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
Leap back or teleport (dragoon)
Active roll dodge(not as you know it in action combat. It would be a class skill for a few classes. Cooldown and mp cost Small evasion stat boost to the maximum while the character performs a roll dodge animation).
Active block (not as you know it in sction combat. Class skill for some classes. Cooldown and mp cost. Character performs a shield, dual wield, two handed block animation. Greatly boosts p defence for a very short period. You cant hold it to have it active. Doesnt affect magic attacks. Now there should be an additional block for tanks, requiring a shield. Same mechanics but blocks all types of dmg for a bit more. The animation lasts more. Imagine knight with shield blocking mage prysm atk or dragon firebreath).
Not action combat. Modernized tabtarget with animations tied to simulated "action block/dodge" p. def boosts and evasion boosts.
Class locked a must.
I totally agree with you that games with rotations are mindless spam. However, that is not inherent to tab target games, it is just common in poorly developed ones.
Also, the two videos you links, I have a very specific issue with. We just finished stating that tab target games are not designed to look good, action games are.
Comparing this to the discussion that was on these forums about the games website. Someone wanted more bright colors, and flashy animations and such. Basically, they wanted Fortnites web design for Ashes. The Ashes website is more muted in tone, more gritty even.
Those bright colors and that animation, that is designed to appeal to kids. It's visual, attention grabbing, but
often completely lacking in any information being conferred. Ashes website has all the information that Intrepid want to give players in a fairly easy format - the website is functional.
In terms of combat, action combat is flashy, there's a lot of movement going on. That doesn't make it deep, it doesn't mean it is good to play, it makes it interesting to look at.
A tab target game doesn't care what it looks like. It doesn't care because the genre was invented at a point in time where the only way you could show someone what it looked like was to have them literally sitting next to you while you played it, so that person wasn't looking at the game, they were looking at the enjoyment that player was having playing the game.
When you have a game that is like this, you can't just show a video of that game and say "see what this looks like?".
This is akin to filming a game of chess (a game not designed for a televised audience) and then comparing it to a game of football (any kind, they are all designed for a televised audience now) and then pointing out how boring that game is chess is.
One is designed to be a spectator sport, one is designed purely, 100% for the enjoyment of the person playing it.
Yeah totally. I wouldn’t expect the basics to be the focus either, just have to be more engaging thsn holding a button and letting the game play for you. And you said it perfectly about heavy attacks, use them opportunistically which creates more player choice and slightly more skill gap (when to use and when to not). So we agree on this.
Your example of WoW combat is basically how I felt as well, along with all the other tabs I have played. So to a degree I think we agree here too. More incentive to make hybrid work since you do prefer tab but you don’t care for the “boring” aspect of it. I think you’d appreciate if the tab target skills would auto-aim, and be able to be dodged or blocked by the opponent? You still get auto aim which is basically what tab is, but it simply changes how the opponent gets to react. This could be the common ground the community needs, which is what the OP wants (me too). Based on your even more recent reply to Merek, I’d say yes we’ve reached common ground.
Yeah the two aren’t entirely comparable, especially based on what might be getting us close to a good compromise. Your frame data seems sound, I shouldn’t have said data before. I meant the concept of being unable to react to your opponent was wrong. But I think we’re on the same page now. I’m not sure what you should elaborate on next. My main goal I think is going to be doing what the OP is doing and campaigning for what seems to be something multiple people are agreeing on in this thread so far (yay!)
Would you say the system we seem to be forging an alliance on in this thread might work for you then? Without going over each facet in too much detail we essentially are talking about having an active/dedicated block, light and heavy basic attacks, tab target abilities operate as auto aimed abilities but can be blocked or dodged by the opponent, possible crit chance / crit resist / or other RNG stat as a replacement for evasion stat since you’ll be actively dodging or evading by moving (jury is still out on this last idea).
I was under the impression you were of the mindset that an active block is a good thing? I fail to see the problem with what you described. If a player with a shield stays in their block until after an attack and then taking advantage of the small opening to attack, that sounds like exactly what that role is supposed to be doing. It sort of baffles me you end by saying “take out the blocking” because that’s the whole point of having a shield in the game, or any other weapons that can block an attack like a greatsword. In Ashes there will be plenty of abilities, so I don’t think you’ll have to worry about it being too similar to the Dragons Dogma footage. Hopefully we’re pretty close to common ground here. Hopefully Steven and Co are quietly paying attention to all of this and taking notes because I have no idea how else to get these mostly-unanimous ideas to them.
One of the key aspects of a combat system for top end raid content is that the encounter needs to be able to be kept still. Without this one aspect being true, there is a massive limitation on what mechanics you can implement - this one thing in itself is responsible for most of the difference in content quality and variety between tab and action combat games. It's worth noting here that a game with a combat system where a tank can hold a mob still can still implement content where the tank and mob move, but a combat system where the tank moves and thus the mob moves can't really implement an encounter where both are still.
In order to hold a mob still, a tank needs to remain still. In order to remain still, a tank needs to have defenses that don't require him to move. This is why if you look up a video of competent raiders from a tab target game, everything will look perfectly boring. The more boring it *looks*, the better it is going. Videos for entertainment purposes in tab target games are generally people screwing up, or purposefully doing things wrong (Leeroy Jenkins, etc).
Now, obviously, this doesn't hold true for solo or small group content, and is absolutely not the case in PvP. In fact, I have yet to see a PvP game where standing still is anything other than suicide, and I don't expect to ever see it - regardless of action or tab combat. This type of content NEEDS movement to be interesting, and the lack of it is why I said above that solo content is mind-numbingly boring in most tab target games.
This is something that can be fixed - adding movement to the game in solo and small group situations, but without adding it in top end PvE content.
This is why I wouldn't just say adding dodge to a tab target game is a good idea - it needs a lot more nuance than that. I mean, adding more movement is good, it just needs to be done in a way that doesn't ruin the aspects of tab target games that make (some of) them great.
I mean, if someone were to make a tab target game that didn't have the capacity for interesting and varied top end content - I think both of us would just look at that thinking "what the fuck is this...?"