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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Tab targeting and action combat
Cire89
Member
Hey there.
I have a suggestion for the combat system.
You don't need to go for a complete hybrid combat system. Neither you need to go for one main type.
Make the system class specific.
For Example, let the warrior archetype be action combat meanwhile the clerics are tab targeting.
That can make classes feel really different in playstyle.
I know that can maybe be different in kind of balancing...
What do you guys think about that?
greetings
eric
I have a suggestion for the combat system.
You don't need to go for a complete hybrid combat system. Neither you need to go for one main type.
Make the system class specific.
For Example, let the warrior archetype be action combat meanwhile the clerics are tab targeting.
That can make classes feel really different in playstyle.
I know that can maybe be different in kind of balancing...
What do you guys think about that?
greetings
eric
0
Comments
But even so trying to throw both systems into the game has some negatives. So I understand people commenting on action combat vs tab targeting.
In action combat your targeting is based on skill shots and aiming at targets. Dodging is skill based and monster interaction is completely different. Instead of monsters targeting you based on a tab target "follow you around like its sliding crossed a linear plane. They target your body but actions are not 100% never miss. This allows the system for "aiming" and "dodging" to be utilized. Currently the way action combat feels in Ashes is that when your playing action combat "dodge" can't really take place because when you side step monsters follow you and continue to attack side stepping with you. So the game doesn't really feel "great" for action combat feels like you might as well just play tab target so you never "miss" a target.
Allowing the use of tab targeting for monsters and pvp just means that you don't have to skill shot your always gonna hit a target unless we go around giving a "timing based dodge Invincibility frame" to all dodge actions.
I think the end of the day its gonna come down to just scrapping action combat and sticking to to tab targeting and just allowing certain skill shot skills to pull you into a 1 skill button moving radical like laying down a meteor blast or something. But the two systems don't work well in the same world without significant differences in monster combat.
I know the reason why tab target was favored as well its because it's much easier to code you don't need to program hit boxes and physics mechanics for every skill. You just need math skills for distance of monster, damage sounds and effects. Also don't have to worry about latency issues like you do with say how New World came out and ping over 200 can cause you to miss hitboxes. Can't miss with tab targeting unless the target is outside of the hitbox range in which the client will just say you aren't close enough. And enough players from world of warcraft and other games know tab target well. Action combat is just the new flavor that came with games like Tera Online and Archeage. The Action combat part of it really is only really good for the combat in pvp in here but even still why even bother if you can tab target and never miss a person because you've locked onto them. The only way to make someone favor switching to out of tab targeting is making tab target work from a "only when infront of the character" type of view.
Target character = when target is in front of player.
^ This would make it so during pvp tab target users can't lock onto someone using tab targeting and always hit targets.
Overall I think its gonna just come down to scrapping action combat since the game really is programmed for more the tab target play style and not attempting to do some hybrid system that obviously won't work. Only dodging you really need to do is dodging static effects from bosses when a boss targets the floor. There's currently no advantages to playing action combat other then causing yourself to be stressed and frustrated because its useless vs tab target style monsters.
College Lessons
People will always find some reason to complain at the end of the day. But its a hard sell currently to say its an action combat game but the game is setup to play out like tab target. If you go play tera then play ashes you would see what i mean and those feelings of the differences in how monsters react. I mean I find action combat a little more interesting at this stage but the draw is more "skill based over rotation based" cant really do a rotation in an action combat game where your more concerned about landing your skills in the hitbox window. Action combat is more like this:
Range player - Hitbox size / Positioning - Effects around monster - threat level- physics
https://youtube.com/watch?v=C3ZlbMxyy3E
^ This was actually a raid mode which was eventually removed from tera because it was really laggy with the client system they where using flash really has no place in a mmo client.
But in terms with action combat physics is a huge part of the game which is why the current system doesn't really match well with how mobs work. The physics of the weight of the mob its slam attack and the attack of when you swing your sword and how it effects the monster when you hit it don't exist in tab targeting. We know we will always hit x mob in tab target we cant miss cause we are locked in physics aren't even calculated just the number damage of the attack if its a crit and damage and sound.
College Lessons
DPS classes could get full action combat with ranged DPS requiring actual aim and precision. I think part of New World's initial success is that the fps style aiming is very popular with a huge portion of the gaming audience. If New World were full tab targeting, the game probably would've been dead at launch.
Summoners could maybe be a hybrid. With summons being tab target, and everything else being action.
Well, the great thing is you can customize how you play your class. You can choose to put your talent points into abilities that are more action-oriented instead of abilities that are more tab-oriented. It really is up to the player on how they want to play.
Intrepid has said that you wont be able to go 100% into action or tab, but that said a long time ago before we had/ have any sort of testing.
I don't think we'll get New World style combat, ranged attacks will be somewhat target based (attacks lock on to target near reticle on screen) and weapon attacks wont lock you into animations.
That is the idea, and Intrepid said that tab would be the default (i assume with the split body animation action-based attacks). But also what do you do for ranged weapon auto attacks? Also some abilities are "action" in the sense that they are skillshots and placeable aoes, but can be used while in tab target "mode".
I think there is some confusion in the community about action and tab target and it is entirely due to the swappable "modes". If Intrepid chose just one and moved on with it, everything would be a lot more clear.
Healing should be tab targeting. Love the mechanics from wow !
Couldnt be worse if there is something like healing the friendly target with the lowest hp automaticly
I played all the classes but I loved melee combat with tab targeting because it still feels a lot more engaging without auto attack hitting the Q key for basic attack and dropping your abilities as you fight feels very action based still but without the performance hit.
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why not just scrap tab targeting altogether in favour of action combat, it seems to be getting more and more popular nowadays tbh
there are games that pulled it of like swords of legends online, they made hybrid kinda work
and so is action combat, I don't get why it's always the tab target fans that want to phase out action combat but if the action combat fans acted the same way they would get spammed with angry reactions
Ok, lets compare.
I'm going to use EverQuest as the tab target example. I could pick WoW, EQ2, or a dozen other games, but I am going for the original.
The game is full tab target, and has been out for about 23 years, and is still popular enough to get a full expansion every year (they are about to launch their 28th expansion).It also has a Metacritic score of 85/100.
Provide your counter-example of an action MMORPG that proves it can be a long lived combat type in this specific genre.
The absolute best you can do is pick Tera, but I am somewhat interested to see which game you pick here.
It's going to be mostly opinions stated as facts and a whole bunch of ruffled feathers.
Look, here's a cute thing:
And to get back on topic, @Zeyd Arthurn Ashes was originally pitched with Tab Target only - and that's the original audience it drew, so in this specific case the option to try to integrate Action Combat is seen more like an extra feature that can be scrapped if it goes poorly. Although I also have a preference for Action, there are other good reasons why people prefer tab:
There are other reasons, but I think those two are the strongest.
The best we can do is provide what feedback we can so that Ashes has a really good chance at nailing Hybrid combat.
I'm old I find tab easier I have played games with action as a caster and it's futile if stationary then yes i hit 100% if moving I'm down 50% thtas not fun to me or worth while to my grp
Cause if you scrap tab targeting the mobs and skills and everything has to be reprogrammed to use the new type of combat system. We have to start using physics which determines the weight of skills and positioning and landing. Monsters would have to be dynamic type of targeting. And we would need a system which dodging / action combat is actually value-able. Right now aside from dodging AoE skills no benefit of trying to dodge anything else because the moment you side step a mob it just turns to the side. Monsters would need limited range in that when you side step the monster has to do an animation to also side step and not just continue to hit you with a physical ability without having to move to hit you. This would be accomplished with the use of PhysX for unreal engine 4. But I have no idea how easy or complicated it is to work with. Rather then just focusing on what we have now which is a tab target system it could add significant added time on to development.
The best kind of hybrid would be not having the tab targeting but utilizing certain skills which are just circles that could be placed such as AoE type of skills. The other issue becomes bandwidth and number of players on a screen. This is why New world likely has a buttload of desyncing cause if you don't hard-cap player amount you get so many characters on the screen and effects that causes system lag and its a sausage fest of people who can't hit the hitboxes. I prefer the action combat system myself too. I just see with how the game is all setup we really can't use both systems cause one is just gonna be trash and right now the action combat is trash on a hot day.
Another way of doing atleast a lockon type of skill would be keep the radicals for action combat but allow highlighted targeting. Ranged skills become a hover over lockon instead of a point and shoot ability. radicals can still be used for the melee but that would be a healthy compromise and also still make pvp a "skill based" cause that's another thing we need to consider with tab target. Pvp will suck if people can just tab target and lockon every skill hit to a player.
College Lessons
I wouldn't use just tera since bluehole's client and engine was trash. I would use either Onigiri or Dragon Nest but even Continent of the Ninth Seal was good. But we shouldn't be advertising as a action combat if we really don't have the right system for it.
College Lessons
So, in defense of the idea that action combat in an MMORPG is a proven mechanic, you are listing two games that have yet to receive enough reviews to even have a Metacritic score despite one of them being out for over a decade.
The first game you listed even has a user rating on Metacritic of 3.8/10. The second game has been dropped by multiple publishers, in basically every region. I didn't even bother looking at the third - since the first two were so bad.
If I had no idea at all about games, and someone pointed to these two games as a means of giving me an idea what action combat can be like in a game, and this was contrast to the original EQ, I wouldn't even consider action combat as being viable.
YOU may like these games, but they are not an advertisement for action games.
So, if we follow this logic then you mean that since EQ1 is popular that if a modern game copied it's exact combat and player controls, you think it would be successful? I think we both know this is not what you are saying but this is your argument. This argument ignores the variety of reasons people play old games as well as what is now possible.
Hell, with this argument we probably should go back to muds and turn based games.
Glad to hear you are onboard.
Here is my own offering to this discussion
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/absolver category: multiplayer action rpg according to metacritic
Metascore 75 player reviews 94 player score 6
https://www.mmorpg.com/columns/our-absolver-review-2000106688 if we really need to dispell the whole 'its not an mmo so doesn't get to be discussed when talking about mmos' nonsense for my point to get through. Openworld pvp, constantly described as an rpg, decent amounts of players allowed in the same zone instance. Not massive multiplayer. But serviceable when talking about combat. Also they greatly improved pve post this review which was their only real complaint.
Absolver uses a tab target mainly but no targeting is required to attack and in fact tab targeting can be a disadvantage when fighting multiple enemies so certain dungeons require increased skill with untabbed targeting.
Metascore 75 player reviews 94 player score 6
That's a good metascore. Does it get to count as a sign it's good and should be investigated or should we ignore metascores and therefore your critique of Onigiri's lack of one above?
For reference as to games more commonplace in the forums here are two commonly cited games frequently referenced as acceptable for debate about AoC by most people when talking about combat or over all game design.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/lineage-ii-the-chaotic-chronicle metascore 62 128 reviews 6.9
If I wanted to look like a completely biased uninformed moron I could have cited the erthia expansion numbers instead with 9 reviews and a 4.2. But I am not because that's not a fair representation of the community.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/everquest-ii metascore 83 reviews 90 7.3
That's a pretty good Metascore. Is everquest 2 better than lineage 2 because it has higher scores? Does the metascore of absolver matter here since it's above Lineage 2's?
Let's throw in wildstar just to point out a deadgame that most people feel was good and has a bunch more reviews, but isn't playable
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/wildstar metascore 82 reviews 958 7.5
Lineage 2's reviews #'s are not that far off from Absolvers. Should we be caring about the fact that it has smaller review numbers than Wildstar? Is it invalid to talk about smaller games or not?
Oh and just for those who didn't want to bother fact checking Noaani's disingenuous claim about Onigiri they picked the latest port which was to switch rather than the ones with longer held communities to make their point look more impactful.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/onigiri 8 reviews 7.6
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/onigiri 12 reviews 7.4
https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/onigiri 11 reviews 5.2
https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/onigiri 4 reviews 3.8
As for Continent of the 9th Seal
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/continent-of-the-ninth-seal 21 reviews 6.3
Yes they aren't as popular and have lower reviews but I personally think it'd be silly to consider the entirety of a games success to validate or invalidate a single part of the games design that was good. If we take that approach Wildstar died and is unplayable. I could make the, in my opinion, disingenuous arguement that Onigiri is playable while Wildstar isn't, so has more players than Wildstar and is therefore more successful. So let's ignore Wildstar in conversations. It's the same type of logic.
Last bit of fun: the game that serves as a large base of this game's design
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/archeage metascore 80 767 reviews player score 3.4
We all know that score is in reaction to pay 2 win not that the game's combat was bad. But do the player scires matter more or the meta ones (that imo more accurately reflect the games quality.) Have I made a good enough case that this metacritic business should be retracted and discarded?
Yeah, this is just how I wish the combat were designed in an ideal world assuming that it could work well even in large scale PvP battles.
In regards to using metacritic to judge the quality of combat, this doesn't really make sense because those ratings are judging the entire game, not just the combat separately. A game can have good combat that does not contribute to it being a bad game, but bad elements, from graphics to shallow gameplay systems, can be so bad that the game gets a bad overall rating on metacritic.
The comment made was that action combat is proven in MMO's.
You can't just cut off a conversation, make up your own assumption about what you think that conversation was and then jump in based on your own made up conversation.
Are you saying that EQ (among other games) is not proof positive that tab target can be successful in an MMO? Because if you were following the conversation, and you are arguing with what I am saying, then that has to be what you are arguing.
If someone says "this game is a great example of why X can be good in a game", and that game hasn't even had enough Metacritic reviews to have a score (despite being 10 years old), then that game can be discounted.
If it does have a good enough score (or indeed any score), then you need to look a little further in to that game, as I did in the post above (and found that the game in question had been dropped by multiple publishers, across every region).
You complain about my take on Onigiri, yet my main point was that it didn't even have a Metacritic score due to not having enough published reviews. Even if you take all four platforms and combine them, it STILL doesn't have enough reviews to have an actual Metacritic score.
If you want to hold that up as a shining beacon of what an action combat MMO can be, then go for it. My point was that it probably isn't the best game to point to when people ask about action combat MMO's - but hey, if you disagree with that assessment, next time someone asks you about action games and if action combat can be any good in an MMO, I expect you to point to it.