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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.
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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.
Comments
Well that was sort of my point in my original post of making all basic range attacks tab target and making most abilities action based and perhaps heavy attacks as well. Maintains the hybrid idea instead of choosing one or the other. Not to mention it is important to keep an equal playing field for players. Put an FPS shooter against an MMO tab targeter, you have a recipe for a lot of upset playerbase. Which goes back to my other point of alienating a massive player population for the intended genre. Make abilities skill based, but I say overall leave basic attacks to tab targeting.
Alienation can go both ways, making basic attacks to be tab target and boring for people will alienate mmo players looking forward towards the game as well. This is why you have all options instead of saying lets make this tab target.
A person looking at numbers doesn't understand the effort that goes into landing hits on a moving target that has evasion skills, most people will do tab because of ease or because it will do more dmg for them.
But if we are going to extremes of basic attacks imo there shouldn't be any tab target range combat its the most unintuitive system imaginable for range combat basic attacks. And the whole balance issue can be fixed with soft target lock where it locks onto the enemy around your cursor and is easy to use for everyone. And a second type where its pure free aim but allows you to shoot at longer distances. Both do the same damage, one is good for medium - long range and another is good for shorter - medium ranges. It allows you on both to have light and heavy arrow charge attacks and is 100% a better and more fun system. Then running back and just auto attacking at range or standing still on walls with tab target which would be a very boring and brain dead system for bows.
But hey im just trying to do a in-between that is fair and some amount of balance between the two rather then saying the system that is the most fun should be used. I understand people try to compare it to being a shooter but its not its just a false equivariance to keep range combat simple so there is 0 skill curve.
Not all people have those skills, and that's fine. Those people can resort to the base reflex skills instead.
We aren't really talking about skills we are talking only about the basic attack. So akin to the basic attack they showed with the sword and daggers.
While some do, many don't.
Edit for clarification; in EQ2 for example, my class gained a specific spell at level 1. It has a 3 second recast timer, and is the spell many would consider the classes "basic attack" (there was no auto attack for casters at this time).
By the time you hit the level cap, literally the only time you would use that spell is if you made a mistake in combat. Basically, you should literally always have something better up to cast, and if you didn't, it is because you cast things wrong 6 - 10 seconds ago and are now left with nothing better to do (or you were expecting a specific buff that never arrived - which did happen).
Others of the same class I raided with would often look through the parse at the end of the day to see who made the most mistakes, resulting in needing to cast that spell the most.
It will have one up until the level cap - at which point it shouldn't be needed.
It will be needed for action combat, for sure - getting *an* attack off is the key in action, as opposed to getting *the right* attack off in tab. It just shouldn't be needed at all by any character that has built a tab heavy build.
Lol what? This reads like "im smart so i use tab-target, you dummies can use action"
You do realize that action combat can have all the intricacies that tab has ("internalizing many timers and such")
Its not just "ooga booga i see spell i press dodge"
Sure it can. And tab can require the same level of twitch skill as action.
I mean, neither of them actually DO either of these things, but both are technically capable.
When talking generalizations about either action or tab, you talk about, well, generalizations. You talk about the differences in each combat system and what that forces on to the content - you dont bitch and moan about what they "could" do.
It makes tab target look like slow motion.
They could and they have done it. Best example would be Tera. When it comes to hotbars, skills, keeping up with timers and cooldowns, rotations, etc etc, it does everything a tab-target game does, plus it makes you aim your stuff, and actively dodge or block.
Not all ping is created equal. If you ever played with high ping on an FPS game, or against someone with high ping you'll know the pain
My post was in regards to what can be. In the same way tab *can* have many cooldown times players need to internalize, action "can" have a need for high twitch skill.
Neither games really do this, but they *can*.
Well, that is an exhaustive list of everything in a game that could ever require twitch skill.
Now, the above line is sarcasm, I assume you picked up on that.
I thought you had moved on from judging a games combat system playability based on how it looks.
Guess not. Sure, some tab target is slow. But combat in Tera (as mentioned by the poster below you) makes tab target games look turbo charged.
Not a big fan of iframes fiesta at all, probably one of the things i dispised the most in BDO combat.
The Rift tab target combat example you gave was pretty terrible could possible call it nitty pick?
Even though Archeage was mostly Tab-Target the combat was very fast paced, had many skills that wouldn't trigger GCD, had animation cancelling possibilities and had high mobility options not only through skils but also through mounts and gliders usage in combat. Barely had any iframes bs.
It is important to remember Archeage(along side Lineage 2) is one of the biggest influences to Steven for Ashes.
Aren't we all sinners?
Tera has bigger problems, like attacking less the higher your ping is.
These issues would be much less noticeable with proper networking and better internet infrastructures, the only gaming company investing in this that i know of is Riot Games, so i have high hopes for their combat.
Indeed it does have bigger problems.
It's lack of live servers is probably the biggest issue the game has today.
Not just Tera, ping is always a big problem for a lot of mmorpgs(and the majority of online games in general) may it be tab-combat ones or action-combat ones, even tho it is well known how much more impactiful it is for action combat ones, just like it is for games like FPS's, Moba's and fighting games, for those 3 they have the advantage of having less players in their settings like 10(5v5) or 2(1v1 for fighing games) MMORPGs on the other hand don't have that luxury and have to handle ridiculous amounts of players at the same time on the screen...
In the end, good netcode is the ultimate ping issues combatant, fighting games for example use frame delays(like in Dragon Ball Fighter Z) or Rollback frames(better than frame delays in my opinion)(like in Guilty Gear Strive) to mitigate ping issues as those games are extremely dependent on ping.
Sadly those types of netcode aren't very reasonable for MMORPGs.
Aren't we all sinners?
IIRC, it's part of the reason why they are doing the node sieges the way they are being somewhat instanced not only to prevent gameplay issues but to reduce performance issues so players can enjoy it with hopefully minimal lag. The minimum requirements and recommended required are probably going to be more on the modern side of things.
There are other reasons like node resets in the event of a loss which will set the node back to phase 0. So with them going UE5, many of the challenges they would have had to be a bit more critical towards in solving are still complex but somewhat less stressful in the grand scheme of things, especially in terms of accomplishing said goals for the games design in UE4 vs UE5.
Not sure what their real time destruction goal is for the sieges but I imagine it would also play a role in all this as well assuming they're still going with their version of destruction.
Obviously, there is a lot more to it without getting too in-depth but it's a rough idea for reasonings.
Alpha One was quite an expensive buy in. I would assume that the people who afforded that are on very good internet connections too. As such, I hope the distribution of players is good enough. Like Europeans, Australians, Asians. Which are maybe somewhat unrealistic in terms of real world performances, but it would allow you to gauge the impact it has on combat. But yea, most fighting game solutions are not ideal, they work well in a one on one, but less so in a world where there are thousands of players potentially.
Not sure on their goals for regional server pools but I would imagine there could be some latency issues globally for those who want to play from different regions depending on server location and structure aside from what was previously mentioned. It does really fall back a lot on the engine, game design and servers. Got to be well thought out and handled accordingly especially with plans for future content and any system changes.
Which is why I hope they have a diversified testing group, geographically speaking.
It doesn't matter if you aren't a fan of iframes this clip doesn't even come close skill wise. When you need to aim all of your moves its a different story, if your skill are tab you simply are clicking the button and it hits the player, you don't need to worry about player location and again your own aim and tracking.
I don't feel like reading up on the entire history of this debate, but both tab target and action combat can involve skill, different kids, but still skill. Like comparing chess to ---I don't know Operation? A shooter game? Darts? All these games take skill, just different kinds.
its about twitch combat , yes there is mobility in there to try to avoid some melee attack or reposition behind them. But tab will not have more twitch combat then action combat even if its slower then bdo as its a different story when you need to track your enemy and actually land your hits. Think they referenced tera as being slower but its slower because skill, patience and everything that is needed in action combat is required. You can dive around all over the place while tabbed and have all your stuff land.
Long story short, doesn't matter how hard tab tries as long as your abilities animation is just flare and all attacks auto hit and follow enemies like homing missiles it can never be in the league of twitch feeling and rush of action combat.