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
I have no doubt about this at all.
However, I also have no doubt that they will keep the inherent style of each in tact. No one wants action combat that plays like tab, or tab combat that plays like action.
As such, action will be better in PvP.
I don't inherently disagree, in fact I tend to agree that action based skills will have the advantage for a variety of reasons, however in my mind this really comes down to how the abilities are designed.
ie. a tab ranged stun vs a skill shot stun, same duration, which is better? Well without the details of whether tab abilities will abide by the same rules as action abilities, what the execution speed is, accuracy, distance, impact radius and all that other relevant stuff.... it would be hard to know for certain.
in regards to the main topic, I have nothing against tab based combat but I think action based combat is more interesting to me. Elements such as aiming and positioning both offensively and defensively become a huge part of the player's choice process which in some cases is enough to be interesting without even considering skills/abilities. I would be happy with a 70/30 split, with 70% of my time spent using action skills and 30% of tab skills.
Hopefully the technology is there to ensure its not janky when using action skills in PvP.
I agree with you here.
However, my assumption (and the assumption that I think we should all make unless proven otherwise) is that Intrepid will make action combat so that it plays and feels like action combat, and tab combat so that it plays and feels like action combat.
As to your example of a ranged stun, there is more to it than what you have outlined. What is the cast time for it in tab and action? Can it be cast while moving in each? Does it have any other components associated with it? How much of an effect do character stats (both of the caster and target) have on each? What is the recast timer?
It seems to me that the difference between action and tab will be much more than just duration. If that is the only difference, then action will not feel like action, and tab will not feel like tab.
I never focused on one thing, especially not just duration, I listed a variety of specific things and then said "and everything else that's relevant", so I totally agree with all the variables you mentioned, however that just leans into the point I was making. Feel free to reread that paragraph because it's the same as what you said, you just went into more detail and listed more elements.
On the other point, I really hope you are right with both styles of abilities feeling like action combat! It really comes down to us seeing more of the tab skills to really know how it will feel swapping between the two.
Now you may ask why, i think people have lots of reasons, for me it is a mix of two things.
One. I am getting older, been playing games since i was a kid and now i am close to 60 my reflexes are far slower and those types of aiming games just become too frustrating to play.
Two. There are many games players with lots of types of disability that can restrict their fun when there is no tab target. I myself have arthritis, not chronic though thank god.
I remember the first "aimbot" i came across, about 30 years ago, and there have been many iterations since. I believe if you have two systems in place (tab target and aim) and one is more powerful or skills can only be used when using one or the other it will be detrimental to the game.
Finally, i would like to say that people seem to dismiss effort as less valuable than skill. I would say in my experience that skilful plyers will always get to the top of the tree no matter what system is settled on. Effort should be rewarded far more than it is in a lot of games (which don't last long).
Just my 2 cents anyway.
You don't know what people want in pvp, you don't pvp....
After playing Guild Wars 2, I grew to dislike tab-targeting. It's way less player-skill based and more of which class activates their overpowered abilities first. Tab-targeting might as well be called "auto-targeting" because that's what it is.
Agreed, exactly why people use tab over action combat in GW2 because it is 100% more effective removing the skill element.
Yeah and this is after playing Ultima Online, Lineage 2, SWTOR, WOW etc.
Guild Wars 2 was one of the only MMOs I played where it felt as your gear and items were important, but your own personal skill were the biggest factors.
Tab-targeting is outdated and more focus on fluid, aesthetic and satisfying DYNAMIC combat should be where we are going.
A lot of player's first MMO was WoW so I understand why they want it but WoW is not a good example of good MMO combat. That's exactly why they've been "balancing" the PvP for +17 years.
Because it's not good.
I also wouldn't be suprised of the toggle stayed..... i think having both modes of combat allows the largest range of players to play how they enjoy to... why limit themselves.
Ashes is looking to make a .......hybrid........ system. They have already talked about how hard ccs are going to require the skillshots of action combat. But at the same time what does a root matter to a tab target skill anyways? Its going to be a mix. Not just action not just tab. I think this isnt really that hard to imagine.
The biggest problem with "action combat" as a tab player is that its shallow. I like having a huge amount of skills to customize and for them all to be balanced in an action setting, its normally a character with 4 or so abilities i need to watch out for. And that seems shallow to me.
While tab seems boring, from the action side of things because "you dont do anything" just hit buttons in a certain order, and walk around. You could say the experience seems shallow.
Putting both together, in a way where combat FEELS good. Cant do anything but make it more complex. All the rest of the argument is balancing.... so when the combat is shown, and we get to play around with it. Dont stop complaining about the balance until it works. Thats our job. Stop trying to remove either part of the system. Leave action in. Leave tab in. Just complain about the system as a whole until it works.
@PenguinPaladin
I have not played BDO, everyone said it was trash, so i dont have that experience, oh great BDO enjoyer.... my bad for not having your exact opinions and experience.
My action combat experiences are smite, which i think is a good action combat system, but i wouod be disappointed with it in an MMO, and ESO where i had 6 skills that did anything. And again am disappointed with that in an MMO.
I dont use unfinished games, like new world as a bases for argument.
And, my take on the two combat systems overall was like the least important part of my post. You BDO players are worse than the WOW players. Constantly begging for ashes to be the recreation of your dead game.
I've never said i wanted AoC to be a recreation of BDO. What I find is the worst if you consider smite action based relating to do anything with a mmorpg, a moba and mmorpg are not the same thing please don't compare the two.
So you are saying you don't want ashes to be a recreation of a dead game, why are you interested in the game as it is made up of actual dead mmorpgs with 0 player base or a very tiny one? What is the point of a statement except to attempt to annoy or agitate someone for no reason as its clear you are trying to insult. Thought you were better than that tbh.
This I agree with, should be aoe everywhere and giant aoe. With a proper speed it won't be like bdo where people can do 1000 things per second and constantly dodge your stuff and be in iframe. Creating good pve is important in all mmorpgs and honestly games in general, elden ring as an example.
And you are calling games dead because they have at least 30-40k plus people or ignoring other mmorpg and their combat, comparing mmorpgs to smite in action combat.
I wasn't even trying to argue just stating the fact bdo has more abilities and instead you start a argument and attack when given information.
Lets play the old uno reverse card as i sum up our conversation...
My opinion on the 2 combat systems due to my experience, and how that really doesnt matter because making a working hybrid system is the goal.
"But bdo is amazing, and im going to assume you have no idea what you're talking about and blam new world for it"
My correction of your assumption, listing what games im referenceing in my opinion, and being hostile back to you because if we gonna scrap we gonna scrap...
"Your opinions trash" dont compair games with team based combat to games with group combat. Or games with 100 characters and active balancing to game that will have "64 classes" and will need balancing.... And a whole take on worthless conversation about how ashes is a conglomerate of dead games.
Where in this did you try and actually try and discuss anything with me? Point it out. Im kind of slow.
Me citing people always use new world as a reference isn't hostile....plenty of people do it. Its not limited to just new world but any mmo that has action combat and only like 6 skills. I'm saying there is no reason why a mmo can't be designed to have more skills BDO being one example.
So its your perception I'm being hostile, I was simply asking a question on why you think that and you twisted it as a hostile attack for whatever reason. I can't understand you unless I ask questions on your train of thinking on you viewing action combat has a very limited amount of skills.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. When i originally asked the question I didn't say your opinions were trash. I simply stated action mmorpgs aren't limited to 4 skills that is up to the designer.
I'm sure they will try their best to balance it but what I mean is that action combat should have the advantage if both parties are equally skilled. Because it takes more skill to lead, aim, and predict movements than someone that is tab targeting, if this doesn't happen then you're just going to see what you see in GW2 which is competitive people just using tab targeting.
Tab targeting is fine, but definitely allow other types of targeting keys, like target the target of your target. Ie, I point at you and then I can target what you are hitting, or I point at a monster and I can target who the monster is hitting (ie you) and heal you.
Things like that make it easy when there are swarms of monsters and chaos.
I mean, I spent over 4 years in Archrage, including 2 years of that being top end PvP - but sure.
Highly doubt it like everything else you stretch fact. Even so that isn't a long time to pvp.
My time in Archeage is on record throughout these forums.
I started the game with a PvE guuld. We killed the games biggest boss, saw how pathetic it was and half of mmy guild left. I stayed because I enjoyed the economic side of the game, joined a top end PvP guild and stayed there for two years (which in Archeage is an eternity - I was the only person left in that servers top end PvP scene when I moved servers).
If you look hard enough through my post history (all 9.6k posts) you'll find parts of my story from that game among them (including snippets with interactions with Steven - he was a dick).
The problem is, you like to make assumptions about things. You made assumptions about tab target games and were wrong. You made assumptions about EQ2 and were wrong. You made assumptions about me and were wrong.
I can't wait to farm you on AoC that is all im going to say.