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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 balance tab vs action abilities
Potato Basket
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Do you think this could work?
Risk vs reward principle should apply to combat
Tab target abilities = team effort = coordination
Action abilities = individual effort = skill
Tab targeting requires less aiming skills so there's no risk involved since you virtually can't miss, therefore the reward should be proportional.
Meaning the effectiveness of the individual should be lessened but compensated with the help of others as a group which should require coordination.
In comparison to action abilities it's the opposite.
Since the risk of missing your ability has punishing consequences and hitting the mark requires skill, the effect should be more significant and rewarding.
Let's take healing as an example
If Healing a target with an action ability should heal with 100% effectiveness
The same ability but as a tab targeting should heal with less % effectiveness, let's say 30%.
Bottom line is what players can't achieve with skill they can compensate with numbers; more players.
I believe this also works in scale.
Based on A1, In large scale battles it's harder and less likely to rely on action abilities therefore the majority will use tab targeting which should be coordinated to be effective.
So numbers do the talking.
On a smaller scale, action abilities are more viable so skill should do the talking.
Just an idea I thought would be interesting to discuss
No hard feelings
Have fun 😊
Risk vs reward principle should apply to combat
Tab target abilities = team effort = coordination
Action abilities = individual effort = skill
Tab targeting requires less aiming skills so there's no risk involved since you virtually can't miss, therefore the reward should be proportional.
Meaning the effectiveness of the individual should be lessened but compensated with the help of others as a group which should require coordination.
In comparison to action abilities it's the opposite.
Since the risk of missing your ability has punishing consequences and hitting the mark requires skill, the effect should be more significant and rewarding.
Let's take healing as an example
If Healing a target with an action ability should heal with 100% effectiveness
The same ability but as a tab targeting should heal with less % effectiveness, let's say 30%.
Bottom line is what players can't achieve with skill they can compensate with numbers; more players.
I believe this also works in scale.
Based on A1, In large scale battles it's harder and less likely to rely on action abilities therefore the majority will use tab targeting which should be coordinated to be effective.
So numbers do the talking.
On a smaller scale, action abilities are more viable so skill should do the talking.
Just an idea I thought would be interesting to discuss
No hard feelings
Have fun 😊
0
Comments
While tab target games do not require aiming, if the game is created properly, they require skills that action combat doesnt require.
Also, tab target games put a lot of emphasis on gearing up your character, so the only way your suggestion would be viable is if gear boosted tab target performance, but not action - or at least not as much (the same ratio as the loss in effectiveness tab loses in your sugestion).
You then have the additional issue of active defense against a tab target attack - in your scenario, even if a player dodges out of the way, the attack should hit them. You cant say "your abilities always hit and so do less damage" unless those abilities do indeed always hit.
All up, it just isnt an appropriate way to implement hybrid combat.
(relies on your gear)
Action skills you need to hit them with your own skill, then stats decide the amount of damage you deal.
(relies on your gear)
See the pattern here. both the same yet one is more effective then the other. So tab skills should deal less damage correct. Though it doesn't mean tab skills deal no dmg or every tab skill does less damage. You might have a ranger skill that lets you snipe a target from rng and do heavy dmg but has a long cool down. Action skill you do the same dmg but a little more rng and give a CC.
@Azherae I don't know what gear score you got on bdo, but I have never played a game with a worst (more difficult) gear chase in any other mmorpg. There is large emphasis on gear chase in all mmorpgs, its not about action or tab its about the mmorpg and how its designed.
Gotta counter that tab target bias.
Tab Target skills have a miss chance, so no, they don't 100% always hit.
Tab Target skills do not deal less damage, rather Action Combat skills rely less on RNG.
Tab skills hit 100% of the time, miss chance isn't exclusive to tab target. RnG exist for both tab and action, you don't know what you are talking about.
I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic but if it will help you make your point or start a discussion that helps Intrepid in any way I can give a detailed status of my GearScore and how I got to it in BDO.
If you only need the short version it is generally about 525 (Full TET + Catchup Mechanic Gifts), on Console (Kuno, Shai, Dark Knight), No P2W player, I consider myself a casual since I play BDO to study moreso than for fun. My PvP performance is, I believe 'ass', but I really have no way to say for sure. I definitely don't seem to contribute meaningfully in RBF though.
lmk if that 'helps' or if you need more data for whatever point you are making.
Oh ok, you were predicting me, then? Or calling me to help make the point?
In the former case 'yes I agree'.
If the latter, lmk if you need me to detail how my 'gear chase' went and how it affected my experience, in brief.
Oh, yeah, for sure, it's either easy because you're lucky/rich or discouragingly stupid if you care about actually being very competitive with players who are lucky/rich.
And ofc since it is BDO when I say rich I mean 'can spend $2000 a day on BDO'.
Because if the narrative you can't do this without tab, they can be like if your tab isn't stronger than action the game won't have good pve and will flap. These are false points when you are talking about gear, stats (miss chance I see being brought up), etc. All concepts exist in action and tab target or can be made to exist.
I agree, the only valid point in my opinion that has been made is Noaani's point, and Noaani's point is about 'amount of variety potentially present across all endgame encounters'.
I think you and I still disagree on that point because I agree with Noaani on it, but all the other points that seem to be arguing about the prerequisites to Noaani's position do seem to just be misinformed.
@ OP note that I have not done analysis on your main post, I am 'responding to being summoned'.
Right, this is the part I disagree with entirely and am completely aligned with Noaani's perspective on.
Except for one aspect which kinda flips the whole thing, and I end up wondering if you're in the same situation without necessarily noticing it.
As an Action-heavy/capable player, I don't care about the 'mechanical variety' as MUCH. The Action part is engaging, which I believe is the basis of the point. I don't care as much if it is that 60% of the strain is the encounter and 40% is the physical execution. I don't consider Action games to have 'simplistic' Physical execution variety even at raid levels of play, but maybe I've just been lucky to play some that don't, or maybe I've 'never raided' by the standards being used.
My point is... 'who cares?' It would mean that the raiding scene looked different, made up of people like me instead of people like Noaani, and if that's what Intrepid is ok with, then certainly I can't be out here complaining.
tl;dr if the 'part of the encounter that involves me aiming, dodging, and thinking about my position relative to Action Abilities' is also interesting and variable, I don't care that other complex mechanics have to be cut so that I get the encounter. I'll consider it 'variety' either way. The only way I would not, is if 'all the Action Combat parts were similar'. Which would just be Intrepid failing to meet a design bar just as it would be in a heavy Tab Target case.
Tab-Target-only players are not expected to exist, so they would just have different roles in such combat.
I'm not like that at all, me and my guild prefer things on the action side some of them only play action now. But Having complex mechanics is 100% something we want not just a bullet sponge or things we need to dodge, those are bonuses layered on to us that make it more fun and having some epic moments.
Though personal view points shouldn't be a deciding factor on what can be done. Lets say 80% don't care about mechs, it doesn't mean from a design perspective it is impossible to do on a large raid. It doesn't mean a action focused player can't pay attention to more then just attacking the boss.
I feel like your perspective/interpretation might be a little binary here.
It's not like it is '90% action 10% mechanics', and idk who claimed that (if you're arguing because of a person).
I personally feel like the 'debate' is closer to '70-30' or '30-70'.
And I don't care because 100% occurs in all cases.
But at 70-30 in favor of Action, variety in the non-action parts does suffer, I think.
Well, you're obviously free to believe that. As a designer, I can't afford to. I'd prefer to discuss how to solve the thing that I have experienced to be a challenge or problem, than to just go 'yeah I'm sure they'll fix it'.
We've played enough average/below average MMOs lately to know that 'I'm sure they'll fix it' is worth nothing.
Ah, sorry, I think I misunderstood you. The 70-30 thing wasn't about players or 'support'. It was about the complex point Noaani has made in some thread recently.
"If you are spending time on the dodging and repositioning, and you make the encounter the same difficulty as a Tab Target one mechanically, it is now impossible."
So you always have to choose 'what percentage of the design of this encounter is Tab-optimal and what percentage is Action-optimal', that's all.
Generally when you have a mechanic you focus on the mechanic and aren't trying to do two things at the same time. It can be different person to person group one might have to focus dps as the other does the mechanic. There is a fight in lost ark where you have to run to see the mechanic mid action fight and then tell the other team what they need to do sot hey don't wipe as they are fighting.
I just don't understand these points that action can't do mechanics during combat, and people refuse to give clear examples for good reasons, instead of using made metrics in their head without giving any form of evidence to back up their point. Where is the logic in that and how can you have a good discussion? It just becomes I think this because in my head this makes sense, but I won't give a single example to back up any points. So instead of seeing waht they think based on their examples you have to debate their bias head cannon.
See what I'm saying with this? Just becomes a argument on a treadmill.
I would find that system to be weak. I prefer games with higher skill floors where you must deal with the mechanic, the action, and the coordination all at the same time.
Now, I believe your answer indicates that your perspective is (please correct me):
"Because mechanics are usually sequential and not parallel, Action is easily equal to Tab in most situations."
I agree that with the assumption of only sequential mechanics, you are correct. If Ashes only has sequential mechanics for its encounters, I'll be disappointed, but if that's what it takes to make hybrid work, then I'll accept it.
I could try to give mechanics, have you played Monster Hunter World, if so, up to what monster? If you consider Monster Hunter games to be irrelevant to the discussion, let me know, and I can try to look for something else, but we can also just disengage here, now that we've cemented where our point of disagreement is.
I don't consider any others mechanics to be irrelevant, there is a lot of action stuff you can pull from action games where it wouldn't be something you could normally (or be felt to be made more engaging and fun) than with tab target. I don't think there will be any monster climbing in the game but the use of climbing to add more verticality to a raid can be a thing as well.
To touch up on the mechanic part though In games there are points where its separated and you would have to judge how many of them are separated from having to physically attack the boss / objectives. If its a large raid people should have different positions based on the mechanics where some might be doing them and doing call out others could be dpsing the boss and following the instructions. It isn't that its fully separated but with the amount of players you have, everyone has their roles to do throughout the encounter. Then you throw in the difficulty and what you want to do with the dodging elements and how you might want other certain aspects of action combat to play in as well.
Sorry about that, for now, let's just agree to disagree, the related priors are not available, and I'm not about to ask you to go play Monster Hunter: World for a potentially irrelevant forum discussion.
This part, but as I said it is really hard to explain without the priors.
Think of it this way. In MMOs, particularly Tab MMOs, the positions and roles and requirements of each player are fairly set at most times in a battle. You have said, multiple times, that Tab suffers because 'you just know the mechanics and dodge them', right?
I don't play games like this for very long. I play games where things 'stack', combine randomly, require rapid adaptation and shifting between roles to cover for someone else who has become unavailable in the moment due to mechanics.
"Alright the Boss is doing his AoE pull, Healers prepare to use AoE Heals."
vs.
"Ok who's silenced from that? All Healers? Ok Rogues get behind and prep for the AoE pull, don't stun the pull, we're gonna rely on the Summoner to cleanse the Healers if the pull happens, Tank prep to CC the move after the pull, if you're Stunned at that time due to the Stun from the adds yell and we'll flip the strat to have the Mage take hate with a big attack so that the boss won't use AoE on next ability. Rogues, if Tank is stunned obv you can move, get on its tail and pull hate off the Mage so we don't lose them while the Summoner Cleanses the Healers. Healers, you know what to do, top the Tank back up so they can pull off the Rogue, and ffs people remember that if we all dodge the same direction on the magma blade attack if it goes for that we'll just end up back where we started."
So in that example... The Summoner has become Cleanse, the Mage has become 'Tank', the Rogues have become 'offtank', the Healers now have to have a whole concept of how they're going to heal everybody in the correct order without wasting mana, and the boss is STILL about to randomly do maybe 6 different things which we might have to respond to before the current situation is even resolved. If the Rangers were standing near the Mage now they have to scatter, but only if the Tank is stunned, and only if the Summoner DOESN'T get stunned.
Now add to all that 'you must do all this perfectly mechanically dodging the adds so that you don't get stunned on the way to the position you're supposed to be in after the AoE pull, and you have something I consider 'an average encounter'.
Roles change fast. Roles change based on spacing. Someone else 'running up to try to land a big attack' now means every player has to load an entirely different set of responses mentally to all 8 of the random potential mechanics the boss can use next, and then in Action Combat you have to be aware of the spacing of every other player.
This is about the point where I start to have fun. Maybe I'm not much of an RPG fan.
You literally can't do the tab mechanics in action because you will not have enough surroundings awareness to execute all of that perfectly. And if you just have some basic movement to avoid hazards and simple button presses to attack/defend against attacks - that's super dull in tab.
As for hybrid, I'd probably try to push players to their utter limits with a combination of the things I listed. With the randomized boss actions influencing what players need to concentrate in that exact moment, switching from one camera to the other and doing the actiony or taby things depending on the current mechanics.
Its just something that action combat can do as well so I don't see the players can't focus on the boss and do the mechanics as well type of thing. You have a bunch of players and you will have shot callers that help keep track of what is going on and what people need to do.
I'm not trying to argue preferences, everyone has things they like more or don't like as much. It is only about can this type of combat do it, and to me that is a yes.
Right, and this is my general experience. This is my general experience in 'Tab Target' because apparently I play one of the many more hybridized Tab Target games with a fairly strict range limit for abilities. I have also occasionally experienced it in Action.
I'll boil it down to one thing.
"If your healer cannot heal you because they are busy dodging a slow moving triple fireball from a three headed dragon, but you are facing that dragon and can't see the healer is dodging and not ready to heal, then you don't know if to pop your mitigation ability early or if you can save it."
Few points
1.why does the boss need to be different (way more mobile) then the type of tab target boss.
2. Why do you need to hit a certain part of the boss.
3. How much additional aoe are we talking about, and why does that need to be a constant thing in a unpredictable way?
Just because something is action doesn't mean the difficulty for the fight needs to be amped up to the maximum. If you want an extremely hard fight yes include everything but nto everything needs to become an insane challenge.
Needed movement for dodging, hitting the boss in a certain part, etc are also mechanics so depending on how you have them it would be a more complex fight. If the answer for tab target is we are going to layer 3 mechanics on top of each other. And action has 2 with needing to do a dodge pattern based off its attacks in certain instances and you need to do something to stop it. That is also 3 mechanics.
If the argument is the boss does a lot of movement, a ton of aoe you need to dodge and focus on the walls that also shoot things on at you and you, those are mechanics just dodging ones....They mix of the fight and add more types of variety which is possible in the game.
The healer would communicate with you, and the combat would be balanced in a way that your party doesn't wipe because of that.