Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
True, (and please forgive me for 'scolding' you) but this isn't really the thread for it, unless we're letting this one derail too (I'm not saying it shouldn't).
Intrepid's 'hands are tied' and they give this impression precisely because of this situation. Someone (usually you), draws on the proverbial Whiteboard, someone else comes up and points to your stuff and says 'how about we erase this part, I don't much like it', and then there's a 2 page debate on whether or not the basic thing you assumed was obvious should be erased.
The bad news is, this doesn't get better in multimillion dollar companies either. It's worse because then you have internal politics. Point is, education is a better focus than convincing. And if you want, you can leave that entirely to me, today. Stock market trades less and closes early on Fridays.
What we have right now is the basic Weapon Attack.
We're trying to evaluate combat in an Alpha One with no augments or Weapon Skills...even though Weapon Skills is a key feature.
And, the mob AI is very rudimentary.
I think for Adventurers, we will recognize the difference between Active Skills and weapon combos without needing to see the weapons glow. The Ashes devs LOVE glowy stuff, while players are already complaining there is too much glow, so we probably should not encourage these devs to add more glow.
I think "basic spammable spell", here, is the equivalent of the weapon combo.
It's going to be something like weapon attack, weapon attack, weapon attack, weapon attack, Ultimate Weapon Attack. Apparently, they haven't figured out how they want that to be presented yet.
What exactly makes you think this, though?
"Weapon Skill" means something entirely different in other games, and there have been hints of 'Weapon Perks' which provide stuff like procs to basic attacks instead of this.
Is this something you want to happen, something you expect because that's how you visualize it from other games, or something you concluded from data given? Knowing Jeff Bard's FFXI experience, and gleaning from what else has been said in various places relative to weapons, I expect exactly the opposite of what you do.
EDIT: To clarify why.
These procs may reduce or reset cooldowns on other skills on the player's hotbar.[7]
Using a skill/ability will in general reset the combo.
Interpretation - The melee attack IS the 'spammable', and therefore any discussion of Light and Heavy attacks or similar is valid.
Let's say a dagger has some slashing effects that bleed the target or that cripple the target... Every time you attack you have a chance to proc that effect. That effect then can synergize with what your active skills tree has available to it.
Interpretation - You spec for 'bleed chance on dagger slashes' in the Weapon Tree, and possibly no additional attacks/abilities for damage are even gained.
A revised weapon use combo system will be present in Alpha-1.
Do we assume they missed the mark? Or that the thing we have now is the thing they meant? The models don't line up. Therefore we assume that what we have now is 'the combos', that Weapon Tree offers 'if you reach the third hit of this, you get a chance for this thing to happen', and therefore the precise nature of the melee attack and combos is actually one of the most important things right now.
EDIT2:
I have just remembered (my bad yet again) that non Action game players mean 'synergistic effects that come in sequence' when they say 'Combos' whereas Action game players usually mean 'a melee attack sequence that I control the components of'.
@Dygz, whenever we talk about 'combos' we're talking about 'the mechanics of hitting things' and nothing to do with synergies.
Sounds good to me
I'm still curious about root motion and split body in NWO, Wildstar, New World and Valheim, but I guess that should be pushed to a different thread. I had totally forgotten the intended focus for this thread.
I played NWO in 2013 and Wildstar in 2014, so... ground telegraphs felt awesome in those games. But, they might be a bit outdated in 2020. I think we probably no longer need them.
I love the AI behaviors in Valheim and New World... but I don't consider those to be RPGs and I'm not sure the Action Combat in those games is what an RPG should have. Especially with PvP. The combat in those games works great with mobs - might not be fun for those who love PvP.
That being said the mobs in Valheim and New World seem to lunge, strafe, stand, retreat and reorient.
When I look at Jermaine, Torment of Illwind in Jahlon's video, I'm thinking more about how I would like to use those broken walls as barriers. But, an anthropomorphic mob should also be trying to use the walls as barriers as well. Again, I think I'd want New World AI movement behavior there.
I adore Active Block in Valheim. Typically, I prefer to dodge/roll/blink, but successfully timing the block creates a knockback that opens the mobs up for a crit... it might be my favorite thing about Valheim combat.
That’s a great point about using cover Dygz. Right now a wall or any other cover doesn’t do anything to stop attacks because mobs are allowed to “tab target” the player and always hit unless the server says it missed. I agree with you that it would be a nice thing to change.
The blocking, dodging, evading, etc that you mentioned is very satisfying and bosses can be made more or less difficult based on those factors rather than just having more health. I think that’s pretty on topic for this thread, phew! Lol
Honestly, at this point, the thread is all the same to me, precisely because it's all one thing in my head. I build all my games like this, so no harm.
Valheim is also Root Motion combat. The tuning is wrong here too. Attacks are too slow. This isn't actually because the animations are janky (they sort of are) but because Neverwinter's are more correct. Serious combatant humans swing their weapons so fast that you literally cannot see them properly, so games that aim to make things visible often fail. either the 'camera blur' or 'movement you can't even see' is actually more correct. (EDIT: This is important because of the way recovery frames work. Optimally, a game allows you to attack very quickly, and cancel out of the recovery of the attack into movement or a skill, the aforementioned 'transition-to-move'. Slow attacks make the player feel less in control for many reasons)
Wildstar has Free Motion combat available because of the way they wanted people to aim their abilities required so much movement of particular types, but in general, it isn't used that much, and like Ashes, it shows Rooted animations whenever the player is not in motion. Which, even in their development videos, is fairly often, since you don't have a good reason to move a lot of the time.
That's the result of 'mobs not being quite as dynamic because the mobs aren't necessarily implemented the same way as the players' but I can't be sure without watching a lot more of their DevSpeak.
Here's the reference for what I did quickly watch to check and give data. I can't see from just that video which errors they have in their tuning. It looks good, but was probably either 'too hardcore' for certain people, or got boring in some way because the way the rotations are likely to work pulls it closer to BDO. In short, I can't tell exactly why the dials are wrong because you could 'turn one dial' and make it right one way, or 'turn another dial' and make it right the other way. Something small is off, but unless it's likely to help Ashes, I may not dive much into what.
For example to implement the monsters basic attack change from tab to action would require a overall rework on all monsters with their attacks/arcs range and area considering their size and/or weapon reach and other factors. (Example: Lil Fellbeak Macaw baby swings would be laughable and kitable on melee and Big boy sword wielding revenants would swing Huge hard to avoid AoEs).
The thing is, the monsters and the players combat must be on the same grounds, so i don't see a problem with monster having TT basic attack, but would like every single one of them to have some type of AoE action skills(even if generalized straight lines, cones, circles, AS AoE or whatever crazy shape and etc) used with reasonable frequency for a more interactive pve combat.
Aren't we all sinners?
My tests indicate that this might actually already have been done.
It could be that the reason the monster's basic attack seems like this, is actually because the attack cones for everything are too large for you to get out of range, right now.
As long as the mob can pivot its 190 degree attack cone faster than the player can circle the mob (almost always true), you won't be able to tell the difference between Tab and Action style hits from the mob other than the fact that they don't hit other people in a cone.
The underlying controllers for players vs NPCs are actually easier to handle once homogenized, and in a certain good model, they just would be.
Basically we can't say one way or the other whether or not Intrepid has already done the work for moving closer to the Action Side of Hybrid without a very complicated test, but I can check the footage we gathered for clues if anyone cares. I didn't figure anyone would because I didn't think of the fact that someone might not 'assume it was easy'.
Other than the degree of the swing, the range of the swing and the monsters attack speed would also play a big role on this elusive difference on how the monster basic attack is currently working.
It would be very good to have an intrepid confirmation or reasoning on this topic.
Aren't we all sinners?
Now those things are easier to test, using the Esoteric enemies in Elyon node in the Alpha. Those ones match the behaviour of players, but again, unless you find a way to glitch their movement so that they can't turn (basically impossible) or reach you (this one, I've done, for tests, so I know the ranges on most things) it can't be absolutely confirmed.
But for now, that's why I say that my tests indicate it's already been done. I'm not sure when it was done because I only bothered to test this specific thing back right after the patch that should have been 'giving us the build they had from the June Dev Stream'.
I can run the test again if it's particularly relevant, but I don't think it is because it's basic Blueprint within UE4, to just drag and drop a controller node into a mob. Making sure it worked on every mob? QA to the rescue, but it might take a while to get to us (and it did).
So it's possible that they don't all have it, but there's also almost no good reason why they wouldn't eventually.
This thread is therefore moreso 'hey which things should the basic combat action controller contain that generalizes across all mobs?' since any generalized controller would 'need' either 'an equivalent action for every single mob' or specialized blocks to make them act correctly when they don't have that action, e.g. if a Crab doesn't have Lunge, you have to do something to its AI and settings so that it doesn't get stuck trying to use Lunge in the same place other mobs would.
I absolutely don't like the forward flow that takes us past the dead enemies - whatever can get rid of that, I'm down for.
What pushed me away from Wildstar was the point at which the ground telegraphs get insanely arcadey.
5 different patterns of ground telegraphs drop in 2 seconds and you have to try to find a safe spot in the overlap. Too much like a puzzle game, for me, at that point.
Actually, the sad part is, it's probably inconsequential to over 70% of players, but they don't all know that.
The thing that makes Neverwinter so nice is that the transition-to-move is so small. So you swing your weapon, once, it's fast, you hit, you see something you want to dodge, you move, you swing your weapon again. The 'actual weapon swing', the first one, is so fast that a lot of people don't care that they are animation locked.
What they care about is 'I pressed a button to swing a weapon and then started to look for an enemy attack'. What they want is 'if I see an attack after I have pressed my button, I have time to dodge that attack'. It's a frame data thing. Just numbers. What people like Cypher want is 'I have continued my combo into bigger damage, I know this puts me at risk and reduces my chance of dodging if the opponent tries to hit me, but I don't think that's going to happen so I'm going for damage!'
This allows the enemies to be better while being fairer, for another essayworth of reasons. The reason Ashes Root Motion is bad is because certain attacks take literally 34 frames. You pressed a button, and depending on your ping, you are unable to move at all for over half a second. If you hold the button too long, you start the animation for the next attack which is another 20-30 frames. All the while you're moving more than one body length forward. Neverwinter Root motions are half that most of the time and you don't go flying forward unless you want to.
They also have better combos (Target Combo type, where the recovery animation is canceled by the natural flow of the next attack's vector) to cut down on this even more.
I don't know if that counts as confirmed for you @JamesSunderland, but that's what I've got.
Aren't we all sinners?
Melee attack animation DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL source of damage. What does that mean?
Tab Target MMOs will generally output damage by using AOE zones With the character model, similar to ones seen in the Wild Star video.
2D Fighting games will generally output damage that comes From the character model (this part is incredibly important for us to remember)
This is why whenever anyone interested in frame data in fighting games they will come across different colored rectangles or ovals around the character model. Generally these are called Hit Boxes. They represent areas that do damage, where a character can get hurt, where a character is invincible etc... The sizes of these shapes can change but will always be attached to the character, exceptions being projectiles.
The reason why @Cypher and I have felt uncomfortable about Split Body melee combat is because of this: The character is a Shotgun Disguised as a Swordsman.
Let me explain...
Anyone that swings a stick in person would know that anything that is in the way of the stick will get hit. Let's say you swing a 2 foot long stick straight from top to bottom. Anything too far left, right, forward and behind you should not get hit by the stick. In this case, you are a 2D fighting game character.
The issue is when the area that can be hit doesn't match the size and positions of the stick being swung. You swing the same stick the same way as before, but now anything within an invisible 6ft x 6ft AOE cone in front of you gets hit. This is what it looks and feels like to be a Shotgun Disguised as a Swordsmen.
Tab Target MMOs tend to design their melee weapon combat as the Shotgun Swordsman (which sounds like a badass multi class ngl). This design philosophy however, does not fit the feel of the Root Motion Melee Action Combat design that we have been so desperately been trying to explain.
For the design and feel of what we envision to work properly, it first requires both the player and enemy NPC's hit boxes to be programmed similar to 2D fighting game characters, or Soul Calibur to fit the theme. Then everything else we've discussed should fall into place if done well.
No I do not want AoC to play like Soul Calibur or Tekken, I want the Hit Boxes on character and enemy NPC models to behave like those games.
I also understand that AoC is still early in development and some systems are just place holders or yet to be improved, but I still think my post can help people understand why certain things work and how this can help others to formulate better ideas for discussion.
I'll be copy pasting this post in the main feedback thread but slightly modified.
Thank you for listening to my TED Talk
I was always under the impression that what I think you're talking about, a cleave, came about from and is seen most often in action games.
DDO is what I'd expect the eventual boss encounters to look like, minus the grappling and other DDO specific features.
This sort of thing doesn't work well with 40 people.
Would be great for solo progression though.
Varies. Everyone could be trying to climb it and destroy different parts of its body *shrug*
That just sounds like a scramble, not content for an organized, disciplined force.
Again though, the idea sounds great for solo content. This isn't surprising, since the idea was from a single player game and almost nothing from good single player games (in terms of encounter design) works for 40 person content.
Cleaving is the property than can be "programmed" into the weapon. To apply damage to a weapon attack animation it is up to the programmer to apply the appropriate damage zones (Hit Boxes) and damage numbers when something comes into contact with those Hit Boxes.
For an enemy swinging a 10ft long Great Sword horizontally, it requires the programmer to put Hit Boxes that activate around the Great Sword model during certain frames of the attack animation. Also keep in mind that Hit Boxes can be programmed to be longer, shorter or thinner than the actual weapon model.
Cleaving is the by product of having Hit Boxes staying active throughout the required attack animation.
Let's take the analogy of swinging a stick again, this time with Hit Boxes.
You swing a 2 foot long stick straight from top to bottom, starting from above your head and ending at your feet. That is your attack animation.
Let's say there is a 1ft thick wall that is within attack range and directly behind that wall is a flower pot floating at the height of your chest. You play your attack animation at the wall and your stick goes through both the wall and flower pot, but nothing happens...
Now a programmer designs a Hit Box around the exact size of of your stick. This Hit Box also stays active for your entire attack animation.
Now when your attack animation is played, both the wall and flower pot become visibly damaged.
Now the programmer designs a Hit Box that is 1ft long and starts at the base of where your hand is gripping the stick. This Hit Box is also active for your entire attack animation
You play your exact same attack animation but now only the entire wall is damaged and the flower pot stays intact.
Now the programmer designs a Hit Box around the exact size of your stick again. The Hit Box stays active for your entire attack animation, Except at chest height.
You play your exact same attack animation but now the top and bottom of the wall is damaged, leaving a piece of the wall and flower pot to ominously float unscathed...
Also having a couple people climb up a Dragon during a 40 man raid is not impossible, just difficult to do well. There would have to be some kind of "climbing meter" that fills up on the dragon that everyone can work towards.
Once it's full, up to 10 players can climb onto specific glowing regions on the Dragon and those players would keep doing damage. There would be specific glowing weak spots that players can climb towards to get bonus damage.
However there may be random quick time events while climbing that require players to press a certain directional key within a certain time frame to stay on, and failing 3 times will knock a player off early.
Also certain danger zones may appear on the body for specific monsters. Players climbing an Ice Dragon would also have to avoid getting too close to protruding ice scales or risk being slowed or frozen, causing players to miss out on extra DPS
All while this is happening the Dragon starts a combat phase where it starts to pounce around the battlefield, and anything within the vicinity will get damaged. This is also to keep the rest of the raid on their feet and to react accordingly.
The Dragon flies up into the sky hundreds of feet in the air, preparing a divebomb on an area of the battlefield. A growing AOE indicator is shown while the Dragon is flying full speed to the ground. The rest of the raid has to move out in time or risk possible death.
Players still climbing the dragon would have to face a final special quick time event, something like a sequence of 5 directional keys or risk possible death. However if a player fails to press all the right keys in time, they will take reduced damaged based on how many keys were left in the QTE.
Just spit ballin though...
@Merek - FFXIV's bosses seem boring, from the reports of people I know who play, they are boring, or easy, for the most part. Unfortunately I can't say much because though FFXI bosses are not 'massively different', they are different enough that I love one game and don't like the other. Again, there's a lot of nuance.
QTE aren't necessary, and the epic feeling people get from fighting big bosses has a specific formula that some MMOs know how to follow, and some don't. It's actually almost universal across the types of game, especially when defensive mechanics players use are there primarily to reduce damage and aren't based on either the Tab Target zergfest (the fight is almost always this, the question is whether or not the enemy has enough mechanics to 'disrupt the zerg') or the Action Combat iFrame dance (even if the game doesn't have these, if the defensive mechanics are meant to completely avoid damage, the experience is different).
Monster Hunter is the way it is for a reason, years of experience crafting that reason. FFXIV's crossover can be used to see a lot. They put the iconic 'Behemoth' into Monster Hunter, and the second stage of that fight feels cool the way Monster Hunter always feels. The first stage is less so, because it's meant to feel like an FFXIV fight (they were trying to get people from one game to enjoy the other or something, I can't imagine it was that easy, but it was a semi-stated goal, they probably meant 'enjoy watching it and get into it' that way). The counterpart was that they put Monster Hunter's iconic Rathalos into FFXIV.
It's only my opinion (well, me and everyone I know that I've talked to about it), but they managed to make Rathalos boring. The most important note, though, was looking at it and thinking 'huh, I expected this to be an FFXI style fight, but I guess I was expecting too much'.
Fight, for anyone curious. It's a little sad, and I don't say that because I'm comparing it to Monster Hunter. It's because this is a terribly poor translation of the experience into a Tab Target game. Mostly, it's terribly slowed and telegraphs literally everything at least 3x more than it needs to, and 5-10x more than in Monster Hunter.
I don't know if this is a framing for discussion that suits y'all, but I offer it because I think we really need to talk more about specifics than about abstractions.
"That fight is too slowed down, even for a Tab Target game, it's tuned to make the player feel like they can handle the monster, and drastically changes the skill gap, on top of making it as rotation-heavy as possible."
I would give a proper Rathalos fight for comparison, but this isn't about comparing to MHW, this is about 'what would make that fight not be boring in Ashes?', and also any short Rathalos videos are probably from overgeared speedrunners who just stun the monster repeatedly so that it never does anything. If you want comparison for some reason try looking for something 10-15m long I guess... 'Charge Blade' would be what compares the best.
Inversely to Hit Boxes are Hurt Boxes. Hurt Boxes are generally tied to the character model to indicate that when a Hit Box comes into contact of a Hurt Box, damage will be applied.
Hurt Boxes can be programmed in different sizes and on different sections of the character model. A Hurt Box can be programmed for a section of the head, torso, arms, and legs. OR a Hurt Box can be programmed as just one giant cube that fits around a character model.
If I were to use the same analogy of the stick, everything that I explained before would imply that the wall and flower pot were programmed with the appropriate sized Hurt Box. No Hurt Box means anything programmed with a Hit Box, no matter the size and distance, cannot cause damage to an object.
If the wall and flower pot were programmed to be separate models, each with one Hurt Box 5 times larger than their visual appearance, then theoretically all three scenarios would actually damage the models. For that to not happen, models and objects need to have one or several Hurt Boxes that are appropriate to their respective sizes.