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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.
How to make BDO's combat system viable?
Moowell
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
There seem to be three main camps on how much hybridization Ashes should using when blending tab and action. Some people want tab enhanced like FFXIV or WoW, some people want something closer to Guild Wars 2's customizable system, and some people want BDO's precision action. Tab enhanced and Guild Wars 2's system are both hybrids and fit with Steven's goal of making a tab/action hybrid. However, BDO has zero tab targeting. Basic attacks are manually clicked, skills go a set distance and hit whatever happens to be there. This does not fit with the goal of creating a hybrid system.
So how can we make BDO's system more of a hybrid?
One suggestion is to have a separate entity follow the player. The player selects a target for the entity to focus on. The entity acts like an auto-attack or DOT against the selected target, and several skills make the entity use some ability while the player's basic attacks and primary skills are precision-based. Of course, there are problems with this idea. Summoners lose their identity if everyone already has a pet following them around. 500 vs. 500 player sieges become 250 vs. 250 player sieges with 500 extras following the players. Lore around the entities needs to be established. Pets? Tech? Familiars? Pieces of the player's soul? Not quite as important as the mechanical issues, but still a point to consider.
Regardless of the method, without some form of tab target system in place, it seems unlikely that BDO's combat style will ever be implemented in Ashes. What suggestions can give BDO's camp a stronger argument?
So how can we make BDO's system more of a hybrid?
One suggestion is to have a separate entity follow the player. The player selects a target for the entity to focus on. The entity acts like an auto-attack or DOT against the selected target, and several skills make the entity use some ability while the player's basic attacks and primary skills are precision-based. Of course, there are problems with this idea. Summoners lose their identity if everyone already has a pet following them around. 500 vs. 500 player sieges become 250 vs. 250 player sieges with 500 extras following the players. Lore around the entities needs to be established. Pets? Tech? Familiars? Pieces of the player's soul? Not quite as important as the mechanical issues, but still a point to consider.
Regardless of the method, without some form of tab target system in place, it seems unlikely that BDO's combat style will ever be implemented in Ashes. What suggestions can give BDO's camp a stronger argument?
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The last time we discussed this seriously (this might be bias since I was involved heavily and don't explicitly remember another discussion as detailed as that one since then), it was basically 'worked out' to some extent, but since then, we have received information that indicates that Intrepid wishes to go another way and at best it will be like GW2.
So, it seems that if they were paying attention at that time, so far we haven't seen any implementation of it.
That might mean that the arguments or concepts discussed were not strong enough to sway Steven's/the team's decisions, or it might mean that they just didn't have time to implement it and perceive that using the Split Body animation attack style will not interact badly with whatever perception they have of it.
I say all this simply to avoid massive repetition of 'how to make BDO's combat style work'. How to make it work is known (this is my arrogance, the last discussion isn't about whether it can be done, my certainty that it can be done comes from personal design experience), whether or not it is what people (including Steven) want, is less known.
EDIT: I realized I talked in circles around the actual question, so...
Bearing in mind my bias due to involvement in this before, the 'answer' can be boiled down to:
"Don't aim for BDO or try to get it, aim for this."
From the people i have talked to, the big thing "tab" users don't seem to like about BDO is combat's speed and all the dodging around.
Doesnt feel right with mmos.
That being said, "viable" as in, "viable for AOC's hybrid system" there would need to be A LOT of work.
I don't see it working as long as IFrames are still used and this is probably the biggest barrier to adapting the BDO style combat into what they plan for AOC. BDO combat is just about spamming AOEs and maximizing the amount of time you are invulnerable to damage. Any "targeted attacks" do stick with the "aim assist" system, also seen above.
I can acknowledge that it's fun combat, but it doesn't fit in an MMO, as stated above. More attuned to a fighting game like Street Fighter, or maybe a MOBA. Intrepid would need to do some major overhauling to adapt this into any type of hybrid system, and it really wouldn't be worth their time when they are working on their own system already.
That tracks with what I remember of it. That, and memorizing combos like I was playing a Street Fighter combat game.
I get how that might appeal to some people, but it didn't feel right in an MMORPG. I personally didn't enjoy it at all. It was way too fiddly. At least it looked pretty.
BDO promises the player a single player experience in a world full of other players, and built a fantastic combat system towards that player promise. Every class can grind everywhere by themselves, the only required group play is in the large scale PvP node wars.
Ashes on the other hand promises the player a fundamentally multiplayer experience, with the best combat possible without detracting from the multiplayer component. Copy + pasting BDO's combat into ashes would do just that. Instead, ashes needs to find how to give the player the most freedom and skill expression capacity, all while not allowing them to do too much as to allow them to play the entire game solo.
To play Devil's Advocate, I could see how someone might be attracted to an idea of BDO without P2W.
Personally, I find P2W to be the least of my issues with the game.
^^^ pretty much my feelings.
I like BDO, for the combat especially, but as someone above mentioned - that sort of combat doesn't work very well beyond solo play (and I think has multiple issues when it comes to PvP?)
Not that it matters to Ashes, but neither of those things is true unless you are saying 'replicate every aspect of BDO combat', and even then, you could 'divide their classes into two piles' and one pile would have no issues, the other would have all the issues.
I'm a big fan of the feeling that Neverwinter gives, especially the Xanthalax video posted, it is a great example. My problem with Neverwinter is that there isn't enough skill and ability diversity with each class. I think that each class needs to have a lot of skills, some of which may be that class' bread and butter abilities that are used quite often with short cooldowns. However, the majority of abilities should be much more tactical in their value with longer cooldowns.
Neverwinter gives their classes those bread and butter abilities, but then they only have like one ultimate ability, it's lacking a huge suite of tactical abilities. That guy fighting Xanthalax got caught quite a few times and made several mistakes. Getting caught once should've been far more troublesome, or even cost him the fight in some cases, but he should've been able to avoid getting caught by using those tactical cooldowns. That boss also needs a little more variety in its attacks, it just repeated the same combos over and over, becoming very predictable. In a fight like that, there should be some tactical abilities thrown out by the boss as well, in which the player must counter with their own. Instead, the fight was a roundabout of the same repetitive combos from both the boss and the player. With more skill diversity on both sides, and strategic usage of the skills at key moments, that fight would've been much more interesting, and almost exactly what I'm, personally, looing for in a combat system.
BDO on the other hand is also somewhat decent, but I think the abilities are too flashy and too fast. There should definitely be quick and flashy abilities, just not every single one of them. The other issue with BDO is that the mob AI is absolutely horrible. I mean, if you engage more than one group of mobs, the other groups will patiently wait for you to finish off the other mobs so that you have a maximum amount of targets you're dealing with at any given time. When you're not fighting them, they sort of just stand around in neat formations waiting for someone to come by and engage them. It both looks stupid and feels stupid. Hell, Assassin's Creed has better combat than BDO, especially Assassin's Creed Valhalla. At least it's tactical.
The game should feel like Neverwinter and Dark Souls, and that's all I've got left to say about it.
But the game is absolutely pay to win. You have to plunk down lots of cash to really do end game stuff. That was the killer for me. I had to quit for my freaking bank account’s sake!
Such a shame too. I had so much fun for a while.
I feel the same.
Both about BDO and Archeage.
BDO never had any group content to deal with so its a poor candidate to pick from for anything other than solo play. For AOC we also want to have fun group combat in PVE and PVP. The best experience I had in group PVE was playing the lancer in TERA due to active block. Active block is something I very much want for AOC since not only is it fun in PVE, I think its a must have for group PVP.
In every single game with large scale PVP you always end up with two walls of ranged classes facing off while everyone else is fodder that dies in the middle. If you have active block that extends to party members in a cone behind you then your PVP would naturally center around formations. While this would make your initial engagement have tanks, meele, ranged and then healers last, I think the real win is after both sides engage since everyone that knows how to take advantage of their groups dmg-mitigation abilities will win over those that go free for all after the initial engagement.
ignoring all the other issues with the game, the combat is very... unique... yeah we'll use that.
Guild Wars 2 has the best... vision? on what a PvX combat system should be.
GW2's combat ISN'T but the design behind how it plays could've been. It's got it's own issues and... i mean when 95% of your players sit in the instances pressing like 3 skills to kill PvE trash, you don't need to do much to fix it up.
I'd love to see Ashes take the baseline of GW2's system (Combo Fields anyone?) and push it to it's limits in with 2022 level expectations.
I think with the 64 archetypes, though we don't know enough about each of them, you'd still get a solid mix of classes that can really 'DUEL' -like trying to chase that BDO level kind of feeling of catching like a 1 frame gap kind of thing - but you'd still get your major supply of classes that feel good all round, doing whatever - particularly in a group, which is part of the MASSIVELY multiplayer Steven has wanted to bring back
duel specs would see solid play in the ranked arena though. so careful there
this turned into a word dump my bad