Greetings,
With all the talk about the player's movement and mechanics for combat, I had a realization that we also need to talk about how mobs (and bosses) will interact with the player in combat.
Currently, mobs will make a straight line toward you until in range, where they will stay firmly planted and swing at you. The server, as far as I can tell, always calculates whether or not you were hit based on RNG and stats rather than looking at whether or not the enemy strike made contact with your hitbox. It appears that strafing in circles around a mob for example has no effect on whether or not it hits you. If you’re near it, it hits you unless the server says you “evaded”. Gross. This leads to walking up to a mob, and doing exactly what it does: standing still and holding the attack key (and throwing some abilities at it). This is mind-numbingly boring.
Additionally, this results in a contest between who can withstand more damage. Plenty of examples of this exist but what sparked this thought was the intro to
this video. Look at the very beginning, where he’s fighting a boss called Jermaine, Torment of Illwind. The fight takes place standing still, until the player realizes he is going to lose based on which health bar is going down faster, along with an AOE from the boss, and
only then does he use any movement, to turn and run. Movement is pointless in combat currently (except for a few telegraphed AOE attacks shown on the ground).
I propose some solutions to counter the issue above, that I feel are very necessary for a good PvE experience:1- The mobs should have some variety with how they engage the player (maybe they rush you, maybe they try to get around you to attack from the side or back, etc) including strafing or even dodging (some mobs maybe, not all) rather than sitting still and attacking unless the player steps back or turns to run.
2- The player's hitbox should matter, just like the mob hitbox should. I believe we saw Steven demonstrate that when swinging a sword in a horizontal arc, all mobs within the arc are hit. This is good. We need the mob's attacks to operate the same way. If you’re in their attack arc, you’re hit, if you step out of the way of the swing, you’re not hit. Same goes for bosses. Imagine the fight I mentioned above (which you can witness with the video link), with the boss "Jermaine" but with the ability to side step the those sword strikes. Now you have a reason to be moving around AND actually
watching what the boss is doing rather than mindlessly staring at both health bars and spamming all your hotkeys. If you could see the boss is winding up for an attack, you know it's time to dodge (and based on what type of attack is coming, you know whether to step left, right, back or dodge roll).
*And finally, a few things I thought of later in this thread that would be enough for me, and probably many others to feel good with the combat:
- Dedicated block (assigned to RMB for example) for weapons that make sense
- Light and heavy attacks for basic attacking. Click for light, hold and release (or use a modifier like shift+LMB) for heavy.
These add enough depth to combat, and enough player-choice in between ability cooldowns to be engaging for most players whether action or tab. It’s a little more than what tabby players are used to but not hard at all, and a lot less than what action players are used to. It’s a good compromise. Help me get this in front of intrepid if you agree.
I'm open to a better title for this thread by the way. Hard to come up with exactly what to call this specific topic.
Please share your thoughts and feel free to either agree with the points I made or completely rip them apart.
