Action Combat for meele classes, tab targeting for ranged classes

What do you guys prefer, cross aiming or tab targeting for ranged dps classes?
Furthermore would you like to see different approaches with different classes?
EG:
- Ranged agility based classes (like hunters) -> Action Combat (Cross aim) with basic attacks
- Ranged intelligence based classes (like mages) --> Tab Targeting with basic attacks + skill shot abilities

Since with mage classes the core gameplay is to land your abilities (where the most dmg comes from), i think tab targeting for your basic attacks should be fine. The skill with intelligence based classes shouldnt be measured by what player has the best aim in the game.
It should be measured by the tactical use of your set of abilities and by landing those. IMO

But there should be room for players, who come from fps games, as well. They should be able to show their skill and beeing rewarded in fights too e.g. by having a good aim. I dont know the exact numbers but with my knowlege from other games like New World I can imagine that those fps oriented players like are choosing classes with bows, gunpowder weappons, etc.

So why dont we do cross aiming your basic attacks for those agility based classes and tab targeting your basic attacks for intelligence based classes?

Since we are talking about two different approaches of dmg output you would have the advantage of adjusting the dmg output of the classes individually when balancing the classes overall. From my point of view this would be a better solution for the balacing overall rather than giving people the choice of swapping between action and tabtargeting with any ranged dps class.

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falcorpix

ariatras wrote: »

Tera has bigger problems, like attacking less the higher your ping is.

Tera and other korean games definitely have ping and desync problems, which arent a problem at all in korea, given their internet infrastructures are pretty good.

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.

Noaani

ariatras wrote: »

Tera has bigger problems, like attacking less the higher your ping is.

Indeed it does have bigger problems.

It's lack of live servers is probably the biggest issue the game has today.

JamesSunderland

ariatras wrote: »

Tera has bigger problems, like attacking less the higher your ping is.

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.

Enigmatic Sage

The ping/latency issues has to do a lot with engine capabilities, game design as well as the servers with how the handle the data packets for companies side of things.

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.

ariatras

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

The ping/latency issues has to do a lot with engine capabilities, game design as well as the servers with how the handle the data packets for companies side of things.

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.

Enigmatic Sage

ariatras wrote: »

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

The ping/latency issues has to do a lot with engine capabilities, game design as well as the servers with how the handle the data packets for companies side of things.

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.

ariatras

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

ariatras wrote: »

Enigmatic Sage wrote: »

The ping/latency issues has to do a lot with engine capabilities, game design as well as the servers with how the handle the data packets for companies side of things.

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.

Mag7spy

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Find me a video where you are doing this in tab target.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAkTaiR-IeM

Mag7spy wrote: »

You can see the huge difference needed in tab target, that ninja in iframe fighting other iframes barely having frames to hit each other or cc and constantly attacking.

It makes tab target look like slow motion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q6THOFLlEA

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh1OhUk0H1A

It is important to remember Archeage(along side Lineage 2) is one of the biggest influences to Steven for Ashes.

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.

ariatras

Mag7spy wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Find me a video where you are doing this in tab target.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAkTaiR-IeM

Mag7spy wrote: »

You can see the huge difference needed in tab target, that ninja in iframe fighting other iframes barely having frames to hit each other or cc and constantly attacking.

It makes tab target look like slow motion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q6THOFLlEA

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh1OhUk0H1A

It is important to remember Archeage(along side Lineage 2) is one of the biggest influences to Steven for Ashes.

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.

Mag7spy

ariatras wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Find me a video where you are doing this in tab target.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAkTaiR-IeM

Mag7spy wrote: »

You can see the huge difference needed in tab target, that ninja in iframe fighting other iframes barely having frames to hit each other or cc and constantly attacking.

It makes tab target look like slow motion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q6THOFLlEA

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh1OhUk0H1A

It is important to remember Archeage(along side Lineage 2) is one of the biggest influences to Steven for Ashes.

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.

Mag7spy

Noaani wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Tab does not require the same twitch level as action combat x.x. Can we please be realistic.

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*.

Mag7spy wrote: »

needing 0 control on camera, 0 tracking, having all your moves aim for you, not needing to dodge physically. Tab style camera alone is not made for twitch combat, its a reason why action combat needs a certain kind of camera.

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.

Mag7spy wrote: »

Find me a video where you are doing this in tab target.

I thought you had moved on from judging a games combat system playability based on how it looks.

Guess not.

Mag7spy wrote: »

You can see the huge difference needed in tab target, that ninja in iframe fighting other iframes barely having frames to hit each other or cc and constantly attacking.

It makes tab target look like slow motion.

Sure, some tab target is slow. But combat in Tera (as mentioned by the poster below you) makes tab target games look turbo charged.

It only doesn't matter how it looks if its tab target. When you use a skill if you are in range all animation, looks and effects are just flare and don't have anything to do with dmg done. Action combat all of that does matter as damage is calculated after a hit of animation.

Dygz

Mag7spy wrote: »

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.

An RPG really shouldn't be focused on the twitch feeling of the player.
I prefer having some rather than none, sure.
Thankfully, Ashes is going for hybrid, so again... your argument is moot.

And, yeah, what matters is whether the combat feels slow or not and your "damage done" point becomes irrelevant.

Solvryn

ariatras wrote: »

Solvryn wrote: »

It takes more to aim freely than tab. There’s just more to it.

That said I’m opposed to offensive abilities being tab, if you can’t aim get aimlabs.

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

I grew up on dial up while people had dsl.

Mag7spy

Dygz wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

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.

An RPG really shouldn't be focused on the twitch feeling of the player.
I prefer having some rather than none, sure.
Thankfully, Ashes is going for hybrid, so again... your argument is moot.

And, yeah, what matters is whether the combat feels slow or not and your "damage done" point becomes irrelevant.

My argument is not moot what are you talking about. Please read the discussion then just assuming things as knowing context should be the first step if you want to throw 2 cents in. Its a point to someone saying tab has the same level of skill as twitch combat. That can't be possible le as fundamentally tab target abilities lacks functions that make action combat.

Ludullu

Mag7spy wrote: »

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 dunno how it worked in AA, but in L2 I had to click on people instead of just hitting tab, because L2's tab had a limited range and, due to the speed of combat, tabbing through random close people was a waste of time when you could just click on a person directly.

L2 had detargeting abilities so you did in fact have to track your targets. And if you had those detargeting skills yourself, you'd try and use them to prevent enemy casts, so you would not only track movement, but ability usage too. And with some abilities being preventive (dodge/def buffs), you'd want to use them right before a big (or usually time-limited super buffed one) attack, so you had to predict your enemy's actions too.

And imo, clicking on 10 pixels on my screen during a hectic fight, so that I can single out the healer in a crowd, takes more skill than just moving my mouse a bit and using an aoe in a general direction.

And if AA was anywhere near that kind of combat, it would've required even more skill, considering that it had faster movement than L2.

So overall, tab games can still require the same skill sets from people. The only difference is that instead of just moving your mouse to aim, you need to move the whole camera with your mouse and then move on top of that, so it's a double move instead of a singular one.

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

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 dunno how it worked in AA, but in L2 I had to click on people instead of just hitting tab, because L2's tab had a limited range and, due to the speed of combat, tabbing through random close people was a waste of time when you could just click on a person directly.

L2 had detargeting abilities so you did in fact have to track your targets. And if you had those detargeting skills yourself, you'd try and use them to prevent enemy casts, so you would not only track movement, but ability usage too. And with some abilities being preventive (dodge/def buffs), you'd want to use them right before a big (or usually time-limited super buffed one) attack, so you had to predict your enemy's actions too.

And imo, clicking on 10 pixels on my screen during a hectic fight, so that I can single out the healer in a crowd, takes more skill than just moving my mouse a bit and using an aoe in a general direction.

And if AA was anywhere near that kind of combat, it would've required even more skill, considering that it had faster movement than L2.

So overall, tab games can still require the same skill sets from people. The only difference is that instead of just moving your mouse to aim, you need to move the whole camera with your mouse and then move on top of that, so it's a double move instead of a singular one.

I really don't want this post to be going down tab vrs action as well as my original point was having a style for everyone. Even more so when we have the other post.

Briefly ill comment on one point, why are you needing to say aoe? Not every skill is a aoe that has distance. You need to account for the player you are attacking and their movements, Iframes, super armor and how they react to your movements.

If you are telling me in tab target everyone is grouped up tightly and you need to click one person in a small frame cause your camera is so far zoomed back and have 10 pixels to select. That isn't a positive point it is clunky and shows the limits on what tab target can do are being reached and making the fight less immersive. A cool movement isn't i managed to click this healer on 10 pixels of my screen. A cool moment is I see a healer in the distance and i weaved through their group cc the healer, countering the other two people that tried to help them and managed to kill the healer and get out alive in the fight.

Again this point was to a comment saying tab can be as twitch as action, which is not the case. I'm not talking about teleport speed and blowing someone up with tab target and being able to do that fast. There is a big difference between action and tab elements in gameplay and responses as one auto hits int he area and the toher you have an attempt to dodge every single physical attack or for it to miss you.

mcstackerson

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

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.

And imo, clicking on 10 pixels on my screen during a hectic fight, so that I can single out the healer in a crowd, takes more skill than just moving my mouse a bit and using an aoe in a general direction.

I don't think that is a fair comparison since you can also have precise free aim skills that would require the same amount of precision.

Dygz

Mag7spy wrote: »

My argument is not moot what are you talking about. Please read the discussion then just assuming things as knowing context should be the first step if you want to throw 2 cents in. Its a point to someone saying tab has the same level of skill as twitch combat. That can't be possible le as fundamentally tab target abilities lacks functions that make action combat.

So, this is like saying that racing cross-country dooes not take skill but sprinting does.
Noanni is teeling you that both take skill - sure one is faster than the other - but both take skill.
Different skills.
You just happen to like sprinting better than you like cross-country because sprinting is faster and feels more thrilling to you.

Once Noaani states that Tera feels faster than laborius tab target, even though it's not "action combat", your point about damage is moot.

Dygz

NiKr wrote: »

So overall, tab games can still require the same skill sets from people. The only difference is that instead of just moving your mouse to aim, you need to move the whole camera with your mouse and then move on top of that, so it's a double move instead of a singular one.

I'd say perhaps equivalent amount of skill, but not the same skill sets.
Probably seems a bit nitpicky but, there's actually signifant difference.
So.... yes.

Ludullu

mcstackerson wrote: »

I don't think that is a fair comparison since you can also have precise free aim skills that would require the same amount of precision.

True, but how many of those does any given class have? Cause any class in L2 required this. You could've been aggroed by a tank and had to reclick your main target, you could've been clipped by a mage's aoe detargeting skill or by a dagger's targeted detargeting, or you could be hitting a light armor wearing class and it had an augment that made you lose their target at some % chance.

All of those things usually meant that you gotta track your opponent constantly and you gotta be precise in your clicking, because if you spread out your dmg to much, it'll just get outhealed.

Mag7spy wrote: »

If you are telling me in tab target everyone is grouped up tightly and you need to click one person in a small frame cause your camera is so far zoomed back and have 10 pixels to select. That isn't a positive point it is clunky and shows the limits on what tab target can do are being reached and making the fight less immersive. A cool movement isn't i managed to click this healer on 10 pixels of my screen. A cool moment is I see a healer in the distance and i weaved through their group cc the healer, countering the other two people that tried to help them and managed to kill the healer and get out alive in the fight.

Obviously, to you it isn't a positive. But in L2, good targeters were highly valued and considered to be great pvpers. Just as a good twitch aimer in action mmos would be praised for great aiming and precision.

And as for "weaved through and killed their healer", L2 had this too. Daggers had a full stealth buff for 30 secs, which would be dispelled if they were hit, so they had to run through a ton of aoes around the enemy healer in order to not be noticed. This required knowledge of cast timings and enemy classes. My main class required me to properly use directional blinks in order to get behind enemy lines quickly. This required precise character movements, while being very fast so that your enemy can't react fast enough to counter your actions.

Again though. All I'm saying is "not all games are the same". Some tab games can require you to have good twitch skills. Some action games just require you to aim in a general direction and cast some aoes w/o thinking too much. And other games on either side can push their own mechanics to the limit w/o being similar to the other side at all.

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