closest enemy. I find that I'll hit tab, while in action mode and it occasionally targets the wrong enemy... usually I've already punched the one i want in the face. Instinct says "hit tab" so i do... and the beast I'm smacking still isn't targeted... I have thrown my Hammer of judgment over my shoulder to land on a beast that I had recently run past.
5) When I am in "Click" mode healing a party/raid, I like to click player frames to target for my heals... I lose the mouse cursor SO EASILY with all the flashy animations. Please help make it easier to find... and maybe tone down the flashy skill animations... they're really cool, but a bit much. Maybe add an opacity slider into the UI so that we can fine tune them to our liking?
One criticism. It seems that tab targeting used line of sight. So if your char was surrounded by mobs, tab wouldn't target the closest mob if it wasn't in your los. I found that annoying, especially when there are so many particle effects blocking your view.