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
That is a very binary and absolute prospective. One that I could see coming from a Sith lord, explaining the force.
I feel that there is a nearly infinite way that PvP and PvE and be merged in a fun and balanced way that people enjoy it. The same goes for Action and Tab combat.
It is just up to developers to find ways to make these systems work together and be good.
While, I have been questioning if Intrepid is the studio to make that happen in this thread, that does not mean I don't thing the systems can exist in a way where they enhance each other rather than take from each other.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Sadly, my analytics tools require a clear enough definition to do their job, so unless we want Skyforge and Trove to show up in that analysis, we'd have to define a bare minimum for 'Action MMO', as Vhaeyne points out (honestly Skyforge almost passes the test, but like most such games, seemed to figure that they didn't need to do much of the 'world' part once they got the 'Action Combat' part done).
And honestly, that's how it will probably stay, since as we're currently experiencing, the two concepts tend to grind against each other for lots of reasons. But hey, there's a New World out there, maybe something good will happen, if you just give Amazon an extra $5 for your totally non-gameplay affecting 'Busy RL Person Convenience Package'.
I feel like RL itself needs a few more $5 "Convenience Packages". Imagine how much faster I could get better at cooking if I could just skip some of that that 'time spent practicing or watching videos' and just level up faster outright, for $5.
Get on it, Amazon, I literally don't have all day.
I also get fucked in his example where all pve games are tab and all pvp games are action, being a pvp focused/tab preference. Which would be lame.
The thing with a PB&J is that you can replace the J with something like honey, and you get a different flavor of the same basic concept, because the jelly is there to add sweetness, and honey will perform that task perfectly well (arguably better).
You could also replace the peanut butter with something like cheese to provide the salty component. This works with either honey or jelly (or jam, which is just better jelly). I know a few people that have cheddar and jam sandwiches daily (or cheddar and jam on toast, usually).
But you can't just take any two things and mix them expecting it to work out well.
I love parmesan cheese, and I love seafood. Mixing the two results in something that smells and tastes like vomit. The only way to have these two items on a plate is if you use a very small amount of parmesan, and you grill it to alter it's flavor enough to not react with the seafood in the same way. Basically, you need to strip what is good about parmesan in order to make it palatable with seafood.
It is possible (easy, even) to have a combat system that appeals to both tab and action combat players (the one that people think they are developing now is one that was talked about on the old forums for this game perhaps 2 - 3 years ago).
The hard part is the rest of the game.
Everything that has been discussed so far is only appropriate to be used in PvP settings, or on PvE content designed for an action game. None of it would work even remotely on raid content, or even on good single group content.
Since the core draw for most PvE players (even those that don't realize it) is the content of the game and not the combat system, having a game that doesn't allow for tab target game variety of content is already not appealing to the bulk of tab target gamers, even if many of them do not realize this.
What the suggestion in this thread and the other is doing, really, is placing a hard limit on the variety and quality of PvE content in any game that uses it.
Ask yourself a simple question. In a game where there is a true hybrid system, what does the content look like that both appeals to tab target players, yet is still viable for action combat players.
Tab target content requires the ability to hold an encounter still. Action combat is all about motion. Make a game that requires motion in combat and you have cut 90% of what can be added to a group or raid encounter, making the game another of that long line that will start out well, only for players to realize that there isn't the depth to the game in the area that is important to them.
Here is where I run into a problem when discussing this topic with you specifically. You think that action combat is all about motion. As you have just stated. You also think there are things that can happen in tab target that cannot happen in action combat. This is not true.
Action Combat is literally just everything that can happen in tab-target combat, but you have to manually dodge and aim attacks. Everything that is great about tab-target happens in action combat. You don't seem to appreciate this fact. Which makes it very difficult to have a real conversation with you about the differences between action and tab target.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is what players generally expect. I don't think you would deny that most action combat players expect a lot of movement.
Players of tab target games have their expectations, players of action games have their expectations.
I don't think many people wanting action combat would be keen on a game where you aim at a stationary target because your tank is doing a good job.
O 3. 0
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FIGHT!
In high-end raids for both action and tab target. The movement should be on the edge of what a human can realistically do reliably. I hope we both agree on that?
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
In a tab target game, no more than 10% of top end raid encounters should be about movement. That isn't to say they need to be completely stationary, but movement should be incidental on 90% of encounters.
I guess I can't expect to have you in my Savage or Mythic raid teams, then?
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
My understanding of FFXIV raids is that the tank is able to hold the mob fairly still.
Is this not the case?
Not always. It's nice when you can get it.
There is a lot of motion expected in savage.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
So the aim is to keep the mob still. If things are going well, there isn't a whole lot of movement from it.
The aim is to do the mechanics correctly.
In Wildstar, Tera, FFXIV, and WOW I have seen both a high amount of movement and a degree of keeping the boss still at times, so people can do positional DPS. It seems to depend on the boss and how far it is into the raid tier.
My takeaway point would be that anyone who has played WOW or FFXIV expects to be moving a lot end-game any ways. The average MMORPG raider's expectations are based on WOW and FFXIV. Regardless of you or I like that fact. I think both Tab-Target and Action Combat players expect to be moving at this point.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
You are moving to align yourself with a rod during a knockback, rather than because the ability you used contains a movement component.
If you have a combat system that necessitates a lot of movement, then you simply can't have mechanics like that in content.
When it comes to the combat system, necessitating a lot of movement or not in PvE. I think it comes down to what class has the longest cast times when the character needs to stand still to cast, as the lowest common denominator for combat encounter designers to work with.
You don't need to watch the whole videos, just click around. I did not search of specific fights, just BLM/SORC POV. To the point that I think both the average PvE buy in both tab-target and action combat expects a good amount of movement, but not to be constantly moving 100% of the time.
In PvP it doesn't matter because everyone is going to move as often as they can get away with.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Yessssss
I can't imagine anyone being keen on a game where you "aim" at a stationary target because your tank is "doing a good job". Sounds like bad game design. The tank should be mitigating damage for himself and the party, and even attempting to keep the attention of the raid boss. It is possible to have an action game or a hybrid where movement is important and the general roles of the classes are still important. Rather than what you and many others assume which is "everyone flailing around wildly". It is possible to have strategic and thoughtful movement in action, something the analytical tab players just don't realize.
I know this wasn't a question for me, but I agree with this. High difficulty raids should require being good at the game, not just add more boss HP and more colors to the floor to not stand on.
Indeed. I would expect that if I'm an archer or a mage in a raid I can probably move a little bit less and focus on shooting, but I also expect that there will be somewhat frequent move requirements that are more than a simple "Oh boy look at all the spots on the ground".
Instead it would be more like "the boss is now flying, so I can expect it to be trying to swoop on my ass", or maybe it's tunneling, or maybe it's rolling across the field, or splitting the field in half with an ice wall and everyone needs to be on the correct side (break the ice if you have to) or else be 1-shot by a massive blast.
That kinda stuff. In between, sure the ranged characters can be a bit less mobile.
The melee peeps will be constantly dodging/blocking/avoiding the boss's close-range attacks like swipes, slashes, bites, stomps, etc.
If I go back to something I said in another thread - it is more about variety than it is what is possible on any single encounter.
My expectation from a tab target game is for the developers to release ~30 raid encounters a year. This could be as part of an expansion, as stand alone dungeons, or as individual encounters if they wish, it really doesn't matter.
I have seen a total of perhaps 5 raid encounters for action combat games, and they all looked basically the same. The video above from Tera is a good example of that.
This leads me to believe that developers are not able to get the same amount of variety in to content in action combat games as they can get in to (and have been getting in to) tab target games.
Of the five most memorable raids I have taken part in, three of them saw the raid stand completely still for the entire encounter. As I said in another thread though, this was from a time before YouTube, let alone before developers let their content be influenced by streamers needing to put on a show. You can't have an encounter where you are 100% focused on one thing, and then also need to focus on another thing. If you need to focus on another thing, you are - by definition - not able to focus 100% on the first thing.
If you have an action combat system where the tank does a combat roll to dodge attacks, then you have a combat system where players are always needing to aim their abilities. This is great from an action combat perspective, not so great from the perspective of asking players to put 100% focus on any other aspect.
You need to always be at least mostly focused on that one thing, which means every encounter will see you mostly focused on that one thing - which means every encounter will be mostly the same.
It goes both ways with ranged in most MMORPGs. If a ranged class has long stationary cast times and low mobility, they are not expected to do much more than survive and DPS or heal as hard as possible. If the ranged class has low cast times or can cast and move, then it is considered high mobility and normally given more boss mechanic responsibilities outside just surviving and DPSing. I have seen this dynamic in action and tabbed target.
In my personally experience, it is not that hard to stay on the boss in PvE as a ranged or melee class in action combat or tab-target PvE. Tab-target is easier because the "Invisible" cone of area you can be facing and hit your target is much wider.
For me, the real stress in aiming in action combat is always in PvP not PvE. Players are 1000x more wiggly than the most rubbery of raid bosses.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Yeah, it would be.
If a game asked players to actively aim, and then had the target be basically still if everything was going according to plan, that would be very bad game design.
That is why action games don't do this, and why tab games can have things be completely still without it ruining the fun and challenge of the encounter - if you don't need to aim specifically at the encounter, it doesn't matter if the encounter is stationary.
While it is indeed possible to have an action game or a hybrid where movement is important and the general roles of the classes are still important, this comes back to that 75/25 thing I was talking about in that other thread.
A good online game will require 100% of a players concentration at the top end. It doesn't matter what style of game it is. If a portion of that concentration is used for movement, then that portion can't be used elsewhere. If there is no concentration used for movement, there is more to be put to use in other areas.
If the combat system requires that movement, then that movement is present in all encounters, limiting what else can be done. If the combat system does not require that movement, then the developer can still add it in via the content, if they wish, as often or infrequently as they wish. Some games (FFXIV and WoW post 2012 or so) have opted to put in a lot of movement with their encounters, as it is more appealing as streaming content - for better or worse.
I agree with you, but don't tell Dygz. He will act like that kid whose mom canceled his WOW sub... I am sure you have seen the gif...
I am not sold on the 100% focus argument. I get the core than we as humans can only focus on so much at a time. There are also the things we do automatically through practice. Typing this now, I am not thinking about what any one of my fingers is doing. I am only thinking about the words I want to use, and they magically appear on the screen. Zero focus required, I don't even have to look at my keyboard. This is all because of practice.
In many modern MMORPGs, your characters' skill rotation is like that. You get to a point where you are still able to move and cast and pay attention to the boss, and the whole time you are doing your characters' rotation for max DPS. Even while paying attention to the bosses cast bar and looking for things that need to be interrupted or ques to do boss specific mechanics. Looking around the room for safe spots from boss aoe. Kitting ads or all of the above. This is the same in both action and tab combat.
There are many encounters in these games were in addition to your rotation and movement you have to keep track of mechanics. In some cases, many mechanics thrown at you at once. Sometimes it seems unmanageable, with practice any raid boss is possible. Even ones with a huge amount of "mechanical vomit" going on.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
And this is the content type I was talking about that is all basically just the same. These are all the things you are doing.
A good tab target game with good top end content won't see you doing any of the above on a good number of encounters - it will see you having to pay attention to other things.
An example of this is an encounter from many years ago that required everyone in the raid to maintain their mana within a certain percent range. It was fairly tight, and with some classes a single ability would take you
from the upper limit to the lower limit. If anyone in the raid went even 0.01% too high or too low, the raid wiped.
To make things more fun, the encounter had a mana-tap and a mana-boost.
All of a sudden, those years of knowing your rotation, of looking for the safe spot, of watching the enemies cast bar, kiting or CC'ing adds - they are all completely worthless in that moment.
Sure, an action game can make stock standard encounters like you describe above, I've never said it can't. What I have said, and still say, is that it can't make the variety of encounters that I would expect from a purely tab target game. I can't tell him anything - he has me on ignore, and it's the best thing ever.
As far as I can tell (Seeing that you dislike FFXIV and WOW so much). The only "Good Tab-Target game" in your opinion is Everquest 2.
I don't think I would be too far out of line saying that the average MMORPG player coming into any MMORPG is not expecting to play anything like EQ2. In fact, I would wager that less that 1% of "active" MMORPGs have played EQ2 and less than 1% of those who have played EQ2 ever raided in EQ2.
The number of people that have enjoyed what you consider to be "good combat" is so low it's mind-boggling.
What people expect when they hear that a game is going to have raids is WOW and FFXIV. It has been that way for years. There was a time when MMORPG players might have thought about other games, but those days are passed us. I don't think there was ever a time when the average MMORPG thought of EQ2 for raids. Even when it was "Big". There was a time when EQ1 was a top dog MMORPG, but never EQ2.
So expect what you call (Flashy movement to make the game more streamable). Ashes will and already has that. The "Flashy movements" style of boss is perfectly compatible with both action and tab target. As seen in every MMORPG to stay relevant since 2008.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Honestly, I have not met many people that have raided in FFXIV.
Rift is another example of a game that has/had content akin to what I am talking about.
Indeed.
EQ2 isn't that far removed from what WoW was. WoW matured in to a more streamer focused content type, EQ2 in to more of a player focused content type.
The fact that it is still around means you need to automatically give it more respect than games that aren't. The fact that it is the raid content that keeps that game alive means that games raid content alone deserves more respect than Wildstar in it's entirety, imo.
People hear raids, and expect WoW raids (not FFXIV imo). I agree with this, but they expect that *type* of raid - and generally want better than WoW (otherwise they would stay in WoW).
What I am talking about is WoW raids that are better than WoW.
I absolutely expect that.
As I said, Ashes should move on to full action combat.
It seems stupid to me to have a game that is PvP focused, and has no real ambition to be a good PvE game, to have a combat system that is anything other than the best combat system for PvP - which is a full action system.
We all know the PvE content in Ashes is going to be shit regardless of the combat system.
Here is where we are going to have a major disagreement then.
"WOW raids have only gotten better over the years." I know you disagree with that statement, but it is big true.
The only thing good in WOW right now is the raids. The reason why people don't want to play WOW right now is not because the raids are not amazing. It is because the game gates raiding behind daily chores that no one wants to do.
The movement in these raids is not there because Blizzard wants a more streamable game. They started putting "dances" in WOW well before people could stream it. See Naxxaramas in vanilla WOW for reference.
The thing that has changed in WOW raids is that players have consistently gotten better at raiding, and Blizzard has consistently made the fights more and more challenging. This has progressed the genre to where we are today. Where only two games have good raids. FFXIV and WOW. Both games also openly copy each other's homework and change it a little. This is not a bad thing, as the competition pushes the genre forward.
It may be forward in a direction you don't like, but for most MMORPG players, raids have only been getting better.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
They are by far the two companies that sell the most burgers, but few would argue they sell the best.
I don't know that the pve content in Ashes is going to be shit either. I'm not a pve fanatic, but I don't expect it to be shit. I expect it to be decent. Not WoW level, or on the level of any other mmo that mostly or fully specializes in pve content. Because Ashes won't specialize in pve content, it will have way more systems than the average game and the pve will reflect that. But it has to be better than shit.
Edit: I expect it to be decent and to serve its purpose, to drive pvp and player change in the world, to create things to fight over. I expect there to be some pve nuggets, probably in the 20% instanced figure that's been cited, that will be more focused on giving players a quality pve raiding experience, but again it will be hard to compete with dedicated pve mmos.
Comical analogy, but it is nothing like that at all.
People go to McDonalds and Burger King because they are close and cheap. Which makes them easy and convenient.
People raid in FFXIV and WOW because the raids are hard and fun.
People don't push themselves into doing Savage or Mythic because they are easy and convenient.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
If a game builds around tanking working strongly through primarily the tank you get the common Tab Target result. It isn't necessary.
Ashes can just make tanking a 'team effort' and that will be more in line with all their stated philosophies if big bosses have hurtboxes.
The Action part for the tank is mitigation. For everyone else it is juggling 'damage' and 'their contribution to tanking'.
Also helps prevent Tankx2 Healerx3 FOTM DDx11.